Teaching Career, 1933-1977, 1985

Despite his multifold interests, Link was first and foremost a teacher of social history. His long teaching career, which spanned nearly five decades, is illuminated by two subseries dealing with institutional correspondence and lecture notes.

Link taught as a full-time, permanent faculty member at seven schools in Massachusetts, South Carolina, New Jersey, Colorado, and New York. In addition, he was twice a Fulbright Lecturer in India and a one-year visiting professor in Britain and the Peoples Republic of China. Link's institutional correspondence covers all variety of educational matters, great and small, in which he was involved. In this subseries, particular attention is given to Link's career at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh (1963-77). The folder detailing this tenure contains Link's correspondence with George Angell (president of Plattsburgh, SUNY, from 1954-74). Link had known Angell when both served at the State University College of New Paltz, New York (Link as the Chair of the Social Science Division, 1950-63; Angell the Dean of the College, 1949-53). It was largely this friendship that led Link to Plattsburgh as "research professor" in 1963.

The second major subseries deals with Link's lecture notes from twenty courses taught at New Paltz, Plattsburgh, and Hull, England, over thirty-two years. Due to his interests in Third World cultures and minority rights in America, Link successfully introduced several courses in the 1970s that dealt with American cultural and social history including: African American, women's, Indian, and Asian studies. In that sense, he was a pioneer of the modern emphasis on multiculturalism in the State of New York University System.