By Peter Hans

President, University of North Carolina System

RALEIGH (February 5, 2025) – Great teachers are great storytellers, and no one spun a scholarly yarn better than Bill Leuchtenburg. When I took one of his courses as a junior at Carolina, it seemed perfectly natural for a room full of awed undergraduates to burst into applause at the end of each class, cheering for a lesson on 1930s economic policy like it was the finale of a symphony. I don’t remember everything I learned about early 20th-Century politics, but I remember the thrill of being led into the deeper currents of American life, the electric feeling that history isn’t dead and gone but urgent and alive.

Dr. William Leuchtenburg, who passed away last week at the too-young age of 102, lit up the lecture halls at UNC-Chapel Hill for more than two decades, and he continued inspiring generations of students long after his retirement in 2002. He wrote influential histories of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal; Progressive-era political movements; and modern presidential power. And he was a true public intellectual, bringing historical perspective to the nightly news, advising on Ken Burns’ documentaries, and always eager to bring scholarly insight to contemporary political debates. 

“History professors do not have to remain immured behind campus walls,” Leuchtenburg said in his address to the American Historical Association in 1991. They can write “not just for one another but for a literate public.”

It’s one of the everyday miracles of a public university that a kid from small-town North Carolina could spend a semester alongside one of the great historians of the 20th Century. I knew when I set off for Carolina that I’d be learning from people who had mastered great works of art and literature and history; it wasn’t until Dr. Leuchtenburg’s class that I realized I was learning from professors who had written great works of art and literature and history. It’s quite something to arrive in class and find that the author of your textbook is the person standing behind the podium.

Dr. Leuchtenburg’s genius was in making history seem approachable without ever making it feel small. Even as he talked about giants like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower, he gave every one of us the unmistakable impression that we might venture into the whirlwind of American life and shape the direction of this country. He believed in democracy in that way, and in the power of public higher education to create citizens ready for the responsibilities of public life. That kind of confidence and enthusiasm are infectious, especially for young people still imagining their way in the world. I have never forgotten it.

I have also not forgotten Dr. Leuchtenburg’s staunchest counsel for people in leadership roles during turbulent times, which is to embrace dissent and debate as sources of strength. In that same address to the AHA, where he encouraged individual scholars to share their expertise far and wide, he cautioned against universities and scholarly associations taking official stands on contentious political debates.

“I would no more want to inflict my views on others than have views inflicted on me, nor would I wish to see us torn apart by factional fights over such issues,” he warned. “Above all, we should take care not to create an atmosphere in the classroom in which views that diverge from our own cannot freely be voiced, and we should respect the rights of others in the profession to express beliefs contrary to our own or to remain silent.”

That commitment to pluralism in academic and public life — backed by decades of research on the shifting intellectual tides that shaped American history — is the lesson I learned best from Bill Leuchtenburg. When I last saw him, at his 100th birthday celebration in Chapel Hill, he was surrounded by friends and former colleagues, holding court and having exactly the kind of lively discussion he always sought in the classroom. May we all have teachers that guide us to live so richly and learn so eagerly.