Richard Arnold Continues His History of Lifelong Learning

By Jim Klar, Communications Officer

During his 52-year tenure at TAS as an upper school history and social studies teacher, Richard Arnold has received multiple accolades and awards that recognize milestones on his fascinating journey of lifelong learning. He added to his list of accomplishments in the summer of 2022 when the National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored his attendance at a workshop for educators at The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. While his excursion was partly funded through the generous support of the professional development office of TAS, this marks Arnold’s fifth sponsorship by the NEH.

“Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and the Japanese American Incarceration” taught educators about the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II and the related issues of the treatment of Native Americans, the racism behind many government decisions, and the settling of the American West. It is part of NEH’s Landmarks of American History and Culture program, which specializes in place-based education that lets participants experience aspects of American history where they happened.

Held on the site of the internment of 14,000 Japanese Americans, the five-day program of in-person workshops took educators through the Pearl Harbor attack, wartime hysteria, incarceration, and eventual apology and redress payments made to Japanese Americans by the US government. The program’s creators used digitized artifacts, oral histories, and newspapers, plus the workshop featured some sessions led by former detainees of Heart Mountain.

A former detainee, Arnold explained, helped prevent a similar detention program during the period of hysteria following the September 11 attacks. “As a child, Norman Mineta was detained with his family at the Heart Mountain facility,” Arnold said. “He grew up to serve in the US House of Representatives and as Secretary of Transportation under President George W. Bush. After 9/11, he advised Bush against government programs targeting Muslim Americans based on his experience as a Japanese American detainee during World War II. This is a fine example,” concluded Arnold, “of personal experience lending a viewpoint to the lens of history.”

We salute Richard Arnold for his fifth National Endowment for the Humanities sponsorship and his relentless efforts toward lifelong learning. May he continue to serve as an inspiration to his students, his colleagues, and the world.