university of washington phd music education

University of Washington

Music Education

TEACHER EDUCATION AT THE UW: MUSIC EDUCATION

The University of Washington School of Music is one of five arts departments (along with Dance, Drama, DXArts and Art) in the College of Arts & Sciences. The School of Music enrolls approximately 400 majors at the undergraduate and graduate level. Majors within the school include performance, composition, music history, music theory, jazz studies and music education.

The Music Education major includes three pathways leading to Washington State teacher certification. The undergraduate major is a 4-year program leading to a Bachelor of Music degree; the post-baccalaureate program is a certification-only option designed for students already holding an undergraduate degree in another area of music; the Masters-plus-certification option allows students to concurrently complete requirements for the Master of Arts in Music Education and certification. On average, 10-15 students per year complete their certification requirements through one of these three pathways.

Students select either an instrumental/general or choral/general concentration depending on their major performance area. Differences between the two are minimal, largely restricted to area-specific major ensemble experiences and method class options. Regardless of concentration each of the programs includes coursework that prepares students for endorsement in each of the three music areas: General, Choral and Instrumental Music.

Admission to the School of Music is by performance audition. Admission to the Music Education major is gained through a second audition that includes a prepared solo performance, a keyboard and sight-singing skills assessment and an interview.

The Music Education division consists of three full-time faculty members:

• Dr. Patricia Shehan Campbell, Professor of Music

- Elementary music education, music for children

• Dr. Steven M. Demorest, Professor of Music

- Choral music education

• Dr. Steven J. Morrison, Chair, Associate Professor of Music

- Instrumental music education

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Master of Arts in Music Education

Two year degree (61-21).

The following guide serves as a typical program of study (assuming no remedial work is necessary) upon which the Supervisory Committee develops each graduate student's particular program of study. It is the responsibility of the Supervisory Committee to assure an appropriate program of study for each student. It is within the Committee's purview to require additional courses that are not listed below, to substitute particular courses for others listed below, and to tailor the program to the needs of the student in anyway that it deems educationally mandated. The student needs to be certain that he/she is working directly with the Committee, and choosing courses that reflect the Committee's suggestions and requirements, at all times. For entrance requirements, please see our website: http://music.washington.edu/advising . A minimum of 45 credits is required for the degree (at least 30 of these credits must be taken at the University of Washington). The distribution of credits is given below.

Total Credits: 51

Master’s Examination:

• Thesis Option : Students must write a thesis approved by a supervisory committee and pass a comprehensive oral examination plus a thesis defense. The thesis must be formatted according to the Graduate School Style & Policy Manual. Students must take at least 9 credits of MUSIC 700, Master’s Thesis.
• Non-Thesis Option : Complete approved projects (MUSIC 600, 9 credits) and a portfolio of papers accepted by a Supervisory Committee, plus pass a written and oral comprehensive.

Maintain a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or better. Only grades of 2.7 and above may be counted toward fulfilling graduate requirements. Complete all requirements for the master's degree within six years of entering the program. All graduate students must be familiar with the content of The University of Washington General Catalog Graduate Degree Policies. A student must satisfy the requirements for the degree that are in force at the time the degree is to be awarded.

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At the UW College of Education, our graduate students work closely with nationally-recognized faculty to address the most pressing challenges facing schools, communities and students. Join a community of passionate educators committed to making an excellent education a reality of all learners.

Our Programs

Applied behavior analysis (on-campus), applied behavior analysis (online), culturally sustaining education, danforth educational leadership program, early childhood special education ( sped-tep ), edpol: early childhood policy specialization, education, equity and society, educational foundations, leadership, and policy, educational policy, organization and leadership, elementary teacher education program (eltep), high-incidence disabilities teacher education ( sped-tep ), instructional leadership, intercollegiate athletic leadership, islandwood graduate program, language, literacy and culture, leadership for learning (l4l), leadership in higher education, learning sciences & human development, measurement and statistics, native education certificate program, psychometrics & applied analytics graduate certificate, school psychology (ed.s.), school psychology (ph.d.), science or math education specialization, seattle teacher residency (str), secondary teacher education program (step), social and cultural foundations, special education doctoral, teacher education and teacher learning for justice, uw accelerated certification for teachers (u-act).

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

The Doctor of Philosophy program in the College of Education prepares students for careers in research or scholarly inquiry and teaching at the college level. The program consists of: (1) continuous research, (2) courses in education and related fields designed to develop a comprehensive academic basis for future work in research and teaching, and (3) teaching and other related experiences tailored to individual needs and career goals. Each student works closely with an advisor and a faculty Supervisory Committee to select courses, topics of research and inquiry, and teaching experiences. These three areas will combine to: (1) convey deep scholarly knowledge of education and a specialty outside of education (2) promote a broad understanding of various methods of inquiry in education and develop competency in several of those methods, (3) impart broad knowledge of theory and practice in two supportive cognates, and (4) promote excellence as a college teacher. Our Ph.D. alumni have positions at national research universities, at region and local universities, in community colleges, K-12 school settings, laboratories, foundations, agencies, and private businesses.

Culturally Sustaining Education

Educational policy, organization and leadership, language, literacy and culture, leadership in higher education, learning sciences & human development, measurement and statistics, school psychology (ph.d.), science or math education specialization, social and cultural foundations, special education doctoral, teacher education and teacher learning for justice.

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University of Washington School of Music

Our school is a vibrant laboratory for arts education and practice within one of the world’s most innovative public universities. As a welcoming and inclusive community of artists and scholars, we work together toward a shared mission of academic discovery and creative mastery. With internationally-acclaimed faculty artists, stellar students, and deep ties to regional and national arts organizations, the UW School of Music is a thriving hub for arts study, production, and performance in the Pacific Northwest.

We offer bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in the following areas, in addition to many non-major opportunities:

• Composition
• Ethnomusicology
• Instrumental Performance
• Jazz and Improvised Music  
• Music Education
• Music History and Music Theory  
• Vocal Performance  

Fast facts:

• 7:1 average student-teacher ratio
• 16 undergraduate degrees offered
• Over 25 performing ensembles
• $500,000 awarded in scholarships each year  
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• Degree I am interested in pursuing Music Minor BM Composition BM Guitar BM Jazz Studies and Improvised Music BM Music Education - Instrumental Emphasis BM Music Education - Vocal Emphasis BM Orchestral Instruments BM Organ BM Percussion Performance BM Piano BM Strings BM Voice BA Ethnomusicology BA Music - Instrumental Option BA Music - Vocal Option BA Music - Music History Option BA Music - Early Music History Option BA Music - Music Theory Option MM Brass MM Choral Conducting MM Composition MM Harp and Guitar MM Instrumental Conducting MM Jazz and Improvised Music MM Percussion MM Piano MM Strings MM Voice MM Woodwinds MA Ethnomusicology MA Music Education MA Music History MA Music Theory DMA Brass DMA Choral Conducting DMA Composition DMA Harp DMA Instrumental Conducting DMA Percussion DMA Piano DMA Strings DMA Voice DMA Woodwinds PhD Ethnomusicology PhD Music Education PhD Music History PhD Music Theory
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Eight Graduate Students Receive Fulbright Fellowships for 2024

The scholars will travel to seven different countries to do research, study and teach

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School of Music

What spotify’s gamble can tell us about the future of audio streaming, celebrating contemporary indigenous music.

Markus Teuton, a musician and citizen of Cherokee Nation, explores contemporary Indigenous music through his academic work and as host of “Indigenous Jazz,” a radio show.

NPR Live Sessions: I Catch on Fire

Doctoral student Lorin Green (flute) was featured recently on NPR's Live Sessions in a video performance from Classical King’s “Northwest Focus Live” with host Sean MacLean, performing "I Catch On Fire," by Jake Heggie, with mezzo Myah Rose Paden, and pianist Joe Williams.

Caitlin Sarwono discusses starring in The Fifth Avenue Theatre’s new production of ‘Spring Awakening’

Music Education alumna Caitlin Sarwono's ('23 BM, Music Ed) passion for musical theater and her involvement with the UW Stage Notes theater student organization has led her to professional stage roles at Seattle's Fifth Avenue Theater. 

Seattle performing musicians balance creativity and 'portfolio careers'

Though the economic reality of being a professional musician has long necessitated that they work side jobs, the loss of performance opportunities during the pandemic shutdown made portfolio careers even more necessary for artists. Percussion Studies Chair Bonnie Whiting and alumna Leanna Keith ('17 MM, Woodwinds) are featured in this article from Seattle public radio station KNKX.

2024 Husky 100

The College of Arts & Sciences celebrates undergraduate and graduate students from across all four divisions, who are recognized for making the most of their time at the UW. 

UW piano students perform concertos with Northwest Sinfonietta

Tacoma-based chamber orchestra Northwest Sinfonietta performed a variety of concerto excerpts with UW piano students April 12, conducted by senior artist in residence David Rahbee. The UW School of Music is mentioned.

OPINION | Beyond the Score: Funding the Future of Arts Education in Washington

While music is often praised for enhancing academic performance, its role in health is far more important, especially given the recent uptick in youth mental health issues. Beyond music therapy, research indicates that music participation and education supports the development of children’s emotional intelligence, creativity, and physical and mental health. A guest editorial by School of Music master's student Nicole Stankovic.

April 20: Arts and Sciences Events at Admitted Student Day

Admitted students and families can engage with the College of Arts and Sciences through several department and program specific events over the next few weeks.

A Concert Course Reimagined

Professor Mark Rodgers has reimagined "The Concert Season," a course to familiarize students with jazz and classical music performances. Students can now personalize the course to fit their interests. 

ArtSci Roundup: Fall Concert with DXARTS, Dance Graduate Research Symposium and more

Artsci roundup: a conversation with emily m. bender, dubal memorial lecture, and more.

This week, learn why Emily Bender believes “AI” is a bad term, take part in the Dubal Memorial Lecture on ‘Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era’, view the film screening of Tortoise Under the Earth, and more.

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ArtSci Roundup: Kicking the school year off with the Henry Art Gallery, Dawg Daze, and more

Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week. This week, attend gallery exhibitions, Dawg Daze events, and more. As the UW community returns to campus, consider taking advantage of campus perks available to UW employees and students.

Dawg Daze Digest: Planetarium Shows, Art Tours, Trivia, Information Sessions and more!

Kick off the Autumn quarter and celebrate a return to campus with these can’t-miss recommendations from the College of Arts & Sciences.

Arts and entertainment   |   UW Notebook   |   Video

March 7, 2023

UW law professor goes to music school, launches interdisciplinary Music Law & Policy class

Peter Nicolas was in a parent-child music class with his daughter when he decided to pursue a long-dormant passion.

Nicolas joined the University of Washington School of Law in 2000, and he’s nationally known as an expert in constitutional law, evidence, sexual orientation law and intellectual property. Now Nicolas has combined his legal training with his growing academic interest in the study of music. His new class, Music Law & Policy , is open to students in the law school and in the School of Music, where Nicolas is currently a post-baccalaureate student as well as an adjunct professor.

Music Law & Policy is open to students in the UW School of Law and in the School of Music. University of Washington

Nicolas’ formal music training began just six years ago, not long after he enrolled his daughter in a class designed to awaken a love of music in children. The course did more than just that. It also inspired Nicolas, who has always loved music, to pursue a new path.

During one of the classes, Nicolas noticed a flyer for a free 30-minute music lesson and decided to take a chance. That lesson turned into continued private instruction in voice and piano and then a spot in a church choir.

Soon, Nicolas started taking classes at Shoreline Community College, where in 2021 he earned a degree in music performance. Still eager to learn more, he applied to the UW School of Music and auditioned as a vocalist. Now a music history major with a focus on vocal performance, Nicolas expects to earn his second bachelor’s degree this year.

With his music education underway, Nicolas decided to combine his interests. Music Law & Policy launched this quarter as an interdisciplinary course, at the same time Nicolas was named the director of the law school’s graduate program in intellectual property.

“I think going back to school made me a better teacher,” Nicolas said. “By the time all is said and done, I probably will have experienced the equivalent of four full years of taking classes with very different types of professors. There are a lot of things I’ve learned about how they do things that I’ve incorporated into my teaching.”

Music Law & Policy covers legal issues in the music industry, including intellectual property law as it relates to music and musicians. After building a fundamental understanding of music theory and copyright law, Nicolas asks students to examine court decisions that purport to rely upon principles of music theory. The class also covers subjects like trademark law and the right of personality and publicity.

Peter Nicolas is a professor of law and an adjunct professor of music at the UW. University of Washington

“One of the things this experience taught me is that what music students go through in their field has more in common than people realize with what law students have to do to be successful,” Nicolas said. “There’s a lot in this course — technical reading and analysis — that music students must do when dealing with theory. Music history has a lot in common with the historical documents law students study. The ability to get up and perform in front of people is something that lawyers and musicians both must do.”

While other universities offer courses that teach music and law, Nicolas said his class is unique because he incorporates music principles into the learning process. Nearly all the music and law students are expected to perform an excerpt from one of the cases being studied. Law students with musical backgrounds can do solo performances, and those without musical backgrounds can engage in group-based musical performances. Students also complete a paper in groups consisting of both law and music students.

“People were very skeptical when I said I was going to teach a class to law students where they have to do music — not just at the superficial level, but to really know and understand it,” Nicolas said. “There is a reason for it. To some extent, the law sometimes comes to incorrect decisions because the people making the decisions don’t understand how music works.

“If we can bring these two disciplines together through teaching and scholarship, we can likely get better outcomes. When these disputes are decided, we can know what is unique about this particular song, that somebody shouldn’t be able to use without permission, and what about it is a basic building block of music, that anyone is free to use.”

Music Law & Policy covers legal issues in the music industry, including intellectual property law as it relates to music and musicians. University of Washington

Nicolas prides himself on teaching students with varying educational backgrounds. In the past, he taught an interdisciplinary course in forensic nursing to those in the UW School of Law and the School of Nursing. He’s also currently teaching a course on sexual orientation law that is cross-listed in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, where Nicolas also is an adjunct professor.

For music students, the Music Law & Policy course introduces potential copyright issues and the legalities of performing or filming a certain composer’s music. The law students enrolled in the course tend to be a combination of those generally interested in intellectual property law and others with a musical background.

“I’m viewing this in the long term as a good possible partnership,” Nicolas said. “Maybe some of the students who are undergraduates in music can go into the field of law and find a way to blend those two interests in the way I’ve tried to do myself.”

For more information, contact Nicolas at [email protected] .

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University of Missouri

College of Arts and Science

School of Music

Phd in music education.

The PhD in Music Education is designed to prepare students for careers in higher education as music education teacher/researchers, as ensemble conductors with a strong commitment to music education teaching and research, or as master teachers or music supervisors in the K-12 system. Applicants must be certified music teachers, with a bachelor’s or master’s degree in music education and at least three years of school teaching experience, or present evidence of equivalent experiences. Individuals with music teaching experience in higher education but without music teaching experience in elementary or secondary schools are eligible for   admission, but   are required to complete prerequisites and field experiences in elementary and secondary schools prior to taking comprehensive examinations. 

This program is “research-intensive,” and students are expected to complete four to five research courses, read past and current research, assist and eventually collaborate with faculty and peers on research projects, develop the ability to translate research findings to classroom applications, and ultimately achieve independence as a researcher.

Students encounter a stimulating curriculum that is relevant to their career aspirations, taught by faculty who are on the cutting edge of best-practice pedagogy, research, scholarship, and creative activity. Music education faculty members play active leadership roles in international and national organizations devoted to improving preK-12th grade music instruction. They also regularly publish their work in premier research and practitioner   journals, and   remain actively engaged with music teachers through presentations and clinics. 

The degree program moved to the School of Music from the College of Education, effective August 2018.  It is fully accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music.

Additional information about program expectations is available on the MU PhD in Music Education Criteria document available to download from this page.

PhD admissions are selective. Applicants submit college transcripts, TOEFL scores (international students only), letters of recommendation, Curriculum Vitae, formal statement of purpose, writing sample, and must meet with music education faculty in person, if possible, or, if not, via video conferencing. Depending on their interest and specialty areas, applicants may be required to audition for conducting or applied music faculty. Admissions decisions are based on multiple criteria, including faculty time commitments, judgment of the student’s potential for success in the program and profession, program needs, and the fit between the student and the program.  Thus, not everyone who meets minimum qualifications “on paper” is admitted.  

Within the general framework, the PhD program is relatively flexible and individualized for each student. The degree requires 72 hours beyond the bachelor’s degree. Specific coursework is planned by the doctoral student and the four- to five-member doctoral committee to meet the student’s individual needs and future goals. The committee is chaired by a music education   faculty member who is a member of the Doctoral Faculty. Students choose one to two support areas, one in music and an optional second area in a related field. The support-area courses are not   prescribed, but   are selected in consultation with a faculty member in that area, who often serves as a doctoral committee member. In addition to the coursework requirements, students must complete one “research internship” and one “teaching internship,” which may or may not be attached to credit hours. These are faculty-supervised experiences designed to help prepare the students with skills they will need to enter the professoriate.  

Residency is essential to the acquisition of experiences necessary for success in the program and the profession. Students’ commitment to spending at least one academic year (fall and winter semester) as a full-time student on the MU campus is required (enrollment in a minimum of 9 credit hours per semester; may be a Teaching Assistant or Research Assistant, but not hold more than a part-time position elsewhere, to be negotiated with the doctoral committee). Students are expected to complete the degree in a timely manner, meeting all Graduate School deadlines. This means a maximum of 5 years for completing coursework from first enrollment as a PhD student (coursework is generally completed in 2 years of full-time study including summers) and 5 years for completing the dissertation after passing comprehensive exams (this is a maximum—most students finish in less time).  

Students complete comprehensive examinations upon the completion of their formal coursework. These include projects and essays assigned by the music education and support-area faculty, designed to demonstrate that the students have synthesized course materials at a high level, and achieved appropriate research expertise. In lieu of a written examination in a performance-based support area, students may prepare and present a public lecture-recital as a performer or conductor, according to program criteria and under the supervision of the faculty. The comprehensive examination experience concludes with an oral examination. Upon successful completion of the exam, the student is considered a candidate for the degree.   

The final stage of the doctoral degree is completion of a doctoral dissertation that demonstrates the candidate’s potential to become an independent scholar, and which makes a contribution to knowledge related to some aspect of music teaching and/or learning. The topic and methodology are selected by the student, in consultation with the doctoral committee. The written proposal is subject to the approval of the committee. The dissertation research is completed independently, but in close consultation with the advisor and others, as necessary. Several weeks after the complete dissertation is drafted and distributed to the committee, there is a final oral exam, composed of a public presentation and a closed question and answer “defense” with the committee. After passing the examination the student works with the advisor and sometimes members of the committee to make any final revisions   required, and   deposits the completed document electronically with the Graduate School.  

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• Arts & Sciences
• Graduate Studies in A&S

Graduate Program

Take your education to the next level..

Our department offers an M.A. and Ph.D. in Music, with concentrations in  Musicology  and  Music Theory , and we have an integrated view of musical scholarship. Graduate coursework exposes all students to advanced study in musicology, ethnomusicology, and theory. Washington University also offers many opportunities for interdisciplinary study, with certificate programs in  American Culture Studies ,  Women and Gender Studies , and  Film and Media Studies .

We are very proud of our supportive community of faculty and graduate students located on a beautiful campus in a musically-rich city. With a low student-to-faculty ratio, individual attention is a hallmark of our department. 

All students accepted for the Ph.D. program receive generous six-year funding packages, with additional support for language study, research, and conference travel. ​We provide supervised teaching experience and offer opportunities for independent teaching. Our graduates currently hold positions in research universities, conservatories, liberal arts colleges, and engineering schools, as well as arts institutions outside academia. 

Take a Closer Look

Our concentrations.

What does the path ahead look like? Are you interested in Musicology or Music Theory? Take a look at the requirements of each.

Faculty Research Interests at a Glance

PATRICK BURKE:  ethnomusicology, music of the United States, jazz, rock, race and ethnicity

TODD DECKER : film music and musicals, the Broadway musical, popular music

CHRISTOPHER DOUTHITT:  composition, electronic music, technology, analysis of recorded music

BEN DUANE : texture, form, music cognition, computational modeling, 18th & early 19th-century music

ESTHER VIOLA KURTZ: Afro-Brazilian music and dance, cultural politics, ethnographic ethics, decolonizing practices

ROBERT SNARRENBERG : Schenker, metaphor and music analysis, Brahms

CHRISTOPHER STARK : composition, 20th-century theory and analysis, electronic music, postmodernism

ALEXANDER STEFANIAK : 19th-century music, virtuosity, Schumann, music criticism, Romantic aesthetics

L AUREN ELDRIDGE STEWART: pedagogy, African diasporic music, the Caribbean, Haiti, art economies

PAUL STEINBECK : improvisation, intermedia, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians

PARKORN WANGPAIBOONKIT:  global music history, music and colonialism, opera, Siam/Thailand

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Doctoral Dissertation Guide

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the faculty bookshelf

Astaire by Numbers: Time & the Straight White Male Dancer

Astaire by Numbers  looks at every second of dancing Fred Astaire committed to film in the studio era--all six hours, thirty-four minutes, and fifty seconds. Using a quantitative digital humanities approach, as well as previously untapped production records, author Todd Decker takes the reader onto the set and into the rehearsal halls and editing rooms where Astaire created his seemingly perfect film dances. Watching closely in this way reveals how Astaire used the technically sophisticated resources of the Hollywood film making machine to craft a singular career in mass entertainment as a straight white man who danced. Decker dissects Astaire's work at the level of the shot, the cut, and the dance step to reveal the aesthetic and practical choices that yielded Astaire's dancing figure on screen. He offers new insights into how Astaire secured his masculinity and his heterosexuality, along with a new understanding of Astaire's whiteness, which emerges in both the sheer extent of his work and the larger implications of his famous "full figure" framing of his dancing body. Astaire by Numbers rethinks this towering straight white male figure from the ground up by digging deeply into questions of race, gender, and sexuality, ultimately offering a complete re-assessment of a twentieth-century icon of American popular culture.

• Sound Experiments: The Music of the AACM

Founded on Chicago’s South Side in 1965 and still thriving today, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is the most influential collective organization in jazz and experimental music. In Sound Experiments , Paul Steinbeck offers a sonic history of the collective, analyzing AACM artists’ best-known compositions and their farthest-reaching formal innovations. The compositions examined in Sound Experiments span the entire history of the AACM, from 1960s and 1970s works by Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, and Anthony Braxton to recent pieces by Wadada Leo Smith, Nicole Mitchell, and the Artifacts trio. Sound Experiments shows how the creators of these extraordinary works pioneered new approaches to instrumentation, notation, conducting, and technology while continually renewing the AACM’s commitment to musical experimentation.  

"Present at the Creation: A meditation about the origin and future of creative music"

The AACM’s achievements made it the most significant Black collective in the history of jazz and experimental music, and its members’ commitment to reinvention ensured that creative music would remain in the vanguard for decades to come.

• "Present at the Creation: A meditation about the origin and future of creative music by Paul Steinbeck."

"Becoming Clara Schumann: Performance Strategies and Aesthetics in the Culture of the Musical Canon"

Well before she married Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann was already an internationally renowned pianist, and she concertized extensively for several decades after her husband's death. Despite being tied professionally to Robert, Clara forged her own career and played an important role in forming what we now recognize as the culture of classical music.

Becoming Clara Schumann guides readers through her entire career, including performance, composition, edits to her husband's music, and teaching. Alexander Stefaniak brings together the full run of Schumann's concert programs, detailed accounts of her performances and reception, and other previously unexplored primary source material to illuminate how she positioned herself within larger currents in concert life and musical aesthetics. He reveals that she was an accomplished strategist, having played roughly 1,300 concerts across western and central Europe over the course of her six-decade career, and she shaped the canonization of her husband's music. Extraordinary for her time, Schumann earned success and prestige by crafting her own playing style, selecting and composing her own concerts, and acting as her own manager.

By highlighting Schumann's navigation of her musical culture's gendered boundaries, Becoming Clara Schumann details how she cultivated her public image in order to win over audiences and embody some of her field's most ambitious aspirations for musical performance.

• Becoming Clara Schumann: Performance Strategies and Aesthetics in the Culture of the Musical Canon
• Theme for Lester

Tear Down the Walls: White Radicalism and Black Power in 1960s Rock

From the earliest days of rock and roll, white artists regularly achieved fame, wealth, and success that eluded the Black artists whose work had preceded and inspired them. This dynamic continued into the 1960s, even as the music and its fans grew to be more engaged with political issues regarding race. In  Tear Down the Walls , Patrick Burke tells the story of white American and British rock musicians’ engagement with Black Power politics and African American music during the volatile years of 1968 and 1969. The book sheds new light on a significant but overlooked facet of 1960s rock—white musicians and audiences casting themselves as political revolutionaries by enacting a romanticized vision of African American identity. These artists’ attempts to cast themselves as revolutionary were often naïve, misguided, or arrogant, but they could also reflect genuine interest in African American music and culture and sincere investment in anti-racist politics. White musicians such as those in popular rock groups Jefferson Airplane, the Rolling Stones, and the MC5, fascinated with Black performance and rhetoric, simultaneously perpetuated a long history of racial appropriation and misrepresentation and made thoughtful, self-aware attempts to respectfully present African American music in forms that white leftists found politically relevant. In  Tear Down the Walls  Patrick Burke neither condemns white rock musicians as inauthentic nor elevates them as revolutionary. The result is a fresh look at 1960s rock that provides new insight into how popular music both reflects and informs our ideas about race and how white musicians and activists can engage meaningfully with Black political movements.

• Tear Down the Walls
• The Art Ensemble of Chicago

The Art Ensemble of Chicago est regardé depuis sa création en 1966 comme l’un des groupes les plus influents du jazz et de la musique expérimentale. Dans ce livre, Paul Steinbeck suit en détail sa trajectoire jusqu’à la fin des années 2010. Il analyse ses performances et explique comment les membres de l’Art Ensemble sont capables d’improviser ensemble dans de nombreux styles différents tout en s’appuyant sur un vaste répertoire de compositions notées.

La nouveauté de la théorie de l’improvisation qui anime le groupe ressort également des dimensions intermédiales de leurs performances, qui intègrent la musique à la poésie, au théâtre, aux costumes et au mouvement. Au-delà de l’activité proprement musicale du groupe, l’auteur éclaire enfin un modèle distinctif de relations sociales, de pratiques de coopération et d’autonomie personnelle que ses membres ont adapté de l’Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), collectif dont The Art Ensemble of Chicago est issu.

‘Like a Cake Made from Five Ingredients’

Paul Steinbeck, “‘Like a Cake Made from Five Ingredients’: The Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Social and Musical Practices,” in  Free Improvisation: History and Perspectives , eds. Alessandro Sbordoni and Antonio Rostagno (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2018): 3–13.

• Paul Steinbeck, “‘Like a Cake Made from Five Ingredients’: The Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Social and Musical Practices,” in Free Improvisation: History and Perspectives, eds. Alessandro Sbordoni and Antonio Rostagno (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2018

George Lewis’s Voyager

Paul Steinbeck, “George Lewis’s  Voyager ,”  The Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies , eds. Nicholas Gebhardt, Nichole Rustin-Paschal, and Tony Whyton (New York: Routledge, 2019): 261–270.

• “George Lewis’s Voyager,” The Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies, eds. Nicholas Gebhardt, Nichole Rustin-Paschal, and Tony Whyton (New York: Routledge, 2019): 261–270.

“Beyond Hanslick: Liszt’s Symphonic Poems and Program Symphonies in Vienna, 1886-1904.”

“Beyond Hanslick: Liszt’s Symphonic Poems and Program Symphonies in Vienna, 1886-1904.” In  Nineteenth-Century Programme Music:  Creation, Negotiations, Reception , ed. Jonathan Kregor, 429-62 .  Brepols, 2019 ( Speculum Musicae  33). 

“Improvisation and Collaboration in Anthony Braxton’s Composition 76” Journal of Music Theory, 62/2

This article examines Anthony Braxton’s  Composition 76 , a landmark work for three multi-instrumentalists. The score for  Composition 76  employs graphic techniques (colors, shapes, and codes) as well as traditional notation on five-line staves. Original transcriptions of two studio recordings illustrate the strategies that the performers use to realize Braxton’s complex score, uncovering the structure of a composition previously thought to be resistant to analysis. The article also sheds light on the diverse influences that can be seen in the graphic score—and heard in the performances—from John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen to the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.

• Journal of Music Theory
• "Thirteenth-Century Motet Functions: Views through the Lens of the Portare Motet Family."

"Thirteenth-Century Motet Functions: Views through the Lens of the  Portare  Motet Family." In  A Critical Companion to Medieval Motets , ed. Jared Hartt, 131-54. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music 17. Boydell and Brewer, 2018.

"Montpellier 8 PORTARE Motets and Tonal Exploration"

"Montpellier 8 PORTARE Motets and Tonal Exploration." In  The Montpellier Codex: The Final Fascicle. Contents, Contexts, Chronologies , ed. Catherine A. Bradley and Karen Desmond, 233-53. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music 16.  Boydell and Brewer, 2018.

• "Montpellier 8 PORTARE Motets and Tonal Exploration."
• Schenker's Interpretive Practice

Schenker's Interpretive Practice is the first comprehensive study of this century's most influential music theorist, Heinrich Schenker. Since the 1960s, American theorists and musicologists have focused almost exclusively on analytical methods distilled from Schenker's writings. Breaking from that tradition, Robert Snarrenberg returns to Schenker's texts and to the humanist roots of his approach, situating Schenker's work in the broader context of his desire to portray the richness and particularity of musical experience. Snarrenberg concentrates on four aims that Schenker hoped to achieve: to present a theoretical account of musical effects encountered in European music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to represent the mindset shared among composers of that music, to convey the expressive interaction of musical effects in individual artwork, and to promote continued creative and re-creative participation in the musical tradition.Author recipient of the 1998 Young Scholar Award from the Society of Music Theory.

Talking Back: Performer-Audience Interaction in Roscoe Mitchell’s "Nonaah"

Many music scholars, particularly in jazz studies, have investigated performers’ real-time sonic interactions with one another. Very few, though, have asked how musicians interact with their audiences. The following article examines a performance that demands this kind of analysis: a 1976 concert in which saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell is confronted by an audibly hostile audience.

• Music Theory Online 22/3

Listening to Voyager

In this introduction to composer, musician, and interdisciplinary scholar George E. Lewis, music theorist Paul Steinbeck, a former student of Lewis’s at Columbia, sheds light on the intertwined histories of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and Voyager , the computer system with which Lewis and Roscoe Mitchell will perform at CTM 2018. As he argues, Voyager , like all Artificial Intelligence, is not a neutral system but rather reflects the aesthetic values and experiences of its human creator(s).

• CTM Magazine #5

Grande Musica Nera: Storia dell’Art Ensemble of Chicago

Raccontare l’Art Ensemble of Chicago significa attraversare buona parte delle esperienze artistiche più innovative del secondo Novecento. Senza mai allontanarsi dalla cultura afroamericana in cui si sono formati (la musica delle chiese nere, quella delle comunità locali, le bande dell’esercito, il jazz di ogni epoca), i suoi membri hanno saputo influenzare l’arte performativa di tutto il pianeta, sintetizzando nel concetto di Grande Musica Nera ciò che la diaspora africana nel mondo ha regalato alla cultura contemporanea. Fin dalla metà degli anni Sessanta, sul palcoscenico i membri dell’Art Ensemble creavano un irresistibile intreccio di esperienze spettacolari, suonando centinaia di strumenti, recitando poesie, dando vita a episodi teatrali, mascherandosi e usando costumi d’ogni provenienza. Emerso dal formidabile calderone espressivo della Chicago nera degli anni Sessanta, il gruppo si è affermato in una Parigi che era stata appena attraversata dai fermenti del Sessantotto e ha poi trionfalmente conquistato il pubblico di tutti i continenti.

In questo volume Paul Steinbeck esplora nei dettagli la storia dell’Art Ensemble of Chicago. Unendo l’analisi musicale alla ricerca storica, propone un’approfondita interpretazione che ne lega insieme tutte le innovazioni: i diversi modelli d’improvvisazione, l’ampio repertorio di composizioni, la dimensione intermediale e quel concetto cooperativo di interazione sociale che ha permesso al gruppo di attraversare con successo i decenni. Nonostante infatti la dolorosa scomparsa di due fondatori, Lester Bowie e Malachi Favors, e il ritiro di Joseph Jarman, il creatore del gruppo Roscoe Mitchell lo guida ancor oggi assieme a Don Moye, caso più unico che raro nella storia della musica. L’avventura dell’Art Ensemble continua.

“Linear and Linguistic Syntax in ‘O kühler Wald’ (Brahms, Opus 72, No. 3)” Music Analysis, 36/3

This essay explores the interplay between states of syntactic completion and incompletion in the text and music of Brahms's O kühler Wald and how the composer thereby conveys an interpretation of the poetic text to create an experience for the listener that bears a striking resemblance to the experience of the poem's lovelorn persona.

• Wiley Online Library

"Reconsidering Josquin's Ave Maria…virgo serena." Journal of Musicology, 34

Notwithstanding the reputation of Josquin’s Ave Maria…virgo serena as a touchstone of late–fifteenth-century musical style, little is known about the context in which the piece emerged. Just over a decade ago, Joshua Rifkin placed the motet in Milan ca. 1484; more recently, Theodor Dumitrescu has uncovered stylistic affinities with Johannes Regis’s Ave Maria that reopen the debate about the provenance of Josquin's setting. Stipulating that the issues of provenance and dating are for the moment unsolvable, I argue that the most promising way forward is to contextualize this work to the fullest extent possible. Using the twin lenses of genre and musical style, I investigate the motet’s apparently innovative procedures (e.g., paired duos, periodic entries, and block chords) in order to refine our understanding of how Josquin’s setting relates to that of Regis and to the Milanese motet cycles (motetti missales). I also uncover connections between Josquin’s motet and the music of earlier generations, above all the cantilena and the forme fixe chanson, that offer new insights into the development of musical style in the fifteenth century. The essay concludes by positioning the types of analyses explored here within a growing body of research that enables a revitalized approach to longstanding questions about compositional development and musical style.

• University of California Press

"The Inner Sleeve" The Wire, 404

Paul Steinbeck discusses the artwork of the Art Ensemble of Chicago's album The Third Decade .

“Music and Racial Segregation in Twentieth-Century St. Louis: Uncovering the Sources”

Music is one of the primary means by which racial and ethnic categories are maintained and understood. As Ronald Radano and Philip Bohlman put it in their foundational 2000 book Music and the Racial Imagination, music both “contributes substantially to the vocabularies used to construct race” and “fills in the spaces between racial distinctiveness”—in other words, music sometimes helps build racial barriers and sometimes challenges and undermines them. The fundamental connection between music and race is especially notable in urban areas, where musical institutions, both formal and informal, reflect and shape racial inclusion and exclusion.  St. Louis, notorious for its history of racial segregation but also widely celebrated for its vibrant musical heritage, provides a significant test case for questions about the connections between music and segregation in urban life.

• WashU Digital Archives

“Brahms’s Non-Strophic Settings of Stanzaic Poetry” Music & Letters 98/2

There are only a handful of solo songs in which Brahms composed a setting that is not congruent with the poem’s stanzaic structure. This article explores textual motivations for the non-strophic design of twelve songs, tracing the correlation of musical designs with such factors as the grammatical mood of the poem’s verbs (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, realis/irrealis), changes in the persona’s attention (digressions or interruptions in a train of thought, a shift of focus between inner and outer worlds), alternation between the lyric present and the persona’s past or future experience, as well as changes in semantic focus (imagery, topic), discourse function (dialogue, quotation, requests and commands, descriptions and wishes), and narrative (characters, scenes, agency).

• Oxford University Press

Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago

Message to Our Folks is the first book about the Art Ensemble of Chicago, one of the most influential groups in jazz and experimental music. Unlike many texts in jazz studies and improvisation studies, Message to Our Folks combines musical analysis with historical inquiry. The book offers a detailed history of the Art Ensemble, from its 1966 founding on Chicago’s South Side to its final performances in the 2010s. But the book’s greatest contribution to music theory (and a range of other disciplines) may be its analyses of the Art Ensemble’s performances. Message to Our Folks proposes a new theory of group improvisation that explains how the Art Ensemble members are able to improvise together in many different styles while drawing on an extensive repertoire of notated compositions. The book also examines the intermedia dimensions of the Art Ensemble’s performances, which integrate music with poetry, theater, costumes, and movement. Additionally, Message to Our Folks investigates the connections between the group’s performances and its distinctive model of social relations—practices of cooperation and personal autonomy that the group members adapted from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the Chicago collective from which the Art Ensemble emerged.

• The University of Chicago Press

Hymns for the Fallen: Combat Movie Music and Sound after Vietnam

In  Hymns for the Fallen,  Todd Decker listens closely to forty years of Hollywood combat films produced after Vietnam. Ever a noisy genre, post-Vietnam war films have deployed music and sound to place the audience in the midst of battle and to provoke reflection on the experience of combat. Considering landmark movies—such as  Apocalypse Now ,  Saving Private Ryan ,  The Thin Red Line ,  Black Hawk Down ,  The Hurt Locker , and  American Sniper —as well as lesser-known films, Decker shows how the domain of sound, an experientially rich and culturally resonant aspect of cinema, not only invokes the realities of war, but also shapes the American audience’s engagement with soldiers and veterans as flesh-and-blood representatives of the nation.  Hymns for the Fallen  explores all three elements of film sound—dialogue, sound effects, music—and considers how expressive and formal choices in the soundtrack have turned the serious war film into a patriotic ritual enacted in the commercial space of the cinema.

“Repetition and Prominence: The Probabilistic Structure of Melodic and Non-Melodic Lines” Music Perception, 39/1

This study examines the difference between prominent and non-prominent lines (e.g., melodies and accompaniments). After reviewing research suggesting that lines with few repeating patterns would readily capture attention, the hypothesis that prominent lines tend to be less repetitive is tested. Various probabilistic models are used to quantify the repetitiveness of lines from three musical corpora—two containing Classical string quartets, one including songs by the Beatles. The results suggest that notes from prominent lines tend to have lower probability. This trend, along with others found in the corpora, is consistent with the hypothesis that prominent lines are generally less repetitive.

Schumann's Virtuosity: Composition, Criticism, and Performance in Nineteenth-Century Germany

Considered one of the greatest composers—and music critics—of the Romantic era, Robert Schumann (1810–1856) played an important role in shaping nineteenth-century German ideas about virtuosity. Forging his career in the decades that saw abundant public fascination with the feats and creations of virtuosos (Liszt, Paganini, and Chopin among others), Schumann engaged with instrumental virtuosity through not only his compositions and performances but also his music reviews and writings about his contemporaries. Ultimately, the discourse of virtuosity influenced the culture of Western "art music" well beyond the nineteenth century and into the present day. By examining previously unexplored archival sources, Alexander Stefaniak looks at the diverse approaches to virtuosity Schumann developed over the course of his career, revealing several distinct currents in nineteenth-century German virtuosity and the enduring flexibility of virtuosity discourse.

• Indiana University Press

Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical

Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical  tells the full story of the making and remaking of the most important musical in Broadway history. Drawing on exhaustive archival research and including much new information from early draft scripts and scores, this book reveals how Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern created  Show Boat  in the crucible of the Jazz Age to fit the talents of the show's original 1927 cast. After showing how major figures such as Paul Robeson and Helen Morgan defined the content of the show, the book goes on to detail how  Show Boat  was altered by later directors, choreographers, and performers up to the end of the twentieth century. All the major New York productions are covered, as are five important London productions and four Hollywood versions. This book is the first to take  Show Boat 's innovative interracial cast as the defining feature of the show.  Show Boat 's voyage through the twentieth century offers a vantage point on more than just the Broadway musical. It tells a complex tale of interracial encounter performed in popular music and dance on the national stage during a century of profound transformations.

Who Should Sing 'Ol' Man River'?: The Lives of an American Song

A Broadway classic, a call to action, and an incredibly malleable popular song, "Ol' Man River" is not your typical musical theater standard. Written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II in the 1920s for Show Boat, "Ol Man River" perfectly blends two seemingly incongruous traits-the gravity of a Negro spiritual and the crowd-pleasing power of a Broadway anthem. Inspired by the voice of African American singer Paul Robeson, who adopted the tune for his own goals as an activist, "Ol' Man River" is both iconic and transformative. In  Who Should Sing "Ol' Man River"? The Lives of an American Song , author Todd Decker examines how the song has shaped, and been shaped by, the African American experience. Yet "Ol' Man River" also transcends both its genre and original conception as a song written for an African American male. Beyond musical theater, this Broadway ballad has been reworked in musical genres from pop to jazz, opera to doo wop, rhythm and blues to gospel to reggae. Pop singers such as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Judy Garland made "Ol' Man River" one of their signature songs. Jazz artists such as Bix Biederbecke, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Count Basie, and Keith Jarrett have all played "Ol' Man River," as have stars of the rock and roll era, such as Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, the Temptations, Cher, and Rod Stewart. Black or white, male or female-anyone who sings "Ol' Man River" must confront and consider its charged racial content and activist history.

Liszt’s Final Decade

Liszt's Final Decade  reveals in the composer's own words to his confidantes Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein and Olga von Meyendorff how he resolved his conflicted self-image as a celebrated performer but underappreciated composer. Toward the end of his life Franz Liszt maintained extensive correspondence with two women who were at the time his closest confidantes, Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein and Olga von Meyendorff. Liszt wrote to them regularly, expressing his intimate feelings about personal and career events and his conflicted self-image as a celebrated performer but underappreciated composer. Absent a diary, the letters offer the most direct avenue into Liszt's psyche in his final years.  Liszt's Final Decade  explores through these letters the mind and music of one of the nineteenth century's most popular musicians, providing insight into Liszt's melancholia in his last years and his struggle to gain recognition for his music yet avoid criticism. The exchange indicates that Liszt ultimately resolved his inner conflict through a personally constructed Christian moral philosophy that embraced positive resignation to suffering, compassionate love, and trust in a just reward to come. The book also examines how Liszt's late sacred compositions affirm the yielding of suffering to joy and hope. Significantly, Liszt viewed these works, commonly overlooked today, as a major part of his compositional legacy. This volume thus challenges the idea of a single "late" Lisztian style and the notion that despair overwhelmed the composer in his final years.

• University of Rochester Press

“Thematic and Non-Thematic Textures in Schubert’s Three-Key Expositions” Music Theory Spectrum, 34/2

This article reexamines two common views of Schubert’s three-key expositions: one that contends the third key is presented in the context of thematic formal function, another that asserts this section’s function is non-thematic. Considering texture as an important determinant of formal function, these two views are assessed using a computational model of texture. Applying this model to a corpus of two-key expositions from the late eighteenth century, I demonstrate that certain textures tend to be associated with thematic function more than others. This model is then used to determine the presence of thematic and non-thematic textures in three of Schubert’s three-key expositions and the extent to which the two views of the formal function of the third key make sense.

• Music Theory Spectrum

Music Makes Me: Fred Astaire and Jazz

Fred Astaire: one of the great jazz artists of the twentieth century? Astaire is best known for his brilliant dancing in the movie musicals of the 1930s, but in  Music Makes Me , Todd Decker argues that Astaire’s work as a dancer and choreographer —particularly in the realm of tap dancing—made a significant contribution to the art of jazz. Decker examines the full range of Astaire’s work in filmed and recorded media, from a 1926 recording with George Gershwin to his 1970 blues stylings on television, and analyzes Astaire’s creative relationships with the greats, including George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and Johnny Mercer. He also highlights Astaire’s collaborations with African American musicians and his work with lesser known professionals—arrangers, musicians, dance directors, and performers.

Come in and Hear the Truth

Between the mid-1930s and the late ’40s, the center of the jazz world was a two-block stretch of 52nd Street in Manhattan. Dozens of crowded basement clubs between Fifth and Seventh avenues played host to legends such as Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, as well as to innumerable professional musicians whose names aren’t quite so well known. Together, these musicians and their audiences defied the traditional border between serious art and commercial entertainment—and between the races, as 52nd Street was home to some of the first nightclubs in New York to allow racially integrated bands and audiences. Patrick Burke argues that the jazz played on 52nd Street complicated simplistic distinctions between musical styles such as Dixieland, swing, and bebop. And since these styles were defined along racial lines, the music was itself a powerful challenge to racist ideology. 

Come In and Hear the Truth  uses a range of materials, from classic photographs to original interviews with musicians, to bring the street’s vibrant history to life and to shed new light on the interracial contacts and collaborations it generated.

If you have questions, please reach out to the director of graduate studies, Professor Steinbeck.

• National Security
• Matthew Continetti
• Men of the Year

• Men Of The Year

'Completely Reinventing Reality': California Lawmakers and Former Cops Slam Harris for Touting Her 'Tough on Drugs' Record as DA 

How China and North Korea Are Saving Russia's Military Machine From Grinding to a Halt

‘he did not complete the degree program’: tim walz repeatedly claimed he was ‘nearly finished’ with doctorate years after he disappeared from university, walz was only enrolled at saint mary's university of minnesota until 2004 but said until 2011 that he was close to getting his doctorate.

As recently as 2011, Tim Walz claimed in official biographies for his campaign and congressional office that he was on the verge of completing a doctorate in education, a decade after he enrolled in a doctorate program at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota in the small town of Winona.

The university, however, told the Washington Free Beacon that its last records indicating Walz was an active student are dated to 2004.

"We can confirm that Governor Walz attended Saint Mary's from 2001-2004 in our doctorate level Ed.D. program," the school's communications director, Ashly Bissen, told the Free Beacon . "He did not complete the degree program."

Walz would nonetheless claim through 2011 that he was an active student "nearly finished with his doctorate at St. Mary's University in Winona, Minnesota," as his congressional biography put it, four years after he arrived on Capitol Hill.

That claim, like so many others Walz has made about his biography over his political career, was at best a stretch and at worst a lie, the same sort of résumé padding characteristic of other fibs and misrepresentations Walz has made throughout his political career.

But academic dishonesty stands out, including exaggerations. Rep. Andy Ogles (R., Tenn.) last year apologized for stating he had a degree in economics when he’d only taken one economics class and gotten a "C." The CEO of Yahoo was forced out in 2012 after it was discovered he lied about majoring in both computer science and accounting in college. He only majored in accounting.

Walz, who’d been teaching high school for over a decade, started a course of study at St. Mary's in 2001, enrolling in a "cohort doctoral program," a second spokeswoman told the Free Beacon . He stopped taking classes at St. Mary's in 2004 and never earned a degree, the spokeswoman said.

"Governor Walz was enrolled as part of a cohort doctoral program from 2001-2004 and has not taken classes at Saint Mary's since that time," said Michelle Rovang, the school's vice president of communications.

Walz earned a master's degree in "experiential education" (an academic term for hands-on learning, a feature of Walz’s work as a teacher) from Minnesota State University, Mankato, in 2002. St. Mary’s told the Free Beacon that the school accepted Walz into its doctoral program on the condition that he’d earn his master’s at nearby Minnesota State.

Getting a master’s degree is an early step toward earning a doctorate, which requires years of additional study and research and can also require teaching college-level courses and successfully defending a dissertation.

Nonetheless, when Walz ran for Congress in 2006, roughly two years after his last recorded year in the St. Mary’s doctoral program, he portrayed himself on the campaign trail and in Congress as an active student "nearly finished" with his doctorate. A 2006 voter guide published by the Minnesota Star Tribune indicated that Walz’s Ed.D. was "in progress."

That year, Waltz defeated a five-term Republican incumbent, Gil Gutknecht, who recently told the Free Beacon , when asked about Walz, that "all political figures are guilty of a bit of puffery. He frequently went well beyond that into prevarication."

Indeed, as a sitting member of Congress, Walz continued to claim for years that he was finishing his doctoral degree. His congressional website made those claims through 2011 , an archived version shows. But by 2012, Walz had removed all references to his impending doctorate from his congressional biography .

Walz’s years of misstatements about his academic background are part and parcel of a pattern of prevarication that has followed him from the high school classroom to Capitol Hill to the Minnesota governor's mansion—and now, should Kamala Harris prevail in November, to the Naval Observatory. The misrepresentations, embellishments, and falsehoods have been carefully woven together to create a portrait of a patriot-scholar and exemplary product of the American heartland.

Walz boasted during his 2006 campaign launch that he was "named the Outstanding Young Nebraskan by the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce," a false claim that the Chamber's then-president demanded that Walz correct. Walz’s campaign manager at the time claimed Walz had won an award from the Junior Chamber of Commerce and attributed the error to a "typographical error."

Walz also made the exaggerated claim during his maiden congressional run that in 1989, he’d "earned the title of Nebraska Citizen-Soldier of the Year." In fact, he was one of 52 reservists invited to a brunch for recipients of the "Citizens Soldiers Awards," an event sponsored by a mysterious civic group called Ak-Sar-Ben, which is "Nebraska" spelled backward.

Walz further stated that his yearlong teaching stint in China came through a program at Harvard University for which he was hand-picked by the school. While the program was founded by Harvard undergraduates, it does not appear to have ever been officially associated with the Ivy League school.

Walz has also lied about his own family, telling MSNBC in July that his "two beautiful children" would not be alive without in vitro fertilization. His kids were not conceived through IVF but rather through a non-controversial, far less costly, and far less invasive procedure known as intrauterine insemination. The lie gives Walz, a middle-aged man, a personal connection to the battle for so-called women’s reproductive rights that Democrats see as a winning issue this year.

Walz's most controversial claims, however, pertain to his time in the Army National Guard.

Walz, who served in the guard for 24 years, has said he carried guns "in war." His campaign promoted news stories that described him as one of a "number of veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq" running for Congress.

But Walz never served in Afghanistan. While he spent time in Norway and Italy working in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, he never saw combat and never set foot in the war theater. When his National Guard battalion was being eyed for a deployment to Iraq, Walz issued a March 2005 campaign press release pledging to "serve if called upon" and run for Congress from the Middle East. But two months later, in May, he retired from the guard. By July, his old unit received notice of the deployment, and Walz never joined them in Iraq.

It's unclear how close Walz was to achieving his doctorate and whether he formally withdrew from St. Mary's. His time at St. Mary's overlapped with his deployment to Italy, which came in 2003 and concluded in 2004. Walz had taken five years, from 1997 to 2002, to complete his master's degree at Minnesota State, according to the New York Times . He was also teaching school at the time.

The current iteration of the doctoral program Walz enrolled in can be completed in as little as four years, according to St. Mary's, and the school requires students to complete it in eight years. Rovang said students "do not need to formally withdraw from a graduate or doctorate program." She also said the program "has changed a great deal" since Walz was enrolled and declined to provide program details from that time.

The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Though Walz's master's degree is not in question, some of the details surrounding his higher education experience have been misreported, including by Walz himself.

Walz has repeatedly said, including in his congressional bios, that he received his master's degree in education in 2001, a claim that media outlets such as CNN , the Washington Post , and Politico have echoed. Minnesota State University, Mankato media relations director Dan Benson, however, says the school conferred Walz the degree on May 10, 2002.

"I, too, have seen media reports that list 2001 as the year Walz received his master's degree," Benson told the Free Beacon , "but per Minnesota State Mankato records, that is wrong."

"For media members who have asked, the date of May 10, 2002, has been provided as the date Walz earned his master of science degree in experiential education. University records show that Walz's last day as an enrolled student at Minnesota State University, Mankato, was July 26, 2002."

That means Walz was enrolled simultaneously at Minnesota State and St. Mary's, which told the Free Beacon it accepted Walz for its Ed.D. program on the condition that he’d complete his master’s degree at Minnesota State.

"We have often accepted students conditionally in a cohort program when they are successfully finishing a master's degree at another institution," Rovang said.

Media outlets such as the New York Times have also noted that Walz "wrote his thesis on Holocaust education." Benson, however, said Walz "wrote what is called an ' alternate plan paper ,'" which, unlike a thesis, consists of an "evaluation and analysis" of outside sources rather than original research.

"Many media organizations have referred to this as his 'thesis' in their news stories," Benson said.

But in fact, Walz did not perform the kind of original, academic research that’s required to produce a master’s thesis. And he never completed his doctoral work, which would have required original research at a more advanced level.

Update 12:40 p.m.: This piece has been updated to clarify that Walz sought an Ed.D., or a Doctor in Education, rather than a Ph.D. in Education.

Published under: 2024 Election , Military , Minnesota , Tim Walz

• Washington State University
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Literacy education professor begins ‘Getting Smarter’ podcast second season

After a successful first podcast season of interviewing the top minds in the world of literacy education, a Washington State University faculty member is back for a second season. 

Margaret Vaughn, a language, literacy, and technology professor in the College of Education, is the creator and host of the “ Getting Smarter” podcast .

Vaughn said her goal is to interview critical thinkers and award-winning leaders in literacy education, as well as spark listeners’ curiosity, and help them learn something new every episode.  

“I started this podcast to advocate for the teaching profession and have conversations with established literacy scholars who have paved the way in the field,” Vaughn said. “These scholars have transformed our collective thinking in education.” 

The first season consisted of 11 episodes, beginning this past spring, and going through the summer. Vaugh said she believes those episodes were successful at giving transformational insights into why education and collaboration is essential to the betterment of our society. 

“My aim is for policy makers, literacy scholars, and educators to listen to the podcast and find their own entry point into thinking about how they too can make an impact in their community,” she said. “The scholars I have the privilege of interviewing, have spent their careers making conditions better for children and communities. We can listen to their stories and use their knowledge to make a difference around us.” 

Vaughn joined the College of Education in 2021. She has received a number of awards for her research and scholarship, including a Fulbright Specialist Program award from the U.S. Department of State. 

As it did last season, new episodes this season will be released on most major podcast platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 

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