FEATURE
40 Years of Nukes & Commies by Bev Rodrigues
When John Curran was asked about his many years of teaching Nukes & Commies, he chuckled at the suggestion that it is one of the courses in which the most alumni would be interested. “That’s a nice way of putting it—as opposed to, ‘I’m so old that it will impact more alumni!’” In fact, as anyone who has attended an LA reunion knows, applause fills the room when John Curran stands as one of the school’s longtime educators.
be recommended for the class. But sometimes, as in the past two years, the demand is so great that two sections of the course are offered. “When I was starting to teach the course, and for the first 15 years,” he recalls, “the Cold War was still going on. Soviets were aiming their missiles at us, so it was very current events until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.” But even in the midst of the conflict, his purpose was not to take sides in teaching the subject. In fact, he says, “It’s a hallmark of the History Department as a whole that the emphasis has always been to encourage the kids to look at issues from many perspectives. It isn’t just facts and a textbook; it’s a matter of interpretation.”
Still going strong, and one of the most talked-about courses in the LA curriculum, the history course once titled The Cold War and now called U.S. and the World Since 1945—but still affectionately known as Nukes & Commies—came into existence back in the early 1970s. Curran had a ’fro, and things were pretty cool. “It coincided with our starting to work on things like Winterim, LAII [now the IIP], and academic credit for arts courses,” Curran explains. “Educational reform was in the air—trying to make classes more relevant and trying to give students some choices in what they would learn.” During this period, he notes, there were electives being created in other departments, including Laura Moore’s Creative Writing course, which began in the 80s and also continues to this day as the popular Honors Writing class.
John in 1980
“It’s always a strain with history courses, because you only have so much time, yet more and more stuff happens!” John Curran
“My main academic area is foreign policy, so the Nukes class was a natural for me,” says Curran. The course took root immediately, changing quickly from a one-term to a two-term elective and soon to a yearlong course. Now it’s an honors course and expectations are high. Students must qualify and
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The Cold War continues to be one of the topics covered in the class, and when recent events in Ukraine brought speculation about a potential second Cold War, students were quickly directed into a two-week investigation of the issue. Curran is pleased to report: “At the end of that period we had our own international conference; the kids were diplomats from either the U.S., Russia, Ukraine, or the EU. We studied the issue and tried to see if we could come up with a settlement, which we did—I don’t know if the world will, but we did.”
He is well aware that it is that sort of flexibility that helps keep his class vital, and he enjoys the challenge. “It’s always a strain with history courses,” he exclaims, laughing, “because you only have so much time, yet more and more stuff happens!” There are lots of simulations, press conferences, and international conferences, and clearly they are highlights for
