Glenn C. Altschuler

Glenn Altschuler is an American writer and university-level educator and administrator. At Cornell University, he is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies and a Weiss Presidential Fellow. An animating force in American Studies, Altschuler taught large lecture courses in American popular culture and has been a strong advocate for the value of humanities and for high-quality undergraduate teaching and advising. He is a subject-matter expert on Popular Culture, Politics, and Higher Education in the United States.

Early life and education
Altschuler received his BA in history (Magna Cum Laude with Honors) from Brooklyn College in 1971, his MA from Cornell in 1973, and his PhD in American history from Cornell in 1976.

Career
Altschuler began his teaching career as a history professor at Ithaca College in 1975.

In 1981, he joined Cornell University as an administrator and teacher and became noted for his work on the history of American popular culture. He believes that popular culture is "contested terrain"—in which economic classes and demographic groups struggle to make their marks on society. His year-long course in American Popular Culture was among the most popular in the university.

From 1991 to 2020, he served as Dean of the Cornell University School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, making him the longest-serving dean in the history of Cornell.

Altschuler also served as Cornell's vice president for University Relations for four years, with responsibilities for articulating and overseeing strategies related to communications, government relations, and land grant affairs. Additional positions included Chair of the Academic Advising Center (1983-1991), Associate Dean for Advising and Alumni Affairs (1986-1991), and Chair of Cornell's Sesquicentennial Commission (2012-2015).

For four years, Altschuler wrote a column on higher education for the Education Life section of The New York Times. From 2002 to 2005, he was a regular panelist on national and international affairs for the WCNY television program The Ivory Tower Half-Hour . A popular speaker, Altschuler has given lectures throughout the United States, and in China, England, Ireland, Israel, Italy, and Russia; a collection of his papers may be found in the Cornell Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

He has written over 2,000 scholarly essays, opinion pieces, book reviews, and articles for publishers including The Australian, Barron's Financial Weekly, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Conversation US, Forbes, The Hill, Inside Higher Ed, The Jerusalem Post, The New York Times, NPR's Books We Like, Psychology Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. The National Book Critics Circle has cited his work as "exemplary." Psychology Today has featured it as "essential reading."

In his book-length poem, Glare (1997), A. R. Ammons, winner of two National Book Awards, wrote: “Glenn (inventively and wittily, as is his kaffeeklatsch wont) (also quite a singer and maker of songs) said why not let professors improve their pay by selling time to local commercial interests – apart from the midclass break that lets the kids visit the facilities, one could have one or more mini-breaks, such as… and now, have you tried the Downtown Bagelry…Glenn’s fun: also capable of pertinent and deep thought: we like him, as do others.”

Prizes, awards and honors

 * The Clark Teaching Award
 * The Donna and Robert Paul Award for Excellence in Faculty Advising
 * The Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Award for Outstanding Advising
 * The Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellowship (2006)
 * The Altschuler Faculty Study in Olin Library as well as the Altschuler Terrace (2008)
 * The New York Academy of History’s Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in New York History

Books and sample videos

 * The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn: An American Story (co-authored with Stuart M. Blumin, Cornell University Press 2022), was awarded the New York Academy of History's Herbert H. Lehman Prize for the best book on New York published in 2022. See also the authors’ article “When Sunday Baseball Came to Brooklyn” (New York History, Cornell University Press 2023), the basis for a presentation by Altschuler and Blumin at the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture in June 2023. Reviewer Jon Butler of The Gotham Center for New York City History described the book as "smoothly written, smartly analyzed, and deeply researched." Butler continued, "The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn becomes An American Story, as its subtitle promises – a wonderfully satisfying book whose final sentences convey just how powerfully our past can illuminate our troubled present if we let it.”
 * Ten Great American Trials: Lessons in Advocacy (co-authored with Faust F. Rossi, American Bar Association 2016)
 * Cornell: A History, 1940–2015 (co-authored with Isaac Kramnick, Cornell University Press 2014)
 * The GI Bill: A New Deal for Veterans (co-authored with Stuart M. Blumin, Oxford University Press 2009)
 * The 100 Most Notable Cornellians (co-authored with Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, Cornell University Press 2003)
 * All Shook Up: How Rock 'n Roll Changed America (Oxford University Press 2003) In The Atlantic, Eric Alterman wrote, “… All Shook Up, by Glenn C. Altschuler, is one of the first to do rock-and-roll the significant service of locating it within the cultural and political maelstrom it helped to create.”
 * Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the 19th Century (co-authored with Stuart M. Blumin, Princeton University Press 2000) In The American Historical Review, Tyler Anbinder wrote, “This book is one of the most significant (and certainly most original) studies of American political history to appear in the last twenty years. . . . [The authors] have written an original, thought-provoking, and persuasive book. . . . [A] path-breaking study.” In The Journal of American History, Philip J. Ethington wrote, “This is a genuine paradigm-shifting book about the nature of political participation in the nineteenth-century United States. . . . The aftermath of this book should be a deep rethinking of popular political participation in the United States.”
 * Changing Channels: America in TV Guide (co-authored with David I. Grossvogel, University of Illinois Press 1992)
 * Better Than Second Best: Love and Work in the Life of Helen Magill (University of Illinois Press 1990)
 * Revivalism, Social Conscience and Community in the Burned-Over District (co-authored with Jan M. Saltzgaber, Cornell University Press 1983)
 * Race, Ethnicity, and Class in American Social Thought, 1865–1919 (American History Series, John Hope Franklin and A. S. Eisenstadt, eds., Harlan Davidson, Inc. 1982)
 * Andrew D. White: Educator, Historian, Diplomat (Cornell University Press 1979)
 * Video: 2014 Olin Lecture, "The Way We Were and Are"