Hofstadter showed more interest in his research than in his teaching. In undergraduate classes, he read aloud the draft of his next book. As a senior professor at a leading graduate university, Hofstadter directed more than 100 finished doctoral dissertations but gave his graduate students only cursory attention; he believed this academic latitude enabled them to find their own models of history. Among them were Herbert Gutman, Eric Foner, Lawrence W. Levine, Linda Kerber, and Paula S. Fass. Some, such as Eric McKitrick and Stanley Elkins, were more conservative than he; Hofstadter had few disciples and founded no school of history writing.