Faculty Between 1945 and 1950

On October 20, 1944, Msgr Aloysius Ziegler (1896-1977), Head of the Department of History, wrote to a former student who served in the Air Force at the time3: “The most remarkable innovation at the University this year takes the form of a ‘slew’ of nurses living in Gibbons Hall. There are, of course, very few men on the campus beyond those in cassocks.” 

There were even more priest at CUA at this time because those who would usually go to Rome could not because of the war between Italy and the US. After the end of the war, this radically changed because of the influx of war veterans. The historian Harold (Harry) Langley was one of them.4 He later recalled that he and other G. I. students were “shocked at how unprepared the university was for the influx.” There were also culture clashes with the non-veteran students on campus: the university’s bookstore was “not used to students being able to buy all their books at once, as veterans were thanks to the Veterans’ Administration,” and as Harry sat on the lawn outside McMahon to inspect all the textbooks he’d just bought he heard a non-veteran passing by, saying she was going to transfer to another college next semester. “She said, ‘I can't stand this place, everyone studies!’”5

The next page includes List 1: Faculty at the Department of History 1945 – 1950 (including further sources) 

3CUA Archives, History Department, Box 2, 1944, letter # 17.

4Harry Langley went on to a doctorate at Penn and a distinguished career as a historian, first at the Library of Congress, then the Department of State, and as a fulltime member of CUA’s History Department faculty from 1964 until 1969. https://history.catholic.edu/alumni-and-giving/newsletter/2016-newsletter/langley.html 2016 Alumni Newsletter.

5https://history.catholic.edu/alumni-and-giving/newsletter/2016-newsletter/langley.html 2016 Alumni Newsletter.