Professor Emeritus
David Schalk was trained at Wesleyan and Harvard (where he received his doctorate in 1964), primarily in European intellectual history, with additional background in history and literature and contemporary French history. Over the years he has published in all three areas and has branched out to do comparative work. For example, his most recent book, War and the Ivory Tower (Oxford University Press, 1991), is sub-titled "Algeria and Vietnam."
Schalk's experience of being a young professor during the Vietnam War almost impelled him into the study of intellectuals and political involvement (what the French call engagement). His second book, The Spectrum of Political Engagement (Princeton University Press, 1979), nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, addresses this issue directly, focusing on France in the years 1920-1945. War and the Ivory Tower compares antiwar engagement in France during the Algerian War (1954-1962) and in America during the War in Vietnam (1964-1975). In 2005 the University of Nebraska Press reissued War and the Ivory Tower, adding prefaces by Professors Benjamin Stora and George Herring, and a new Introduction by the author.