He was an advocate of the benefits of a broad education in the history of Western Civilisation, which he taught at Riverside, and a meticulous historian much interested in sources and historiography, contributing an article on "The Teaching of Scandinavian History in the United States" to "Scandinavian Studies" in 1965 in which he surveyed scholars, institutions, and the availability of sources on Scandinavia in the United States and noted that some important publications were only available at the Library of Congress or the New York Public Library.