MIT history professor to lecture on “rapina”

Eric J. Goldberg, Ph.D., professor of history at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will visit Lycoming College as the annual Ewing lecturer to deliver a talk entitled, “Soldiers, Rapine, and the Decline of an Empire,” at Lycoming College on Tuesday, March 25, at 7:30 p.m., in Trogner Presentation Room in Krapf Gateway Center. The event is free and open to the public.

In his talk, Goldberg will discuss the Frankish ruler Charlemagne (768-814) and his dynasty, the Carolingians, who conquered the peoples of Europe and created an empire. The Carolingian empire entered a period of political and military crisis during the later ninth century and abruptly came to an end in the year 888. Historians have proposed a range of explanations for the decline this empire: the incompetence of Charlemagne’s descendants and their squandering of royal lands, their failure to drive out the Vikings or curb the growing power of the Frankish “feudal” magnates, their misfortunes with premature royal deaths and childless marriages.

Goldberg’s talk proposes an alternative explanation: the inability of Charlemagne’s descendants to supply their armies. Fundamental transformations in Frankish warfare made it increasingly difficult for the later Carolingians to feed their soldiers and horses and maintain discipline among their troops. The result was a mounting epidemic of Frankish soldiers seizing supplies from their fellow countrymen and committing acts of violence against them. Kings and chroniclers referred to such alarming behavior as “rapine,” a technical term that went back to Roman law and described illegal requestions committed by men in the army. The late Carolingians never found a solution to the problem of rapine committed by their soldiers. Rapine ultimately undermined the legitimacy of the Carolingian dynasty and led to the breakup of their empire.

A specialist in the history of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Goldberg’s research focuses on the politics and culture of the Merovingian, Carolingian, and Anglo-Saxon worlds. His first book, “Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German, 817-876,” offers the first study in English of the reign of Charlemagne’s grandson, Louis the German (840-876). His second book, “In the Manner of the Franks: Hunting, Kingship, and Masculinity in Early Medieval Europe” explores the fascinating and little-understood history of hunting from the late Roman empire to the turn of the first millennium.

Among other awards, Goldberg has been awarded fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study, the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Counsel for Learned Societies, the Medieval Academy of America, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.

Goldberg was a tenured professor at Williams College before coming to M.I.T. in 2009. Goldberg received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1998 and his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. He was born and raised in San Francisco.

The Ewing Lecture Series was established in 1973 to honor Robert H. Ewing for his 27 years of teaching and service at Lycoming College. A revered teacher and friend of the College, his life was characterized by a deep religious faith, a passion for history, and a strong devotion to a liberal arts education. These qualities touched the lives of all who came in contact with him and led his many friends to establish this annual Lecture Series, which seeks to bring distinguished historians to campus to share their expertise with the Lycoming community.

Strauser Lecture to address use of data in criminal justice

Lycoming College will welcome Kristen Golden, Ph.D., as the speaker for the 24th annual Strauser Lecture. The talk is slated for Wednesday, March 26, at 4 p.m. in the Trogner Presentation Room in the Krapf Gateway Center, with a reception immediately following in the Lady Family Reception area.

Chief data officer for the Office of Justice Data and director of the New Jersey Statistical Analysis Center, Golden will deliver a talk titled “An academic in a world full of lawyers and cops: Impacting policy through data,” during which she will share some of the successes and challenges of working with criminal justice data, the importance of transparency, and how data can inform policy and practice. Golden will walk attendees through some of her public facing work, viewable at www.njoag.gov/ojd.

In her current position, Golden has headed numerous projects regarding criminal justice data, including analyses on New Jersey’s 2017 criminal justice reform initiative. She and her team of analysts focus on data collection process improvements to ensure data are reliable and useful, that analyses are understandable, and that areas in need of clarification and improvement are identified. Her analytic work is used to inform policy, procedures, and practice in the criminal justice system.

Golden has extensive experience creating easy-to-understand visualizations and reports on a variety of criminal justice topics to promote transparency, such as the law enforcement internal affairs and major discipline, law enforcement recruitment and diversity, law enforcement uses of force, mental health and law enforcement co-responses, reported bias incidents, gun ownership, traffic fatalities, asset seizures & forfeitures, and arrests and charging patterns.

With the annual Strauser Lecture Series, Lycoming honors the legacy of Professor Larry R. Strauser, who began the criminal justice major at Lycoming College in 1975.

He envisioned a unique interdisciplinary curriculum at a liberal arts college that would contribute to the reformation of the criminal justice system. Under Strauser’s direction the program grew, and today many alumni hold successful criminal justice careers. Past speakers include Ramiro Martinez, Ph.D., professor of sociology and criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University; Thomas Vanaskie ’75, federal judge of the U.S. District Court of the Middle District of Pennsylvania; and Elijah Anderson, Ph.D., the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Sociology at Yale University.