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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Photographic Archive—Annapolis
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The Greenfield Library photographic archive houses over 5,000 photographs. The photographs in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. The Library’s mission is to organize and preserve these unique visual materials, and to provide access to this collection. </p>
To learn more about our photographic use policy or to obtain high resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Photographic Archive Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Photographic Archive Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Photographic Archive—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
photographicarchiveannapolis
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Physical Dimensions
The actual physical size of the original image
25.5 x 20.5 cm
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
1 black-and-white photographic copy print
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SJC-P-2211
Title
A name given to the resource
Main Street, Annapolis, Maryland, circa 1870
Description
An account of the resource
Photograph of Main Street in Annapolis, Maryland, circa 1870. <br /><br />The photograph is a modern copy print. A photographic print of the same image is in the <a href="https://collections.digitalmaryland.org/digital/collection/mdaa/id/134/rec/279">Maryland Department Photograph Collection at the Enoch Pratt Free Library</a>.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
circa 1870
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bachrach, David, 1845-1921
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Still Image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
jpeg
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright undetermined
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PDF Text
Text
Sr JoHN'S COLLEGE
SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO 87501-4599 • (505) 982-3691
Community Events Calendar
OCTOBER 1988
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
DON'T FORGET!
September 28
Wednesday, ~ PM
SPECIAL LECTURE: DR. RUPERT SHELDRAKE,
British biologist and author, will discuss his
new book, The Presence of the Past. Co-Sponsored
by International synergy-Institute and Sol Y
Sombra. $5 at the door. Free to St. John's
students. The Great Hall.
September 30
. Friday, ! PM
LECTURE: Peter Widulski, Professor of Humanities
at Fordham University will speak on "An
Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Right."
Free. The Great Hall.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
October !
Saturday, starting l PM
*FILMS: Theme - Atomic Allegories
"La Jetee"
1962 - France - Directed by Chris Marker - 29 mins
black and white.
"Dr. Strangelove"
1964 - Directed by Stanley Kubrick - 1 hr 33 mins -
black and white.
"Insi9nificance"
1985 - Great Britain - Directed by Nicolas Roeg -
1 hr 50 mins - color.
�October 4
Tuesday, ~ PM
SYMBOLIC HISTORY - THROUGH SIGHT AND SOUND:
"Nature, the Perceptive Field: a Heraclitean
Celebration of the Modern Universe."
Tutor Emeritus CHARLES BELL. Free.
Junior Common Room.
October 9 ~
Sunday, 3-6 PM
ART GALLERY OPENING RECEPTION: JANET LIPPINCOTT,
owner of the Lippincott Studio-Gallery on Canyon
Road; participant in over 75 invitational and
juried exhibitions nationally; showing of large
paintings and mono-prints. Free. Exhibit from
October 4 - 31, Wednesday through Sunday, 1-5 PM.
October 11
Tuesday, ~ PM
SYMBOLIC HISTORY - THROUGH SIGHT AND SOUND:
"Cycles: Patterns-of History, Early Civilizations;
Where Are We Now?" Tutor Emeritus CHARLES BELL.
Free. Junior Common Room.
*
*
October 12
Wednesday, ~ PM
SPECIAL LECTURE: JOHN H. HOLLAND, Professor
of Computer Science and Engineering at the
University of Michigan, will speak on the
topic "Learning in Machines and Man." Part of
the Santa Fe Institute Lecture Series.
Free. The Great Hall.
=
October 15
Saturday, ~ AM
! PM
COUNCIL ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SYMPOSIUM:
"The European Community: How Will It Affect the
United States?" Co-sponsored by St. John's College.
Speakers include: Congressman Bill Richardson,
Nancy Ballack, US State Dept., Steve Kramer, Ass't
Professor of History, UNM, Conrad Latour, Professor
Emeritus of History & Government at Beaver College
Center for Education Abroad, Vienna. The Great Hall.
Tickets are $5 to C.I.R. members with advance
reservations; $7.50 to members and the public at
the door. Luncheon at the College is $7.50 with
advance reservations required. Send reservations
and payment to:
C.I.R. PO Box 1223
Santa Fe, NM 87504 Telephone: 982-4931.
�October 15
Saturday, l ! ~ PM
FILMS: Theme - Ask Not What Your Country Can
Do For You •••
"Mr. Smith Goes To Washington"
1939 - Directed by Frank Capra - 2 hrs 5 mins black and white.
"The Manchurian Candidate"
1962 - Directed by John Frankenheimer - 2 hrs
5 mins - black and white.
October 18
Tuesday, ~ PM
SYMBOLIC HISTORY - THROUGH SIGHT AND SOUND:
"Greece: The Tragic Myth and Deed - Homer to
Plato, Fruit of the Fall." Tutor Emeritus
CHARLES BELL. Free. Junior Common Room.
October 22
Saturdayc l ! ~ PM
*FILMS: 'fheme - The Legalities of War
"A Soldier's Story"
1984 - Directed by Norman Jewison - 1 hr
42 mins
color.
"Breaker Morant"
1979 - Directed by Bruce Beresford - 1 hr 47 mins
color.
~
October 25
Tuesday, ~ PM
SYMBOLIC°JiISTORY - THROUGH SIGHT AND SOUND:
"The Alexandrian Melt: East and West,
Backgrounds and Convergence." Tutor Emeritus
CHARLES BELL. Free. Junior Common Room.
~ October 28
Friday, ~ PM
ST. JOHN'S CONCERT SERIES: PTanist PETER PESIC,
the Musician-in-Residence at the College, will
play an all-Beethoven recital. Featured works
will include: Op. 2 No. 1, Beethoven's first
published sonata, OJ?. 81a "Les Adieux" sonata,
and the "Hammerklavier" sonata OJ?. 106. Admission
at the door is $6 and $3 for senior citizens and
non-st. John's students or by season pass to patrons
of the Music Series.
Film Showings: 7 PM & 9 PM+
Admissions: $3, Double Feature $4
The Great Hall opens at 6:45 PM.
CHECK SWITCHBOARD FOR LAST MINUTE CHANGES.
�xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
UPCOMING EVENTS IN NOVEMBER
November 15
Tuesday, 4:30 - 6:30 PM
ANNUAL SEMINAR DAY: A Graduate Institute program.
More details in the November calendar.
~ November 15
Tuesday, ~ PM
SPECIAL LECTURE: STEWART. BRAND,
Editor/Publisher of "The Last Whole Earth
Catalog" and "The Co-Evolution Quarterly,"
will speak on the topic "The Media Lab at MIT:
Neural Nets and Global Communication."
Part of the Santa Fe Institute Lecture Series.
Free. The Great Hall.
November 22
Tuesday, 7 PM
PRESIDENTIAL SEMINAR: DR. MICHAEL P. RICCARDS
will lead a seminar discussing The Snows of
Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway.~o fee.
Limited to 25 people. Call 982-3691 ext. 289 for
, reservations. Santa Fe Hall Room 105.
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Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
4 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Santa Fe Community Calendar, October 1988
Description
An account of the resource
Event calendar for the Santa Fe campus community, October 1988.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1988-10
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SF_Community_Calendar_1988_10
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John’s College
Calendar
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Photographic Archive—Annapolis
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The Greenfield Library photographic archive houses over 5,000 photographs. The photographs in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. The Library’s mission is to organize and preserve these unique visual materials, and to provide access to this collection. </p>
To learn more about our photographic use policy or to obtain high resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Photographic Archive Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Photographic Archive Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Photographic Archive—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
photographicarchiveannapolis
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Physical Dimensions
The actual physical size of the original image
24.5 x 19.5 cm.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
photograph
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SJC-P-0069
Title
A name given to the resource
John S. Kieffer Introducing Stringfellow Barr at Stringfellow Barr's Formal Lecture "The Beginning of the St. John's Program" in the King William Room, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland
Description
An account of the resource
1 photographic print : b&w
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1972-07
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
[Cecil H. Fox]
Subject
The topic of the resource
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Friday night lecture series
July 1972
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Presidents.
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Faculty.
Lectures and Lecturing
Kieffer, John Spangler.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
still image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
jpeg
Deans
Honorary Alumni
Presidents
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Photographic Archive—Annapolis
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The Greenfield Library photographic archive houses over 5,000 photographs. The photographs in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. The Library’s mission is to organize and preserve these unique visual materials, and to provide access to this collection. </p>
To learn more about our photographic use policy or to obtain high resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Photographic Archive Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Photographic Archive Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Photographic Archive—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
photographicarchiveannapolis
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Physical Dimensions
The actual physical size of the original image
24.5 x 19.5 cm.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
photograph
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SJC-P-0068
Title
A name given to the resource
John S. Kieffer at Stringfellow Barr's Formal Lecture "The Beginning of the St. John's Program" in the King William Room, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland
Description
An account of the resource
1 photographic print : b&w
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1972-07
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
[Fox, Cecil H.]
Subject
The topic of the resource
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Friday night lecture series
July 1972
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Presidents.
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Faculty.
Lectures and Lecturing
Kieffer, John Spangler.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
still image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
jpeg
Deans
Honorary Alumni
Presidents
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Photographic Archive—Annapolis
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The Greenfield Library photographic archive houses over 5,000 photographs. The photographs in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. The Library’s mission is to organize and preserve these unique visual materials, and to provide access to this collection. </p>
To learn more about our photographic use policy or to obtain high resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Photographic Archive Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Photographic Archive Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Photographic Archive—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
photographicarchiveannapolis
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Physical Dimensions
The actual physical size of the original image
24.5 x 19.5 cm.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
photograph
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SJC-P-0070
Title
A name given to the resource
Roxanna Kieffer at Stringfellow Barr's Formal Lecture "The Beginning of the St. John's Program" in the King William Room, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland
Description
An account of the resource
1 photographic print : b&w
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1972-07
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
[Fox, Cecil H.]
Subject
The topic of the resource
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Friday night lecture series
July 1972
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Faculty -- Spouses.
Lectures and Lecturing
Kieffer, Roxanna
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
still image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
jpeg
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Photographic Archive—Annapolis
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The Greenfield Library photographic archive houses over 5,000 photographs. The photographs in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. The Library’s mission is to organize and preserve these unique visual materials, and to provide access to this collection. </p>
To learn more about our photographic use policy or to obtain high resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Photographic Archive Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Photographic Archive Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Photographic Archive—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
photographicarchiveannapolis
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Physical Dimensions
The actual physical size of the original image
24 x 18.5 cm.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
photograph
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SJC-P-0183
Title
A name given to the resource
William Kyle Smith, Mrs. Kyle Smith, Roxanna Kieffer, and Miriam Strange at Stringfellow Barr's Formal Lecture "The Beginning of the St. John's Program" in the King William Room, St. John's College, Annapolis
Description
An account of the resource
1 photographic print : b&w
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1972-07
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
[Fox, Cecil H.]
Subject
The topic of the resource
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Friday night lecture series
July 1972
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Faculty.
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Registrars.
Smith, William Kyle
Strange, Miriam
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
still image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
jpeg
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph.
Deans
Honorary Alumni
Tutors
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Photographic Archive—Annapolis
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The Greenfield Library photographic archive houses over 5,000 photographs. The photographs in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. The Library’s mission is to organize and preserve these unique visual materials, and to provide access to this collection. </p>
To learn more about our photographic use policy or to obtain high resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Photographic Archive Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Photographic Archive Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Photographic Archive—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
photographicarchiveannapolis
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Physical Dimensions
The actual physical size of the original image
24 x 19 cm.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
photograph
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SJC-P-0184
Title
A name given to the resource
John S. Kieffer, Mr. Leavenworth, and Mrs. Leavenworth at Stringfellow Barr's Formal Lecture "The Beginning of the St. John's Program" in the King William Room, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland
Description
An account of the resource
1 photographic print : b&w
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1972-07
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
[Fox, Cecil H.]
Subject
The topic of the resource
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Friday night lecture series
July 1972
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Presidents.
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Deans.
Kieffer, John Spangler.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
still image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
jpeg
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph.
Deans
Honorary Alumni
Presidents
Tutors
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Photographic Archive—Annapolis
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The Greenfield Library photographic archive houses over 5,000 photographs. The photographs in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. The Library’s mission is to organize and preserve these unique visual materials, and to provide access to this collection. </p>
To learn more about our photographic use policy or to obtain high resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Photographic Archive Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Photographic Archive Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Photographic Archive—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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photographicarchiveannapolis
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SJC-P-0794
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St. John's College Class of 1976 Seated on Front Campus in Academic Robes during Commencement, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, 1976
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1 photographic print : b&w
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1976
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[Luflein]
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Commencement (St. John's College, Annapolis, MD) 1976.
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Annapolis, MD
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Commencement
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Photographic Archive—Annapolis
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An account of the resource
<p>The Greenfield Library photographic archive houses over 5,000 photographs. The photographs in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. The Library’s mission is to organize and preserve these unique visual materials, and to provide access to this collection. </p>
To learn more about our photographic use policy or to obtain high resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Photographic Archive Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Photographic Archive Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Photographic Archive—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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photographicarchiveannapolis
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25.5 x 20.5 cm.
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Group Portrait of the St. John's College 1932 Lacrosse Team on Back Campus, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland
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1 photographic print
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1932
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[Pickering, E. H.]
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St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Lacrosse.
Lacrosse
Group Portraits
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Annapolis, MD
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still image
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jpeg
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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The Horses of Achilles
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on September 9, 2016 by Robert Charles Abbott, Jr. as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Abbott, Robert Charles, Jr.
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Annapolis, MD
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2016-09-09
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A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
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English
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Abbott_Robert_2016-09-09
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<a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1139">Typescript</a>
Friday night lecture
Tutors
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PDF Text
Text
THE HORSES OF ACHILLES
At the end of the Nineteenth Book of the Iliad, Achilles readies himself to avenge
the death of Patrocles. He puts on the armor of Hephaestus, mounts the chariot behind his
two immortal horses, and calls on them in a terrible voice:
Xanthos and Balios, far-famed sons of Podarge!
Take care to return your charioteer in another way
to the company of the Danaans once we quit the field:
do not leave me there dead, as you did Patrocles.
The goddess Hera then gives one of the horses a prodigious, an unheard of gift: the power
to speak. Xanthos claims he and his brother, Balios, were not to blame for the death of
Patrocles, and though they will bring Achilles safely home this time, his death is not far off.
The Furies take back Xanthos’ voice as quickly as it was given. Achilles is deeply shaken by
this ominous reply to his insult, but states his intention to return to the war, and drives the
chariot on.
Xanthos never speaks before this, nor does he or any other animal in the Iliad ever
do so again. In order to understand the significance of this momentary suspension in the
rule of the cosmos we must acquaint ourselves with the nature of those horses who
participated in the Trojan War and the deathless horses of Achilles in particular. Not being
an expert in horsemanship myself, I will permit a few others to guide us, chief among them
Xenophon, the Athenian soldier and friend of Socrates. The lecture is in five parts.
Part One: The Horses
The horses of the Iliad, unlike the dogs who lurk at its edges, are full participants in the war.
Just like human warriors, they are sensitive to boredom, terror, and honor, though they
perceive each in their own equine way. When the Trojans have taken the field, and their
campfires are scattered across it, innumerable and brilliant as the stars, their horses watch
through the endless hours of night for the return of dawn, just as their masters do
(VIII.564). Horses, also like men, can be more or less used to war, as when the newly
arrived Thracian horses are too frightened to walk on the bodies of their masters. And
horses, like men, are capable of overcoming even great weariness and reluctance when
persuaded. Antilochus delivers himself of a complicated speech in the midst of the chariot
race at the end of the poem, calling on his horses with a rhetorical sophistication we might
think appropriate only for human listeners, though he demonstrates thereby the close bond
between warriors and horses, and their sensitivity to honor (XXIII.400).
A fast horse is life. As it did for Nestor, a chariot can rescue the exhausted hero and
carry him to safety (VIII.85). It can also take him where he is needed most. From the
height of the chariot a spear can be thrown or a comrade spotted (IV.306). Not to have
one’s horses nearby can mean death, as it did for Agastrophos, whom Homer calls a fool for
leaving his chariot team with a henchman (XI.340). Dolon, the impetuous Trojan spy,
names the horses of Achilles as the high price for his dangerous night raid into the Greek
camp (X.320). He does not acquire them, and the book ends with Odysseus and Diomedes
�The Horses of Achilles
St. John’s College
Robert C. Abbott Jr.
September 9th, 2016
stealing the horses of King Rhesus, an ally of the Trojans. This strategically unimportant
and morally questionable raid is a symbolic journey into the dark underworld of the battle
to steal something as precious as daylight—hope for the successful outcome of the war.
It is as if the theft of these snow-white horses secures the sunrise, and the book ends with
the bloody, triumphant heroes bathing in the dawn-drenched waters of the sea.
The horses of Achilles did not always belong to him. Poseidon gave them to his
father, Peleus, and he gave them to Achilles when he sailed for Troy. Their father is
Zephyrus—the West Wind, and their mother, Podarge—a harpy (XVI.148). The harpies, or
more literally, “Snatchers,” are winged spirits of the storm, blamed for sudden or
unexplained disappearances. Zephyrus by contrast, is the obliging wind who comes at
Achilles’ request to kindle the funeral pyre of Patrocles. As with many mythological pairings,
these progenitors are opposites but akin: Zephyrus generously comes from afar to help hide
the body of Patrocles in fire, Podarge makes mortals disappear with ill will. The horses are
as swift as their parents, though their names do not reveal this extraordinary inheritance.
Xanthos and Balios refer simply to the color of their coats: Bay and Dapple.
The chariot of Achilles is also drawn by a third horse, Pedasos, who is mortal.
His name is revealing. It is probably derived from the verb πεδάω, to bind with fetters, and
Pedasos would mean something like, “Fettered,” or more figuratively, “Trained.” One also
hears the verb πηδάω in his name, which means, to leap or bound. Both these meanings are
revelatory of his own duel nature: he is bound to the earth by his mortality, but he rises
above his natural station to run with the immortal horses.
Pedasos is killed by a spear which pierces his shoulder, and Automedon hurriedly
cuts him free from the chariot in the chaos of battle. His is a harbinger of Patrocles’ own
death, a mortal severed from godlike Achilles. When Pedasos dies, he screams, and just like
any of the other heroes in the Iliad, blows his life’s breath from his mouth.
No horse can be handled without skill, but the immortal horses require an altogether
formidable rider. Just as a great hero like Achilles is jealous of his freedom to act as he sees
fit, inflexibly proud of his peerless excellence, and easily offended by discourtesy, there is
something correspondingly perilous in the temperaments of Xanthos and Balios. Odysseus
and Apollo agree they are, “difficult horses to ride” (X.401, XVII.76). And being difficult is
not the same as being wild or unbroken. A certain kind of horse might well refuse to be
ridden by an inferior rider, just as a certain kind of person might refuse to be commanded by
an inferior king.
There are other similarities between Achilles and his horses besides their prideful
unwillingness to be led by any but the most excellent guides. Both are accounted in the
catalogue of ships to be the best among the Greeks (II.770). When Achilles finally returns
to the field of battle, he attains the cosmic proportions this ranking promised: his eyes burn
like fire, he shines like the madness-inducing Dog Star, his shield depicts the entire earth,
and he is drawn by immortal horses, swift as the wind. By this time in the poem, Pedasos
and Patrocles are dead; nothing remains to remind him of his human heritage, only Xanthos’
prophecy of his imminent death. The likeness between Achilles and the immortal horses
is in no way better exemplified than at the funerary games. Neither participates. They stand
apart and mourn.
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�The Horses of Achilles
St. John’s College
Robert C. Abbott Jr.
September 9th, 2016
Part Two: The Charioteer
The immortal horses are more difficult to ride than any other, though it is not to
Achilles their mastery belongs, but rather, to Patrocles (XVII.475). He is their beloved
charioteer (ἡνίοχος), a word which applies peculiarly to him, the greatest charioteer for the
greatest warrior (XXIII.280). Achilles, while watching the funeral games, remembers him
this way:
But I stay here at the side, and my single-foot horses stay with me;
such is the high glory of the charioteer they have lost,
the gentle one, who so many times anointed their manes with
soft olive oil, after he had washed them in shining water.
As Pandaros says to Aeneas, horses carry better the horseman they know best (V.230). “To
know” in this sense entails profound trust and understanding. He goes on to say it is the
longed for voice of the charioteer that calms the terror battle brings on, not the rider’s skill
with the mechanical apparatus of the chariot.
Hector speaks to his own horses with this intent to calm and encourage. He asks
they repay in battle all the care his wife, Andromache, gave them in peace (VIII.185). There
is a likeness between Hector’s speech and Achilles’ insult: Hector demands his horses repay
the special kindness Andromache showed them, just as Achilles accuses his horses of
unjustly not repaying the kindness of Patrocles. In both addresses Patrocles and
Andromache are the horses’ caretakers whose memory should inspire them to excellence.
This is not the only time Patrocles has been implicitly compared to a woman.
In Book Nine, Phoenix tells Achilles an only apparently rambling story meant to
convince him to return to the battle before the Greeks are driven into the sea. It becomes
clear he is not primarily addressing Achilles. Patrocles’ name means “glory of the father,”
and the wife of the angry, recalcitrant hero in Phoenix’s story is Kleopatra, its feminine
equivalent. In the story, Kleopatra is the only person who can persuade her husband,
Meleager, to give up his anger and save the city, just as Patrocles might be the only person
who can convince Achilles to save the Greeks. Gentle and masterful charioteer that he is,
he might be able to persuade spirited Achilles, just as Kleopatra did her husband.
The epithet with which Achilles addresses Patrocles after he has agreed to let him go
into battle is ἱπποκέλευθος. This word is used only three times in the Iliad and exclusively to
characterize Patrocles. It distinguishes his horsemanship from the Trojans’, who are often
referred to as ἱπποδάμοιων, “breakers of horses.” Ἱππόδαμος is derived from the word for
horse, ἳππος, and the verb δαμάζω, which means “to break in, tame; (in mid.) to control
(horses); to bring into subjection (political or matrimonial); to wear out or exhaust; to curb
or restrain; to overcome, overpower, to put an end to, to destroy.” Although the lexicon
suggests this wide-ranging word means something like “bring into order” when it refers to
horses, in its broader sense it hints at the forceful means by which this is accomplished, as
well as the permanent circumstances which ensure the obedience of the horse. The Trojans
do have their horses under control, but rather in the way Xerxes controls his army: always
under threat of the lash.
Patrocles’ epithet, ἱπποκέλευθος on the other hand, has a very different range of
meaning. Its root appears to be κέλευθος, which means “way, road, or path,” and so one
Homeric lexicon defines ἱπποκέλευθος as “one who fares with horses,” while another
suggests, “making the road on a chariot, chariot-fighter.” Lattimore translates it as “rider of
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�The Horses of Achilles
St. John’s College
Robert C. Abbott Jr.
September 9th, 2016
horses,” and “lord of horses,” the latter of which nicely captures a verbal echo from the verb
κελεῦω, which has the primary meaning, “to command persons, order, bid, enjoin,
give orders or injunctions.” Secondarily, it means “to bid, exhort, charge, urge, recommend,
counsel, invite.” These two resonances in his epithet—κέλευθος and κελεῦω—imply that
Patrocles’ relationship to horses is not one of breaking them to his will, but rather, of
commanding them, as one might command a fellow warrior capable of understanding and
assent. In his horsemanship, the horse is taken to be a thinking being capable of persuasion
and with which one can go somewhere together. Patrocles is ἱπποκέλευθος because he
follows the way of the horse. In the Trojan epithet, ἱππόδαμος, the horse always remains a
potential enemy, defeated, never moving beyond its subjection.
I will turn to Xenophon and a few other horse trainers to show that this
difference—between force and persuasion—is a fundamental concept in horse training, and
that anyone who would fare with horses must make a decision regarding it. The distinction
reaches to the depths of the conflict portrayed in the Iliad.
While Xenophon recommends many means of training the horse one might call
forceful, he is very clear, the final end of horsemanship is for the horse to act always of its
own free will. He means this to be true most of all when the horse is asked to do more
dangerous things than it would ever do in the wild. This is a simple but difficult thought to
accept. How can a rider ride a horse unless it is the rider’s will which rules? Here is
Xenophon in his own words:
For what a horse does under constraint, […] he does without
understanding, and with no more grace than a dancer would show if he
was whipped and goaded. Under such treatment horse and man alike will
do much more that is ugly than graceful. No, a horse must make the
most graceful and brilliant appearance in all respects of his own will with the
help of aids. (The Art of Horsemanship XI.4)
A more modern inheritor of Xenophon’s tradition writes, “The thing you are trying to help
the horse do is to use his own mind. You are trying to present something and then let him
figure out how to get there.” That was the trainer Tom Dorrance on horsemanship, or,
perhaps, on education generally. Dorrance also talks about those riders who don’t “get in
the way of” their horse (p. 17, True Unity: Willing Communication between Horse and Human).
According to these teachers, true horsemanship is not forcing the horse to act, but rather,
allowing the horse to do what he or she is capable of and wills for itself. “You need to be
the horse’s master, but him not the slave, but rather your willing partner.” (p. 51, Dorrance)
Dorrance sums up the relationship between horse and rider as a “true unity of willing
communication,” and later, to be clear he is not describing a monstrous melding of horse
and man, he calls this state of unity, “togetherness.” (p. 11, Dorrance)
We can properly estimate the horsemanship of Patrocles by noting what it enables
him to do with the horses. It is not always true that actions are revelatory of the powers
which enabled them. Mere force, after all, can induce great and terrible effects all on its
own. But in this case, the action in question is so extraordinary that we can look to it as a
true indication of his skill. In order to understand its significance, we must remember the
precarious situation the Greeks find themselves in without Achilles. Nestor proposes a plan
to make up for his absence. First, they will gather and bury their dead in a collective funeral
pyre. Then they will construct a wall, fronted by a moat, lined with wooden stakes meant to
impede and impale the expected Trojan assault. The project will transform the Greeks’
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�The Horses of Achilles
St. John’s College
Robert C. Abbott Jr.
September 9th, 2016
piratical encampment into a more permanently defensible fort, but also anchor them even
more firmly in their defensive position. The buried warriors are meant to protect them from
their enemies just as much as the wall and moat (VII.327). One might recall the body of
Oedipus buried at Colonus to defend Athens from invasion, or the Spartan theft of Orestes’
bones to ensure their conquest of Arcadia (Herodotus, Inquiries I.67). The Greek
encampment is founded on and preoccupied with the dead, the dark, and past grievances;
Troy is the city of life, and the forgetful forgiveness of Paris’ calamitous theft of Helen; it is
the city of Apollo. In the twilight between Greek darkness and Trojan light lies the plain of
war, the place of heroic action.
When Patrocles finally rides out in defense of his comrades, he turns the tide of the
battle and drives the Trojan flood back into this plain. Many are crushed in the panicked
retreat or trapped in the dust-choked ditch. Patrocles drives the horses straight towards this
grisly chasm, heedless of the danger, and vaults it in one death-defying spring (XVI.380).
Xenophon says in The Cavalry Commander, if it is true a man should wish to fly, then he
should learn to ride a horse, as it is that activity which most closely resembles it (viii.6). This
astonishing physical feat is itself only a mark of an even greater spiritual one. The leap of
Patrocles affirms that though human life may only be safe behind a barrier founded on the
memory of those who have gone before us, it is possible to leap into the living present and
act. While the leap shows us what Patrocles and the horses were capable of, their reaction to
his death reveals the great love which made it possible.
Part Three: The Grave
After the horses hear Patrocles has been killed, they stand still as gravestones and
weep. The verb (πυθέσθην, from πεύθομαι, XVII.427) emphasizes that they do not simply
witness, but hear of and understand what has happened. Patrocles᾽ death is described
elliptically. He falls “in the dust,” (ἐν κονίῃσι) and the horses mimic his collapse by trailing
the full length of their manes in the muck of the battlefield. Their desecration of themselves
anticipates the fate of his dead body, soon to be returned to the earth. The horses bow their
heads to the earth, their tears flow to the ground, and they stand fixed (ἔμπεδον) as a
gravestone. “Ἔμπεδον” recalls the name, Pedasos, the mortal horse whose name means
“fettered,” or as we might hear it now, “earthbound.” Without Patrocles to guide them, the
immortal horses are rooted to the earth, like their dead comrade.
The horses are compared to a gravestone not only because they are still, but because
their immobility means something, in the way a gravestone does. It means they have lost, or
are willing to give up, that essential part of themselves—their speed—out of love for
Patrocles. Rather than run away from his death, in body or in mind, they remain with him.
The word for remain here, μένει, might remind us of the link Socrates makes between
“remaining” and “remembering” in the Meno. The heroes of the Iliad long for immortality in
the form of undying fame and they fear forgetful oblivion. When the carnage Achilles
wreaks is so great the river Scamander rises from his bed in indignation, Achilles fears not
only he will drown, but that he will be forgotten in the depths without a fixed grave marker
to remember him by (XXI.315). Patrocles will not be so forgotten. Homer’s simile makes
the horses’ eloquent immobility his memorial.
Homer notes that the grave in the simile is for either a lord or a lady. This seemingly
inexplicable addition suggests the horses mourn Patrocles as if he were both man and
woman, which is appropriate, given his dual nature. On the one hand, he is the horses’
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�The Horses of Achilles
St. John’s College
Robert C. Abbott Jr.
September 9th, 2016
gentle charioteer, he sets the bread on the table when the embassy comes to persuade
Achilles, he comforts Briseis when she is first brought to the Greek camp, and he is
compared to Andromache and Kleopatra. On the other hand, he is a great warrior, eager for
glory, the best of the Myrmidons. He kills more warriors in the field than anyone else in the
poem, more than Achilles and Hector combined. The grave of Patrocles is the grave of
mankind, without regard for gender.
One might think after hearing their careless laughter at the end of Book One the
immortals have no cause to mourn, but we see this is not so. Zeus himself weeps tears of
blood when his son Sarpedon dies, and the mourning of the horses gives the king of the
gods another occasion to contemplate the sorrow of immortality (XVI.459). He asks
himself: why did we give you to a mortal man, the most wretched creature on earth? Their
mourning shows that the immortal horses were not made to serve mortals unwillingly, as
Poseidon and Apollo served King Laomedon in building the walls of Troy (VII.445).
Rather, the horses mourn Patrocles for the same reason Zeus mourned Sarpedon: they have
lost, he whom they loved.
The horses refuse to leave Patrocles’ body. Automedon uses every kind of
persuasion: he beats them, he threatens them with a sharp whip, and he pleads with them.
Their refusal is both a testament to their love as well as an indication that the bond which
permitted the great leap over the barrier does not yet extend to Automedon. The epithet
ἱπποκέλευθος implied that the horsemanship of Patrocles depended on persuasion and
willing assent. Without it, the horses are not moved by words, either threatening or pleasing,
nor can they be forced from their place. Their power cannot be harnessed by a mere
breaker of horses.
Hector notices the famous team standing by the body of Patrocles and hopes to add
them to the spoil of Achilles’ armor. Zeus emphatically denies him this. Rather than force
them to return to the ships, however, he puts great strength into their knees so they are
themselves able to overcome their grief and rescue Automedon. When Xanthus and his
brother later stand accused of desertion, he does not tell Achilles it was Zeus who aided
them or that their first reaction to his death was to stay and weep for Patrocles. But we
know that the true reason they left the battlefield was because Zeus gave them the strength
to, just as we know that the true cause of their staying was their love for Patrocles.
Part Four: Justice
We are now in a position to appreciate the depth of Achilles’ insult I recounted at
the beginning of this lecture. His scornful request that the horses make sure to return him
safely back to camp as they did not do for Patrocles insinuates, that when he needed them
most, they failed in their trust. It is as if Achilles sees in their desertion a bitter reminder of
his own abandonment of the army. Without Patrocles, Achilles does not believe in the
willing compliance of the horses, or his power to persuade them. His command is
undermined by its irony: if the horses abandoned Patrocles, why should they not abandon
him as well?
The seriousness of his insult catches the attention of an equally serious power in the
cosmos. That it is the queen of the gods who gives Xanthos the power to speak marks this
occasion as significant in more than the world of horsemanship. Whenever a god acts in the
way Hera does here, their sphere of responsibility has been violated. And a god always and
tirelessly protects that for which it is responsible. Hera gives Xanthos the power to speak
6
�The Horses of Achilles
St. John’s College
Robert C. Abbott Jr.
September 9th, 2016
so he can correct Achilles’ unjust insult. Why this should be any of Hera’s concern is made
clearer by looking to the sorts of things that move her to anger and to action.
Hera is the last word of Book One, just as anger is its first. This is an ominous
intimation of her violent and vocal opposition to the will of Zeus. She is the goddess of the
“reckless word” (VIII.210, 461), and—like Achilles—is often angry. Unlike Athena, she
cannot control her rage, but pours it out in speech. (IV.25) She urges Achilles to call the
many-voiced assembly in Book One. She does this not only to save her warriors from the
arrows of Apollo, but also because of her care for that aspect of just redress which calls for
an accusation to be heard in public. The first and barest aspect of all justice, including its
cruder form in vengeance, is the vocalization “No!” The first word of the Iliad is μῆνιν—
wrath, but the first sound—and the Iliad is a poem one is meant to hear—the first sound is
μή—the negative particle of refusal—no, I will not. The Iliad is replete with negation:
Agamemnon says no, I will not return your daughter; Helen says no, I will not go to bed with
him yet again; Achilles says no, I will not fight. Without the power to protest what has been
said or done, there can be no balanced reconsideration, no appeal to what should have been,
and no fair judgment. The Iliad, by beginning with the momentary vocalization, “No!”
indicates it is a poem with justice, and the possibility for justice, at its heart.
Xanthos’ decisive “no” gives a sharp correction to Achilles’ insult, and although it
cannot reestablish that harmony of horse and rider which existed prior to the death of
Patrocles, his speech does make clear the parameters within which the horses are acting.
Xanthos states that not they but the gods and fate were the causes (ἄιτιοι) of Patrocles’
death, and thereby indicates that one of Patrocles’ killers is the god Apollo and beyond
Achilles’ reach. Xanthos also says it was not through slowness or irresponsibility he and his
brother failed to return their charioteer; they were both capable and willing. Achilles should
not blame the instruments available to him but look to the true causes.
Achilles addresses the horses as “famed sons of the harpy Podarge,” but Xanthos
boasts that he and his brother could run with the West Wind, their more benevolent father.
The supplemented genealogy reminds Achilles that the horses do more than bring death,
they can rescue their rider as well. Their speed is an image of their immortality, which they
can momentarily share with the charioteer they carry. Immediately after his boast, Xanthos
says, but you (αλλά τοι) are destined to be overpowered by a god and a man, as if to say that
even swift Achilles will one day be outrun by death. The phrase Homer uses for
“overpowered” is ἶφι δαμῆναι, “overmastered by force,” and cannot but recall the epithet
ἱππόδαμος, “horse-breaker,” which shares a root, δαμαζω. The horses are too swift to be
mastered, but Achilles will fall prey to force and to death.
What the content of Xanthos’ speech reveals is that the immortal horses could not
have been forced to do anything. Their love for Patrocles was not hampered by indecision,
laziness, poor-timing, weakness, ignorance, or any of the vices which usually keep us from
living up to our noblest form. And the highest form of horsemanship demands that we
believe the horse is in every way capable of and willing to attain the perfection proper to it.
Achilles fails to believe this myth. What he assumes, instead, when he insults the horses, is
that they did not wish to save Patrocles, that their bond of willing communication was a
pretense which shattered at his death. He fails to believe there was anything more than force
at work between them, so when the wielder of that force died, the horses deserted him.
What the fact of Xanthos’ speech reveals to Achilles is that it was not simply force
which guided the horses, but an unbroken, silent communication between horse and
charioteer. The horses have always been able to speak, but only to the right listener. It took Hera’s gift
7
�The Horses of Achilles
St. John’s College
Robert C. Abbott Jr.
September 9th, 2016
to make their voices discernible to Achilles, and to us. This is the meaning of her gift: it is
not a magical or supernatural event, except in so far as it is the revelation of a deep truth.
Hera gives Xanthos the power to speak, but it is the Furies who take it away again
just as suddenly. This makes some immediate sense: a speaking animal is outside the bounds
of nature. But the Furies are more than guardians of order simply. If we can see what their
sphere of responsibility is in the poem, we can explain why they take Xanthos’ voice. But
saying they “take” it is misleading. Rather, Hera and the Furies appear on the scene to
protect that for which they are responsible, and they work together to repair the damage
done by Achilles’ insult.
We know three chief characteristics of the Furies. First, in Book Fifteen we learn
they side with the elder, even among the gods (XV.205). This includes not only the elder
born among siblings, but parents; in other words, they side with who or what came first, or,
put in another way, they side with chronological origins, not consequences, often to the
detriment of who or what follows from them. Phoenix is punished by the Furies for
sleeping with his father’s favorite concubine and thereby dishonoring him (IX.455) and
Athena claims the Furies punish Ares for opposing his mother’s will by assisting the Trojans
(XXI.410). The Furies also punish those who break oaths, that is, those who act as if their
own past promises do not matter in the future (III.278). Finally, we know the special
responsibility of the Furies is to avenge the dead, those who by virtue of fully existing only in
the past can no longer effect the justice due them in the present (XIX.260). In this way, the
Furies are, like Hera, deeply concerned with justice—the way things should be—which can
only be achieved by remembering distant origins in the present. The special responsibility of
the Furies is the honoring of the past in the present, and they punish those crimes which
might disrupt that orderly reverence.
The Furies permit Xanthos to speak because the kind of crime he is accused of
would, if he were guilty of it, demand their punishment. Achilles’ insult has, as it were,
called them up from Hell by claiming that Xanthos and his brother carelessly forgot their
bond with Patrocles and left him behind on the battlefield. The truth, rather, is they
remained with him in mind and body (μένει), and the essence of their relationship with him
in life was an active holding together of origin and consequence, command and response.
The horses were mindful of Patrocles, as he was of them. An audible voice is superfluous in
such a subtle relationship, so the Furies take it away to return Xanthos to his true nature.
Part Five: The Soul
In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates says the soul is like a chariot drawn by two horses—
one, beautiful and high-minded, the other, passionate and dark. They are led by a charioteer,
whose difficult task it is to put these hostile comrades through their psychic paces. Like
Plato, Homer also gives us images of human life constructed out of chariots and horses. It
is these images and not their explication we should remember. I have given you one
possible explication, and only of a single moment, but the living jewel that is the poem can
be turned and seen in a different light. Achilles the warrior, Patrocles the charioteer,
immortal Xanthos and Balios, and mortal Pedasos: they make up an image of the mortal and
immortal bound in friendship—the single-footed, discontinuous thunder of the horses’
hooves harmonizing with the swift, never-ending revolution of the chariot’s wheels. Like
Plato’s, this image evolves. The great leap over the trench becomes the perfect stillness of
the mourning horses; the quiet horsemanship of Patrocles gives way to Achilles’ wrathful
8
�The Horses of Achilles
St. John’s College
Robert C. Abbott Jr.
September 9th, 2016
accusation. And the nightmare image of immortal horses dragging a dead human around the
walls of a sacred city shows a form of life in which Wrath has triumphed and immortal
beings are made to dishonor the shameful weakness of the mortal body.
How are we to understand the immortal horses as elements of an image portraying
the human condition? In other words, what are they to us? The field of Troy is far away
and we no longer hear the voices of the gods whispering over our shoulders, so it may
surprise you to learn there are now in your possession, powers very much like the immortal
horses of Achilles. They were given to you, in one way, by your parents, and in a more
mysterious way, by the gods. They are immortal in the sense that they currently belong to
you, but they recur infinitely in other beings, indifferent to your specific quiddity—what
makes you you. They have a life of their own which will persist long after you have ceased to
be. We do not each possess all of them, though among humans, the inheritance is usually
the same for each of us. Over the ages they have taken various forms, been given many
names, and been counted in different ways: Vision, Touch, the Powers to Move and to
Remain, the Power to Make Another Like Yourself. These are only a few of those who
stand in the Pantheon, though Aristotle insisted that for all their apparent diversity they are
united by one underlying name and desire—soul. The greatest of all the powers he named
νοῦς, or Mind—the power to remake yourself in the image of the world and thereby know
it.
It is true there is no perfectly convincing reason I can give you to think of these
powers as divine gifts—immortal, difficult to master, and not entirely under your control. It
would appear, after all, that you can command these willing servants as you like. They can
be made to turn this way and that, to carry you out of danger, to take you where you want to
go. But perhaps after considering the horsemanship of Patrocles and the mistake of
Achilles, you may reconsider your presumption to think of them as mere instruments and
see them as powers in their own right. You may also remember that these gifts were not
given to you whole and entire, but their use had to be learned through practice, though it is
very easy to forget with what care your mother and father taught you to master the art of
standing, or the long, dark millennia Nature required to train matter into the intricate shape
of an eye. These gifts call for our respect, even our awe, though you may answer that call
how you like. Ἱπποκέλευθος Πάτροκλος answered his horses in a particular way and leapt
the barrier between life and death. There was a harmony between them which hummed
along the web of harness and reins, yoke, bridle, and bit. It was not a conversation you
could hear, but it was a physical manifestation of the λόγος. One of the purposes of your
education here is to train those powers you have been given. They have a logic of their own
which you learn to understand and develop. Seeing, after all, is not as easy as opening your
eyes, and thinking may not be simply putting two and two together.
One might well grow nervous when someone takes mastery to be an educational
touchstone, especially at a college where lectures are by no means the rule. But staying
undecided on the role of true authority risks two serious mistakes—and by true authority I
mean the kind demonstrated in Patrocles’ horsemanship. The first mistake is simply not to
like authority-talk at all. But this is a tacit denial of one of the most fundamental features of
human experience: the astonishing way cause leads to effect, as it so evidently does in our
universe. Time and again, collision determines trajectory, seed blossoms into flower,
and conclusion follows flawlessly upon premise. How do we explain these cosmic
concatenations without first acknowledging that one thing leads another? Another way to
go wrong in thinking about authority is to go so far as to decide it is such a good in itself
9
�The Horses of Achilles
St. John’s College
Robert C. Abbott Jr.
September 9th, 2016
that the whole purpose of education is to subject all one’s powers to the sovereign self.
Sometimes this is mistakenly called freedom. But to what end does the self have all these
gifts at its disposal? Authority alone cannot decide what to do with its powers; it must
consult the powers themselves for direction. Education enables us to acquaint ourselves
with those we possess, to understand their purposes and the way they strengthen or interfere
with each other, and to give them rein to act.
It may not be immediately clear to you what would be different if you believed that
the everyday activities of your existence—eating, looking around, picking things up, tracing
the shape of a magnolia leaf, perhaps—were manifestations of immortal powers given into
your temporary care. And, of course, I cannot, and would not be interested in convincing
you this is necessarily the case. For one thing, the mere shift in your intellectual
commitments would not be enough. You would have to live with the myth, forge a bond
entirely your own in the intermediate space between you and those immortal powers you’ve
been given. That space between is where you cultivate what is uniquely you. Patrocles lives
with the myth that the horses are immortal: the cultivation of his unique bond with them is
based on it. I call it a myth not to disparage it, but to indicate its power to change your life
merely by thinking about it. That is what a myth is: a story you live with, and by letting it repattern your life, a story you live in. As far as he knows, Hector has mortal horses; no one
could convince him otherwise. His myth is different, diminished, and because of its
limitations, he is unable to do with his horses what Patrocles could.
The last word of the Iliad is a now familiar epithet, there used of Hector, ἰππόδαμος.
Hector is a supreme breaker of horses, but when his chariot approaches the black maw
which separates the Greek camp from the Trojan plain, his horses start back in fear, and
even though there are four of them to Patrocles’ three, they are unable to leap its terrifying
distance (XII.50). There is no explicit mention in the Iliad of the defeat of Troy by the
Trojan horse—it is, after all, an Odyssean ruse which wins the war—but the failure of
Hector’s horses to leap the gulf intimates that in spite of their celebrated horsemanship,
a horse will be the downfall of the Trojans. Apart from a clever trick, what does the image
of the wooden horse tell us about the nature of the Trojan failure? We could say the Trojans
were deceived by the Greeks, or, that they did not understand what they were seeing. Their
deception was in truth a failure of horsemanship: they did not see those powers Wisdom had
hidden within the horse.
The excellence of the horses of Achilles is that they need not fear death. They can
outrun it or leap over it. But we, in the end, cannot. Like Pedasos, one day we will each take
a spear to the shoulder and trade our life away. I believe it is a good thing for mortals to
hate death. As a wise person once said, it is by the strength of the soul’s desire for
immortality—for deathlessness—that its health is measured. Immortality is just another way
of saying, being there for it, always, and perfectly. What would Achilles give to be there in the
light of the sun for one more day? —to watch it touch the world, touch the faces of those he
loved? We hear in the Odyssey he would give a great deal, perhaps more than he can afford
to and still remain himself. The desire to remain in the delineating light of day is not only
for the sake of remaining with others, but for remaining our selves. Self-preservation, no
matter how coarsely interpreted, is the spirit’s insistence on the integrity of those clear
boundaries of flesh and blood which outline animal individuality against the indeterminate
many. What are the immortal powers Aristotle enumerates but manifestations of the soul’s
desire to become and be forever itself, immortal and ageless?
10
�The Horses of Achilles
St. John’s College
Robert C. Abbott Jr.
September 9th, 2016
So it is good to desire immortality and to shun death. But Socrates suggests in the Phaedo it
is wise, though very difficult, to learn the art of dying well; that is, to yoke and then unyoke,
when the time comes, the mortal and the immortal parts of us. In a Homeric formulation,
we should learn to put the reins of the immortal horses into the hands of Patrocles.
One of the immortal gifts given to us is the power to speak, and this is perhaps the
most difficult gift to accept, as we often identify our voice as uniquely and always our own.
Your voice is what you try to develop in writing or find through political participation. But
the opening line of the Iliad reminds us that in its highest form, language speaks through us.
Ἄειδε θεά! Sing, Muse! Language is never simply a personal expression; if it were, we
would not know what each other was saying or care we were trying to say it. This does not
mean Homer or we never say what we mean, only that meaning is difficult to achieve. Your
voice is what your breath becomes when you mean something by it, and it takes time and
mastery to effect the full transformation from living life to meaning it. The alchemical
conversion of your breath into your voice is implicit in the Homeric word ψυχή. Ψυχή is
that warm, feather-light quickening at your nose and mouth, a mortal incarnation of the
bright, endless air which spills down from Olympus into the mortal world. We say it means
life’s-breath or soul. It is what flies out of the mouth or a spear wound at death, never to
return. There is, though, a way for it to leave the human body behind without killing it.
Speaking transforms the soul—gives it wings—so it may leap safely past that most animal
and mortal part of us—the sharp barrier of our teeth—and in some proximate way, as the
Voice, experience an immortality and fellowship known only to the gods.
11
�
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Friday night lecture
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Robert C. Abbott Jr.
Commencement Address
May 12, 2019
St. John’s College, Annapolis
Graduating students of the College and the Graduate Institute; family and friends; faculty
and guests: it is my honor to speak to you this morning.
As some of you know, I am partial to concise works—among them, the fragmentary remains
of Sappho’s poetry, Anselm’s minimalist proof for the existence of God, and of course the
slightly lengthier six hundred pages of Herodotus’ Histories. This morning, I would like to
mull over just one sentence from a Platonic dialogue, in which Socrates tells the young
Theaetetus a story. I say “young” because from the outset of the dialogue that bears his
name, we know this conversation takes place when he was just starting out in life. Perhaps
Socrates had a weather eye on his young friend’s future when he told him this story.
It is said that while gazing up at the stars, Thales—one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece—
fell into a well; a witty Thracian serving woman, upon observing this, remarked, “How is it,
Thales, that being so wise in the affairs of heaven, you should fail to see what was before
your very feet?”
So who is Thales? Herodotus tells us that he was one of the first to predict the time of a
solar eclipse, so it is no surprise we should find him star-gazing. In the tradition, he is
considered the first philosopher, and Aristotle specifies that he was the first seeker after the
wisdom of nature. So in a way, he is the progenitor of our tribe, someone who, like
Socrates, delved into the things under the earth and peered at those in the sky. Thales
posited that, “All is water,” which might be a way of saying that beings change their form as
water does, but their underlying material remains what it is. He had many accomplishments
to his name, not least of which was an ingenious way to cross a river. Right now you might
be in agreement with the Thracian serving woman that Thales was rather foolish to fall into
his own first principle, so I will tell you this other story to establish his credentials as a
genuine thinker.1 And I tell it because you too might be concerned with how to get from
Here to There.
1
I owe this particular formulation of Thales’ fall to Joe Sachs.
1
�Robert C. Abbott Jr.
Commencement Address
May 12, 2019
St. John’s College, Annapolis
The army of the Lydian king needed to cross the River Halys and Thales was given the task.
Instead of moving the army over the river by conventional means—boat or bridge, Thales
changed the ground it stood on. He realized that the river was already moving, and instead of
transporting the army over the river, he diverted the river around the army, leaving it on an
island between two new channels. Because the whole was divided, both channels could be
crossed. That is a clever solution, and perhaps one which only someone who had spent
some time thinking about the nature of water would devise.
Now to return to our image from the Theaetetus. Thales is a natural philosopher investigating
the mysterious motions of the stars, and cannot be blamed for tracing the paths of the gods
even as he walks those more terrestrial ones. The Thracian serving woman on the other
hand is down to earth. She has a practical occupation, useful to herself and others. Her
witty question reveals theory to be both useless and dangerous. Stay grounded, she laughs.
You too have noticed, perhaps, that too much time in the hot air balloon above the Socratic
Thinkery can make you light-headed.
But the more I think about Thales falling into the well, the less it seems to warn against the
conflict between theory and practice, and the more it seems to describe an utterly typical
event in a thoughtful life. One minute you have your head in the clouds, inventing likely
hypotheses and following premises to their as-yet undiscovered conclusions, and the next,
the ground has disappeared. What you perceived or understood or believed is no longer
there for you as the immoveable ground it was moments before. What is it about a
thoughtful life that with some regularity the ground you stand on will vanish and leave you
spinning in mid-air?
Let me give you an example of what I mean. You are demonstrating at the chalkboard a
geometrical proposition from that infinitely patient book, Euclid’s Elements. You complete
the diagram by drawing the long final line between points A and B. But as you carry out the
proof, you realize something is wrong. Your ratios are jumbled, the triangles you remember
are not the triangles on the board, and none of the assistance you receive from friendly
classmates makes any sense. Your foot has come down on nothing.
2
�Robert C. Abbott Jr.
Commencement Address
May 12, 2019
St. John’s College, Annapolis
You will no doubt recognize this condition—fluttering in your stomach, disorientation and
embarrassment, confusion. This is the straightforward way to fall into a well—to make a
mistake. Perhaps that line wasn’t supposed to go to B, but rather to C. Or maybe one of
your given conditions was wrong. Or you didn’t understand compound ratio as well as you
thought you did. Standing there at the board, exposed and off-balance, you can now
recognize your kinship with that first thinker, Thales, patron saint of bewilderment.
Because most of you are young and intellectually limber, losing your footing can still be
agreeable. Like one of Darwin’s tumbler pigeons, you can perform a Backwards-TripleLutz-Somersault more gracefully than those of us who have been land animals for a longer
time. The Graduate Institute students are by and large older and more experienced, and
deserve special praise for choosing to have the ground pulled out from under them with
some regularity—ground that often was hard won. It is a daunting thing to fall into a well
when you are supposed to know better.
Lest we ever think too highly of our acrobatics, there is the Thracian serving woman with
her ready wit, waiting to point out how ridiculous we thinkers can be at any age. She is
integral to this philosophical image because she reminds us of the perils of losing one’s
intellectual footing in public. What are those perils? There are three.
The first is embarrassment. When you lose your footing, your cheeks burn and you tiptoe
away from what you’ve done. Your self-mocking laughter separates you from yourself. “I
couldn’t have done that,” you think. If the mistake is serious enough and you deny it too
angrily, you separate your present from your past; though as Freud would say, that denial
also means you cannot get over what you’ve done. And just as shame can alienate you from
yourself, it can also exclude from the conversation others who have made mistakes. But if
you have experience at making a mistake in public, you will learn to own what you’ve done,
and alienate neither your own past self nor other thinkers.
The second peril is that you will be distracted from what you were trying to do. When you
fall down a well, the world disappears. It is very difficult to maintain continuity with your
past endeavors. You must reach back in memory and find the thread that led you to the
3
�Robert C. Abbott Jr.
Commencement Address
May 12, 2019
St. John’s College, Annapolis
present, however circuitously. But if you have practice at weaving these strands together,
you live a more intricate, coherent life, one in which the activity of your mind persists in
spite of both failure and success, and time holds, an unbroken braid.
The third peril is that you break faith with your fellows. As we all know, there are more
unsettling ways for the ground to disappear than losing the thread of a Euclidean
proposition. You may find yourself doubting what the right thing to do is, or if there is a
right or wrong at all. You may find you’ve harmed a friend and couldn’t say why. Being
confused about your place in the world can render you useless for its present needs. I will
name this peril incivility, with the understanding that I do not mean mere impoliteness but
the failure to fulfill the responsibility you have to your community because you did not have
firm ground to stand on. But in this failing, you can learn to see what your community is
and requires. You can learn to ask for forgiveness from it, and not allow your own failings
to excuse you from your responsibility.
Herodotus tells us that Thales was also a statesman of sorts. He recommended to a number
of neighboring cities that they choose a single meeting place to hear disputes and decide
matters in common, as if each polis were a district of a larger political whole. I wonder if
Thales had this commitment to a common political life because he occasionally fell into a
well and found himself fractured by embarrassment, distraction, and incivility. Thales’
meeting place is the solid ground on which to work at being undivided. It should remind
you of our own classroom: one table, many voices.
There are other ways the ground disappears that have nothing to do with making a mistake.
How often have you talked your way somewhere in seminar and like Elizabeth Bennet found
that you had “wandered about until you were beyond your own knowledge?” You reach for
a familiar world and find it upended and whirling. Time varies with velocity, matter is energy
by another name, God is love: after a particularly good conversation you might well, as
Pentheus did, see two suns in the sky. Aristotle tells us wonder is the source of wisdom, and
perhaps it is by having the ground fall away from beneath us that we are prepared to behold
the world with new eyes.
4
�Robert C. Abbott Jr.
Commencement Address
May 12, 2019
St. John’s College, Annapolis
Since you are heading out into the world, I feel bound to tell you something particularly true
of it in this present age: most people are terrible at falling down wells. This is not surprising.
They have little to no practice at making mistakes in public and they believe that the purpose
of education is to learn how to become a certified non-mistake-maker, that is, an expert. At
most, they acknowledge that failure is important, but only as a ditch one leaps out of,
something to laugh at from a more comfortable vantage point. Many commencement
speakers are probably telling graduates right now to accept failure as a necessary evil on their
predestined path to success. I think Thales and the Thracian woman would have a few
choice words for them.
I hope it is clear by now that I am not giving you advice. I am praising you for what you
have been doing here all along. You have not learned how to land on your feet every time
you fall down a well. That would be sophistry—the skill to say something plausible no
matter the circumstances. But you have learned to welcome a fall when it comes. Falls come
in varying heights—from incorrectly drawing a geometrical diagram to realizing that your
whole account for your place in the world didn’t make adequate sense. In the period of your
course in these halls you have practiced disorientation: having your ground—perceptual,
intellectual, moral—fall out from beneath you. You have learned to be more committed to
the conversation than your own embarrassment, distraction, or incivility. You have learned
to remain at the table.
The sun is not yet at its zenith, but this is well past the midpoint of my address and I would
like to tell you a story about my own encounter with a well. Many years ago my family
visited the house where my grandmother was born, in Greene County, Virginia. It had long
since been in other hands, but she wanted to see it again, and she wanted me to see it for the
first time. My grandmother, parents, and I drove down one summer day, warmer than this
one, and turned from the highway onto country roads, until we came to the old home place.
The property was overgrown, and I was the only one who ventured into the abandoned
house. Young trees grew through the floor of the living room and stood like motionless
hosts. Only leaves breathed the quiet air of the house. When I returned to the car, I found
my grandmother upset by the dilapidation of the present and this rough return to the past.
But even in consternation she asked me, “Did you find the well?”
5
�Robert C. Abbott Jr.
Commencement Address
May 12, 2019
St. John’s College, Annapolis
The well was an underlying figure in the landscape of her childhood. She was a rare and
powerful storyteller; her memories of that childhood live on in those who heard her stories.
I have a vivid image of her drawing water to cool that morning’s milk as if I had been there
to hold the pail. When I take a drink after a long row here on the Severn I sometimes
remember how she quenched her thirst at the well after a long walk home from school. And
I did find this same well. She told me to watch out for it before I left the road and went into
the woods. The well was deep, and its wooden cover was surely rotted away. But I
discovered it in time, near the back porch stairs—a dark opening in the earth.
This memory gives me cause to rethink my telling of the Thales story. I have praised what
you undertook here at the College. But like Socrates in the Phaedrus, perhaps I have not yet
done justice to the end of that enterprise. I have considered one aspect of the thoughtful
life—when the ground disappears, but I have yet to address another—falling into a well.
Allow me to begin my encomium again, giving due praise not to the fall, but Depth.
You fall, yes, but into what? Thales fell into his own first principle—water, which he took to
be the underlying material beneath everything else. In other words, he fell into the source of
the world. The word for source in Greek is arche, a word that has many resonances with us
here at the College. An arche is a beginning, a cause, a source for the way things are, a spring
that pours forth much. The sources of the world are deep. You cannot always climb down
but must trust the fall. I am reminded of what the German poet Hölderlin wrote, “Wo aber
Gefahr ist, wächst / Das Rettende auch.” “Where danger is, there salvation also grows.” It is no
accident that we find water in the deep places of the world. There is a secret bond between
the high and the deep. When we set our gaze on the ageless dance of the stars we also find
ourselves falling to the very heart of the world. But I want to describe more specifically
what we fall into when the ground gives way.
When I was in high school, trying to persuade my parents to let me attend the College, we
were invited to an event for prospective students at an alumna’s house. My mother was not
at all sure that this strange school would be worth the risk. I think my father was happy
enough that I was interested in crew to sign off on the whole dubious project. Wouldn’t it
6
�Robert C. Abbott Jr.
Commencement Address
May 12, 2019
St. John’s College, Annapolis
be better to go somewhere with more options, somewhere more conservative, more
affordable, somewhere with a study abroad program? We met a tutor at the event, Nancy
Buchenauer, and my mother asked her a challenging question: what is the worldview of St.
John’s College? Ms. Buchenauer paused, but did not shy away from an answer. “We believe
there are certain questions that must be asked.” My parents were convinced.
The more I ask opening questions at the beginning of seminar, the more time I live with the
great books that pose those certain questions with unyielding intensity, the more I believe
that a question is not a statement disguised by uncertainty, nor is it an indication of, or an
attempt to induce, confusion. A question is a well-spring sunk into the heart of the world.
A question demands that you must answer it now, in the present, and for yourself; no one
can do it for you. Who am I? What is nature? What ought I do here? What is fleeting,
undying, beautiful? These wells do not run dry however much we draw from them. They
are springs of living water, nourishing tree, city, and soul.
Our time is at its end and you are about to return to a source. I know the College sometimes
seems self-sufficient, but the great world to which you go is one of our sources, and we, its
tributary. Plato has given you many ways to picture life in the world. The darkest is in the
Republic. There it it is like living in a cave, chained by injustice, bound to see only images of
the truth. But in the Theaetetus, he gave you another way of picturing that place underlying all
others. Going back to the world is like falling into a well. Disorienting at first, but in it you
may discover the source of what is. I believe the well of Thales was a place for reunion and
betrothal, like a well in the book of Genesis; or like the pool of Bethesda, where an angel
troubled the waters and the lame came to walk again. Thales falling into the well is an image
of what happens to human beings after they have strained to see the undying beauty above
them, but lost their footing and found themselves in fathomless depth. Perhaps instead of
being forced down to earth as in the cave, they fall there, as Alyosha does, in praise and
wonder.
7
�
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Commencement
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Tutor Panel on “Freshman Laboratory and the Laboratory’s Place in the Liberal Arts"
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Freshman Laboratory
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Friday night lecture
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LETTERSJrom Santa Fe
St. John's College-Santa Fe, New Mexico
Fall 1993
RESEARCH AND TEACHING
INSIDE
THE IMPACT OF
SPECIALIZATION
page 2
THE FUTURE OF
TEACHING
pages
THE TYRANNICAL
MACHINE
page9
THE CHARGE THAT
RESEARCH IS NARROW
AND OPAQUE
IS DECADES OUT OF
DATE
page 14
SENSE AND NONSENSE
page 17
Something has happened to teaching. Simply put, at some point, I know
not when, it stopped being the highest function and core calling of many
professors. At some point it dawned on administrators in higher education
that it was easier to count books and articles in refereed journals, or check off
the number of times an article was cited elsewhere, than make the difficult
judgments required on something as subjective as good teaching. As everyone now knows, the money and the rewards are less in teaching than in
research and publishing.
My favorite example is not actually from the U.S. but from a university
in Mexico City where, as one of our tutors at St. John's discovered, you get
points for various activities. For instance, you will get 3300 points for publishing a research paper. For teaching a course for one semester, you will get
210 points. For writing a textbook or a computer package, you will get 6600
points. For directing a thesis, you will get 220 points. For getting a patent you
will get almost 7000 points; if you're on a thesis committee, merely 60. And he
who wraps up the most points gets the promotion and the higher pay.
The status of teaching in America may not be as cut and dried as it is
south of the border, but I recently received a request from a very good
foundation for a list of the best teachers of history here at my college. Why?
To reward them with a year off from classroom teaching. The personnel
offices of big corporations repeatedly say how highly they value a liberal
arts education, and then consistently hire people with technical or business
degrees. So also do universities consistently proclaim their devotion to good
teaching and consistently reward something else. This emphasis on the
value of research is particularly odd in the humanities, where research,
rather than widening our view of important matters, has probably subtracted
from the sum of human knowledge.
I'm not going to get into an argument over whether or not some research
scholarship does not, at times, prove a great benefit for classroom teachingof course it might. Or that researchers are not great teachers--0f course some
are. All I mean to say is the obvious as well as the empirically verifiable: that
less time is spent on teaching today than before, that fewer university
rewards are given for teaching, and that where there are great scholar-teachers,
such benefits as have accrued have accrued to their scholarship, and often
works to the detriment of their hours in the classroom.
With the selection of the articles in this issue, I have tried to present
something of the history of the conflict between research and teaching as
well as anecdotal evidence of the problems it leaves in its wake.
�THE IMPACT OF
SPECIALIZATION
by
Frederick Rudolph
Subjects and courses
were often offered not
because students wanted
or needed them but
because an essentially
autonomous group of
academic professionals
could and would teach
nothing else.
pa ge t wo
The American liberal arts college
was of pre-industrial origin. Its
concern with the education of
gentlemen, its lack of sympathy
with many of the egalitarian and
exploitive impulses of the age, and
its Christian orientation suffused
the classical curriculum and the
humanistic style of the old colleges.
The American university, on the
other hand, was a child of the new
order, a product of the Industrial
Revolution eager to play a central
role in the refinement and specialization of knowledge and in the
training of cadres of experts to keep
the machinery of society running.
Once the university began to
d efine the mission of American
hig her ed uca ti on, the colleges
were essentially contrary institutions,
evoking the old values, suspicious
of much that specialization
celebrated , prefe rring to r egard
higher education as primarily a
center for humanistic study, social
critici s m , and e thical concern.
Increasingly the colleges found
themselves at a disadvantage, even
anachronistic in an age that was
being defin e d by speciali s t s,
corporate bureaucracies, g rowth,
and consolidation. The curricular
battles of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries must in
some ways be seen as s truggles
between the demands and needs of
the professionals- including the
professional academicians- and the
L E TT E R S fr om S anta Fe
traditional concerns and purposes of
the colleges as sources of enlightened
and responsible community leadership.
The impact of the universities
on the undergraduate curriculum
was devastating. They promoted
old vocations learned on the job
into new professions, certified by
the universities' own professional
schools. They dignified old utilities
with new learning, revealing an
appetite for new subjects and a
receptivity to applied science that
allied them openly with the industrial
order. They identified themselves
as agents of social mobility by
offering the courses that appeared
to lead the way into corporate and
government bureaucracies. In
asserting the equality of all subjects,
as did Ezra Cornell and Charles
William Eliot each in his own way,
they invited an expanding clientele
to join them-the universities-in
their own version of the meritocratic
bureaucratic system.
It is no wonder that it wa s
difficult to keep a clear vision of
purpose, to give order to academic
priorities, or even to remember that
higher education had once revealed
more concern for the conduct of
society than for the ambitions of
individual men, more interest in
shaping a human community than
in shaping individual careers. In an
a tmosphere of confused purpose,
jumbled priorities, and forgetfulness,
the univ ersities and the colleges
that aped them had no difficulty in
offering a course of study equ ally
confused, jumbled, and forgetful.
*****
Perhaps this is the place to dispel
the false dich o tomy tha t often
clouds any con sideration of the
useful a nd the liberal in hig h er
F a ll 199 3
�education. Liberal studies were
from the beginning eminently useful
even if they were not specific in
their vocational focus. The skills
and attitudes of an educated man
were expected to be vocationally
useful. It was not enough, however,
for a liberal study to be useful; it
also had to possess the dimension
that made it liberal. The vocational
subjects, the professional curriculum,
the technical utilities that made
their way into the colleges could
not justify their liberal pretensions
without providing that "something
else" that differentiated liberal
studies from the rest. What
was that something else?
The difference between a
liberal subject and one that
was not was the degree to
which there was an emphasis
on cognitive skills, rational
analysis, the stuff it took to
be communicative-clear,
expressive, imaginative. A liberal course of study invited
contemplation, a look inward, an
assessment, even a reassessment of
self and society. "Something" went
on in the old colleges that helped
their graduates to be recognized as
possessing a certain style, a moral
stance, a reliability in taste and
values, a capacity to analyze and
even to imagine derived from that
amalgam of experiences known as
"going to college." It was precisely
that "something" that liberal arts colleges nurtured.
The growth of professionalism
changed who went to college, what
they sought there, and who taught
there. The consequences for liberal
learning, associated as it was with
an earlier professionalism, a narrow
governing elite, and a less secular
orientation, were dramatic-challenging and subversive but not fatal, for
Fa /1 1993
much was missing in the new
order, as attractive as its dynamism
and energy and authority may have
been. And that "much" included a
social ethic, an element of human
concern and regard for community.
The professionalization of the
professors and the proliferation of
academic specialists helped to fuel
the institutional rivalries that made
academic life very much like
industrial life. The competition for
professors, the rivalries between
departments, the focus on size and
numbers and growth, and the
appearance of endless numbers of
specialists in a growing number of
departments led to a kind of acquisitiveness and imperialism that made
students both objects of conquest
and victims of professional
indifference. To that end the curriculum was an expression of the
power of the professional academicians. Subjects a nd courses were
often offered not because students
wanted or needed them but because
an essentially autonomous group of
academic professionals could and
would t eac h nothin g e l se. To
co mpen sate for the unpalatable
offerings of one kind of academic
specialist, the institutions acknowledged their responsibilities to the
student clients and the need to bolster
enrollments by offering students
what they wanted in the way of
LETTER S from S anta Fe
undemanding courses and careeroriented programs in the neoprofessional and technical studies.
Ironically, when the professors
abandoned a curriculum that they
thought students needed, they
substituted for it one that, instead,
catered either to what the professors
needed or what the students wanted.
The results confirmed the authority
of the professors and students but
they robbed the curriculum of any
authority at all.
The reaction of students to all
this activity in the curriculum was
brilliant. They concluded
that the curriculum really
didn't matter. Their response
was an accelerating growth
of the extracurriculum, an
explosion of fraternities,
sororities, and athletic teams
that in one sense over w helmed the course of
study. Nothing is more
revealing of the depth of this
point of view than the failed
effort of many institutions, including Harvard in the 1890s, to reduce
the course to three years. Students
would have none of it: they were
not there for the courses. They were
there for the fun, the sociability, the
experiences that gave shape to character, personality, and individual
promise.
Even as the professional academicians were insinuating intellectual
focus into the curriculum, moving
away from values and ethics and all
those s ticky questions that the
classical college was comfortable
with, the students were relocating
such concerns in their fraternities
and athletic teams. It would be
embarrassing if widely known, but
the heir to Mark Hopkin's mantle
was not the new professional professor of philosophy but the football
p age thr ee
�coach. An elective curriculum
allowed students to get what they
wanted, but what they wanted was
not really very much, since they
had long since learned that the jobs
they would one day hold depended
far less on the courses they took
than on the firmness of their handshake and the directness of their
eye.
* * * **
Out there in the real world
employers who say that they prefer
business or engineering majors really
do not care very much about the
technical content of undergraduate
education. They know as well as the
rest of us that most of what makes
a person effective on the job is
learned on the job, something that
anyone with a Ph.D. degree knows
without having to be told. What
that business or engineering major
means to an employer is that the
young man or woman in question
has not been contaminated by the
liberal arts, subverted by the liberal
ethos.
If the American college graduate
is weak in analysis and the spirit of
inquiry, unable to communicate in
his own or any other language
clearly and effectively, and with it
all, ethically unsure and ignorant of
his own history and culture, the
responsibility lies not with the
schools or with college and university
presidents, nor with the politicians
or the people, but with the professors.
They have the power to change the
curriculum. They should not be
allowed to get away with pointing
the finger of responsibility elsewhere.
Professionalism among the
professors, their narrow specialization, the complete neglect in
their training of any concern with
teaching or with any professional
responsibility other than to scholarship, are conditions that inhibit
optimism about whether even liberal
arts colleges can in fact teach liberally.
Too many teachers of liberal subjects
are so far gone into specialization
and into the scientific understanding
of their specialties that the challenges
of teaching, of bringing students into
a humanistic relationship with their
subjects, are beyond their interest or
capacity. And, these days, the uncertainties of the academic job market
and the territorial behavior that goes
along with academic departments all
but disqualify the professors from
thinking creatively and responsibly
about what a comprehensive and
coherent college education ought to
be. But, this is where any reform must
begin. The professors have the power.
They must be encouraged to use it
responsibly.
Excerpted from: "The Power of
Professors: The Impact of
Specialization and Professionalization
on the Curriculum" that originally
appeared in Change magazine,
May/June 1984.
SCHOLARS AND SOCIETY
From "Scholars and Society," a speech by Lynne Cheney, former chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities, to
the American Council of Learned Societies, New York, April 15, 1988.
When new theoretical interests are added to specialization, the problem of communication becomes even more severe.
Not only does the public fail to understand us; sometimes we don't even understand each other. Last month, a professor at
South Puget Sound Community College handed me a current issue of a well-known scholarly journal. He wanted to point
out a long article in it that he regarded as largely impenetrable. One sentence in the article-part of an explanation for a
three-part chart-reads as follows:
Second, the denotative-connotative-stereoscopic triplet is indebted to David Bleich's idea of language as a
Casirerian "symbolic form" capable of creating knowledge that is "always a re-cognition because it is a seeing
through one perspective superimposed in [sic] another in such a way that the one perspective does not appear to
be prior to the other" (a process described by Jean Piaget as "the internal reciprocal assimilation of schemata"), the
kind of knowledge occasioned "when we 'get' a joke; more specifically and pertinently, such "stereoscopic knowledge" involves language evoking the "perspectival possibilities" of always interdependent denotation and connotation."
The Puget Sound professor would probably not have taken the trouble to point out this article, except for the fact that
its topic is how to teach English.
p age fo ur
LETTERS f r o m S anta F e
F a /11993
�I
THE FUTURE OF
TEACHING
by
William Arrowsmith
abandon liberal education so that
specialization can begin with
matriculation, and when he advocates this in order to reconcile the
conflicting claims of research and
teaching, it should be obvious even
to the skeptical that education is
being strangled in its citadel, and
strangled furthermore on behalf of
the crassest technocracy. I find it
difficult to imagine the rationalization of these salaried wardens of a
great, ecumenical tradition, who
apparently view themselves and
the institutions they administer as
mere servants of national and
professional interests.
I am suggesting what will
doubtless seem paradox or treason:
There is no necessary link between
scholarship and education, or
between research and culture, and
in actual practice scholarship is no
longer a significant educational
force . Scholars, to be sure, are
unprecedentedly powerful, but
their power is professional and
technocratic; as educators they
have been eagerly disqualifying
themselves for more than a century,
and their disqualification is now
nearly total. The scholar has disowned
the student-that is, the student
who is not a potential scholar-and
the student has reasonably retaliated
by abandoning the scholar. This, I
believe, is the only natural reading
of what I take to be a momentous
event: the secession of the student
from the institutions of higher
learning on the grounds that they
no longer educate and are therefore,
in his word, irrelevant. By making
education the slave of scholarship,
the university has renounced its
responsibility to human culture
and its old proud claim to possess,
as educator and molder of men, an
ecumenical function. It has disowned
in short what teaching has always
meant; a care and concern for the
future of man, a Platonic love of the
species, not for what it is, but what
it might be. It is a momentous
refusal. I do not exaggerate. When
the president of Cornell seriously
proposes that the university should
** * **
The Colleges
I can think of no more conspicuous failure of leadership than in the
liberal arts colleges. With a few
notable exceptions, the record of
F all 1 993
L E TTERS from S an f a Fe
*****
What students want is not
necessarily what they need; but in
this case it is the students who are
right and the universities that are
wrong . Here, unmistakably, we
have students concerned to ask the
crucial questions-identity, meaning,
right and wrong, the good lifeand they get in response not bread
but a stone. Almost without
exception the response of the
universities to this profound
hunger for education, for compelling
examples of human courage and
compassionate intelligence, has
been mean, parochial, uncomprehending or cold. Above all, cold.
Why, you ask, is teaching held in
contempt? Because it has become
contemptible by indifference.
Teaching has been fatally trivialized
by scholarship which has become
trivial.
... we have students
concerned to ask the
crucial questions-identity,
meaning, right and
wrong, the good lifeand they get in
response not bread
but a stone.
pa ge f i ve
�the college is one of failure, at least
if judged by its own claims .
Whatever else it may be, Socratic it
is not, in faculty, in style, in results.
This I take to be a matter of fact.
Certainly it is hard to imagine a
more damningly documented
indictment of the liberal arts college
than that of the Jacob study, with
its bleak conclusion that, apart from
three or four colleges, the effect of
college teaching on student values
is simply nil, zero, and that what
from within . They have recruited
their faculties heavily from the
major graduate institutions, and
these recruits have inevitably
altered the tone and finally the
function of the colleges. There has
doubtless been pressure from the
graduate schools, but for the most
part the colleges have consented to
the process. And they are now in
the ludicrous position of proudly
claiming, on the one hand, that
seventy-odd percent of their gradu-
small change occurs comes from
the student subculture. The conclusion is the more devastating
because it is precisely on the claim
to teach that the American college
stakes its case. Here-in low studentteacher ratios, in college plans,
tutorials, etc.-it has spent its
money and ingenuity, and it is here
that its failure has been spectacular.
Why?
In my opinion, the colleges
have failed as teaching institutions
because they have been subverted
ates go on to graduate or professional schools, and, on the other, of
complaining that they are being
turned into prep schools for graduate
study. Gentility and snobbery have
played a large part in this subversion,
as well as the hunger for academic
respectability which is now firmly
linked to the business of research .
Instead of cleaving to the Socratic
pretensions and traditions, the
colleges have tended instead to
become petty universities, differing
from the universities only in a slightly
higher regard for the teacher and a
corresponding tolerance of the
student. If the wealthier colleges
have managed to recruit able faculty,
the poor colleges have fared badly,
recruiting second-and third-rate
Ph.D.'s, who for their part regard
the college as an academic boondocks and lust for the day when
they can return to the urban Edens
of research. In the meantime they
teach the only thing they knowtechnical expertise-and thereby
both corrupt their students and
refuse their Socratic opportunities.
The colleges, in short, have yoked
themselves to Pharaoh's chariot
and, if they regret their loss of
function, they have only themselves to blame. A handful of small
colleges have dared to break the
bond of snobbery and respectability
that binds the college to the university, and they have done so simply
by daring to profess the values they
assert and finding teachers who
profess them too.
I am, of course, in violent disagreement with those who believe
that "the selective liberal arts colleges
of the future ... must become
first-rate preparatory colleges for
graduate education." If we believe
that the liberal traditions of the
colleges are viable and that the
college may have a higher function
than feeding professional schools,
then we must set about saving it. If
I am right, the trouble with the
colleges is that they recruit their
faculties from uncongenial sources;
the well is poisoned. By imitating the
universities, the colleges have
everything to lose and nothing to
gain; neither their funds nor their
human resources are adequate to
the competition.
My solution is dramatically
simple. Let the colleges go into
p age s i x
L E TTERS fro m Sa nt a F e
Sp r i n g 1 9 9 3
�business on their own, against the
graduate universities; let them
form their own league as it were
and train the kind of man they cannot
expect to recruit from the universities.
I am aware that such federations
are in the air, and perhaps already
exist; but I am emphatically not
suggesting federation on the
principle of beating the graduate
schools at their own game. It
should be a different game altogether, designed to produce men
who do not think it beneath their
dignity to educate others; men in
whom the general civilized intelligence survives; humanists with a
concern for men; scholars convinced
that the world needs humane
knowledge as never before. Ideally,
I think, it would seek to involve its
students in the real world, and it
would surely seek real association
with the vocations and professions.
But its primary purpose would be
to produce truly educated graduates
as well as teachers to whom it could
reasonably entrust the crucial task
of providing models for those who
wanted to become civilized men
instead of scholars. I also believe
that a formidable but generous
enterprise helps to summon large
behavior into being, and that the
immense task of building institutions
worthy of his love and learning
might do much to create the kind of
man who is missing. Enterprises
which require humanity are the
first prerequisite for a greater
humanity. Men must use themselves
significantly in order to grow. That
is the law of all education, all
growth. Why not apply it to education? We need new or renewed
institutions; in the act of renewing
them, we may renew ourselves.
Such institutions would surely
not lack for students. Those who
Fa/11993
desire to study further but have no
wish to be processed as professors
are, I am convinced, far more
numerous than is commonly suspected. The country is rich; leisure
is available; educational expectations
are rising. Far too many graduates
of our colleges and universities feel,
moreover, that they never got an
education, and it is these who go on
to graduate school in the hope of
getting what they failed to get as
undergraduates. It is graduate
education they want, not graduate
training. This is why dissatisfaction
with the graduate schools is so
keen. There is simply no option
available on the graduate level;
everything is geared to professional
training. And among those disenchanted with graduate school are
precisely those from whom the
colleges should in fact be recruiting
their faculties-those students who
are not averse to learning but who
demand that it be given relevance
and embodiment. It seems a cruel
shame that such talent should go to
waste or find no meaningful fulfillment at a time when it is so terribly
needed. We are not so rich in the
higher human resources that this
source can be so tragically wasted.
Are there enough men to staff
more than three or four such experimental "graduate" centers in the
liberal arts? Probably not. But what
matters is that there should be at
least a handful of colleges in this
country which dare to resist the
conformity imposed by the research
cartel and to distinguish themselves
by putting the teacher-and therefore the humanities-squarely at
the center of the curriculum. Two or
three such places would, I am
convinced, reinvigorate, perhaps
even revolutionize, American
education simply by providing
LETTERS from S an t a F e
But what matters is
that there should be at
least a handful of
colleges in this country
which dare to resist the
conformity imposed by
the research cartel and
to distinguish themselves
by putting the teacherand therefore the
humanities-squarely
at the center of the
curriculum.
pa ge se ve n
�convincing examples of the daring
and diversity we need. The logical
place for them to be established is
either upon the existing base of the
better liberal arts colleges, or as a
new "higher college" created by a
group of colleges acting in concert.
Only by some such device, by
striking at the source of the trouble,
can the traditional role of the college
be protected and expanded. It
would be a staggering loss if the only
institution of higher education still
committed to liberal education
should be subverted by the demand
for professionals and technicians.
The Universities
Teaching is notoriously worse
off in the universities than in the
colleges. Not only is the university
traditionally more committed to
pure research, but it is particularly
vulnerable to the pressures that
have eroded the teacher's status.
Vast numbers of students, huge
classes, intense competition for
Federal funds, and therefore for
distinguished research professors,
political and professional pressures,
all these have operated to downgrade and even discredit teaching.. . .
At present the heart of university power is the department. It is
this departmental power that now
so vehemently promotes research
and is hostile or indifferent to
teaching. It is at the departmental
level that the evaluation of teaching
is subverted, since chairmen apparently equate research and teaching;
it is there that publish-or-perish
policies are really promulgated; that
the pressure for reduced teaching
loads derives; from there that
graduate deans are recruited; that
the demand for early specialization
arises, as well as the jealous specialism
that fragments the curriculum into
p a ge eight
warring factions . Put a mild and
gentle man of broad learning into a
department chairmanship, and
within two years he will either be
murdered by his colleagues or
become an aggressive and vindictive
mafioso of the crassest specialism.
The process can no more be resisted
than the ravages of time. It is
inexorable and destructive; and it is
the remorseless tragedy of university
politics.
This is why it is so imperative
that some rival to it, some countervailing, antidepartmental force be
created. Research is dominant now
because teaching has no effective
representation , no normalized
political place or power, within the
structure of the university. The
departments are theoretically
com posed of teachers or teacherscholars, but actually they have
been wholly captured by the
research professoriat. The scholar
has everything-the departments,
the powerful committees , the
learned societies, the Federal funds,
the deanships, and the presidenciesand if he chooses to say that he finds
teaching distasteful and unworthy
of his abilities, who will say him
nay? Who speaks for teaching here?
Clearly nobody, except perhaps the
students.
problem of research and teaching
not by reconciling them but by
divorcing them altogether. That is
my intention, and one which I am
prepared to risk, since the only likely
alternative is to make teaching the
lackey of scholarship. I think we
have reached the point at which
slogans like "scholar-teacher" merely
darken counsel; there may have
been a time when that was a viable
ideal, and doubtless some exceptionally gifted men still incarnate it.
But by and large its vogue passes
on to the professor the two functions
which the university has inherited
and which it cannot meaningfully
reconcile. The realities of educational
practice make it starkly apparent
that no reconciliation can now
occur except at the expense of
teaching. And I am not prepared to
incur that expense if I can humanly
help it. This is why I urge you to
consider freshly the wisdom of
separating teaching and research,
with the thought that significant
teaching and fresh energy in academic
institutions may eventually make
scholarship human again, and that
an invigorated scholarship may
once again accept the burden of
teaching as the source of its vigor
and the test of its wisdom.
* * * **
This is the present state of
affairs; a vast educational enterprise
built entirely upon a cast of learned
men whose learning has no relevance
to the young and even seems to
alienate the young from both education and culture. It is a vision of
madness accomplished.
Logan Wilson, editor, Octagon Books,
Excerpted from: The Academic Man,
1967.
** * * *
One final point. I expect to be
told that I am actually meeting the
LETT E RS f r o m Sa n ta Fe
Fa /1 1 9 93
�THE TYRANNICAL
MACHINE
by
Lynne V. Cheney
Former Chairman
National Endowment for the
Humanities
For decades critics have been
saying that institutions of higher
education do not do enough to
encourage good teaching. Classicist
William Arrowsmith made this
point in 1967, observing that "at
present, the universities are as
uncongenial to teaching as the
Mojave Desert to a clutch of Druid
priests." Almost a quarter century
later, historian Page Smith asserts
that faculties "are in full flight from
teaching ... In many universities,
faculty members make no bones
about the fact that students are the
enemy. It is students who threaten
to take up precious time that might
otherwise be devoted to research."
This situation has not come
about because faculty members
necessarily prefer research . In a
recent survey, 71 percent reported
that their interests either leaned
toward or lay primarily in teaching.
But the road to success--or even to
survival-in the academic world is
through publishing ... .
The most dramatic examples of
how research is valued over teaching
occur when faculty members who
have won campus-wide awards for
teaching suddenly find themselves
without jobs. A 1988 article in The
Chronicle of Higher Education even
raised the possibility that teaching
F a ll 1 9 93
r
awards, by implying that a faculty
member is not as serious about
research as he or she should be, are
"the kiss of death" as far as achieving
tenure is concerned. Economist
Thomas Sowell reports, "I personally
know three different professors at
three different institutions who
have gotten the Teacher of the Year
Award and were then told that
their contracts would not be
renewed.
The emphasis on research is
greatest at research universities
where 64 percent of the faculty
report spending five hours or less
per week on formal classroom
instruction and 86 percent report
spending six or more hours per
week on research. At liberal arts
colleges, however, the emphasis on
research is growing. Fifty liberal
arts schools have banded together
under the lead of Oberlin College
and are considering calling themselves "research colleges." Schools
such as Colorado College, Grinnell,
and Wellesley have reduced the
number of hours faculty teach so
that they have more time to do
research. A recent survey of twelve
liberal arts colleges reported that
faculty frequently distinguish
between teaching and "what they
often call, significantly, 'my own
work' or research."
According to one
estimate, teaching
responsibilities at noted
research universities
have, since 1920,
decreased in many
instances by one-third,
and often by half to
two-thirds.
* * * * *
The model that increasingly
drives all of higher education-the
tyrannical machine that reignswas first established in the United
States at the end of the nineteenth
century. Derived from German
universities, the model emphasized
the production of knowledge rather
than its diffusion. Both Daniel Coit
Gilman and G. Stanley Hall,
influential spokesmen for the new
LETTERS f rom S anta Fe
p age nin e
�university ideal, thought that the
scholar's proper role lay in producing
"bricks" for the rising temple of
knowledge. William James was
among the first to note that such a
single-minded view threatened a
system in which there were many
paths to excellence.
Teaching Less
One of the most dramatic
effects of emphasizing the production
of new knowledge-that is,
research that leads to publicationrather than the communication of
knowledge to the next generationthat is teaching-has been a decline
in how much faculty members
teach . At four-year institutions,
time spent by faculty in the classroom
has decreased steadily. According
to one estimate, teaching responsibilities at noted research universities
have, since 1920, decreased in
many instances by one-third, and
often by half to two-thirds. As the
president of York College of
Pennsylvania, Robert Iosue notes, it
is difficult to be precise about the
degree to which teaching responsibilities have declined because official
teaching loads are often different
from actual ones, which may be
reduced for such work as service
on a faculty committee. "In one
bizarre case," Iosue says, "a professor
received fifteen hours of reduction
from an official work load of twelve
hours. He was paid a three-hour
teaching overload yet did not step
inside the classroom."
The gradually shrinking academic year also affects time faculty
members spend in the classroom.
In the late 1960s, according to an
executive director of the American
Association of Collegiate Registrars
and Admission Officers, most colleges
had two seventeen-week semesters.
Now, two fifteen-week semesters
are more typical, with some schools
in session as few as twenty-eight
weeks-or half a year. Observing
that students in Missouri institutions
of higher education now spend a
semester and a half less in college
than students in the 1940s,
Governor John Ashcroft has asked
the schools in his state to lengthen
the academic year.
When faculty members teach
less, there is a financial consequence.
Because more people must be hired
to teach , the costs of education
escalate-and so does tuition .
Between 1980-81 and 1989-90,
average tuition charges rose an
inflation-adjusted 50 percent at
public universities, 66 percent at
private universities, and 57 percent
at other private four-year schools.
Other factors, including increased
administrative expenses, account
for some of these increases; but
with instructional budgets typically
comprising 40 percent of educational
and general expenditures, the
decline in the amount of time faculty
members spend in the classroom
clearly plays a role.
Between 1977 and 1987, while
the number of full-time arts and
sciences students decreased by 14
percent, the number of full-time
arts and science faculty members
increased by 16 percent, but it is
hard to find evidence that instruction
benefitted. Instead there are reports
of students unable to get into classes or to take the courses they want.
At the University of Texas at
Austin, after the English department reduced the teaching load by
one-third, students stood in long
lines in Purloin Hall, waiting, as the
student newspaper put it, "for an
English class, any English class, to
open." At Northwestern University,
page t e n
L E TT E RS fro m Sa n ta F e
a student editorial complained
about course offering in history,
noting that 20 percent of the
department was on leave to do
research and that none of the four
highly publicized, newly hired faculty members in the department
was teaching.
Even though the number of arts
and sciences students has declined
markedly and the number of faculty
members has increased significantly,
many institutions still find themselves short of teachers . They frequently fill in the gap with what
has been called an "academic
underclass"-part-time instructors.
Part-timers, who in 1988 comprised
37 percent of faculty nationwide,
are paid much less than full-time
faculty. A survey of English departments showed the typical part-time
faculty member earning $1,500 per
course although there were examples
of departments paying as little as
$400 . Colleges and universities
often cap the number of courses
that a part-timer can teach so they
will not have to pay fringe benefits.
Thus many part-timers become
"gypsy scholars," frantically commuting between teaching assignments at different institutions and
frequently looking for other ways
to supplement their salaries.
Michael Shenefelt, a part-timer at
New York University and Long
Island University, reports that by
supplementing his income as an
office temporary, he is able to earn
$20,000 a year . "A New York
University elevator door operator
begins at $20,000," Shenefelt
observes.
For Ph.D. granting institutions,
graduate students are another
source of cheap labor for the classroom, one used extensively at some
universities. A 1989 walkout of
Fa ll 1 993
�teaching assistants at the University
of California at Berkeley is reported
to have caused the cancellation of
nearly 75 percent of classes. Like
part-time instructors, graduate
students are often unsupervised;
and while some manage to be
excellent teachers without any
orientation or opportunity to discuss
their work with experienced faculty
members, few find themselves
rewarded for a job well done. In
fact what graduate students learn,
all too often, is that teaching is not
worth doing well. Says Frank
Manley of Emory University, "I left
[Johns Hopkins] with the idea that
my main job was to do research,
write books, and neglect undergraduates, because otherwise they
would take all my time ... . My
career has been in part an unlearning
of what I learned in graduate
school." Jaime O'Neill of Butte
College in Oroville, California, says
that it took him "five years of
adjustment to get over the snobbery
of graduate school."
Across the country are thousands
of faculty members whose professional lives run counter to the
prevailing culture of academia. At
a liberal arts college in the Midwest
where a new emphasis on publication
has led to a cutback in course
offerings, a literature professor
teaches as many courses as he
possibly can to try to make up the
shortfall. " I am permitted to teach
on a unlimited basis," he says, "and
I do. If I did not do this, many
students would not be able to take
a literature course." All too often,
however, a decision to emphasize
teaching exacts a price. At the
University of Maryland, associate
professor Maynard Mack, Jr., notes
that his own focus on teaching "is
not a fast track to that promotion. I
Fa/11993
r
should minimize my campus
responsibilities and produce a
second book."
Faculty Interests and Student
Needs
The increased emphasis on
research has resulted in a surge of
publications. The number of books
and articles published annually on
Shakespeare grew by 80 percent
between 1968 and 1988; the number
on Virginia Woolf by 800 percent.
With so much being written, individual researchers find themselves
having to take up narrower and
narrower topics in order to find a
niche.
It is not surprising that faculty
would want to teach what interests
them professionally, but the extent
to which specialization and new
theoretical approaches have affected
curricula may well startle anyone
who has not followed the collegiate
course of study over the last few
decades. A student can fulfill core
requirements at Harvard by studying
tuberculosis from 1842-1952, and
distributive requirements at
Dartmouth with "Sexuality and
Writing," which analyzes "the use
of sexuality and its ramifications as
symbols for the process of literary
creativity, with particular reference
to ... potency and creative fertility;
marriage or adultery and literary
sterility; deviation and/ or solitude
and autobiography; prostitution
and history; chastity and literary
self-referentiality."
At the University of Minnesota,
faculty in the humanities department
recently proposed doing away with
the ten courses the department
offers in Western civilization and
substituting three new courses:
"Discourse and Society," "Text and
Context," and "Knowledge,
LE TT ERS f r o m Santa Fe
The number of books
and articles published
annually on Shakespeare
grew by 80 percent
between 1968 and 1988;
the number on Virginia
Woolf by 800 percent.
With so much being
written, individual
researchers find themselves having to take
up narrower and
narrower topics in order
to find a niche.
pa g e e l eve n
�r
Persuasion, and Power." In these
introductory courses, students will
analyze "ways that certain bodies of
discourse come to cohere to exercise
persuasive power, and to be
regarded as authoritative, while
others are marginalized, ignored, or
to give up plans to abandon the
Western civilization courses
immediately. For the time being,
the older curriculum will continue
to be offered along with the newer
ones. There is concern, however,
about how long the Western civi-
denigrated." More advanced courses
are also being planned including
"Music as Discourse," for which the
syllabus includes music video, a
heavy metal concert, and songs
sung at a workers' strike.
Resistance from faculty in other
departments as well as from students
has led the humanities department
lization courses will last since the
overwhelming majority of faculty
members in the humanities
department has little interest in
teaching them.
A disgruntled student at
Minnesota observes, "This is all
because members of a department
want to teach what they want to
page twelve
LETTERS fro m Sa nt a Fe
teach"-which is not necessarily
what undergraduates need to learn.
A recent nationwide survey conducted
by the Gallup Organization for the
National Endowment for the
Humanities showed that many
students manage to approach college
graduation with alarming gaps in
knowledge. About 25 percent of the
nation's college seniors were unable
to date Columbus's journey within
the correct half-century. More than
30 percent could not identify the
Reformation. A majority could not
link major works by Plato, Dante,
Shakespeare, and Milton with their
authors.
"We are graduating a generation
that knows less and less," says
Vassar sociology professor James
Farganis. In the absence of
required, broad-based courses in
which undergraduates study significant events and books, Farganis
notes, "students are picking and
choosing, making their own curriculum in a haphazard fashion." Some
students do not study American or
English literature at all: It is possible
to graduate from 45 percent of the
nation's colleges and universities
without doing so. Similarly, some
undergraduates do not study history:
It is possible to graduate from 38
percent of the nation's colleges and
universities without doing so. At 41
percent of colleges and universities,
it is possible to graduate without
studying mathematics; at 33 percent,
without studying natural and
physical sciences .
Between 1968 and 1988, while
the number of bachelor's degrees
awarded in the United States grew
by 56 percent, the number of
bachelor's degrees awarded in the
humanities fell by 39 percent. There
have also been significant declines
in mathematics and physical science
r
\
Fa/1199 3
;~
·
�majors during this period: down 33
percent and 9 percent respectively.
For the humanities (and for mathematics) the situation has improved
in recent years, but the loss remains
significant. Twenty years ago, one
out of six graduates majored in the
humanities. Today the figure is one
out of sixteen. No doubt there are
many explanations, but surely one
is that many students come to college
poorly prepared in the humanitiesand in mathematics and physical
sciences as well-and once in college,
they do not take introductory
courses that fully introduce them to
the challenges and pleasures of
these disciplines . How could an
undergraduate who has never taken
a meaningful course in history or
physics choose to major in one of
these fields?
Those who do major in the
humanities often find that their
courses are not conceived as comprehensive treatments of important
subjects but as preparation for
graduate school. Even though most
majors in subjects like English do
not go on to work on Ph.D.'s, they
may well spend time as undergraduates becoming familiar with critical theory-perhaps more time than
they spend reading literature. "I
strongly suspect," " writes Professor
Robert Alter of the University of
California at Berkeley, "that many
young people now earning undergraduate degrees in English or
French at our most prestigious
institutions have read two or three
pages of Lacan, Derrida, Foucault,
and Kristeva for every page of
George Eliot or Stendhal."
In graduate school, students
prepare to publish and survive by
narrowing their focus as much as
possible-and by reading theory.
Elizabeth Fentress, who went to
F a ll 19 93
r
graduate school because she wanted
to concentrate in original works of
literature, has ~ritten about her
discovery that there was no way to
earn an advanced degree without
diving into a "tidal wave of theory."
Rather than be diverted from her
goal, she ended her graduate studies.
"I deemed it best to leave . .. ," she
writes, " and to learn what I wanted
to learn on my own."
Research interests affect teaching
and learning at all levels of higher
education, and they have an impact
on schools as well. Among today's
college students are tomorrow's
teachers; and if their curricula have
been haphazard, they may well
know less than they should about
the subjects they will teach. If they
have been taught in an indifferent
fashion, they will be less likely to
know how to teach well themselves.
"The undergraduate education that
intending teachers receive is full of
the same bad teaching that litters
American high schools," a group of
education school deans observes. "If
teachers are to know a subject so
that they can teach it well, they
need to be taught it well."
Excerpted from : Tvrannical Machines: A
Report on Educational Practices Gone
Wrong and Our Best Hopes for Setting
Them Right. 1990.
"I strongly suspect,"
writes Professor Robert
Alter of the University
of California at Berkeley,
"that many young
people now earning
undergraduate degrees
in English or French at
our most prestigious
institutions have read
two or three pages of
Lacan, Derrida,
Foucault, and Kristeva
for every page of
George Eliot or
Stendhal."
LETT E RS from Santa Fe
pa ge th i rt een
�THE CHARGE THAT
RESEARCH IS NARROW
AND OPAQUE IS
DECADES OUT OF DATE
Most academics still
have a special field,
by
Gerald Graff
and academic fields
This article by Gerald Graff is an
communicate in
attempted response to the charges
specialized vocabularies
piece. Sadly, it probably speaks the
that few lay people
professoriate. And do notice how ten-
made by Lynne Cheney in the previous
mind of most of the higher-education
can penetrate. But the
things that are said in
these vocabularies
increasingly strive for
large general import,
if only because
it is difficult otherwise
to get a job, a
promotion, or a grant.
pa g e f o urt ee n
r
dentious and ideological the "new"
research is compared to the old.
-J.A.
One of the least examined
assumptions in the debates that
have raged lately over the compatibility of research and teaching is
that academic research is narrowly
specialized. Those who criticize the
research enterprise and its reward
structure for drawing professors
away from teaching tend to accept
the late Allan Bloom's observation
in The Closing of the American
Mind that "most professors are specialists, concerned only with their
own fields." Even those who defend
research against such criticisms often
accept the idea that most research is
so highly specialized that it conflicts
with the needs of undergraduate
general education.
Neither the detractors nor the
defenders of research specialization,
however, seem to have been paying
much attention to what has actually
been happening to academic
LETTERS f r o m S ant a F e
research over the past generation.
Indeed, the whole research-versusteaching debate has been marked
by a curious reluctance to examine
what academics now actually do
under the name of research, in
contrast with what they used to do.
We seem so used to the image of
research as over specialized and
opaque that we don't feel any need
to actually look at the stuff.
The over specialized image was
certainly an accurate one in the
past. In its first half-century, the
modern university was dominated
by an ethos of Germanic positivistic
science that viewed any broad generalization as a symptom of dilettantism; it held that the narrower a
research topic was, the sounder the
scholarship. Ideal research subjects
were ones like "The Syntax of at and
ana in Gothic, Old Saxon, and Old
High German," which was the title
of a Ph.D. dissertation at the
University of Chicago in 1916.
But that was quite a while ago.
With the expansion of higher education after World War II, what
counted as "research" became more
flexible and capacious. The brute
accumulation of facts started to be
valued less than interpretations that
gave significance to the facts. Not
only interpretation, but creative
work in the arts began to count
toward tenure and promotion. Then
in the 1960s a barrage of attacks on
narrow specialization began to
reshape the way younger scholars
defined their work.
The result is that today, at least
in humanistic and cultural fields,
the more specialized kinds of
research are actually penalized
rather than rewarded. Anyone writing a dissertation in 1992 on "The
Syntax of at and ana" would be
unlikely to get a teaching job in
Fall J 9 93
�today's competitive market. Far
more likely to catch the eye of a hiring
committee would be broad topics
like "Fascism, Modernism, and the
Historical Avant Garde: Theories
and Praxis," or "Writing Like a
Man: Gender and Readers in Adam
Bede and The House of Mirth," to
mention two titles from the 1988
edition of Dissertation Abstracts.
We need only look at the way
academic books have come to be
promoted to see how much things
have changed. Consider the following
comments from recent universitypress advertisements.
"Twenty-eight of the nation's
leading critics and scholars offer a
comprehensive exploration of
American society and culture."
"[The authors] journey into the
minds of men and bring to light an
imaginative history of women and
of the relations between the sexes."
"At once fascinating and
provocative, [the book] looks at the
history of the automobile for evidence
on the nature of dreams and desires
embedded in modern culture."
Even if such comments often
contain more hype than sober truth,
the mere fact that academic books
have come to be promoted in this
way is proof of a significant shift in
priorities, from over specialization
to "provocative" and "comprehensive"
generality.
Indeed, if today's academy is
over-anything, it is overgeneralized
rather than over specialized, reserving its greatest rewards for scholars
who make large, sweeping theoretical
and interdisciplinary claims. As a
result, excessive pressure falls on
younger scholars to produce the Big
Synthesis before they may be ready
to do so, while worthy but modestly
defined topics go unappreciated.
The beneficial consequence, however,
Fa/11993
is that significance is valued over
pedantry.
Of course, a lot depends on
what we mean by words like
"specialized" and "narrow". As
Catherine R. Stimpson has
observed, "Specialization is a feature of every complex organization,
be it social or natural, a school system, garden, book, or mammalian
body." Most academics still have a
special field, and academic fields
communicate in specialized vocabularies that few lay people can penetrate. But the things that are said in
these vocabularies increasingly
strive for large general import, if
only because it is difficult otherwise
to get a job, a promotion, or a grant.
As Ms. Stimpson also has pointed
out, "specialization" has lately
become an ideological buzz word,
part of the current attack on new
forms of scholarship that allegedly
pander to "special interest groups."
Thus some would object that a topic
like "Writing Like a Man: Gender
and Readers ... " is no less specialized than "The Syntax of at and ana
in Gothic ... ," and it is true that
both dissertations might seem
equally obscure to many students
and lay people.
Nevertheless, there is clearly a
big difference, as the critics themselves betray when they object to
topics like "Writing Like a Man" for
being too political. The objection
implies that, far from being narrowly specialized, such topics are all
too aggressively general in ways
the critics disapprove.
Consider "Tyrannical Machines,"
a 1990 report from the National
Endowment for the Humanities by
its chairman, Lynne V. Cheney.
Mrs. Cheney restates the old chestnut
that humanities research is over
specialized and that general educaLETTERS from Santa Fe
tion suffers as a result, with courses
in "increasingly narrow topics" taking the place of broadly general
ones. For example, Mrs . Cheney
cites one university that has
replaced traditional courses in
Western civilization with new
courses in "Discourse and Society,"
"Text and Context," and "Knowledge
and Power."
But what is "narrow" about
courses in "discourse and society,"
"text and context," and "knowledge
and power"? Since these courses
probably encompass cultures outside the West, they are in one sense
less narrow than the ones they have
replaced. Obviously, it is something
else about the new courses that
bothers Mrs. Cheney, not a difference
in degree of specialization but a
difference in ideology. The question
of ideology needs to be debated,
but tying it to specialization only
confuses the issue.
If I am right that the assumptions about research specialization
that have dominated recent debates
are a generalization out of date,
then the prospects for reconciling
research and teaching (and research
and general education) may be better
than we have been led to think. If
much of today's research, as I have
argued, does tackle questions and
problems with wide significance,
why can't that research be used
effectively in the classroom?
At my first job interview in
1962, I was asked the following
question: If assigned to teach a
freshman course, how would I go
about adapting the topic of my doctoral dissertation to the needs of my
students? This kind of question,
which is still commonly asked,
clearly assumes that acaclemic
research is adaptable to the "general"
interests of undergraduates.
page fifteen
�The question assumes not only
that research has pedagogical
relevance, but that professors
should teach their research to
undergraduates. In the past, of
course, such a view often might
have been just a cynical rationalization for inflicting the most boring
and vacuous professorial specialties
o n students. Today, however, I
think it signals a new desire that
research possess a potential interest
for non-specialists, and a new
appreciation of teachers who can
translate whatever may necessarily
b e esoteric and technical in their
r esearch into term s t h a t can b e
understood by students.
It seems that in practice we
have been evolving a better, more
realistic solution to the researchversu s-teaching problem tha n the
nostrums u su ally p rop osed . This
solution is neither to subordinate
research to general education (as if
they were opposed), nor to separate
research from undergraduate teaching by quarantining it in non-teaching research faculties. It is rather to
ma ke our research more available
to undergraduates, even thinking of
undergraduates as co-researchers.
Does this mean, then, that there
is no substance wha tsoever in the
widespread perception that academic
research interferes with teaching or
inordinately narrows its scope? No,
but I think that m any critics have
not diagnosed the real p roblem.
Today the problem often is not that
aca d emic resea rch lack s gen era l
import, but that the academy does a
poor job of clarifying this import for
students a nd la y people . If most
acade mic publica tion st ill seem s
o pa q u e t o gen era l r ea d e r s, the
ch ances are this is no t because its
con cerns a re i r relevant t o s u ch
readers but because that relevance
pase
s ix f ee 11
is not spelled out for them. Much of
what is currently mistaken by the
public for specializa tion is really
just bad writing, or at least writing
that fails to try to make its point
accessible to outsiders.
Instead of persisting, then, in
the traditional, futile attempt to
shift the emphasis from research to
teaching and general educa tion,
universities should try to do a better
job of clarifying the educational significance of the research that their
faculty members conduct. The public
needs to be convinced that, despite
L E T T E R S f rom Sa nt a Fe
what they have been hearing from
critics, time devoted to research is
not necessarily time stolen from
teaching.
Gerald Graff is professor of English
and education at the University of
Chicago .
This piece appeared in the "Point
of View" column of The Chronicle of
Higher Education. October 21, 1992.
Fa ll 1 993
�SENSE AND NONSENSE
IN THE ACADEMY
who tried to stop the theft will still be
disciplined or if Penn's security forces
still have to go to diversity-sensitivity
training.
A note from John Agresto This is a new column that will, in
this and future issues, reprint the foibles,
These articles appeared in The
Wall Street Journal's. Review and Outlook
Section, July 26, 1993.
failings, shortcomings and downright
lunacy in the ever-crazy world of higher
Penn The Report
education. Please, reader, if you have
stories to tell, tell us. For my part, I think
I'll look into college catalogues for the
next issue.
Here, just so we all have it on
record, is what happened at the
University of Pennsylvania, not in the
"Water Buffalo" episode, but in the
aftermath of the theft of The Dailv
Pennsv/vanian. The only decent part of
this whole shabby story is that the interim provost and the interim president at
Penn both seem reasonably mortified
not only by the publicity surrounding the
episode, but by the episode itself. I
wrote the provost asking for some
explanation of the events recounted
below and, though he didn't address
these issues directly, he did send a
statement that both he and the interim
president signed. In part it reads:
"This action {the theft of the
papers] violated long held principles of freedom of the press and
freedom of speech on the
University of Pennsylvania campus. We will respond vigorously
to any future violations of those
principles.... The confiscation of
any publication on a campus is
wrong and will not be tolerated.
Individuals who engage in such
actions will be subject to the full
range of judicial sanctions."
Nonetheless, the charges against
those who confiscated the papers have
been dismissed. And there is no word if
the courageous museum administrator
Fall 1 993
r
Not long ago, during the memorable Water Buffalo trials at the
University of Pennsylvania, we also
reported on the concurrent suspension of Donald Fitzgerald, director
of security for Penn's University
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology. Mr. Fitzgerald, it
appeared, had run afoul of the
Penn administration-which has
some markedly peculiar notions
about the duties of security officersbecause he tried to apprehend two
women students running out of the
museum carrying three large plastic
bags.
It turned out that the women
were not, as Mr. Fitzgerald worried, running off with museum
pieces. Part of a group of black
activist students aggrieved by the
views aired in the student paper,
the women had confiscated all the
copies of The Daily Pennsylvanian at
the museum, as their friends were
doing elsewhere around campus.
On April 15, virtually the entire
press run of the paper was appropriated and carted off.
The administration, headed at
the time by President Sheldon
Hackney (who recently won confirmation as head of the National
Endowment of the Humanities),
determined at once that Mr .
Fitzgerald should be suspended
from his security duties. He would
remain on suspension many weeks,
while a "blue ribbon panel"
LETTERS fro m Santa Fe
appointed by the Penn administration deliberated over the events of
April 15.
Those deliberations have at last
come to an end. With that end has
also come a report on the panel's
findings-one so remarkable for the
depths of its fastidiously argued
nonsense that we thought it only
fitting to reprint portions nearby.
The document is a pure specimen
of political cravenness. But such
cravenness is hardly limited to the
University of Pennsylvania. The
unhappy fact of university life
today is that there are many Penns
and many administrators who
thought they were purchasing
peace by accommodating political
zealots.
The degree of that effort to
accommodate is reflected in the
central pronouncement of the Penn
panel's report-namely the judgment
that the theft of the newspapers was a
"form of protest" and therefore not
criminal behavior. Apparently,
then, any assault-including, presumably, the removal and destruction of library books some group
considers offensive-might be held
immune from prosecution if it's a
"protest."
The report goes on to say that
rather than taking action, the police
should have contacted entities at
Penn called "Open Expression
Monitors" to study the students
actions. Think we're making that
up? Read the following excerpt.
The panel concludes that the
Museum security director's pursuit
of the women with the shopping
bags was "inappropriate" once
those students had left the property
of the Museum and was not in
"accordance with ... his job functions. " Presumably, then, any thief
who wishes to appropriate some
page seven t een
�invaluable museum piece can now
consider himself immune from pursuit, if he can get past the door and
grounds.
The report recommends that for
his inappropriate behavior, security
director Fitzgerald's superiors
should review his role for possible
disciplinary action. Mr. Fitzgeraldw ho has been returned to active
duty-received a letter of reprimand
and will, along with other security
personnel, have to attend sensitivity
training classes.
There have been other instances
in which activists have undertaken
to silence opposition views by
removing the offending publications. At Penn State (not the same
as the U. of Pennsylvania) two former students-journalism majors,
no less-made off with four thousand
copies of an alternative, conservative
s tudent publication called Th e
Lionhearted. Here the legal outcome
was different. To their credit, the
police charged the perpetrators
with theft, receipt of stolen property,
and criminal conspiracy.
Still, it's a measure of how far
the assault on free expression has
gone on campuses that the Penn
State undergraduate paper, The
Daily Collegian, actually editorialized
in favor of the notion that the
re mova l and burning of Th e
Lionhearted was a legitimate act of
free expression. Presumably these
student "journalists" will soon be
making their way into the
American press corps.
George Orwell had the word
for this sort of reasoning-and for
the entire tenor of the Penn panel's
report. That word is "doublethink"-a
description unfortunately as relevant
today as it was in the 1930s.
During his confirmation hearings, Mr. Hackney assured the
Senators that his administration
took the most serious possible view
of the theft of The Daily
Pennsylvanian papers, and that the
students who took them would be
disciplined. Just how seriously the
university in fact took this attack
on the right of free expression will
be clear to anyone who wants to
take a look at the excerpts of this
stunning Orwellian document from
the minds running America's campuses.
1. Biomedical Library/Johnson
Pavilion (6:52 a.m.): Incident involving two students and two officers
responding to a call from a School
of Medicine security guard.
The panel found that one officer
behaved in a discourteous manner
toward the students by ordering
them to leave before determining
who they were or giving them an
opportunity to explain their presence.
pag e eig h t ee n
LETTERS f r o m San ta Fe
Doublethink at the University of
Pennsylvania
Following are excerpts from the
report of a panel of University of
Pennsylvania administrators appointed
to study the theft of one entire press
run of the student newspaper. The
The panel found that his actions
violated Section 8.4.02 of the "UPPD
(University of Pennsylvania Police
Department)
Policies
and
Procedures Manual" and should be
reviewed by his supervisor for
possible disciplinary action.
The panel found that the
Medical School security guard
behaved appropriately by contacting
the UPPD.
The panel recommended that
all security personnel receive training
on working and interacting with
people from diverse backgrounds.
This training should include information about the diversity of the Penn
community and the expectation
that all members of the community
should be treated with civility and
respect regardless of race, color,
sex, sexual orientation, religion,
national or ethic [sic] origin, age,
disability, or status as a disabled or
Vietnam era veteran.
papers were seized all over campus by
black activist students opposed to The
Oailv Pennsvlvanian's editorial content. The report, which criticizes security
guards, absolves the students of any
wrong-doing- except failure to show
1.0. cards. The panel analyzed what
supposedly transpired at each of the campus sites involved.
Individual Incidents on April 15,
1993.
2. Blackley Hall/Johnson pavilion
(7:48 a.m.): Incident involving two
students, one Medical School security officer, one Medical School
Supervisor of Security, one security
office . .. and four police officers
responding to a call to UPPD that
"A black male at Blackley Hall tried
to take all the DP's [Da ily
Pennsylvanians]."
The panel found that one officer
behaved in an unprofessional manner
in violation of Section 8.4.02 of the
UPPD Policies and Procedures
Manual" by cursing at the student
and u sed excessive force .. .by
striking the student with his baton.
The panel also found that the officer
failed to conduct a proper and thorough inves tiga tion because h e
neglected to interview the security
personnel w ho were in pursuit."
Fa /1 199 3
�3. David Rittenhouse Laboratories
(8:20 a.m.): Incident involving two
students, four officers, and the
UPPD dispatcher. When two officers stopped the students carrying
a large trash bag outside of DRL,
they were informed by the students
that this was a protest action.
The panel found that the
responding officer ... violated
Section 5.22.0 of the "UPPD Policies
and Procedures Manual" by not
requesting that a supervisor be
dispatched to the scene in response
to a demonstration.
The panel found that the dispatcher violated UPPD Divisional
Directive 92.08 by making a command decision without consulting a
supervisor.
4. University Museum/Sports
Medicine (8:16 a.m.): Incident
involving two students, a Museum
security guard, a Museum administrator and two officers. The
Museum administrator pursued the
students, who took the DP's from
Kress Gallery, and caught up with
them in Weightman Hall, where he
made a "citizen's arrest" and
detained the students.
The panel found that the
Museum administrator's actions in
pursuit of the students were inappropriate after they left the property
of the University Museum and not
in accordance with the authority
and responsibility of his job
functions. His actions should be
reviewed by his supervisor for
possible disciplinary action.
The panel found that the students
should have shown their Penn
cards.
In summary, the panel
concluded that once the incident
occurred at DRL [David Rittenhouse
Laboratories], the UPPD should
have recognized that the removal of
the DP's from at least three different
locations was a form of student
protest and not an indicator of
criminal behavior. According to the
University's "Emergency Procedures
Protocols" ... the UPPD should
have contacted the Office of the
Vice Provost for University Life as
soon as it recognized that the students
were involved in a form of protest.
Once the VPUL was notified of the
protest, Open Expression Monitors
would have been dispatched to
observe and monitor the students'
actions, in compliance with the
existing
Open
Expression
Guidelines. Since this act was a
form of protest and not a criminal
offense, it would have been more
appropriate for Open Expression
Monitors, not police officers, to
mediate and attempt to resolve any
further conflicts that resulted from
the removal of the DP's. The Open
Expression Monitors could have
informed the students about the
Open Expression Guidelines, notified
them if their actions violated the
Guidelines, and identified students
who violated the Guidelines.
,.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------,
'
GIFTS AND THE NEW TAX LAW
As the end of the year approaches, the following, taken from
an item in the New York Times, might be of interest. As with any
tax-related matter, check with your tax adviser if there are any
questions about making a gift.
The tax bill introduces, restores and expands several kinds of
tax breaks, and among the greatest of these is charity.
Philanthropic gifts have been tax deductible all along. But it is
even more advantageous for the wealthy to give now that the
after-tax cost of gifts is just 60 cents on the dollar for those in the
highest marginal tax bracket.
There has been another important change in the law, however,
that makes it easier than in recent years to make gifts of property
that has increased in value over the years. These gifts can be
deducted at present market value even though the taxpayer never
paid that much for them, and the gifts do not incur any capital
gains tax.
Under the new law, this kind of transaction can no longer trigger
the punishing alternative minimum tax. And the provisions have
been expanded to include not only property like paintings, but
so-called intangibles, such as stocks or even royalty rights ....
The Internal Revenue Service has also been ordered to develop
a method for taxpayers to agree in advance of making a charitable
donation with the LR. S. on the value of a painting or other property,
so there will be no disputes.
F a ll 1993
r
To our readers,
If you know someone who might be interested in
receiving information regarding the programs offered
at St. John's College, please fill out this form and
return it to St. John's College, 1160 Camino Cruz
Blanca, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501-4599.
Name of interested person (s)
Address
Possible area(s) of interest -
0 Undergraduate
0 Graduate
D Eastern Classics 0 Summer Classics
'
'
'
·- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - -:~ ~-~ ~-~-~ ~:~ ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - -j
LETTERS from Santa Fe
page ninteen
�PROFILE
St. John's College:
An independent, non-sectarian, four-year liberal arts college.
Founded:
Established in 1696 in Annapolis, Maryland, as King William's School and chartered in 1784 as St. John's College.
Great Books Program adopted 1937. Second campus in Santa Fe opened in 1964.
Curriculum:
An integrated, four-year, all-required liberal arts and science program based on reading and discussing, in loosely
chronological order, the great books of Western civilization. The program also includes four years of foreign language,
four years of mathematics, three years of laboratory science, and one year of music.
Approach:
Tutorials, laboratories, and seminars requiring intense participation replace more traditional lectures. Classes are
very small.
Student/Faculty ratio is 8:1.
Degrees Granted:
Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts. Master of Arts in Liberal Studies.
Student Body:
Enrollment is limited to about 400 students on each campus. Current freshman class is made up of 55% men and 45%
women, from 37 states and several foreign countries. Sixty-five percent receive financial aid. Students may transfer
between the Santa Fe and Annapolis campuses.
Alumni Careers:
Education - 21 %, Business - 20%, Law - 10%, Visual and Performing Arts - 9%, Medicine - 7%, Science and
Engineering - 7%, Computer Science - 6%, Writing and Publishing - 5%.
Graduate Institute:
The Graduate Institute in Liberal Education is an interdisciplinary master's d egree program based on the same
principles as the undergraduate program. Offered on both campuses year-round. Readers of the newsletter may be
especially interested in applying for our summer session. For more information please contact the Graduate Institute
in Santa Fe 505/984-6082 or in Annapolis 410/626-2541.
LETTERS from Santa Fe
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Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501-4599
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LETTERSJrom Santa Fe
St. John's College-Santa Fe. New Mexico
Volume Ill. Issue 1
EDUCATION & DEMOCRACY
INSIDE
EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY
IN AMERICA
page 2
THE LEARNING OF LIBERTY
page 4
EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY
page s
EDUCATION, CULTURAL
RELATIVISM, AND THE
AMERICAN FOUNDING
page 7
MULTICULTURAL AND CIVIC
EDUCATION
page 10
MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION:
WHY WE NEED IT AND WHY
WE WORRY ABOUT IT
page 12
THE ENNOBLING OF
DEMOCRACY
page 14
Everyone by now has heard about the Florida school board that, having
been directed by the state to give its students a "multicultural" curriculum,
tacked on the requirement that teachers should also be certain to say that
America is the best country, now or ever. 1his caused a veritable fire-storm in
the media and in academic circles. Such small-mindedness. Such bigotry.
Such judgmentalism.
Now, this outrage struck me as somewhat odd since the President at a
recent D-Day ceremony said much the same fine thing about America. Odd,
because had the school board said students should learn the equal worth
and dignity of all cultures, or even if they had proclaimed, on the other
extreme, the culpability of America for racism, sexism, patriarchy or whatever, we probably would have waited in vain for even a peep from the press or
the professors.
So this newsletter is about civic education. Schools, especially public
schools, were meant to serve a public function - not only to raise up educated
future voters but also to help this country persevere and prosper. Among
their tasks was teaching the principles, the benefits, and the responsibilities of
republican citizenship. For, perhaps more than any other way of life,
democracies always need help. Lacking the force of religion or the armies of
kings or the respect that comes from ancient traditions on its side, democracy
needs the support of education. So, why does it seem that our schools are
happy to teach moral and cultural relativism but not civic virtue? Why is it
that we seem to teach cynicism about America and its place in the world
rather than an appreciation of its principles and achievements?
Of course, none of this denies the shortcomings, lapses and wrongs
found in our history. (You were all waiting for me to say this-it's become
obligatory, and predictable.) All nations have feet of clay. But not all teachers
have to be foot-fetishists. And wouldn't it be interesting if teachers took our
many faults and helped students figure out which ones are the result of our
particular way of life and which are the result of our fallen, common human
nature? Or, as a grade school principal I know once announced: "We have
to teach a multicultural curriculum. 1his is a good thing. 1his means that our
students will see that everywhere, in the whole world, all people are the same:
stupid, crooked and bad."
One last word on the Florida school board. Perhaps it did the right thing
but in a flat-footed way. Perhaps we can be more sophisticated. Should students
in their studies see the superiority of democracy over autocracy? Should
they see the virtues of liberty and the evils of despotism? Should they
compare the benefits of prosperity to the degradation of poverty? Should
they have some knowledge of the truth of equality and the error of human
subjugation? Should they see that universal education is better than ignorance
and superstition? If so, then have them look for that country, now or ever, that
most possesses these fine attributes. Since these are surely among the very
be't thing,, let oo, then, call thot <0untry "b.,,t."
Q.E.:9£'
+./
�EDUCATION AND
DEMOCRACY IN
AMERICA
It cannot be doubted
by
Alexis de Tocqueville
that in the United States
the instruction of the
people powerfully
contributes to support
the democratic republic.
That will always be so
where the instruction
which teaches the mind
is not separated from the
education which is
responsible for mores.
page t wo
Anyone trying to find out how
enlightened the Anglo-Americans
are is liable to see the same phenomenon from two different angles.
If his attention is concentrated on
the learned, he will be astonished
how few they are; but if he counts
the uneducated, he will think the
Americans the most enlightened
people in the world.
The whole population falls
between these two extremes, as I
have noted elsewhere.
In New England every citizen is
instructed in the elements of human
knowledge; he is also taught the
doctrine and the evidences of his
religion; he must know the history
of his country and the main features
of its Constitution. In Connecticut
and Massachusetts you will very
seldom find a man whose knowledge
of all these things is only superficial,
and anybody completely unaware of
them is quite an oddity.
But what I have just said about
New England should not be taken
to apply to the whole of the rest of
the Union indiscriminately. The
farther one goes to the west or the
south, the less public education is
found. In the states bordering the
Gulf of Mexico one may find a
certain number of individuals uninstructed in the rudiments of human
knowledge, but one would search
L ET TER S from Santa Fe
in vain through the United States
for a single district sunk in complete
ignorance. There is a simple reason
for this: the peoples of Europe started
from darkness and barbarism to
advance toward civilization and
enlightenment. Their progress has
been unequal : some have run
ahead, while others have done no
more than walk; there are some
who have halted and are still sleeping
by the roadside.
Nothing like that happened in
the United States.
The Anglo-Americans were
completely civilized when they
arrived in the land which their
descendants occupy; they had no
need to learn, it being enough that
they should not forget. It is the children of these same Americans who
yearly move forward into the
wilderness, bringing, as well as
their homes, the knowledge they
have already acquired and a respect
for learning. Education has made
them realize the usefulness of
enlightenment and put them in a
position to pass this enlightenment
on to their children. So in the
United States, society had no infancy,
being born adult.
The Americans never use the
word "peasant"; the word is
unused because the idea is
unknown; the ignorance of primitive
times, rural simplicity, and rustic
villages have not been preserved
with them, and they have no idea
of the virtues or the vices or the
rude habits and the naive graces of
a newborn civilization.
At the extreme borders of the
confederated states, where organized
society and the wilderness meet,
there is a population of bold adventurers who to escape the poverty
threatening them in their fathers'
homes, have dared to plunge into
V o lume III, I ss u e I
�the solitudes of America seeking a
new homeland there. As soon as
the pioneer reaches his place of
refuge, he hastily fells a few trees
and builds a log cabin in the forest.
Nothing could look more wretched
than these isolated dwellings. The
traveler approaching one toward
evening sees the hearth fire flicker
through the chinks in the walls, and
at night, when the wind rises, he
hears the roof of boughs shake to
and fro in the midst of the great forest
trees. Who would not suppose that
this poor hut sheltered some rude
and ignorant folk? But one should
not assume any connection
between the pioneer and the place
that shelters him. All his surroundings are primitive and wild, but he
is the product of eighteen centuries
of labor and experience. He wears
the clothes and talks the language
of a town; he is aware of the past,
curious about the future, and ready
to argue about the present; he is a
very civilized man prepared for a
time to face life in the forest, plunging
into the wildernesses of the New
World with his Bible, ax, and newspapers.
It is hard to imagine quite how
incredibly quickly ideas circulate in
these empty spaces. I do not believe
that there is so much intellectual
activity in the most enlightened and
populous districts of France.
It cannot be doubted that in the
United States the instruction of the
people powerfully contributes to
support the democratic republic.
That will always be so, I think,
where the instruction which teaches
the mind is not separated from the
education which is responsible for
mores.
But I would not exaggerate this
advantage and am very far from
thinking, as many people in Europe
Volume III, Is s ue 1
do think, that to teach men to read
and write is enough to make them
good citizens immediately.
True enlightenment is in the
main born of experience, and if the
Americans had not gradually
grown accustomed to rule themselves, their literary attainments
would not now help them much
toward success.
I have lived much among the
people in the United States and cannot say how much I admire their
experience and their good sense.
Do not lead an American on to
talk about Europe; he will usually
show great presumption and a
rather foolish pride. He will stick to
those general and undefined ideas
which, in all countries, are such a
comfort to the ignorant. But ask
him about his own country and the
mist clouding his mind will disperse
at once; his thought and his language
will become plain, clear, and precise.
He will tell you what his rights are
and what means he can use to exercise them; he knows the customs
that obtain in the political world.
You will find that he knows about
administrative regulations and is
familiar with the mechanism of the
LETTERS from Sa nta Fe
law. The citizen of the United States
has not obtained his practical
knowledge and his positive notions
from books; his literary education
has prepared him to receive them
but has not furnished them.
It is by taking a share in legislation that the American learns to
know the law; it is by governing
that he becomes educated about the
formalities of government. The
great work of society is daily performed before his eyes, and so to
say, under his hands.
In the United States, education
as a whole is directed toward political
life; in Europe its main object is
preparation for private life, as the
citizens' participation in public
affairs is too rare an event to be
provided for in advance.
Looking at the two societies,
one finds quite overt signs of these
differences. In Europe we often
carry the ideas and habits of private
life over into public life, and passing
suddenly from the family circle to
the government of the state, we
may frequently be heard discussing
the great interests of society in the
same way that we talk with our
friends.
But the Americans almost
always carry the habits of public
life over into their private lives.
With them one finds the idea of a
jury in children's games, and parliamentary formalities even in the
organization of a banquet.
Excerpted from: Democracy in
America, Vol. I, 1835.
page thr e e
�THE LEARNING OF
LIBERTY
by
Lorraine Smith Pangle and
Thomas L. Pangle
... we are more and
more haunted by the
suspicion that our
educational theories
and institutions have
lost sight of the need
to perpetuate a lasting
core of moral and
civic knowledge that is
essential to true
education for everyone.
page four
Currently the United States
finds itself in a time of grave, ongoing
public debate over education. It is
not an exaggeration to say that a
sense of crisis pervades the contemporary discussion. It seems to us
that at the root of the present
malaise are not simply concerns
over the shortage of funds, or the
insufficient number of teachers, or
the inadequacies of teacher education,
or, more generally, the incompleteness of our knowledge of how to
implement the goals of education.
The real seriousness of our situation
is revealed when we recognize how
uncertain Americans have become
as to what the proper goals of education are.
We offer a wide array of subjects
in our schools, and especially in our
high schools, as we try to equip the
next generation with skills that it
may need for careers, many of
which---given the uncanny character
of technological development-do
not yet exist; but we are more and
more haunted by the suspicion that
our educational theories and institutions have lost sight of the need
to perpetuate a lasting core of
moral and civic knowledge that is
essential to true education for
everyone. At the same time, in our
attempts to articulate this educational
ideal we sense is being forgotten,
we become aware that we have
great difficulty defining the content
of the ideal, and thus the content of
the curriculum that deserves to be
perpetuated. We try to encourage
LETTERS from Santa Fe
tolerance and openness to all cultures, yet we wonder with growing
uneasiness whether there is not a
set of distinctly American, republican
principles that children should be
taught to believe in. Meanwhile, we
find ourselves less and less confident
that such principles can in any way
be considered as simply and permanently true. We look to the schools
to help solve our thorniest social
problems, to root out racism and
sexism, to reduce teenage pregnancy
and venereal disease, to combat the
spread of drug abuse, to redress the
damages of broken homes. Yet
amidst this profusion of programs
aimed at specific moral ills, we too
often stop short of addressing in a
serious and sustained way the more
fundamental questions that every
conscientious parent and teacher
feels must be at the very heart of
moral education: What must one do
to live well? What rights must
children be taught to claim and
honor, and what further principles,
virtues, or habits do they most need
if they are to become productive
citizens and good parents? How
can we help the young to go
beyond fleeting amusements to find
lasting and meaningful happiness
in life?
Excerpted from: The Learning of
Liberty. University Press of Kansas,
1993. Reprinted with permission.
Volume III, Issue 1
�As the years pass, we become
an increasingly diverse people,
drawn from many racial, national,
linguistic, and religious origins.
Our cultural heritage as Americans
is as diverse as we are, with multiple
sources of vitality and pride. But
our political heritage is one-the
vision of a common life in liberty,
justice, and equality as expressed in
the Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution two centuries
ago.
To protect that vision, Thomas
Jefferson prescribed a general education not just for the few but for all
citizens, "to enable every man to
judge for himself what will secure
or endanger his freedom." A generation later, Alexis de Tocqueville
reminded us that our first duty was
to "educate democracy." He
believed that all politics were but
the playing out of the "notions and
sentiments" dominant in people.
These, he said, are the "real causes
of all the rest." Ideas-good and
bad-have their consequences in
every sphere of a nation's life.
We cite de Tocqueville's appeal
with a sense of urgency, for we fear
that many young Americans are
growing up without the education
needed to develop a solid commitment to those "notions and sentiments" essential to a democratic
form of government. Although all
the institutions that shape our private
and public lives-family, church,
school, government, media-share
the responsibility for encouraging
democratic values in our children,
our focus here is on the nation's
schools and their teaching of the
social studies and humanities.
In singling out the schools, we
do not suggest that there was ever a
golden age of education for citizenship, somehow lost in recent years.
It is reported that in 1943-that
patriotic era-fewer than half of
surveyed college freshmen could
name four points in the Bill of
Rights. Our purpose here is not to
argue over the past, but only to ask
that everyone with a role in schooling
now join to work for decisive
improvement.
Our call for schools to impart to
their students the learning necessary
for an informed, reasoned allegiance
to the ideals of a free society rests
on three convictions:
First, that democracy is the
worthiest form of human governance
ever conceived.
Second, that we cannot take its
survival or its spread---or its perfection in practice-for granted.
Indeed, we believe that the great
central drama of modern history
has been and continues to be the
struggle to establish, preserve, and
extend democracy-at home and
abroad. We know that very much
still needs doing to achieve justice
and civility in our own society.
Abroad, we note that, according to
the Freedom House survey of political rights and civil liberties, only
one-third of the world's people live
under conditions that can be
described as free.
Third, we are convinced that
democracy's survival depends
upon our transmitting to each new
generation the political vision of
liberty and equality that unites us
Volume III, Issue 1
LETTERS from Santa Fe
I
EDUCATION FOR
DEMOCRACY
The American Federation of
Teachers
A Statement of Principles
... we fear that many
young Americans are
growing up without the
education needed to
develop a solid
commitment to those
"notions and sentiments"
essential to a democratic
form of government.
page five
�as Americans-and a deep loyalty
to the political institutions our
founders put together to fulfill that
vision. As Jack Beatty reminded us
in a New Republic article one Fourth
of July, ours is a patriotism "not of
blood and soil but of values, and
those values are liberal and
humane."
Such values are neither
revealed truths nor natural habits.
There is no evidence that we are
born with them. Devotion to
human dignity and freedom, to
equal rights, to social and economic
justice, to the rule of law, to civility
and truth, to tolerance of diversity,
to mutual assistance, to personal
and civic responsibility, to selfrestraint and self-respect-all these
must be taught and learned and
practiced. They cannot be taken for
granted or regarded as merely one
set of options against which any
other may be accepted as equally
worthy.
Tocqueville meant by the "notions
and sentiments" of a people.
Education for democracy, then,
must extend to education in moral
issues, which our eighteenth century
founders took very seriously
indeed. This is hardly surprising.
The basic ideas of liberty, equality,
and justice, of civil, political, and
economic rights and obligations are
all assertions of right and wrong, of
moral values. Such principles impel
the citizen to make moral choices,
repeatedly to decide between right
and wrong or, just as often,
between one right and another. The
authors of the American testament
had no trouble distinguishing
moral education from religious
instruction, and neither should we.
The democratic state can take no
part in deciding which, if any,
church forms its citizens' consciences. But it is absurd to argue
that the state, or its schools, cannot
be concerned with citizens' ability
to tell right from wrong, and to prefer
one over the other in all matters
that bear upon the common public
life. This would be utterly to misunderstand the democratic vision, and
the moral seriousness of the choices
it demands of us.
We regard the study of history
as the chief subject in education for
democracy, much as Jefferson and
other founders of the United States
did two centuries ago. In revamping
the social studies curriculum, we
should start with the obvious:
History is not the enemy of the
social sciences, but is instead their
indispensable source of nourishment, order, and perspective. We
aim at nothing less than helping the
student to comprehend what is
important, not merely to memorize
fact and formula.
Of all the subjects in the curriculum, history alone affords the
perspective that students need to
compare themselves realistically
with others-in the past and elsewhere on earth-and to think critically, to look behind assertions and
appearances, to ask for the "whole
story," to judge meaning and value
for themselves. History is also the
integrative subject, upon which the
coherence and usefulness of other
subjects depend, especially the
social sciences but also much of
literature and the arts.
We also ask for wider reading
and study in the humanities. For
we are concerned, again, with values,
with every citizen's capacity for
judging the moral worth of things.
In this, courses in "values
clarification" do not get us very far.
They either feign neutrality or
descend to preachiness. Values and
moral integrity are better discovered
by students in their reading of
history, of literature, of philosophy,
and of biography. Values are not
"taught," they are encountered, in
school and life.
The humanities in our schools
must not be limited, as they so often
are now, to a few brief samples of
Good Things, but should embrace
as much as possible of the whole
range of the best that has been
thought and said and created, from
the ancient to the most recent.
Otherwise, students have little
chance to confront the many varied
attempts to answer the great questions of life-or even to be aware
that such questions exist. The quest
for worth and meaning is indispensable to the democratic citizen.
The essence of democracy, its reason
for being, is constant choice. We
choose what the good life is, and
how our society-including its
schools-may order its priorities so
that the good life is possible,
according to what we ourselves
value most. That is what de
"Education for Democracy" is a joint
project of the American Federation
of Teachers, the Educational
Excellence Network and Freedom
House. This "Statement of Principles"
was published in 1987 by the
American Federation of Teachers.
Excerpted and reprinted with permission.
page six
LETTERS from Santa Fe
Volume III, Issu e 1
History and the Humanities as
the Core of Democratic Education
�EDUCATION, CULTURAL
RELATIVISM , AND THE
AMERICAN FOUNDING
by
Charles R. Kesler
My freshman seminar in
American politics always begins
with a discussion of the Declaration
of Independence. Invariably, there
are loads of bright freshmen who
know all about it and who can discourse
plausibly
on
the
Declaration's roots in the
Enlightenment, John Locke's influence on its authors, the economic
interests that actuated its signers,
and so forth. What these students
have trouble with is the most basic
question: Is it true? Are men created equal and endowed with certain
unalienable rights? The question
never fails to floor them. After all, it
seems impossibly naive. Who
would have thunk it, as Pogo might
say, that a college professor would
ask such a question? "In their [the
founders'] opinion, it was true," a
freshman will volunteer, finally.
When students understand that this
revelation is not the end but the
beginning of the discussion, their
education has begun.
It takes a while before students
recognize that the really interesting
question is precisely whether the
proposition at the heart of the
Declaration is true or not. It is only
the concern with such ultimate
questions that justifies paying serious attention to everything else
there is to know about the document. Who can blame students for
not remembering the dates of the
American Revolution, for example
if they have been taught not that
Volum e III, I s sue 1
the Declaration is "that immortal
emblem of humanity" (Lincoln's
words), as previous generations
learned, but that it is (ho-hum) an
eruption of Enlightenment optimism, a footnote to Locke's Second
Treatise, or a hostile takeover bid by
some greedy colonials?
Now I wish to make clear that
this is not an indictment of contemporary students. The fault, I am
tempted to say, is not in them, nor
in their stars, but more likely in the
star faculty of their universities.
Students today labor under the
weight of the accumulated dogmas
of the modern academy, superstitions that are crushing the life out
of modern education as well as politics-chief among them, something
nowadays called "cultural relativism."
generation that really can
"Value" Judgments
claim to be the best and
"Relativism" is the notion that
all judgments of right and wrong,
of noble and base, are relative to the
person or persons making them.
"Cultural relativism" modifies this
definition by suggesting that persons do not in fact, at least regarding the most serious "value" questions, judge relative to themselves
alone-as if everyone could create
his own "values" out of the depths
of his self. Instead, men receive
their most important "values" from
a larger and more comprehensive
authority, from a "culture," which
is, as the name suggests, a kind of
growth.
Accordingly, every culture
stands in relation to other cultures
as one self does to other selves,
each building and dwelling in its
own world of meaning. From this
fact cultural relativism concludes
that all cultures are equal and also,
LETTERS from Santa F e
To help reclaim our
destiny as human beings
and as citizens, we
need to rediscover the
brightest in American
history, at least from
the moral and political
point of view: the
founders of the American
republic.
pag e s even
�quite illogically (about which more
in a moment), that toleration of all
cultures is the appropriate moral
policy. This sentiment, of course,
forms the basis of students' reluctance to evaluate the Declaration of
Independence, not to mention the
contrary claims
made
by
Communism and other forms of
government. In the ethics of the
contemporary academy, passing
value judgments on other ways of
life or governments is a mistake
typically inspired by "ethnocentrism," which means here not the
excessive or unjustified love of
one's own group, but, in principle,
any preference for one's own over
others-the assumption being that
any preference for one's own is by
definition irrational.
For all of its talk of openness,
what is most characteristic of the
contemporary academy is its
unwillingness to hear of relativism's alternative. There is a constituency within American universities for "diversity" in virtually
every area except this, the vital one.
(Republicans also need not apply.)
Yet the argument against the radical separation of facts and values
must be heard if American education is ever to be able to recapture
its self-respect and its purpose.
This calls for the reading of
great books, as Allan Bloom has
argued eloquently, but not merely
for the reading of great books.
The reading of great books,
although necessary, is not sufficient. They must be read with a
view to the students' own good as
human beings and citizens; they
must be read with an eye for something outside the texts. For the aim
of education is not simply the
imparting of facts or an appreciation of great books, but wisdomuniting theory with practice,
knowledge with character, ideas
with consequences. The recognition
that the pursuit of knowledge,
shorn of its moral and political
responsibilities, becomes a kind of
spiritless game, lies behind the frequent calls in our time for schools
to teach "values." Facts are not
enough. Students need something
more. The demand has been taken
up by both liberal and conservative
candidates in the last few elections.
A movement called "cultural conservatism" has sprung up explicitly
to fight cultural relativism by
encouraging attention to "values."
But to speak of conserving cultural
"values" is already to make a crucial, and disabling, concession to
the relativist position. "Values" are
not "truths," because "values" are
by definition subjective. To invoke
"absolute values" is to do no more
than to announce that one feels particularly strongly about them. That
the distinction is not merely verbal
may be gathered from cultural conservatism's answer to the pointed
question, Why ought we to conserve
the "values" of Western civilization? Because "they work," cultural
conservatives often reply. To which
the relativist may fairly rejoin,
"What do you mean, work?" The
"values" of cannibals work very
well for them.
Suppose then that the conservative were to say, "Look, no sane
man doubts that the West's traditional values work, inasmuch as
they produce today's material prosperity, political freedom, and peace
among nations." "But what of those
who despise luxury, who hunger
for power, who grumble at the
peace imposed on them by the will
of other nations?" the relativist will
respond. "Why shouldn't their values count?" To call men like
Robespierre, Lenin, Hitler, and Mao
"insane," absent a major refinement
in cultural conservatism's argument, is simply to say that conservatives do not like such men's "values." It is not to say that they are
wrong. And if a skeptic were to
add, "Suppose that tomorrow the
stock market plunges and a deep
depression begins, or that war
breaks out on the central front in
Europe," what then becomes of
those conservative "values" whose
only justification was that they
used to work?
Our forefathers did not claim
that the United States was based on
such "cultural values." They
declared that the new nation was
founded on self-evident truths. A
self-evident truth is one that contains its own evidence, that packs
the evidence for itself within its
own terms. The proposition "Man
is a rational animal," Aquinas
teaches, is such a truth, because he
who says "man" has already said,
by definition, "rational animal."
The predicate is contained in the
idea of the subject. "That all men
are created equal" is also such a
truth, since he who says "men"
says "a group of beings each of
whom is equally a man." "Created
equal" therefore adds nothing to
the definition of "all men," but
draws attention to what men are
not-created so unequal that one
man might legitimately rule another without his consent.
By knowing what men are, the
Declaration argues, we may know
how we ought to treat one another.
The "is"-created equal and
endowed with certain rights-
page eight
LETTERS from Santa Fe
Volume Ill , Issue 1
*
*
*
*
*
�Sign ing the Declaration of Independence
implies the "ought"-that we
should institute government, operating with the consent of the governed, to secure men's rights. So far
removed from the radical separation of "facts" and "values" is the
Declaration, in fact, that it does not
feel obliged to use the language of
"ought" or "should." It speaks, in
its majestic opening section, in
straightforward declarative sentences:
"When in the course of human
events, it becomes necessary ... a
decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires .. . We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that a mong
these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure
these rights, governments are instituted ... That whenever any form
of government becomes destructive
of these ends ... ," and so forth.
The authors of the Declaration
do not suggest that this is the way
things ought to be, but that this is
how things are. Men are created
equal, endowed with rights, and
government exists to secure those
rights. I do not mean to imply that
Jefferson and the others imagined
that in most countries such principles and institutions actually existed, nor yet that the leaders of the
Revolution did not wish to see civil
governments established wherever
possible. What I am saying is they
understood that the rightness of
their principles did not arise from
any act of their, or for that matter of
any man's, will. The moral imperative contained in those principles
arises from nature itself. In sum, the
Declaration is a document of natural right, which means that the "is"
(nature) and "ought" (right) belong
together as two aspects of the same
reality.
It is of the utmost importance,
then, to help raise our own and our
young people's sights from the
dehumanizing world of cultural relativism. In the quest for educational
reform, we would do well to turn
not only to the great books, but to
the great exemplars of wisdom with
which our own country is blessed.
To help reclaim our destiny as
human beings and as citizens, we
need to rediscover the generation
that really can claim to be the best
and brightest in American history,
at least from the moral and political
point of view: the founders of the
American republic.
Volume III , I s s u e 1
LETTERS from S anta Fe
pa ge nin e
This article appeared in the
"Intercollegiate Review," Vol. 24,
No. 2, Spring 1989. Excerpted and
reprinted with permission.
�MULTICULTURAL
AND CIVIC EDUCATION
Can they IJVe together?
by
Paul Gagnon
Both history and
common sense tell us
that a just and civil
multicultural society
is possible only among
people with a common
liberal vision and
with the political
sophistication to turn
vision into reality.
pa g e t e n
The answer is, as usual, that it's
up to us. Can we keep two ideas in
our heads at once? One, that we all
(not only schoolchildren) need to
understand American diversity and
its necessities, foremost of which is
liberal democracy? Two, that we
need to possess a common vision of
democracy and its necessities, of
which respect for diversity is one
among many?
If this truism is not already
evident to educators, we are in bigger
trouble than a hundred articles
could fix. But for the sake of argument, let us assume that most of us
realize that in our pluralist society,
multicultural and civic education
very much need each other, that the
health of each depends upon the
health of the other. Both history
and common sense tell us that a just
and civil multicultural society is
possible only among people with a
common liberal vision and with the
political sophistication to turn
vision into reality.
Let us also assume that we
know the difference between multicultural education and Afrocentric,
Eurocentric, or any other "centric"
indoctrination. The latter are not
pluralistic but segregationist, not
democratic but elitist and exclusive.
They are divisive, and, by disarming
Americans for common public discourse, are profoundly reactionary,
LE T T E RS from Santa Fe
playing into the hands of those who
do not believe in democracy, or fear
its power to reform itself.
Having said this, are we any
closer to putting multicultural and
civic education into daily practice?
Far from it, for as soon as we spell
out the real changes required in the
curriculum, objections arise on
every side from educators who are
happy with the status quo, or are
resigned to it. Of the many obstacles
thrown up by people who talk so
much of innovation, two stand out.
First is their refusal to accept
the much greater time required in
the social studies curriculum for
serious, historically-centered study
of the several diverse cultures and
world civilizations at issue, and for
an equally serious study of the
ideas, the institutions, the successes,
and failures of democracy, wherever
on earth people have struggled for
it. A year each to rush through
United States and world history are
not enough for either multicultural
or civic studies alone, and impossible
for both together. The sea-changes
required in the American curriculum
have been made utterly clear by the
Bradley Commission's report,
Building a History Curriculum, and
by the National Commission on the
Social Studies' report, Charting a
Course. But both a re opposed by
much of the social studies establishment.
Where will we ever find the
time, they ask. They could begin by
looking at other democratic nations,
whose curricula include six or
seven consecutive years of history,
geography, and civics. Mainly this
is becau se their students' time and
minds are not wasted on "social
stew," that flavorless concoction of
courses (ranging from Consumer
Ed to Futures Learning) supposedly
Volume Ill , I ss u e 1
�r
injecting American students with
instant skills and positive attitudes,
especially those students deemed
"unready" or "learning resistant,"
labels too quickly applied according
to class or race.
If we are to respect all of our
students' equal rights to know who
we Americans are, who we are
becoming, why we think the way
we do, and what some healthy
alternatives might be, we must
allow them the time, in commonly
required courses, to learn together a
wholly candid historical viewdown to the present and its controversies-of the many people and
ideas that have continually transformed American society, of the
world civilizations that have
shaped us and with whom we must
play out the future, and of the
adventures of democracy, for good
and ill, at home and abroad.
This last, however, runs into a
second major obstacle at hand.
Education in the origins, the evolution, the advances, and defeats of
democracy must by its na ture be
heavily Western and also d emand
great attention to political history.
Both, of course, are fiercely out of
fashion . We cannot say Western
without accusation of Eurocentrism,
of slighting the sensibilities of nonEuropean Americans (no matter
how Western are their aspirations).
We cannot stress liberal democracy
without hearing that we are ethnocentric and bent upon indoctrinating
the young (no matter that the rest of
the world's people, and especially
the young, are choosing democracy
whenever they can). And we cannot
press political history without
charges of elitism, of ignoring the
"common people" (as if they' d
never made political history!) and
of oppressing students with the
ideas and actions of Dead White
European Males.
What to do? Since both modern
democracy and its most virulent
enemies have in fact emerged from
the European past, and since-.for
reasons admittedly unhappy and
unfair-most (not all) of their
authors and activists were white
males and dead by now, our choices
are limited. We can teach it honestly
as it is and was, from the ancients
to the Nazis, from Locke and Marx
to the triumphs and horrors of the
twentieth century, as the new, multicultural California framework tries
to do. The alternative, to avoid the
germs of Eurocentrism, elitism, and
the dead, is to drop the subject altogether-or, as in the current New
York State Global Studies program,
relegate Western civilization to the
final quarter of the tenth grade
course (an absurdity still not
absurd enough to save it from cries
of Eurocentrism).
Choosing to avoid or water
down the political history of the
Western world is as reactionary as
anti-Western educators can hope to
get. By promoting political illiteracy,
it disarms the very students whose
causes they profess, for knowing
political history is the absolute precondition for political sophistication,
which in turn is the absolute precondition for free choice and the
exercise of political power. Only in
the last half-century have we
achieved democracy in legal terms,
under court laws and court decisions
on equality of rights and opportunities
for people hitherto excluded. What
a betrayal it would be for schools now
to undermine their chances to acquire
the political sophistication and power
they need to extend their still-fragile
rights, and to contribute their own
strengths to American society.
V o lu me III , I ss u e 1
L E TTERS from San ta Fe
We may regret that political
history is demanding, but political
prowess never did come cheap. We
may even regret that politics is the
only way we can turn our values
and hopes into reality. But there it
is. Which leads to the final pair of
ideas we must keep in our heads at
once. Multicultural education relies
heavily on social history. Education
for democracy relies heavily on
political. Ignoring either kind of
history guarantees misunderstanding
of ourselves and the world. Unless
social and political history are well
integrated, neither is of much use to
us as members of a society that is
pluralist and, we hope, democratic
at the same time. Can multicultural
and civic education live together?
Of course, but we have a lot of
work to do, and minds to change.
This article originally appeared in
"Basic Education," Vol. 35, No. 9,
May 1991. Reprinted with permission.
page e l eve n
�We worry about the impact on
our children of multiculturalism
not because of its evident need and
merits, but because of the form it
takes. And also because it emerges
at a time when so many American
educators are still repeating their
mantra that there is no particular
body of knowledge more worth
teaching than any other. They still
decry the idea of a required common
core of knowledge on three
grounds.
First, that American culture is
now too fragmented . It would be
oppressive and insulting, they say,
to teach any particular historical
past or any particular moral, cultural
or intellectual tradition to a multicultural student population.
Second, that a common core of
academic learning is elitist, and
unsuited and unnecessary to "nontraditional" students of minority,
immigrant, or working-class status.
Third, that the explosion of
knowledge and the rapid pace of
change in modern society render
any particular knowledge obsolete,
so schools should focus on teaching
how to learn-{)n skills and modes
of inquiry-rather than on any
given subject matter.
Such arguments betray massive
intellectual confusion. They ignore
the different, distinctive needs of
the three basic purposes of education:
for work, citizenship and personal
culture. Each relates to the others,
but each also has its own style and
methods . The idea of a common
core of learning applies most directly
to education for citizenship, where
the arguments against it do not
hold. Instead, they point to contrary
conclusions.
First, in our increasingly multicultural society, citizens need to
know all they can about our common
political heritage-and its mainly
Western intellectual, cultural and
moral sources-which allows us the
freedom to be different from each
other, which impels us to respect
those differences and to live together
in liberty and equality.
Second, is a common core of
academic subjects elitist? On the
contrary, no democratic society
would dare fail to offer its children
as much as possible of whatever
subject matter it saw as necessary
for those expected to govern.
Nothing has been more elitist than
our tracking systems, largely along
class, ethnic and racial lines. We
have offered equal access to drastically unequal education, to an array
of "life adjustment" courses that do
nothing for students' development
as critical, competent citizens. In the
name of free choice, we have
played the old game of "different
but equal," and left the mass of
young people unarmed for public
discourse.
It is obvious that wherever the
curriculum in history, literature
and ideas is truncated or optional,
schools violate their students' right
to know, and democratic education
is betrayed. There is something
wrong when the learning thought
necessary for university-bound
LETTERS from Santa Fe
Volume III , I ss u e 1
MULTICULTURAL
EDUCATION :
WHY WE NEED IT AND
WHY WE WORRY
ABOUT IT
by
Conway Dorsett
First, in our increasingly
multicultural society,
citizens need to know
all they can about our
common political
heritage-and its mainly
Western intellectual,
cultural and moral
sources-which allows
us the freedom to be
different from each
other, which impels
us to respect those
differences and to live
together in liberty and
equality.
pa g e twelve
�"leaders" is treated as unnecessary
for the great number, that sovereign
people whose education Jefferson
said should be "chiefly historical"
so that everyone can "judge for
himself what will secure or endanger
his freedom."
Finally, there is the oft-cited
knowledge "explosion" and rush of
change, supposedly making any
particular subject matter obsolete,
and any curriculum as good as any
other. In those studies needed to
prepare democratic citizens, that is
nonsense. The quicker the pace of
change, the higher the flood of
"knowledge" and "information,"
the more critical it will be for all of
us to understand the ideas, institutions and events that have shaped
us and the world. The more complex
our society becomes-the more
anxious and troubled-the less
obsolete and the more relevant will
become the principles of the
Declaration of Independence, the
Bill of Rights, Lincoln's Second
Inaugural, the Atlantic Charter, the
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. And the more needed is the
historical and literary knowledge
required to understand these
visions and to recognize the forces
that have nourished, or assaulted,
such visions throughout history up
to our own time, and across the
world.
Why do we need all this and a
serious multicultural education,
too? Alexis d e Tocqueville
answered in the 1830s. A diverse
and d e mocratic p eople require
three attributes. First, extensive
knowledge of history and ideas, of
politics and economic life. Second, a
deep sense of civic morality, of
obligation to each other a nd to
posterity. Third, a hig h level of
political sophistication, the skill of
Vo lu me Ill, I ss u e 1
exerting power and making things
work. All three are needed. None
alone is enough, each alone is futile.
Knowledge alone is arid; morality
alone is defenseless; sophistication
alone is corrosive and corrupting.
There is simply no way for
Americans to acquire these attributes
without an education, both in and
out of school, that holds multicultural
and civic education in balance, and
that respects the needs of the worker,
the citizen, and the private person
in each of us. It is worth wanting
and worth worrying about.
This article originally appeared in
"Network News and Views, " Vol.
XII, No. 3, March 1993. Reprinted
with permission.
L E TTERS from S anta F e
page thi rt ee n
�In his 1990 State of the Union
Address, President George Bush
restated the themes and commitments enunciated at the "Education
Summit" he had held a half year
before with the governors of the
United States. He spoke of expanding
programs to prepare disadvantaged
preschool children to learn; he set
as a goal a sharp increase in the percentage of students who complete
high school; he spoke of the need to
assess student performance at critical
stages in education, in order to
make "diplomas mean something";
he called for school discipline. Each
of these goals is worthy and was
worth stressing. But surely something was missing from this
attempt to outline the goals of a
proper educational policy. What
was striking was how little the
president had to say regarding the
content of education. What was
remarkable was his almost complete
silence about which sorts of lessons
were or ought to be considered
truly important. On only one point
was there specificity-and there the
clarity was unmistakable: "By the
year 2000, U.S. students must be
first in the world in math and science
achievement." There was indeed a
single passing reference, in the
context of a call for literacy, to the
fact that education must somehow
prepare Americans to be citizens.
But otherwise the education being
discussed might well be regarded
as an education aimed simply at the
acquisition of the skills needed to
work and compete well in a modem,
technological world economy.
Nothing testifies more vividly
to the loss, in American democracy,
of clarity about the most important
goal of public education in a republican society. I say "the most important
goal." For of course the concern for
an education that prepares men
and women to be effective, useful
members of the work force is an
essential and even a noble concemif, or insofar as, it is placed in a
proper republican perspective.
After all, skilled workers can be
well-trained slaves. What makes
the difference between a welltrained, efficient slave and a free
human being? Does not education
of a certain kind play an important,
even the critical, role in this regard?
To this last question, the classical
republican tradition delivers a
resounding affirmative answer. It is
"liberal education" that makes the
difference between a free human
being and a slave. But what is '1iberal
education?" So fluffy and banal has
this expression become in our time
that we need to exert some effort to
recover the original meaning of this
"liberal" educational ideal. ... To
quote Plato's Athenian Stranger,
liberal education is "the education
from childhood in virtue, that
makes one desire and love to
become a perfect citizen who
knows how to rule and be ruled
with justice" (Laws 643b-644a).
Now it is only fair to note that
the president's State of the Union
Address did, contrary to initial
appearances, and unlike the declarations made at the time of the
"Education Summit," make room
for some substantial and serious
reference to liberal education in this
classical republican sense. But what
LETTERS from Santa Fe
Volume Ill, I ss u e 1
THE ENNOBLING
OF DEMOCRACY
by
Thomas Pangle
pag e fourteen
r
�I'
I'.,
is remarkable-and yet so familiar
to, and indeed characteristic of, our
world-is that the president treated
the themes of moral education, not
in the context of his discussion of
public schooling, but rather in his
peroration, where he dwelt on the
themes of "faith and family." There
the president exhorted grandparents,
"our living link to the past," to "tell
the story of struggles waged, at
home and abroad. Of sacrifices
freely made for freedom's sake."
He reminded parents that "your
children look to you for direction
and guidance." "Tell them," he
urged, "of faith and family. Tell
them we are one nation under God.
Teach them that of all the many
gifts they can receive, liberty is
their most precious legacy. And of
all the gifts they can give, the
greatest-the greatest is helping
others."
But as the recent words of
President Bush's State of the Union
Address indicate, the nation still
recognizes the need to communicate
to our children a reverence for the
past that incorporates us into a
society whose freedom is more
than the freedom of individuals
hermetically sealed into the personal
sphere, the present time, the immediate place. There still lives a heritage
of civic virtues, virtues of gratitude
and of generosity, of struggle at
home and abroad, of sacrifice for
freedom rather than mere enjoyment of freedom, of faith in the one
God whose oneness inspires and
helps weld our oneness as a nation.
And there still lives the confidence
that these virtues can be taught, in
part through "telling the story."
May it not be time to make a more
deliberate and determined effort to
make this telling- and, in addition,
practices or habits reflecting what
Volume III, Issu e 1
has been told-a central part of the
curriculum of our public schools?
To this kind of suggestion I
foresee a powerful objection, coming
especially from thoughtful conservatives . What reason is there to
suppose that we can entrust so
important a task to the teachers of
today-whose spirits have been
formed in substantial part by a
higher education many of whose
guiding lights are anything but
sympathetic to this kind of rootedness
in, and reverence for, republican
tradition, patriotism, piety, property
rights, and family? Will not the
effectual upshot be just more subtle
indoctrination in the corrosive intellectual and moral fashions that
pervade the academic elite and
seep thence through every college
classroom? Will not moral education
be conveyed through "values clarification," with its hidden agenda of
apparent skepticism, actual relativism, and hidden, only semiconscious, but all the more dogmatic,
radical egalitarianism and individualism? Will not history be taught in
such a way as to debunk or even
defame the Founders, and all subsequent leaders who did not rebel
against the American tradition as a
racist, capitalist, sexist, Eurocentric
conspiracy to dominate and exploit
the "forgotten of history"? Will
private enterprise, will the rootedness
of human dignity in private property
that has so indelibly marked the
American republican tradition, be
treated with anything like the
respect it deserves? Will not every
American war and war hero or
ordinary soldier be treated as the
veterans of the Vietnam War have
generally been treated-pitied,
where they are not condemned,
their military achievements forgotten,
where they are not excoriated? Will
LETTERS from Santa F e
. . . the nation still
recognizes the need to
communicate to our
children a reverence for the
past that incorporates
us into a society whose
freedom is more than the
freedom of individuals
hermetically sealed into
the personal sphere, the
present time, the immediate
place. There still lives
a heritage of civic virtues,
virtues of gratitude and of
generosity, of struggle at
home and abroad, of sacrifice
for freedom rather than mere
enjoyment of freedom, of
faith in the one God whose
oneness inspires and helps
weld our oneness as a nation.
And there still lives the
confidence that these
virtues can be taught,
in part through "telling the
story"
pa g e fifteen
�not the religious traditions of
America be treated as the last gasps
of benighted ages and darkened
minds? Will the American family
and American womanhood be
celebrated for the hard and selfabnegating choices they made as
they bowed to the stern laws of
nature and the harsh edicts of
destiny-or will their strength in
adversity be seen as the stubbornness
of "false consciousness under
oppression"? In how many advocates
of contemporary feminism do the
principles and commitments of a
feminist like Emma Willard still
live?
I cannot offer reassuring
answers to these questions. But I
think Aristotle is correct in insisting
that private and familial moral or
religious education lacks the
authority to sustain itself without
direct public reinforcement: I do
not think we can leave things
where they are and expect them not
to get worse. As is evident even
from such superficial indicators as
opinion polls, the mass of the
American citizenry, and especially
those who choose the burdens of
parenthood, seem more sensible,
more responsible, and wiser in civic
matters than the elites who dominate
the universities; and teachers in the
public schools, since they tend to
live among ordinary folk and only
spend a few years under the direct
tutelage of the higher education
establishment, remain somewhere
in between. On the whole, I am
inclined to think reasonable the
hope that primary and secondary
schoolteachers are not as alienated
from the educational principles I
have sketched as is sometimes suggested by the pronouncements of
their "spokespeople." At the very
least, I think we have to hope that
page s ixteen
LETTERS from Santa Fe
men and women who devote their
lives to teaching will be willing to
listen to and reflect upon calls for a
return to our civic educational
heritage, enlarged and enriched by
a new infusion of classical republican
inspiration.
*
*
*
*
*
In turning to higher education,
we are brought face to face with the
full complexity and challenge of the
idea of liberal education. For while
higher education is indeed important
as a continuation of, and source of
teachers for, the liberal civic education that ought to begin at the lower
levels, higher education as we
know it in the modern university
has other and more direct functions
and goals. At its "highest," higher
education aims at liberal education
in a second sense, a sense that
encompasses, but goes beyond,
citizenship education. But just what
this transcivic goal of higher education might be has become
increasingly difficult to articulate in
contemporary America. The problem
is not simply the steady pressure on
the universities to provide very
sophisticated vocational preparation
and technical scientific expertise.
This pressure, after all, is inevitable
and by no means altogether
improper in the context of modern
democracy. We need highly skilled
lawyers, engineers, doctors, social
workers, and technicians and scientists of all kinds . But to keep the
pursuit of technical expertise within
its proper bounds, there is required
a counterpressure exerted by a
reasonably clear articulation of the
hierarchy of goals in the modern
university. This articulation is the
responsibility, above all, of the
"humanities," including the more
Volume III, Issue 1
�"humane" branches of the social
sciences.
Unfortunately,
however,
among the custodians of the
humanities in today's universities
there reigns profound confusion or
despair regarding the very possibility
of articulating a clear conception of
"humanity" in its most "liberal" or
liberated spiritual fulfillment. I suggest we try to recover our bearings
by returning, again, to the original,
Socratic articulation of liberal education-but now to the transcivic
dimension of Socratic liberal education.
A liberal education that is truly
liberating in the Socratic sense is an
education that brings us face to face
with disturbing challenges to our
deepest and apparently surest
moral commitments. It is an education that compels us to rethink our
most cherished convictions-to
their very roots, thereby to rediscover and refertilize, and, if need
be, replant, those roots. The aim of
such a probing, if sympathetic,
scrutiny of our treasured beliefs is
not, of course, to subvert those
beliefs; the aim is to transform our
beliefs from mere opinions into
such grounded moral knowledge as
is available to human beings. The
knowledge in question is partly
inspired by, but is not the same as,
the knowledge achieved in the
mathematical sciences. It provides
us with awareness of the genuine
strengths of our principles, precisely
by forcing us to deal with the most
telling actual and potential challenges
to those principles. The aim of
dialectical education is to leave the
subjectivity of "values" behind, by
reenacting for ourselves, accepting
or modifying, and therefore making
truly our own, the great reasonings,
the great choices rooted in argument,
that ushered in our modem civilization. This kind of approach to the
truth, or what Socrates calls his
"human wisdom," is the opposite
of all dogmatism. Such human
wisdom or understanding always
includes some skepticism, even as
regards our most precious beliefs,
because it always includes an acute
awareness of the limits of our
knowledge as well as firsthand
experience of the power of the
arguments that can be mustered
against our beliefs.
In the present time and place,
this means that we need to
encounter disquieting critics of
democracy, of human rights, of
individualism, of toleration, of the
free market and economic growth,
o f sexual liberation a nd sexual
equality, of secularism, of monotheism, of modern science (including
everything from atomism to evolution), of creativity, of art conceived
of in terms of "the aesthetic." To
achieve this sort of bracing confrontation, we cannot possibly rest
satisfied with the sorts of challenges
that originate in our own age and
culture, because what we seek is
precisely critics whose spiritual
footholds are outside our cave, outside our own time, outside the basic
matrix of our moral outlook.
Yet we must avoid the temptation of supposing that liberation
means losing ourselves in the merely
exotic, the strange, the provocative.
Our goal is neith er titillation nor
escapism nor romanticism. It may
h elp a bit to study the silent and
deeply mysterious cultural artifacts
of alien peoples, or the ways and
beliefs of cultures that have no
relation to our own; but such study
Volume Ill , I ss u e 1
L ETTERS fr o m S a nt a F e
*
*
*
*
*
A liberal education that
is truly liberating in the
Socratic sense is an
education that brings us
face to face with
disturbing challenges
to our deepest and
apparently surest moral
commitments. It is an
education that compels us
to rethink our most
cherished convictionsto their very roots,
thereby to rediscover
and refertilize, and, if
need be, replant, those
roots.
page se v e nt ee n
�will not suffice as the core of a liberating education. Such artifacts and
cultures, however rich, are too distant
and inarticulate to provide serious
and lucid alternative conceptions of
the good that we might find ourselves compelled to embrace and in
whose terms we might have to
begin to reorient our lives.
In short, we seek serious and
thoughtful critics whose arguments
draw us, and are
intended to draw us,
into a true dialogue,
in which the very
meaning and purpose of our lives is at
stake. We seek critics
who challenge us to
the core, compelling
us to rethink our
own foundations,
and eliciting from us
some genui ne, if
grudging, admiration for the alternative they represent or
pose.
Now such critics,
and such confrontations, are to be found
especially through
the simultaneous
study of two sorts of
great books: on the
one hand, those, like
the ancient Greek
and Roman, or the medieval
Muslim, Judaic, or Christian books,
which elaborate a rich and philosophically well defended non-liberal and
non-democratic conception of law,
freedom, virtue, beauty, and love;
on the other hand, those books that
are the most original, the broadest,
and the deepest sources of our own
scientific, liberal, and democratic
worldview. In almost every case,
these latter primary sources of our
science, religion, art, and morality:
for example, in political philosophy,
the
Federalist
Papers
and
Montesquieu; in philosophy of science, Bacon and Descartes; in theology, Spinoza and Locke; in literature, Defoe and Fielding. And on
the other hand, guided by these
books that laid down our spiritual
foundations, we should bring them
into confrontation with the great
opposing works and authors
against which they directed their
epoch-making innovations.
The Federalist Papers and
Montesquieu speak with severe, if
sympathetic, criticism of the classical
republics portrayed in Plutarch,
Thucydides, and Xenophon; Bacon
carries on a continuous argument
with Aristotle's anti technological,
teleological conception of science
and its relation to nature and society;
Spinoza
and
Locke engage in a
cautious,
but
searching, critique
of the Bible and its
great medieval
interpreters like
Maimonides and
Thomas Aquinas;
Defoe's plumbing
of the depths of
individualism in
Robinson Crusoe is
partly inspired by,
and written in
direct and sharp
contrast to, Ibn
Tufayl's Hayy the
Son of Yaqzan .
These are, of
course, only selected illustrationsstrategic points of
entry, if you will,
to the sorts of juxtapositions and
arguments that would allow us to
begin to examine our most basic presuppositions from a radically critical perspective.
What are these more profound
and abiding issues that ought, in a
truly liberal education, to take
precedence-if only by remaining,
looming, in the background? A
beginning or provisional list, culled
from the most obvious surface of
the great books, would include:
pa ge e i g h t ee n
LETTERS fr o m Sa nta F e
Volu me III , I ss u e 1
own spiritual horizon will be found
to have blazed their new path by
way of a shattering argument with
the previous, and especially the
Greco-Roman and biblical, authoritative traditions.
For Americans, this implies that
we should emphasize, on the one
hand, those works that laid down
the original stratum of our deepest
presuppositions as regards justice,
�What are, or should be, the goals of
a healthy and decent society? What
is freedom? What is excellence or
virtue? What constitutes human
dignity-is it freedom, or virtue, or
the capacity to love? To what
extent, and how, should government foster freedom, virtue, love,
and dignity? What is love? Who or
what is worthy of love? What is
friendship, and what is a good
friend? What are the relations of
love and friendship to civic duty?
Do God and divine law exist? If so,
or if not, what is implied for the life
of the citizen and the human being?
What is the relationship between
the obligations, the virtues, and the
fulfillment of the citizen or statesman, and the obligations, virtues,
and fulfillment of the human being
simply? What is the moral responsibility or civic obligation of the
artist? What is a philosopher, and
what is the moral responsibility or
civic obligation of the philosopher?
And, speaking comprehensively,
what are the deepest alternative
answers to these questions; how is
the debate among these alternatives
articulated?
Even from this incomplete list,
it is obvious that a study of great
books cannot be confined to the
texts traditionally labeled "works of
political theory." The poets, the
dramatists, the theologians, the
scientists (especially insofar as they
have transcended the narrow and
artificial limits of so much contemporary science) must also be attended
to with painstaking care. The study
of great books is necessarily, then,
in tension- I would say, in a fruitful
and invigorating tension- with the
artificially exaggerated boundaries
of specialization that so unfortunately
sunder the contemporary "university"
into a kind of congeries of intellectual
V o I u me 111 , I s s u e 1
r
ghettos. Among other things, the
inclusion of great books in the reading
lists of courses compels colorless or
self-satisfied technicians and specialists to come into an arena where
they must justify-and therefore
transcend-their "specialties" in
the light of questions that ought to
provide the framework and structure for all specialization, within
the manifold and dynamic dialectical unity that ought to constitute
the "university."
Yet, to repeat, I do not mean for
one moment to suggest that the
pressing concrete issues of contemporary life are to be left behind.
Indeed, one of the major purposes
of studying politics and society,
love and death, religion and science,
in the light shed by the classic
works is to escape the fashionable
academic abstractions of excessively
scientistic or "theoretical" social
science and literary theory. Truly
great books are never abstract, in
the sense of abstracting from the
gripping questions of human fate
and existence. Truly great books
vindicate, while enlarging and
deepening, the good citizen' s perspective on the issues that really
count.
Excerpted from: The Ennobling of
Democracv. The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1992. Reprinted
with permission.
If anyone's interested, we have back copies of all past issues except the very first.
These cover: Political Correctness; Teaching Ethics; "Oneness and Otherness";
Liberal Education; Diversity and Accreditation; Diversity, Multiculturalism and
Liberal Education; Business and Liberal Education; Research and Teaching.
Just write us. Or call 505/984-6104.
Fellowships Available
For College Faculty
St. John's College is now offering partial fellowships of up to $2900
for summer graduate study, thanks to a major grant from the Lynde and
Harry Bradley Foundation. Fellowship recipients will attend summer
sessions of the St. John's College Graduate Institute in Santa Fe.
The fellowships provide the opportunity for college faculty from
other institutions to immerse themselves in a great books curriculum
and in the St. John's method of teaching.
To be eligible, a college must propose at least two faculty members
to attend each summer and cover part of the instructional costs. For further
information, please contact The Graduate Institute, St. John's College,
Santa Fe, NM 87501-4599; (505) 984-6082.
LE T TE R S fr om San t a Fe
page n in e t een
�PROFILE
St. John's College:
An independent, non-sectarian, four-year liberal arts college.
Founded:
Established in 1696 in Annapolis, Maryland, as King William's School and chartered in 1784 as St. John's College. Great Books
Program adopted 1937. Second campus in Santa Fe opened in 1964.
Curriculum:
An integrated, four-year, all-required liberal arts and science program based on reading and discussing, in loosely chronological
order, the great books of Western civilization. The program also includes four years of foreign language, four years of mathematics,
three years of laboratory science, and one year of music.
Approach:
Tutorials, laboratories, and seminars requiring intense participation replace more traditional lectures. Classes are very small.
Student/Faculty ratio is 8:1.
Degrees Granted:
Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts, Master of Arts in Liberal Studies, Master of Arts in Eastern Classics.
Student Body:
Enrollment is limited to about 400 students on each campus. Current freshman class is made up of 55% men and 45% women,
from 37 states and several foreign countries. Sixty-five percent receive financial aid. Students may transfer between the Santa Fe
and Annapolis campuses.
Alumni Careers:
Education - 21 %, Business - 20%, Law - 10%, Visual and Performing Arts - 9%, Medicine - 7%, Science and Engineering - 7%,
Computer Science - 6%, Writing and Publishing - 5%.
Graduate Institute:
The Graduate Institute in Liberal Education is an interdisciplinary master's degree program based on the same principles as the
undergraduate program. Offered on both campuses year-round. Readers of the newsletter may be especially interested in applying
for our summer session. For more information please contact the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe 505/ 984-6082 or in Annapolis
410/626-2541.
Graduate Program in Eastern Classics:
A three-term course of study in the classic texts of India and China, leading to the Master of Arts in Eastern Classics. Offered on
the Santa Fe campus only. For more information please contact the Graduate Program in Eastern Classics at 505/984-6064.
LETTERS from Santa Fe
St. John's College
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 -4599
ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED
U.S. Postage
PAID
Non-Profit
Organization
Permit No. 231
Santa Fe, NM
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Letters from Santa Fe, Volume 3, Issue 1, 1994
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LETTERSfrom . S~TJta
Fe
APRIL 1991
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
j,_,; ,_- y
.ta. l,;,1.1 ''1,j<
John Agresto
\ r.,; :,_ _
DIVERSITY' MULTICULTURALISM, AND
E
very now and then the academic community, as if
in one spirit and one voice, turns to a new idea
and, in virtually the twinkling of an eye, anoints
that new notion with the oil of truth and the water . of
orthodoxy. In our day this new truth is diversity.
Diversity has a pleasing resonance to it. It sounds
wholesome and right. It fits right into all the most
contemporary trends in academic life: the proliferation of
electives, the movement from colleges to universities . to
multiversities, the triumph of relativism, and the liberation of
the dormitories. If one can still use it as a term of praise,
diversity sounds so ' 'American.''
The opposite of diversity sounds so rigid, so nasty, so
reactionary that it surely has few if any adherents-classics,
core curricula, coherence, canons. . . . With pluralism and
diversity all the rage, who today dares talk of required courses
... except perhaps by some kind of odd paradox where the
newly righteous might talk about requiring diversity everywhere.
Indeed, it is amazing to behold how, in the name of diversity,
all heterodox opinions are quickly being pushed out.
If I am critical of the academy's newfound infatuation with
diversity, I am critical only in part, since I do believe that we,
as Americans and as educators, have an interest in upholding
the principle of diversity. Diversity is a key element of this
civilization, and one deserving of serious respect. Indeed,
liberal education was always thought to be grounded in a kind
of diversity-the belief that, through the study of the various
arts and sciences, small and closed minds could be enlarged and
opened, that new ideas would replace old prejudices and that
we might begin to rise from opinion to knowledge- that we
might see the world asd see it whole.
Yet, today, diversity in academe hardly ever means the
presentation of new perspectives, challenging ideas or divergent
philosophies. It almost everywhere means dismantling the
tradition of academic studies and erecting on its ruins courses
that more neatly fit in with our contemporary ideas of class,
.tlfblic
f'1~~
c•aAL EDUCATION
race, gender, and oppression. Almost everywhere "diversity"
is code for the propagation of exactly its opposite-standardized
exposure to contemporary ideology and to the politically
oorrect.
The greatest stumbling block to the new orthodoxy of
diversity is still the notion of a liberal education, still the
remnant of the old idea of a coherent curriculum built around a
core of courses in Western Civilization, classical humanities,
mathematics, the sciences, and the great books. There once
was a time when enlightened opinion wanted such courses to be
offered to everyone- rich and poor, high and low. Now the
academy fluctuates between thinking there really are no such
things as "great books," to thinking that the tradition is surely
pernicious, at least in so far as it undermines the demands of
contemporary pluralism and sensitivity regarding diversity.
A Western Tradition of Diversity
But of all the things that could be said in favor of the bookish
tradition of the West and the traditional curriculum of studies,
let me mention just one-diversity. Unlike contemporary
"diversity, " liberal education always started with a respect for
the diversity of outlook and ideas. For example, the past and its
authors were studied not so much because they were like us as
unlike us. Aristotle and Augustine defend social orders radically
different from our own. Sophocles and Homer find
praiseworthy or contemptible things quite at odds with current
tastes. Dante and St. Paul are far more countercultural than
Herbert Marcuse and Frantz Fanon any day. It was always
understood that there was no learning the core of our own
opinions without considering the divergent ideas of those
radically different from ourselves. So, if it is diversity we are
looking for-and we should be-the traditional curriculum is
far livelier, far more radical, than today's academy is generally
prepared to admit.
So, properly understood, true diversity lies at the heart of
Continued on page 2.
INSIDE:
THE DEATOWER
"''I# t.::.?J
I
I"
f.
J
I
I
�Diversity
A Message
from
the President
Contintv.dfrom page I .
Dear Friends:
Within the last year, "diversity" and "multiculturalism" have become the most important words in
all of contemporary higher education. A quick
review of the literature might even lead a person to
think that an education in ''diversity'' was the
primary goal of all learning. Indeed, as one college
president quoted in these pages asserts, "no college
or university can any longer call itself great unless
its administrators, faculty, program and students
fully reflect the rich, multicultural diversity of
contemporary America.''
The error, the danger, the explicit misunderstanding of what liberal education is all about contained
in that statement is what prompted the theme of
this newsletter.
On a related topic, after the last newsletter
appeared, higher education became embroiled in
what the press always seems to refer to as a "flap"
over the question of minority scholarships. Donald
Stewart and Linda Chavez were kind enough to
write articles for our newsletter taking opposing
viewpoints on this subject. I am especially grateful
for their agreeing to do so on very short notice. Our
selection of reprinted articles also includes an
address by Donald Kagan, Dean of Yale College and
one of our new trustees at St. John's. Finally, this
newsletter contains a short, original essay by one of
our tutors, David Bolotin, on the radical nature and
radical consequences of the new diversity.
Despite difficulties elsewhere, all seems well here
in Santa Fe. The program continues to attract
students in record numbers. One of our seniors is a
new Rhodes Scholar-the first from our campus.
And this June will mark the start of our first
summer session for adults: a series of non-credit,
week-long seminars on works from Plato to Heidegger. The summer will also find us hosting a free,
six-week, public Shakespeare festival in the courtyard of our beautiful new library.
Meanwhile, I wish you well, and I look forward to
hearing from you about this issue.
education. Education is meant to transform us,
or at least give us the opportunity to be other
than what we are, or what our society or class
or parents or professors want us to be. The
problem is that so much of what passes for
liberation in education today is , instead,
control, and control of the rankest sort. The
dismantling of core courses has done less to
liberate student minds tha n to ratify
contemporary social beliefs a nd confirm
contemporary prejudices. Without knowing the
diversity of the full sweep of this civilization,
our students will live only in the contemporary
world, only in the present, only in the light of
their own or their professors' opinions.
We will find few people more narrow than
the contemporary advocates of diversity, few
people more illiberal than those who would u se
the propagandistic potential of the classroom to
possess their students' minds rather than let
them possess their minds for themselves, few
people more tendentious than those who claim
that all education is political and then fulfill
their own prophesies by propagandizing.
Paradoxical as it may sound, every act by
which traditional liberal education is today
preserved and promoted is not simply a
"conservative" act-for students it is a radical,
liberating act at the same time.
Knowing Our Cultural Foundations
Of course, our cognition of true diversity is
not the only reason for traditional liberal arts
~+~
Page 2
LETTERS.from Santa Fe
April 1991
�''The traditional curriculum is far more radical than today's academy
is prepared to admit. ''
education. Despite all its manifest divergencies,
disagreements and distinctions, the tradition of
the West still is that-a tradition : it formed us
as a people, as a particular civilization, a
culture . We were formed both by what we took
from it and what we discarded. If knowing
something other than what you are is a great
desideratum of education; the first desideratum
is to know yourself. A person who is ignorant
of the Bible, of the ancient stories and fables
and myths, of the history of Europe, of the
reasons for the Reformation, of Homer or
Shakespeare-that person is lost in this culture.
It is, to be blunt, more important for an
American to know the Declaration of
Independence and the Gettysburg Address
than to know the principles of Eastern
mysticism. It is, conversely, more important
for a student in China to know something
about Marx and Mao than to be able to
identify the dates of the Thirty Years' War. It
is also more important for recent Asian
immigrants to know who Martin Luther King
was than for American blacks to know the
names of great figures in C ambodian politics.
This is not arrogance on the part of Americans,
nor on the part of other cutlurt's wht'n thl'y do
the same.
It seems, then, that what should be required
are those books and studies that both teach
students something about themselves and help
liberate them from their contemporaries and
from their professors and their prejudices. Our
students need an education in both what has
been handed down to them and in diversity of
thought-always recognizing the unavoidable
diversity within the tradition itself.
Finally, liberal education should make our
students think about universals: What is
beautiful? What is ugly? What should I love?
What should I hate? What is justice? How
should I behave? How can I live a satisfied life
in the midst of unsatisfied desires? How can I
be a friend~ Why do all living things have to
die? These are the kinds of questions our
students ask before they are taught to become
pedants and specialists. This is what they think
philosophy and poetry might help them with,
until they are taught that words have any
meaning we wish, or all meanings, or no
meaning. In fact, the real and perhaps only
purpose for an education in diversity is to see
April 1991
the truth about the greatest human things amid
the cacaphony of discordant, diverse opinions.
Diversity can be a catalyst for inquiry, and it
properly ends in philosophy, not relativism.
The greatest books and texts invite us to think
about these universal issues-issues that go far
beyond race, class, and sex. Contemporary
diversity, on the other hand, abandons the
study of real diflerences, abandons the quest
for the discovery of universals and is tyrannized
by the power of the particular and the merely
accidental.•
Author's note: This article was onginally an addms
delivered and, as you might well understand,
contemptuously treated at a meeting ef the Modem
Language Association in Daember 1989.
LETTERS from Santa Fe
Diversity can be
a cata/,yst for
inquiry, and it
properly ends in
philosophy, not
rel.ativism.
Page 3
�THE DERISORY TOWER
What follows is an editon.al that appeared in the New
Republic on February 18, 1991. It introduced a
series of essays on the worst of contemporary abuses in
higher education, primanly on the topic of race.
Although any number of those essays could have been
worth repeating, the overview of the editon"al may be
the most incisive of them all.
-j.A.
s
''Multiculturalism ))
turns out to be
neither multi
nor cultural.
carcely a generation goes by without a
" crisis" in the universities. From
Gibbon to Bloom the lamentation has
become almost a literary genre. It is tempting
to believe that if these crises did not exist , it
would be necessary for social critics to invent
them . Still, they have been real often enough .
In our centu ry they have ranged from the
malignity of totalitarianism in the 1930s to the
insipid dem and for skills-of law, business,
medicine, even politics- in the 1970s and 80s.
Each has warped the integrity of university life,
distracted the university from its central task of
open-ended , disinterested inquiry. M ore recently, higher learning has been burdened by
the weight of its own growth , by the preference
for publishing over teaching, by the logic of
bureaucracy.
T he most com mon cause of these recurrent
crises has been the demand that the umvers1ty conform to one orthodoxy or another .
Amon g the roste r o f op ponen ts of free,
su bversive tho ught have been the usua l
suspects:
religion , patriotism, M arxism,
materialism , bourgeois propriety. These critiq ues of the old id eal of free academ ic
inq uiry have usually succeeded in making
people forget that such freedom is one of the
higher and most powerful form s of subversion . And (happily) they have tended to elicit
a spirited response in defense of heterodoxy
at the heart of u n iversity life.
Prisoners of R ace
T he newest attack on the idea of a
heterodox university is based on a familiar
rejection of genuinely pluralist thought, a nd
wishes to replace that thought with one of the
most destructive and demeaning orthodoxies
of our time. This orthodoxy, to summarize
the core of the " m ulticultu ralists'" argument, is that race is the determ inant of a
human being's m ind, that the m ind can not,
and should not, try to wrest itself from its
biological or sociological origins. There are
accou nts both of the curriculum's transformation to conform to the dogma of race and of a
revolution in admissions, faculty hirin g, lecturing, writing, speaking, and thinking to
reflect this assumption . T his is not merely a
philosophical quarrel. O n America 's campuses
Page 4
LETTERS/rom Santa Fe
todav tht' issut' of ract' is unaH >ida bk. Thl'
imp;ct of affirm ative action upon the tenor of
even the simplest class discussion is profound.
Resentful whites jostle uncomfortably with
suspicious minority students, struggling with
situations they find personally overwhelm ing.
Wdl-qualilit'd blacks and Hispanics ll-cl tlil'
need to prove their worth, or are wracked
with the suspicion that they m ay not owe
their place to merit. H our upon hour of
precious faculty time is spent soothing racial
sensitivities or deconstructing the canon on
ethnic lines. Deep-rooted racism-which still
undoubtedly and regrettably exists on campus-blurs with legitimate reactions to the
imposition of ''political correctness. ''
O ur
universities, which should strive for an iden tity in contradistinction to the world at large,
have becom e distillations of our bitterest
social divisions.
At the bottom of this dispute is a n idea that is
worth tackling at its roots. In its most popular
form , "multiculturalism" holds that the traditional idea of free thought is an illusion
propagated by the spoilers of freedom by the
relations of power that obtain in any given
society. It holds, more specifically, that the
old liberal notion of freedom is o nly a
sentimental mask of a power structure that is
d efiniti o na ll y o p p re ssive o f those wh o
arc not white W estern males.
And this
ideological and m ethodological principle is
not merely a cautionary note to be taken into
account when studying the established texts
of W estern civilization; it is, in the ha nds of
the ''multiculturalists, ' ' the very m eaning
of- the deepest truth a bout-those texts.
(Sometimes their argument is further complicated by the notion that no stable meaning at
all can be attributed to texts, but we leave
that issue to the j unior faculty. ) T he un iversity should therefore be devoted to blowing the
whistle on those texts, to replacing them with
those that identify and transcend this white
male oppression , and indeed go beyond mere
study to the actual defeat of the racial and
sexual structure of society at large.
An End to Open E xchange
" Multiculturalism" tu rns out, then, to be
neither multi nor cultural. In practice, its
objective is a una nim ity o f thou ght o n
cam pus that, if successful, would effectively
end open exchange- exchange that would
have to include the alleged represen tatives of
patriarchy- and reduce the nuances of culture to the determinants of race. T rue
multicultu ralism, which we applaud and hope
to see flourish, would, in contrast, set no
April 199 1
�borders to texts and ideas, histories and
cultures, lives and images, from worlds alien
to our own. It would attempt to account for
the social and political context in all texts, as
rigorous criticism must do. (Which texts, in
what language, from which society, do not
come to us from the midst of terrible relations
of power? Certainly not the texts of the East).
It would assume, as a matter of philosophirnl
principle, that at least inner independence,
freedom of thought and imagination, may be
attributed to great writers and artists in all
societies, however repressive.
We are opposed to the current "multiculturalist" trend, then, not because we believe
that accounting for sexual, racial, and political bias in text is not a worthwhile (though
limited) intellectual exercise, but because we
believe that it is not the only worthwhile
intellectual exercise. What the "multiculturalist" criticism of the canon fails to grasp is
that the canon is itself a cacophony, that it
teaches not certainty but doubt, that it
presents not a single Western doctrine about
the true or the good or the beautiful, but an
internecine Western war between different
accounts of those values, which will rattle the
student more than it will ever reassure her.
The idea that Plato and Heidegger, Proust
and Thucydides, Hegel and Freud are somehow intellectual equivalents because of their
sex, race and class is absurd, and evaporates
upon inspection. Indeed, many of the fathers
of the "multiculturalist" church-Derrida,
Foucault, Nietzsche, Gramsci-are themselves white males. How did they get away
unscathed? Or does their work, too, express,
however unwittingly, nothing but the social
and sexual biases of their time and place?
The university that we defend is a truly
subversive institution. It is devoted to the
pursuit of inquiry, with no end in sight, and
with no justification except its own curiosity.
It is dedicated to the life of the mind as a
radically undetermined adventure, a ship on
an endless and bottomless sea, open to all
breezes (even multiculturalist breezes), deft
in all currents, with no particular destination,
and no harbor in sight. Soon, we hope, those
April 1991
who share this vision-the real subversives in
our universities-will emerge to defend it
against the racial dogmatists. We have confidence that they will prevail, not least because
students get impatient with the platitudes of
political orthodoxy, but also because they will
provide the proper context for the genuine
insights of multiculturalism to be appreciated. We have no doubt that Foucault, Derrida, et al are worthy of study. Their ideas are
not contemptible, and they have the old
virtue of being dangerous.
Tackling Race Relations in America
Our quarrel with today's "multiculturalism," however, is based not only on a
concern for thinking and teaching in the
university, but also on a concern for tackling
the real issue of race relations in our country.
To be blunt, we do not believe that racism
will ever finally be defeated by a sophisticated
version of its own logic. An orthodoxy that
prefers those texts that are racially pure, and
advances those students whose race-and
race alone-entitles them to study them, is
one that will never free people from the
iniquities of racial prejudice. It may even
serve to entrench these habits of thought (or
non-thought), as angry whites and angry
blacks battle each other over the remn:mts of
each other's pride.
The furor over affirmative action in admissions and hiring in our universities and over a
"multicultural" curriculum is, in fact, a
bitterly ironic distraction from the battle
against racial injustice in our society at large.
While students and academics squabble over
whether to include Alice Walker in a freshman reading list, a whole generation of black
and Hispanic children is mired in a culture of
poverty, dependency, and crime, which our
government has neither the honesty nor the
will to address appropriately. High school
education for many inner-city blacks and
Hispanics is affected by this culture as well .
Without confronting this issue baldly, and
taking the uncomfortable measures to tackle
it, the "multicultural" posturings in our
colleges are at best the indulgence of an elite,
at worst cynically destructive .
The real danger is that the "multicultural"
orthodoxy is itself a disguise for an indifference, or a particular political attitude, to this
greater issue. It whispers in our ears that the
barriers of race are unbridgeable; that
thought cannot undo them; that education
cannot mitigate them; that a liberal government in a liberal society cannot do anything
to achieve a more colorblind society; that
racism is, indeed, ineradicable. It is the
inheritance of liberals to resist this seduction,
not only because it is a temptation to
intellectual orthodoxy, but also because it is a
temptation to political despair.•
LETTERS from Santa Fe
The university
that we defend
is a truly
subversive
institution.
Page 5
�L
ike most others in the education community, I was
shocked by the U.S. Department of Education's
announcement on December 11 that postsecondary
institutions receiving federal aid could no longer
offer scholarships solely on the basis of race. The Department's
six-point "clarification" of its policy-released on December
18-raised more questions than it answered, and subsequent
commentary offered little clarification.
As an educator, and an African American, I take pride in the
progress that has been made since I was a college student in the
number of minorities going to college. It should be noted for the
record that the number of African American men and women
attending college has increased markedly over the past decade,
as has the number of Hispanic men and women. The scores of
African American students on our SAT exams have increased
significantly over the past ten years, even as those of white
students have remained the same. And the number of minority
students taking and doing well in our Advanced Placement
courses has skyrocketed. Over the past decade the number of
African American and Hispanic men and women graduating
from high school has grown even more swiftly than the number
going on to college.
Unquestionably, one of the reasons for the success achieved
with regard to minorities in higher education has been the
growing availability of minority scholarships at institutions that
are predominantly white. We have found that nearly 700
colleges and universities nationwide have scholarships designated for minorities, and we are currently in the process of
gathering even more data on this subject. T hey have them for
good, selfinterested reasons as well as for democratic and
civic-minded ones. As Donna Shalala, chancellor of the
University of Wisconsin at Madison has noted, no college or
university can any longer call itself great unless its administrators, faculty, programs and students Ii.illy reflect the rich,
multicultural diversity of contemporary America.
The sad news is that the proportion of African American
high school graduates aged 18 to 24 going to college has leveled
off. On a percentage basis, it has remained at 28 percent in the
decade of the 1980s. M ore ominously, the American Council
on Education reports that degree attainment for these groups
has declined in recent years, and that the percentage of students
attending college from low -income families has also remained
unchanged .
Donald Stewart is president of the College Board.
Page 6
It is my view that, in fact, a ruling of this sort can seriously
put in jeopardy the future of our great nation. As my good
friend, Lou Harris, told the College Board's national forum two
years ago, " by the end of the next decade, our country will
have either succeeded or failed on the pivotal issue of how to
open the doors of opportunity to minority young people. If we
succeed in [making) them creative, thinking workers, as must
happen with young whites, then surely we will have created a
strongly competitive America that will be the envy of the world.
But if we fail that will condemn us to second tier economic
status as a nation. M ark it well."
Recent comments and proposed legislation have made clear,
moreover, it was not the intent of Congress, when it enacted
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to outlaw efforts to
increase the distressingly low numbers of minority students in
predominantly white colleges and universities nationwide.
On a more philosophical note, as the great observer of
America, Alexis de Tocqueville, noted, the impulse to address
problems through voluntary, private acts is what has set
America apart from other nations and allowed so much private
energy to flow to the public good. We heard this theme sounded
during the last presidential campaign in President Bush ' s 1000
points of light, representing the great American way for
meeting social needs. Therefore, the · announcements of the
Office of Civil Rights are nothing if not paradoxical. For any
policy or action by OCR that would end these programs of
minority scholarships would directly contradict both the spirit
of de Tocqueville and President Bush, and tie one of America's
arms behind its back. Targeted funds, voluntarily given, is how
we get things done, whether for the homeless, for AIDS
victims, for the environment or for education.
More
specifically, it would not only undo the great progress we have
made in increasing the diversity of students on formerly white
campuses, but it would also have a secondary consequence of
discouraging potential donors from giving to higher education
in general.
In closing let me say that if this policy is allowed to stand, the
clear message it will send to young minority men and women is
that their higher education in predominantly white institutions
is a matter of indifference to this nation. Coming after so many
years of trying to persuade them that, in fact, the way is open,
and that their presence is desirable and desired in the
educational community, and necessary for our national social
and economic well being, that would be a tragic outcome
indeed . •
LETTE RS from Santa Fe
April 1991
�W
hen Assistant Secretary of Education Michael
Williams announced in December that awarding
scholarships on the basis of race or ethnicity
violates civil rights laws, even President Bush treated him like
the grinch who stole Christmas. The education establishment
was quick to attack Mr. Williams' temerity; one University
of Pennsylvania law professor said, "it's obscene to use civil
rights laws to support the exclusion of minority students from
higher education ." The fact that Mr. Williams is black made
him an apostate in his critics' eyes.
The reaction to Williams' announcement is a measure of
how topsy-turvy the civil rights world has become in the last
twenty-five years. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 promised to
banish invidious distinctions between individuals based on
race, national origin, gender or religion; now people who call
themselves proponents of civil rights want preferences handed
out according to such characteristics. One school of education
gives black students a .5 grade point advantage over other
students; another university pays black students $550 for
maintaining a C average, $1,IOO for anything above a C +
average; a university graduate school guarantees full financial support, regardless of need, for any minority student
admitted. Students who attend these schools are treated to
different standards depending on their race . We used to call
that discrimination. There is something inherently patronizing in such attempts at race-based preference, no matter how
good the intentions. Why should a black student be rewarded
for mediocre academic performance, and what possible
incentive does he have to excel if his grades will be artificially
inflated simply because of his skin color? Assigning benefits
because of race-whether those benefits consist of college
admission, financial aid, or better grades-is unfair both to
those who are denied such benefits and those who are the
intended beneficiaries.
Five years ago when my oldest son was a senior in high
school he received several unsolicited offers of scholarship aid
from colleges to which he had not applied . One private
college in Pennsylvania promised him a four-year scholarship
for $22,000, without even seeing a copy of his high school
Linda Chavez is former executive director of the U.S. Civil Rights
Commission. She is presently an author and syndicated columnist.
April 1991
.
transcript. These schools were interested only in his status as
a "minority" student. I couldn't help but wonder whether
there wasn't some promising non-minority student somewhere in Pennsylvania-perhaps the son or daughter of an
out-of-work coal miner-who wouldn't benefit more from
such scholarship aid than my son. In the end, my son turned
down all the scholarships he was ollered; he knew his high
school grades didn't merit them and our family's financial
status certainly didn't justify his receiving such largesse.
Instead, he decided to attend our state university, whose
regular admission standards he could meet and whose tuition
he could afford. But he was left feeling uncomfortable
nonetheless. He never thought of himself as disadvantaged or
as a victim, but these schools assumed that he was both
simply because of his ethnicity.
Historically, colleges have dispensed scholarships to students who possessed some special talent, usually academic or
athletic, or who showed promise but could not afford to pay
for college. These criteria still offer the most equitable way to
distribute financial assistance.•
For the Record:
Knowing they would have different views of the
matter, I asked both Donald Stewart and Linda
Chavez to respond to the issue of race-based
scholarships raised recently by the Department of
Education. I asked them both to address, in
particular, the more philosophical question of the
correctness of such scholarships . It is probably right to
note here that although nearly 60 percent of St.
John's students receive some form of financial aid ,
the college has no scholarships for which race or
minority status is a criterion. Our college catalogue
states that all benefits are given " without regard to
race, color, creed, sex, or national origin," and we
intend to abide by that principle.
-J.A .
LETTERS from Santa Fe
Page 7
�David Bolotin
In Defense of the Great Books
W
We need t,o
resist the tide
that would take
us nowhere but
to shallow
relativism.
e are living in a time when many
of the academic heirs of the
Western tradition are turning
against that tradition. It is not
merely that an old philosophy is being challenged by a new philosophy, or an old claim to
revelation by a new one. Rather, the very
presuppositions of all philosophy and of all
Biblical religion are being denied. And they are
being denied not in the name of Eastern
wisdom, but in the name of history and of
cultural diversity. The fundamental presupposition of all philosophy and theology, namely
that there is a lasting and comprehensive truth,
which the thinking individual is capable of
attaining, or at least approaching, is being
denied in the name of the view that all "truth"
is merely relative to the historical context of the
thinker, and that all historical or cultural or
even group perspectives are equally true or
valid. Even the Western science of nature is
coming to be seen as a cultural myth, and a
myth of no greater truth and dignity than
many others we might choose to fabricate.
Now this prejudice, as we know, has been
around for a long time. But recently, within
the American academic establishment, it has
taken on a new and particularly threatening
form. It is now no longer just a theoretical
claim, but it has taken on an explicitly
political cast. Those, like ourselves, who try
to keep alive the possibility that there is a
non-historical truth, and hence that some
perspectives might be closer to the truth, and
hence better, than others, no longer hear
merely that our views are true only for us, or
only in a relative sense. We, or at least the
principles of our Program, are now also being
attacked by many in the academic establishment as elitist, ethnocentric, logocentric,
racist, sexist, religionist, and so forth . Book
lists such as ours are now being criticized as a
kind of canon, and our attachment to the
great books is said to stem from political
motives, namely in order to exclude outsiders
and to maintain our own priestly power
within a larger system of oppression. Finally,
more and more of our critics are coming to
see the chief, or at least most urgent, task of
contemporary education as the political one
of eradicating all traces of what they regard as
elitist or exclusionist ways of thinking (cf.
John Searle, "The Storm over the U niversity,'' The N ew Yo rk R eview of Books,
December 6, 1990, p. 34 ff.).
Widespread Lowering of Standards
Now if this attack should come to prevail
among us, our reading list would of course be
significantly transformed. But the mere addition of some mediocre or merely good books is
not the greatest evil that would ensue. (Indeed,
a few of the changes might even be for the
better.) Rather, the chief evil is the way that all
books would come to be read. The old books
would come to be seen chiefly, if not entirely,
as steppingstones that have prepared the way
for the ideas of the present, which in tum are
preparing the way for the ideas of the future,
ideas whose merit consists solely in their
alleged openness to diversity and their alleged
freedom from the sin of being judgmental. The
old books would no longer have the power to
challenge our students' uncritical acceptance of
the contemporary views that inundate their
ears day after day. When Plato or Hegel, for
instance, argue that the life of the mind is the
highest life, we would no longer even consider
these arguments as they present themselves,
since we would "know" in advance that they
could not possibly be true. W e would " know"
that the authors are merely expressing a
Eurocentric perspective that fails to respect the
equal dignity and validity of all lifestyles. The
very claim that there are any permanent
standards by which individuals, groups, and
cultures have to be measured would be met
with selfrighteous indignation or passed over
with an embarrassed or uncomprehending
silence. The lowering of standards that so
permeates the contemporary world would be
fixed in place by the denial in principle that
there are any true standards, except perhaps
for standards so empty that no one could
conceivably take offense at them.
Upholding a Higher Truth
It is often said by critics of the traditional
curriculum that we need a new kind of
education in order to prepare our students for
a future in which diverse cultures will become
increasingly interdependent. Now if this
claim were advanced merely in order to
recommend serious study of great books from
non-W estern cultures, it would deserve serious consideration. But what is more commonly said, even by the less radical among
our critics, is that we need an essentially new
curriculum, one that will introduce our
students to the new ideas that will dominate
the new kind of future. And this argument is
deeply mistaken. For even apart from its
exaggerated claim to be able to predict the
dominant ideas of the future, it forgets that
the primary question, for us and for all
thinking individuals, is whether those future
ideas will be true or truer than those of the
past. Not because we stand for the past, but
because we stand for the possibility of a
higher truth than the so-called truths of
culture and history, we need to resist the tide
that would take us nowhere but to shallow
relativism or to shallow conformity with ideas
that present themselves as those of the future.•
Davzd Bolotin is a tutor at St. john 's College.
Page 8
LETfERS/rom Santa Fe
April 199 1
�Donald Kagan
An Address to the Class of 1994
adies and gentlemen of the Class of
1994, parents, and friends, greetings and welcome to Yale. To a
greater degree than ever before this
class is made up of a sampling, not of
Connecticut, not of New England, not even of
North America, but of all the continents of the
world. As I stood a year ago greeting the Class
of 1993, I was thrilled by how much Yale (and
America) has been enriched in the three
centuries since its foundation by the presence
and the contribution of the many racial and
ethnic groups rarely if ever represented in its
early years. The greater diversity among our
faculty and student body, as in the American
people at large, iS' a source of strength and it
should be a source of pride, as well
But ethnic and racial diversity
its problems. Few governme
have been able to comb·
internal peace , harmon
unity required to achi
the greatest success
achieved by the
sorbed a wide variet
government, gener
sity, and gradual
citizenship, the rul
the law. But the
over independent
tained peace and
nations whose cul
L
tic participation in go
unified population, as
republic must.
From the Middle Ages
1918, the Hapsburg empire 1
job of bringing a great variety
ethnic groups into the mainstream of g
ment and society, but it never succeeded in
dissolving the distinct identities of the different
groups, living together in separate communities, speaking their native languages, competing and quarreling with one another, and
finally hostile to the dominant ethnic groups.
The destruction of the Hapsburg empire and
Donald Kagan is Richard M. Colgate Professor of
History and Classics at Yale and Dean of Yale
College. He is a member of the Board of Visitors and
Governors of St. john's College. He is the author of,
among other books, a four-volume history of the
Pewponnesian War. The present essay, taken from his
address to the freshman class at Yale College in
September 1990, appeared in the January 1991 issue
of Commentary.
April 1991
E
PLURIBUS
UNUM
dissolution into smaller units did not end
ion, which today threatens the
successor states as Czechoslo-
s
nd ethnicity have
erlul forces, for
1istic hopes for a
ng peoples and
unity of all
national and
major part in
Id wars. Even
Soviet Union
o peace both in
e brought interand all but de-
The assault on
the chnracter of
Western
civilization
badly distorts
history.
t had much in common.
spoke English, and pracorm of Protestant Christianity.
ore long, however, people of many different
ethnic, religious, and national origins arrived
with different cultural traditions, speaking
various languages . Except for the slaves
brought from Africa, most came voluntarily, in
families and as individuals, usually eager to
satisfy desires that could not be met in their
former homelands. They swiftly became citizens and, within a generation or so, Americans. In our own time, finally, after too long a
delay, African Americans also have achieved
freedom, equality before the law, and full
citizenship. People of different origins live side
by side, often in ethnic communities, but never
in enclaves separated from other enclaves.
Although some inherit greater advantages than
others, all are equal before the law, which does
not recognize ethnic or other groups but only
LETTERS from Santa Fe
Page 9
�individuals. Each person is free to maintain old
cultural practices, to abandon them for ones
found outside his ethnic group, or to create
some mixture or combination of both of them.
Our country is not a nation like most others.
"Nation" comes from the Latin word for
birth: a nation is a group of people of common
ancestry, a breed. Chinese, Frenchmen, and
Swedes feel a bond that ties them to their
compatriots as to a greatly extended family and
provides the unity and commitment they need.
But Americans ·do not share a common
ancestry and a common blood. They and their
forebears come from every comer of the earth.
What they have in common and what brings
them together is a system of laws and beliefs
that shaped the establishment of the country, a
system developed within the context of Western
civilization. It should be obvious, then, that all
Americans need to learn about that civilization
if we are to understand our country's origins,
and share in its heritage, purposes, and
character.
At present, however, the study of Western
civilization in our schools and colleges is under
heavy attack. We are told that we should not
give a privileged place in the curriculum to the
great works of its history and literature. At the
extremes of this onslaught the civilization itself,
and therefore its study, is attacked for its
history of slavery, imperialism, racial prejudice, addiction to war, its exclusion of
women and people not of the white race from
its rights and privilege. Some criticize the study
of W estern civilization as narrow, limiting,
arrogant, and discriminatory, asserting that it
has little or no value for those of different
cultural origins. Others concede the value of
the Western heritage but regard it as only one
among many, all of which have equal claim to
our attention. These attacks are unsound. It is
both right and necessary to place Western
civilization and the culture to which it has
given rise at the center of our studies, and we
fail to do so at the peril of our students, our
country, and of the hopes for a democratic,
liberal society emerging throughout the world
today.
For Du Bois the wisdom of the West's great
writers was valuable for all, and he would not
allow himself or others to be deprived of it
because of the accident of race. Such was and is
the view of the millions of people of both
genders and every ethnic group who have
personally experienced the value and significance of the Western heritage.
The assault on the character of Western
civilization badly distorts history. The West's
flaws are real enough, but they are common to
almost all the civilizations known on any
continent at any time in human history. What
is remarkable about the Western heritage and
what makes it essential are the important ways
in which it has departed from the common
experience. More than any other it has asserted
the claims of the individual against those of the
state, limiting the state's power and creating a
realm of privacy into which it cannot penetrate.
By means of the philosophical, scientific,
agricultural, and industrial revolutions that
have taken place in the West, human beings
have been able to produce and multiply the
things needed for life so as to make survival
and prosperity possible for ever-increasing
numbers, without rapacious wars and at a level
that permits dignity and independence.
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces
not. Across the color line I walk arm
in arm with Balzac and Dumas
where smiling men and welcomin~
women glide in gilded halls. From
out of the caves of evening that swing
Champion of Democratic Government
W estern civilization is the champion of
representative democracy as the normal way
for human beings to govern themselves, in
pl~ce of the different varieties of monarchy,
oligarchy, and tyranny that have ruled most of
the human race throughout history and rule
most of the world today. It has produced the
theory and practice of the separation of church
and state, thereby protecting each from the
other and creating a free and safe place for
individual conscience. At its core is a tolerance
and respect for diversity unknown in most
cultures. One of its most telling characteristics
is its encouragement of criticism of itself and its
ways. Only in the W est can one imagine a
'.11ovement to neglect the culture's own heritage
m favor of some other. T he university itself, a
specially sh eltered place for such selfexamination, is a W estern phenomenon, only
partially assimilated by other cultures.
My claim is that most of the sins and errors
of W estern civilization are those of the human
race. Its special achievements and values
however, are gifts to all humanity and ar~
widely seen as such around the world today,
although their authorship is rarely acknowl-
LET TERS from Santa Fe
Apr il 199 1
Universal Wisdom of the West
In response to those who claim that Western
culture is relevant only to a limited group it is
enough to quote W .E. B. Du Bois, the AfricanAmerican intellectual and political leader ,
writing at the turn of the century in a Jim
Crow America:
Page 10
between the strong-limbed earth and
the tracery of the stars, I summon
Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul
I will, and they come all graciously
with no scorn or condescension. So,
wed with Truth, I dwell above the
veil.
�edged. People everywhere envy not only its
science and technology but also its freedom and
popular government and the institutions that
make them possible. The roots of these things
are to be found uniquely in the experience and
ideas of the West.
In shon, Western culture and institutions
are the most powerful paradigm in the world
today. As they increasingly become the objects
of emulation by peoples everywhere, their
study becomes essential for those of all nations.
How odd that Americans should choose this
moment to declare Western civilization irrelevant, unnecessary, and even vicious.
There is, in fact, great need to make the
Western heritage the central and common
study in American schools, colleges, and
universities today. Happily, student bodies
have grown vastly more diverse. Less happily,
students are seeing themselves increasingly as
pans of groups, distinct from other groups .
They often feel pressure to communicate
mainly with others like themselves within the
group and to pursue intellectual interests that
are of no panicular imponance to it. The result
that threatens is a series of discrete experiences
in college, isolated from one another, segregated and panial. But a liberal education needs to
create a challenge to the ideas, habits, and
attitudes that students bring with them, so that
their vision may be broadened, their knowledge expanded, their understanding deepened.
That challenge must come from studies that
are unfamiliar, sometimes uncomfonably so,
and from a wide variety of fellow students from
many different backgrounds, holding different
opinions, expressing them freely to one another, and exploring them together.
The Common Culture of Change
If the students are to educate one another in
this way, some pan of their studies must be
common, and their natural subject is the
experience of which our country is the heir and
of which it remains an imponant pan. There
is, after all, a common culture in our society,
itself various, changing, rich with the contributions of Americans who come or whose
ancestors came from every continent in the
world, yet recognizably and unmistakably
American. At this moment in history an
objective observer would have to say that
American culture derives chiefly from the
experience of Western civilization, and especially from England, whose language and
institutions are the most copious springs from
which it draws its life. I say this without
embarrassment, as an immigrant who arrived
here as an infant from Lithuania, a tiny
country on the fringe of the West, without any
connection with the Anglo-Saxon founders of
the United States. Our students will be
handicapped in their lives after college if they
do not have a broad and deep knowledge of the
April 1991
culture in which they live and the roots from
which it comes.
There are implications, too, for our public
life. Constitutional government and democracy
are not natural blessings; they are far from
common in the world today, and they have
been terribly rare in the history of the human
race . They are the product of some peculiar
developments in the history of Western civilization, and they, too, need to be thoroughly
understood by all our citizens if our ways of
governing ourselves is to continue and flourish .
We must all understand how it works, how it
came to be, and how hard it is to sustain.
"Hang Together or Hang Separately"
Our country was invented and has grown
strong by achieving unity out of diversity while
respecting the imponance and integrity of the
many elements that make it up. The founders
chose as a slogan e pluribus unum , which
provided a continuing and respected place for
the plurality of the various groups that made
up the country, but which also emphasized the
unity that was essential for the nation ' s
well-being. During the revolution that brought
us to independence, Benjamin Franklin addressed his colleagues, different from one
another in so many ways, yet dependent on
one another for survival and success, using a
serious pun to make his point . He told them
that they must all hang together or assuredly
they would all hang separately. That warning
still has meaning for Americans today. As our
land becomes ever more diverse, the danger of
separation, segregation by ethnic group, mutual suspicion, and hostility increases and with
it the danger to the national unity which,
ironically, is essential to the qualities that
attracted its many peoples to this country. Our
colleges and universities have a great responsibility to communicate and affirm the value of
our common heritage, even as they question it
and continue to broaden it with rich new
elements.
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 1994,
you, too, have imponant responsibilities. Take
pride in your families and in the culture they
and your forebears have brought to our shores.
Learn as much as you can about that culture
and share it with all of us. Learn as much as
you can of what the panicular cultures of
others have to offer. But most imponant, do
not fail to learn the great traditions that are the
special gifts of that Western civilization which
is the main foundation of our university and
our country. Do not let our separate heritages
draw us apan and build walls between us, but
use them to enrich the whole. In that way they
may join with our common heritage to teach
us, to bring us together as friends, to unite us
into a single people seeking common goals, to
make a reality of the ideal inherent in the motto
·e pluribus unum. •
LETTERS from Santa Fe
Page 11
�• Foonded:
Established in 1696 in Annapolis, Maryland, as King William's School and chartered in 1784 as St .
John's College. Great Books Program adopted 1937. Second campus in Santa Fe opened in 1964.
Profile
Profile
Profile
Profile
Profile
Profile
• Cunicuklm:
An integrated, four-year, non-elective arts and science program based on reading and discussing, m
loosely chronological order, the Great Books of Western Civilization.
•Approach:
Tutorials, laboratories, and seminars requiring intense participation replace more traditional lectures.
Classes are very small. Student/faculty ratio is 8: 1. St. John 's is independent and non-sectarian.
• Degree Granted:
Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts.
• Student Body:
Enrollment is limited to about 400 students on each campus. Current freshman class made up of 55 %
men and 45% women, from 30 states and several foreign countries. Fifty-seven percent receive
fmancial aid. Students may transfer between the Santa Fe and Annapolis campuses.
• Aklmni Careers:
Education-21%, business-20%, law-10 %, visual and performing arts-9%, medicine-7 % ,
science and engineering- 7 % , computer science-6 % , writing and publishing-5 % .
• Graduate Institute:
The Graduate Institute in Liberal Education is an interdisciplinary Master's degree program based on
the same principles as the undergraduate program . Ollered on both campuses year-round.
�
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Letters from Santa Fe, April 1991
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Letters from Santa Fe, St. John’s College—Santa Fe, New Mexico, April 1991
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Agresto, John
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Bolotin, David, 1944-
Kagan, Donald
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Text
Do the Liberal Arts Today Serve any Useful Public Function?
John Agresto
I picked this somewhat provocative title because I think that the liberal
arts and liberal education, if they are to survive, have to take more
seriously than they do this question of their usefulness, especially their
public usefulness. The liberal arts are dying in America, and they are
dying in large measure because the public is unconvinced that any
attention to these subjects, especially the humanities, are worth the
cost, the effort, or the time.
If you have any doubt regarding the decline of liberal arts education,
just look at what students study in college these days. We all know a
time when it was assumed that when students went off to college that a
goodly number of them would study the liberal arts. We knew that
many of them would major in English – which seemed always a
preferred concentration – while others would study History or
Mathematics or one of the hard sciences. There was, as well, always a
serious handful who gravitated towards Foreign Languages or
Philosophy or the Classics.
So, where do things stand today in higher education? Well, today four of
the top majors – Business Studies, Education, the Health Professions,
and Engineering – account for 41% of all Bachelors degrees, while
English and Literature accounts for a mere 3% of all such degrees.
Today, just over 1% of our students major in any of the Physical
Sciences, and Philosophy accounts for less than one half of one percent
of the whole total. In fact, there are more Bachelor degrees given in
1
�something called “Parks, Recreation, Fitness and Leisure Studies” than
are awarded in all the fields of History put together.
Why is this the case? Let me give the most general answer first and then
make it more specific in a bit. The liberal arts are dying because most
Americans don’t see the point of them. They don’t get why a person
should study literature or history or the classics -- or, more
contemporarily, feminist criticism, whiteness studies, or the literature
of post-colonial states -- when their son can study engineering or their
daughter get a business degree. It’s not only that they and their children
want to get a good job and make lots of money – they often also want to
make a contribution more generally to the world, do something useful
for themselves and their neighbors, even their country, and they don’t
see what “use” the liberal arts (in either their more traditional or
especially in their newer formulations) are either to themselves or to
society.
Now we all know that talking about “usefulness” gives most liberal
artists the willies. We in the liberal arts are always more comfortable
with divorcing ourselves from utility, with seeing our enterprise as
something higher than training people in the more useful arts or helping
people gain a living.
Now, my point is not to try to convince you of the worthiness of other
forms of education, though I know I tend to see them as more worthy
than many of my colleagues do. And my point is definitely not to tell
you that today liberal education needs to adopt a rhetoric of usefulness
deceive the public into thinking we’re something we are not. My point
2
�is simply that the liberal arts are, when at their best, not only of
immense value – let’s even say of “use” -- not only for each of us as
individuals but I think also and especially of use to society at large.
Let me go back to the first years of this country. I’m reminded of the
famous phrase of John Witherspoon, an early president of what would
later become Princeton University, who said to his students that they
should not “live useless and die contemptible.” To Witherspoon, to go to
college and not draw from it some things – many things – of use to one’s
self and to the world at large would have surely seemed quite strange.
And, recognizing that among those who went to Princeton and listened
to President Witherspoon were 9 future cabinet members, 12
governors, 21 senators, 39 congressmen, 3 Supreme Court justices, a
vice president, and a president, James Madison, who was also one of 5 of
Witherspoon’s students at the Constitutional Convention, I can only
assume that the good Mr. Witherspoon thought it was particularly
contemptible to be useless in the public realm, not just ineffectual in our
private lives.
Now, part of the reason why I’m troubled by the way liberal education
seems always ready to denigrate other forms of education or to criticize
society at large for our problems is that, in trying to shunt the blame
elsewhere, we absolve ourselves too easily for our own decline. We
have worn what we saw as our purity and inutility as a badge. When
students turned away from us, we too often said it was their fault – that
they were more interested in jobs and money-making than in education.
We blamed pushy parents, or the materialism of modern life, or the rise
3
�(as this conference’s brochure mentions) of “consumerism.” Yes, we
should be furious over the coming death of the liberal arts in America –
but we should examine ourselves (and by “ourselves” I do not mean St.
John’s in particular but the enterprise of liberal education at large) and
be honest with ourselves. And, having come to grips with all the causes
of our recent decline, we might begin to see that the death of the liberal
arts is less a murder than a suicide.
We all know how the liberal arts have marginalized themselves out of
existence: Read the course catalogues of so many college and see how,
for instance, departments of literature have become shells of their
former selves. With the rise of graduate school analyses and
specialization that is now so much a part of the undergraduate
curriculum, how much vitality has been lost from literature. Gone today
in too many places are all the stories that showed us the world with its
joys and sorrows, gone all our marveling over the varieties of human
types or stories of honor and treachery, of hopes ascendant and hopes
dashed. All replaced by more ideologically-driven studies; all replaced
with our contemporary infatuation with race and class and politics.
Too many History departments stopped trying to show us all we could
learn from the past and began to think it best to show us all we couldn’t
learn from the past. After all, to take just one example, if the Founders
of this country of ours were little more than white racist slaveholders
who set up a government to in order to line their pockets and protect
their interests, who in his right mind would want to waste his time and
his parents money to study the Founding period seriously?
4
�Looking over the liberal arts, I’m not sure which of the many ‘isms’ of
today has done the most damage. Is it the relativism and
postmodernism that we fought over so furiously in the ‘80’s? Or is it the
ideology of multiculturalism, which promised to expand greatly our
worldview, but instead narrowed it mortally by making us ashamed to
take so seriously the works of dead white European males? Is it the
remnants of a kind of pop-Marxism, which always has us look for
economic and material causes as the source of human motivation and
thus diminishes what used to be seen as the sovereign power of
arguments, thoughts, and ideas? Is it the rise of an ideology of “critical
thinking” that passes itself off as the core of the liberal activity, but,
sadly, spends more of its time in being critical than being thoughtful? Or
is it, as I just mentioned before, the rise of the specialization of the
graduate schools, which specialization has been the engine of progress
in many of the advanced sciences and technology, but the cause of so
much smallness of both mind and vision in the humanities?
Let me stay on specialization for a second. How clearly I remember
teaching at other reputable liberal arts colleges where the best
undergraduates would tell me they wanted to double major… triple
major if they could. Why? Because even they knew that what they were
getting was too narrow, too small, too particularized and specialized to
satisfy them. Maybe if they double majored they could see more.
(Sadly, as too many of them found out, only rarely did double majoring
expand anything. Often it meant closing oneself off from all else that
should be learned.)
5
�Nevertheless, you see, students are generally not the problem. The best
of them do want, in what I heard that Eudora Welty once said, “to see
the world and see it whole.” Not see it “all.” Even they know no one can
ever see it all. But so many do want to see it “whole.” See its
interconnections, see the relationship between causes and effects;
thought and act, act and consequences; between love and jealousy,
jealousy and revenge, revenge and justice, justice and all other human
goods. They have the vague sense that the universe is actually a cosmos
– not a jumble of isolated and discrete, unrelated items but a web of
relationships, where one insight leads to another, where one answer
leads to another answer.
Again, it’s not the students who are the problem. They have the same
questions they have always had. Some have questions that revolve
around culture and art; others have questions about why the natural
world or the animal kingdom are they way they are. Almost all have
moral questions -- – What is just? What makes something worthy? What
do I owe others? What do others owe me?
Now, that said, I do not believe that students are necessarily interested
in having questions piled on top of questions in some endless stream of
doubt. (“You think you have questions?! Wait till you see how many
questions I have for you!” the tutor intimates. “And wait till this
Socrates guy confronts you…then they’ll be a million questions!”) If all
you have are questions, intriguing as they may be, not many students
will be interested. Even Socrates, with all his questioning, still wanted
to know the answers.
6
�Still, I admit, the opposite is worse. To say that the liberal arts and we
ever so humane humanists have not only all the questions but all the
answers -- answers that we will preach to you on every topic from the
evils of capitalism to the foolishness of religious beliefs to the meaning
of social justice -- well, having all the answers into which we “instruct”
our students may well be the most corrupting and prevalent of
contemporary academic evils. On many campuses how often is it the
non-liberal studies that open up students’ minds while the humanities
and their practitioners seem more intent on preaching and converting
than in opening and liberating. And what parents in their right minds
want to spend 50k a year for that?
So, where does liberal education go from here? I’m especially interested
in the issue I raised at the start, the question I so inelegantly framed in
terms of use. Where do we go to show once again that the liberal arts
can be of use for us as individuals and of benefit again to society as a
whole?
First, as I’ve already said too often, let’s stop denigrating the non-liberal
arts and stop questioning the motives of those who look to pursue them.
We do not build ourselves up by tearing down other worthy modes of
education. Was Jefferson any less intelligent, less human or less
“humane,” for having been an architect and farmer as well as a
philosopher and political scientist?
Second, let’s do what we can to help our students see what the
important questions are and what the variety of important answers
might be. Not what our answer is; not what the answer of the
7
�supposedly most just or sensitive or socially aware people are, but what
the range and scope of all serious answers might be.
Third, let’s put aside all the overblown platitudes and flowery banalities
about ourselves – how we educate “the Whole Man” or how we feed the
spirit and elevate the soul, or how we are the ones who really teach
people how to think, or how we are the source and font of ever so much
humane and ethical instruction.
OK, if overblown hoo-ha isn’t what we should be chasing, what should
we be doing? What actually IS the peculiar excellence of the liberal arts
that we should present to prospective students and their parents?
Let me cite a modest statement by John Henry Newman: The liberal arts
are that “great but ordinary means to a great but ordinary end.” What
ordinary but great things might he be talking about? How about
learning how to read. Read? What an ordinary thing you say. Yes, but
when you read carefully and sympathetically (again, not exactly
“critically” but sympathetically) you open the door to an amazing thing –
You open the door to another person’s mind. You have the ability to do
a truly great thing – you now have the ability to possess another’s
thoughts. It’s truly marvellous: We humans may want someone else’s
beauty or strength; we may want something physical and bodily. But
we can’t. We can never really possess someone else’s material body
even with the best of medical science at our disposal. But we can have
the part of him or her that’s not material. We can possess someone
else’s mind. Jefferson’s body may be mouldering in the grave; but his
8
�mind can still live in ours. His mind, his ideas and reasons, can live
forever in us because he wrote and we have learned how to read.
What else? Well, as I said before, among the best thing about
adolescents is that most of them are looking for answers to their
deepest questions – questions about love and justice, happiness and
desire, nature and its workings. Again, great but ordinary matters. But
this means, I believe, that so long as we can reinvigorate real literature,
real philosophy, real historical and biographical studies that truly try to
understand rather than debunk the past, real inquiry into the fine arts
with serious inquiries into the beautiful and the sublime, and solid
mathematics and science, all might yet be well.
But this means reviving an older view of liberal education. I was
reminded recently – not by Cardinal Newman but by Josef Pieper – of a
sentence in Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “The
Philosopher and the Poet have this in common – they both begin by
marvelling.” The liberal arts do not begin in doubt, not even exactly in
questioning, but simply in wonder, in marvelling. We begin as Miranda,
the marvelling one, did – not with being critics of the world but with
simply being overwhelmed with the wonder of the world. From there,
all our questions flow -- Why are things as they are; why is the universe
as it is? What are people really like? What am I to do? Again, all great
but, in a real way, ordinary matters.
To begin here, with wonder, is perhaps a start in answering the first
part of what we seek – What is the use of a liberal education for me, for
the individual. In this account, the first benefit is that it begins to satisfy
9
�the human craving to know, to have insight into serious answers to our
most serious questions, perhaps even “to see the world and see it
whole,” when that longing in us is most alive.
Does this education have any other more outwardly useful or practical
import for us as individuals? Yes, it does. Again to refer to Newman,
such an education gives us a clearer and more conscious view of our
own opinions and refines them. It helps us “to disentangle a skein of
thought, to detect what’s sophistical, and discard what’s irrelevant.” It
shows us “how to influence others, how to come to an understanding
with them, and how to bear with them.” In overcoming our ignorance of
the past through history and our ignorance of human nature through
philosophy and literature, we are less likely to be ruled by slogans or
unexamined opinions, less likely to be moved by emotion simply or
demagogues, less easily duped because we lack a conception of the evil
possibilities of our natures.
I’m reminded of Abraham Lincoln, who, while he hardly went to
school at all, was by any and every measure “educated,” liberally
educated. He read, as we know, biographies and histories, he read the
Bible and Shakespeare, and he read literature, especially poetry. He did
this for a kind of highest use. He did all this, as one of his biographers
said, not just to know how better to write or speak but “to learn what
the patterns of a man’s life might be like.”
Still, if all his education did was make Lincoln into a private man
useful to himself in his everyday life, none of would notice, none of us
really care. What we remember was that Lincoln – and before him all
10
�the great men of the American Founding – knew that what was good for
them as private intellects might also be of great value, of great use, to
creating and then re-creating a whole nation, perhaps a whole world.
Jefferson learned from the study of modern moral and political
philosophy the self-evident truths that lay behind the writing of his (and
our) Declaration of Independence. Or consider James Madison: Without
the study of the history of all prior democracies or his inquiries into all
confederacies, both classical and modern, coupled with his deep
reflection on what we were once bold to call “human nature,” Madison
could not have become the Father of the Constitution. Without their
philosophical, political, and historical studies of the preconditions of
popular governments and the nature of tyrannical rule, Madison,
Hamilton, and Jay could not have written the Federalist Papers, nor
could the populace have read them. It was hardly modern political
science that was behind the making of America – it was the liberal arts.
Remember what John Witherspoon told so many of that early
generation – do not live useless and die contemptible. I think I’m right
to say they followed this admonition.
But let me go beyond talking about the liberal arts and high
statesmanship and spend a minute just on the liberal arts and the rest of
us. What else might the liberal arts do that’s of use, of value, for all
society?
Again, from Newman: Our studies aim “at raising the intellectual tone
of society, cultivating the public mind, supplying true principles to
popular enthusiasms and fixed aim to popular aspirations, giving
11
�enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, and refining the
intercourse of private life.” While we might spend five more talks on
each of these seemingly ordinary but truly great aims, let me spend a
minute on just one that has always struck me – the cultivation of the
public and the public mind.
Indeed, while I know it’s unfashionable these days to say this, I also
know that the liberal arts once gave a lovely gift to society: It
transmitted the great heights of culture, this culture, to everyone. While
other parts of a university education might be progressive and forwardlooking, the liberal arts had no hesitation in looking backwards. It
understood it had a conserving function to play. It preserved for
everyone, not just the elites, beautiful music, fine art, high culture,
fabulous literature, good poetry. In this regard it wasn’t ashamed to be
Western, or even Eurocentric. Indeed, it had a kind of honest pride in
being the caretakers of such wonderful treasures, our treasures. Liberal
education once knew that its keeping the culture alive was actually one
of the most publicly useful thing it could do. It gave beauty and
intelligence, tone and cultivation, as Newman says, to the whole society.
In this way the liberal arts were for more than the simply the
enjoyment of a few lucky students or the domain of the rich and wellborn – they were the gift the liberal arts gave to everyone. Back then,
the liberal arts didn’t feel bad that Dante and Homer were dead white
males. Nor did we, the children of working men and the grand children
of immigrant women, feel bad about it either. In fact, back then
12
�humanists actually thought, and rightly so, that keeping Shakespeare
alive was a universal gift, not an ethnocentric act.
Having been given such treasures, it is now our turn to repay
Shakespeare and Milton, Aristotle and Madison. So, we repay them as
best we can – by keeping them alive. Their bodies, as I said before, may
be dead, but they aren’t. And keeping the words and thoughts and
works of great men and women alive is not only of the highest use for us
both individually and as a society, but an act of repayment, of justice, to
each of them.
13
�
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Do the liberal arts today serve any useful public function?
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LETTERSJrom Santa Fe
St. John's College-Santa Fe, New Mexico
Spring 1993
"BUT WHAT WILL I DO WITH IT?"
OR, BUSINESS AND LIBERAL EDUCATION
I
I NS IDE
THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY
page2
CHARTING A COURSE FOR
LIBERAL EDUCATION
pages
CREATIVITY, THE CLASSICS
AND THE CORPORATION
page 7
LIBERAL EDUCATION:
PREPARING TOMORROW'S
BUSINESS EXECUTIVES
page 9
AN ORAL EXAM FOR
THE NEW LIBERAL ARTS
GRADUATE
page 12
once read how the colony of Virginia asked the British Crown for
authority to begin a college in the New World in hopes that a proper education
might help save souls. The response was blunt-"Souls? Damn your souls.
Raise tobacco!"
We have never been, it would seem, without the conflict of making a
living on one side and liberal learning on the other. But, today, the situation
might well be more extreme than in the past. As I mentioned in a previous
edition of this newsletter, probably no more than 15 to 20 percent of all
college students today are concentrating on the liberal arts or some area of
the liberal arts, and the percentage decreases each year.
Let me flirt with heresy for a second and say that surely worse things
have happened in the world, even in the world of higher education.
Professional schools and pre-professional courses have improved immensely
over the years. They offer challenges to the intellect and often broaden
rather than constrict a person's horizons. Many times they offer the rigor
and richness once found in liberal education. And they are increasingly
attracting the better students.
Conversely, liberal education today, in many places, is a pretty sad
affair. Little rigor, much politics, and scarcely a view of what excellence or
even "well-roundedness" might be. Today liberal education is not often the
formation of penetrating minds and the cultivation of high character (much
less the saving of souls). Far too many institutions have abandoned the
broad sweep of general education requirements in important fields of
knowledge and substituted choice for sequence, aimlessness for rigor, and
boutique courses for difficult fields such as mathematics and science. An
a la carte curriculum is not liberal education. Liberal education is, we forget,
the polar opposite of dilettantism, unfocused electives and groundlessness.
What I have tried to do in this issue, besides my usual moaning about
the condition of the world, is not to show that a professional education is
bad but that it is not nearly as useful either to a career or to life as a good liberal
education. I simply wanted to re-present the old view that a solid liberal
arts background is good in itself and, in an age when most people will
change jobs eight or nine times before they die, good for the more practical
parts of life, too.
JUST SAY NO TO COLLEGE
page 14
John Agresto
�FROM
THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY
DISCOURSE VII: "KNOWLEDGE
VIEWED IN RELATION TO
PROFESSIONAL SKILL"
"A CULTIVATED
INTELLECT, BECAUSE
by
John Henry Cardinal Newman
IT IS A GOOD IN ITSELF,
BRINGS WITH IT A
POWER AND A GRACE
TO EVERY WORK AND
OCCUPATION WHICH
IT UNDERTAKES, AND
ENABLES US TO BE
MORE USEFUL, AND
TOA GREATER
NUMBER."
pa ge t wo
• We know, not by a direct
and simple vision, not at a glance,
but, as it were, by piecemeal and
accumulation, by a mental process,
by going round an object, by the
comparison, the combination, the
mutual correction, the continual
adaptation, of many partial notions.
. . . Such a union and concert of the
inte llectual powers, such an
enlargement and development,
such a comprehensiveness, is necessarily a matter of training . But,
such a training ... is not mere application, however exemplary, which
introduces the mind to truth, nor
the reading many books, nor the
getting up many subjects, nor the
witnessing many experiments, nor
the a ttending many lectures. All
this is short of enough; a man may
have done it all, yet be lingering in
the vestibule of knowled ge: he may
not realize what his mouth utters;
he may not see with his mental eye
what confronts him; he may h ave
no grasp of things as they are; or at
least he may have no power at all
of advancing one step forward of
himself, in consequ ence of w hat he
has already acquired, no power of
d iscriminating between truth and
falsehood, of sifting out the grains
of truth from the mass, of arranging
L E T TE R S f r o m Santa Fe
things according to their real value,
and, if I may use the phrase, of
building up ideas . . . . The bodily
eye, the organ for apprehending
material objects, is provided by
nature; the eye of the mind, of
which the object is truth, is the
work of discipline and habit.
This process of training, by
which the intellect, instead of being
formed or sacrificed to some particular or accidental purpose, some
specific trade or profession, or
study of science, is disciplined for
its own sake, for the perception of
its own proper object, and for its
own highest culture, is called liberal
education... .
• Now. .. some great men ...
insist that education should be
confined to some p a rticula r and
narrow end, a nd sh ould issu e in
some definite work, which can b e
weighed and measured . "Useful"
and "utility" becomes their watchword. They very naturally go on to
ask what there is to show for the
expense of a university; what is the
real worth in the market of the article
called "a liberal education."
• ''Tis matter of astonishment,"
Locke says in his work on education,
"tha t m en of quality a nd parts
should suffer themselves to be so
far misled by custom a nd implicit
faith. Reason, if con sulted w ith,
would advise that their children's
time should be spent in acquiring
what might be useful to them, w hen
they come to be men, rather than
that their heads should be stuffed
with a deal of trash, a great part
whereof they usually never do ('tis
certain they never need to) think on
again as long as they live; and so
much of it as does stick by them
they are only the worse for."
S pr i n g 1 993
�In another passage he distinctly
limits utility in education to its
bearing on the future profession or
trade of the pupil, that is, he scorns
the idea of any education of the
intellect, simply as such. "Can
there be any thing more ridiculous," he asks, "than that a father
should waste his own money, and
his son's time, in setting him to
learn the Roman language, when at
the same time he designs him for a
trade, wherein he,
having no use of
Latin, fails not to
forget that little
which he brought
from school, and
which 'tis ten to
one he abhors for
the ill-usage it procured him? Could
it be believed, unless
we have every
where amongst us
examples of it, that
a child should be
forced to learn the
rudiments of a
language, which
he is never to use in
Nevertheless, if a liberal education consists in the culture of the
intellect, and if that culture be in
itself a good, here, without going
further, is an answer to Locke's
question; for if a healthy body is a
good in itself, why is not a healthy
intellect?
+ Let us take "useful" to mean,
not what is simply good, but what
tends to good, or is the instrument of
the course of life that
he is designed to,
and neglect all the
while the writing a
good hand, a nd
casting accounts,
which are of great advantage in all
conditions of life, and to most
trades indispensably necessary?"
Nothing of course can be more
absurd than to neglect in education
those matters which are necessary
for a boy's future calling; but the
tone of Locke's remarks evidently
implies more than this, and is
condemnator y of any teaching
which tends to the genera l
cultivation of the mind.
Sp r i n g 1 99 3
..
good; and in this sense . . . I will
show you how a liberal education is
truly and fully a useful, though it
be not a professional, edu cation. I
lay it down as a principle, which
will save us a great deal of anxiety,
tha t, though the us e ful is not
always good , the good is always
useful. I say then, if a liberal
education be good, it must necessarily be useful too.
LETT E RS f r om Sa nta F e
+ Health is a good in itself,
though nothing came of it, yet . ..
we never think of it except as useful
as well as good, though at the same
time we cannot point out any
definite and distinct work or production which it can be said to
effect. And so as regards intellectual
culture .. . . I only deny tha t we
must be able to point out, before we
have any right to call it useful, some
art, or business, or profession, or
trade, or work, as
resulting from it.
. . . On the other
t
hand, as the body
may be tended,
cherished, and
exercised with a
simple view to its
general health, so
may the intellect
also be generally
exercised in order
to perfect its state;
and this is its
cultivation.
As a man in
health can do
what an unhealthy
man cannot do ...
so in like manner
general culture of
mind is the best
aid to professional
and
scientific
study, and educa ted men can do what illiterate
cannot; a nd th e man who has
learned to think and to reason and
to compare and to discriminate and
to ana lyze, who h as refined his
taste, a nd formed his judgment,
a nd sharpened his m ental vision,
will not indeed at once be a lawyer,
or a pleader, or an orator, or a
statesman, or a physician, or a good
landlord, or a man of business, or
a soldier, or an eng ineer, or a
p a ge th r e e
�+ I have confined myself to
saying that that training of the
intellect, which is best for the
individual himself, best enables
him to discharge his duties to society.
If then a practical end must be
assigned to a university course, I
say it is that of training good members of society. It does not promise
a generation of Aristotles or
Newtons, of Napoleons or
Washingtons, of Raphaels or
Shakespeares, though such miracles
of nature it has before now contained
within its precincts. Nor is it content
on the other hand with forming the
critic or the experimentalist, the
economist or the engineer, though
such too it includes within its scope.
But a university training is the great
ordinary means to a great but
ordinary end; it aims at raising the
intellectual tone of society, at
cultivating the public mind, at
purifying the national taste, at
supplying true principles to popular
enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular
aspiration, at giving enlargement
and sobriety to the ideas of the age,
at facilitating the exercise of political
power, and refining the intercourse
of private life.
It is the education which gives a
man a clear conscious view of his
own opinions and judgments, a
truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a
force in urging them. It teaches him
to see things as they are, to go right
to the point, to disentangle a skein
of thought, to detect what is
sophistical, and to discard what is
irrelevant. It prepares him to fill
any post with credit, and to master
any subject with facility. It shows
him how to accommodate himself
to others, how to throw himself into
their state of mind, how to bring
before them his own, how to
influence them, how to come to an
understanding with them, how to
bear with them. He is at home in
any society, he has common ground
with every class; he knows when to
speak and when to be silent; he is
able to converse, he is able to listen;
he can ask a question pertinently,
and gain a lesson seasonably, when
he has nothing to impart himself; he
is ever ready, yet never in the way;
he is a pleasant companion, and a
comrade you can depend upon; he
knows when to be serious and
when to trifle, and he has a sure tact
which enables him to trifle with
gracefulness and to be serious with
effect. He has the repose of a mind
which lives in itself, while it lives in
the world, and which has resources
for its happiness at home when it
cannot go abroad. He has a gift
page four
LETTERS from Santa Fe
chemist, or a geologist, or an
antiquarian, but he will be placed
in that state of intellect in which he
can take up any one of the sciences
or callings I have referred to, or any
other for which he has a taste or
special talent, with an ease, a grace,
a versatility, and a success, to which
another is a stranger. In this sense
then ... mental culture is emphatically useful.
This then is how I should solve
the fallacy, for so I must call it, by
which Locke and his disciples
would frighten us from cultivating
the intellect, under the notion that
no education is useful which does
not teach us some temporal calling,
or some mechanical art, or some
physical secret. I say that a cultivated
intellect, because it is a good in
itself, brings with it a power and a
grace to every work and occupation
which it undertakes, and enables us
to be more useful, and to a greater
number.
which serves him in public, and
supports him in retirement, without
which good fortune is but vulgar,
and with which failure and
disappointment have a charm.
The art which tends to make a
man all this is in the object which it
pursues as useful as the art of
wealth or the art of health, though
it is less susceptible of method, and
less tangible, less certain, less
complete in its result.
Spring 1993
�defense of the liberal arts
based on "relevancy" is always
problematic. As a practical matter,
career decisions are increasingly
being made by students at the time
they choose to attend a university
and certainly by the time they select
a field of concentration in their
second year. When the career
benefits of a liberal arts degree are
obscured, students tend to select
disciplines that have higher
immediate returns and ignore the
needs both they and the business
community have for more satisfying
and expansive educational programs.
The gift society offers our
educated youth of today is the
freedom to choose various life paths,
... yet the pressure to choose
seems, ironically, to narrow the
range of options. A liberal education
preserves options while at the
same time providing the tools and
the time to select intelligently
among them. In the corporate
world of today, where job qualifications and opportunities change
with disturbing frequency, the
broadest kind of educational
preparation will often prove to be
the most practical.
But if this is so, why are the
liberal arts in jeopardy within the
corporate hiring structure? I take it
that corporations are undervaluing
liberal education in the search for
graduates with technical and
business skills that may be relevant
only in the short run. Solid grounding
in the arts, sciences and languages
is overlooked and the long-run goal
of globally competitive corporate
leadership is jeopardized. In this
sense then the injury done the
"corporations at risk" appears
primarily to be a self-inflicted one.
If top management would just send
different signals to the hiring
committees, the problem should
disappear. But of course, it is not
that easy.
Liberal education bears some
responsibility for the state we find
ourselves in. And I say this as
president of an institution committed
to liberal arts and sciences which
just graduated a class dominated by
students of like mind. The burden
of liberal education has to be that it
prepares students not for a vocation,
but for life. We do not try to
anticipate and teach to narrow
specialties. We take instead a broad
view of education and teach for the
ages; we value the past as a guide
to the future.
That is a noble objective, but it
does not always withstand scrutiny.
During the last decade, many colleges
compromised the conditions
under which a liberal education
best operates. Academic permissiveness encouraged students to
design their own curriculums. This
approach compromised the breadth
of liberal education in two respects,
both of which impact upon the
business community. Left on their
own, students often de-emphasized
the demanding sciences aspect of
liberal education in favor of more
congenial humanities and social
sciences programs. As the essence
of analytical thought is the scientific
method, we have been derelict in
not requiring of students that they
be conversant with both arts and
Spring 1 9 9~3
LETTERS/ram Santa Fe
CHARTING A COURSE FOR
LIBERAL EDUCATION
by
Paul R. Verkuil
A
IN THE CORPORATE
WORLD OF TODAY,
WHERE JOB
QUALIFICATIONS
AND OPPORTUNITIES
CHANGE WITH
DISTURBING
FREQUENCY, THE
BROADEST KIND
OF EDUCATION
PREPARATION WILL
OFTEN PROVE TO
BETHE MOST
PRACTICAL.
page five
�sciences in defining a liberal education. Today colleges have largely
backed off from this self-directed
course selection era (indeed some of
us never entered it) and that should
help bring business recruiters back
to the liberal arts graduates.
A related and no less critical
oversight at many colleges has been
a de-emphasis on foreign languages
and a crippling of international
studies. It is now obvious that our
corporations deal in global markets
and are at an increasing disadvantage vis-a-vis foreign business in
terms of qualified multi-cultural
personnel. One cannot correct this
imbalance with quick fix language
study just before executives are sent
abroad. A total educational approach
to the country and region involved
is the best method for achieving an
educated and culturally sensitive
business elite. Area studies programs
that deal on an interdisciplinary
basis with language, literature and
culture of a given region are ideal
laboratories
for
producing
Americans for the world business
stage. Fortunately, there is a revival
of language requirements on many
campuses and this should lead to
greater interest in area studies .... A
mutual obligation arises: Universities
must insure that liberal education
lives up to its credo of depth and
breadth; corporate sector hiring
must recognize and act on the
values inherent in such long-term
educational preparation.
•• •
deeply troubled about the degree to
which society was unprepared for
dealing with new energies released
through scientific discovery. Yet,
while he enthusiastically criticized his own education, in the
final analysis Adam's message was
not that university education could
anticipate and solve all the problems
of new technology, but that it took
a lifetime of learning and study to
do so. In fact in the Education of
Henry Adams, Adams criticizes his
college experience in an oddly
complimentary way: "Harvard
College, as far as it educated at all,
was a mild and liberal school which
sent young men into the world with
all they needed to make respectable
citizens, and something of what
they wanted to make useful men."
I take comfort from Adam's
observation because it implicitly
recognizes that colleges can never
expect to satisfy demands for fully
educating our leaders. Of course
we should strive to emphasize usefulness over respectability wherever
possible. Ultimately, however, the
liberal arts offers an appreciation of
how much there is to know in life
and the desire and means for beginning the quest. It offers insights
into how persons of consequence,
like Adams himself, lived their lives
and it encourages others to follow
in their path.
This article is taken from a longer
paper delivered by Paul Verkuil,
president and CEO of AAA and former
president of William and Mary, to the
Corporate Council on the Liberal Arts.
Henry Adams spent much of his
life berating the backward-looking
education he received at Harvard
College. In the 19th century as
today, Adams saw technology overtaking established thought. He was
pa ge s ix
L ET T E R S fr om Sant a Fe
I make free
men out of
children
by means
of books
anda
balance.
Taken from the
St. John's College Seal
S p r in g 1993
�CREATIVITY. THE CLASSICS
AND THE CORPORATION
by
Nannerl 0. Keohane
Are liberal arts colleges and
universities these days deluding
ourselves and our students, their
parents and their employers, about
how well our graduates are prepared
for what they do when they leave
our ivy halls?
We think not. In fact, we are
convinced, now more than ever,
that a liberal arts education is the
best possible preparation for the
leaders of the future, including the
entrepreneurs and corporate CEOs
as well as the scientists and the
lawyers, the artists and the politicians. How do we support this
claim?
an employer. We offer time and
space for thinking, for discussion,
for roaming through the ages and
across the world on voyages of
discovery .
As Alice Freeman Palmer,
President of Wellesley said in 1897:
"We go to college to know, assured
that knowledge is sweet and powerful,
that a good education emancipates the
mind and makes us citizens of the
world."
Such stock elements in our
social rhetoric, however bracing
such rhetoric may be, are not however likely to convince the pragmatist
who asks us what is the use of it all.
To answer such challenges, to
convince the skeptical parent or
employer of the worth of what we
do, we must show how a liberal arts
education makes a difference in
will evolve and alter overnight. It
will be more and more a world
shaped by human handiwork and
accessible to technological restructuring. Today we have, compared
with even a few years ago, a vastly
increased capacity to transform the
features of the globe, to touch the
universe. Our tools of measurement and memory and control are
powerful beyond the imagination
of our predecessors, and extended
every moment.
In such a world, the ability to
participate with some degree of
comprehension, and even more to
share in shaping the continuing flux
and change, will depend on knowledge of general principles, on habits,
on analysis, and on suppleness of
mind . Liberal learning gives one
the critical capacity for distance, for
one' s ability to work effectivelyand more than work, to manage
and to change-in the world of the
future.
Among the few things we can
safely say about our future is that it
will be a time of accelerating flux
and change. The world our children
will inhabit is virtually certain to be
a world in which skills and instruments and ways of doing things
assessment, for stepping back and
making judgments, for comparing
what one sees before one with
things of other times and places, for
getting a perspective on the world.
These are crucial attributes for anyone
who sets out to master new complex
phenomena, to ma ke lasting and
productive changes.
In the world that we can forecast
for our children, anyone who lacks
LE TT E RS fro m Sa nt a F e
page seve n
THE VALUE OF LIBERAL LEARNING
I would begin by arguing that a
good liberal arts education is not a
dress rehearsal for anything: it is
reality, a re ality that involves
maturing intellectually and personally, developing crucial skills. The
real world lives in our libraries
and laboratories and dormitories,
as real a world as any we know.
The virtue of the ivory tower
metaphor, of course, is that it does
convey something precious (in the
non-derogatory mean ing of that
word) in what we are all about. We
do offer some shelter from the
relentless pressures of making an
immediate livelihood and responding
to the requirements of a profession or
Sp rin g 19 93
�such broad-based training, who is
narrowly educated in specific
technical skills of any kind, will
become obsolescent almost
overnight.
Any immediate
advantage that such a graduate will
have in fitting into a new job will
shortly be wiped out-and then forever lost-against the adaptive
skills of someone who has been
taught how to learn, where to go for
answers, how to judge the answers
that are given, and how to understand and communicate ideas.
This is our tremendous utilitarian
advantage over any trade school,
any narrow professional or preprofessional education: We teach
people how to learn, and thus
ensure them against the fate of
obsolescence. Their future employers
will not have to spend good time
and money in perpetually retraining
them as skills change, nor will they
be so likely to be out of a job
because the world has passed them
by.
Liberal learning delights in
equipping students for an array of
possible futures, for the individual
and for society. In doing so, a liberal
education makes several futures
possible, and gives liberally educated
people an edge in determining
which of those futures will come to
be.
One of my favorite responses to
this question hinges on the double
meaning of the phrase itself: a liberal
education. On the one h and, a
liberal education was designed for
free persons, not slaves or helotspeople (originally, of course, men)
of free birth who were expected to
have some responsibilities of public
service and some standing within
their communities. In order to
prepare such people well to lead
such lives, a liberal education was
required to instill in them the core
values of their society, rooting them
in history and culture, to make sure
they understood and respected
ancient truths and carried on worthy
traditions.
The second meaning of a liberal
education, however, stands diametrically opposed to this: the liberation of the mind, freeing the student
from unexamined assumptions,
opening horizons from narrow
parochialism onto the wide, wide
world. In order to accomplish this
second part of its purpose, liberal
learning needs to reward quite
different habits of mind from those
promoted by the first: a tolerance
for ambiguity and complexity, an
ability to be at ease with suspended
judgment when closure would be
premature.
When liberal learning works as
it is intended to work, these two
diametrically opposed meanings
move in, against and through each
other in a true dialectic- a dialogue,
a synthesis, a play between opposites
to capture the best of both in a truer
whole. The juxtaposition of familiarity with the classics of the human
mind, with a penchant for creativity
and critical originality, creates the
distinctive strength of a liberal
education.
The good teacher imparts both
a respect for the given, for the reasons
for what is, and also a healthy skepticism a nd habit of continuing
inquiry. The former is at least as
difficult as the latter, for simply
parroting old truths is not liberal
learning; the student must be inside
those truths, must take them on,
adapt them, make them his own.
pag e e i g ht
LETT E R S from Sa nta F e
WHAT IS DISTINCTIVE ABOUT
WHAT WE DO?
In a community devoted to liberal
learning, in the interplay of teacher
and student, in the mind of every
scholar, there should be a fruitful
tension of positive and negative: a
respect for the ceremonies, a willingness to follow rituals and fall in
line with tradition-but also a
questioning and questing spirit that
never lets itself become wholly
absorbed in anything that is.
Nannerl Keohane, newly appointed
president of Duke University, delivered a
longer version of this article at a conference "Corporations at Risk: Liberal
Learning and Private Enterprise."
. . . A LIBERAL
EDUCATION MAKES
SEVERAL FUTURES
POSSIBLE, AND GIVES
LIBERALLY EDUCATED
PEOPLE AN EDGE IN
DETERMINING WHICH
OF THOSE FUTURES
WILL COME TO BE.
Spr in g 199 3
�LIBERAL EDUCATION :
PREPARING TOMORROW'S
BUSINESS EXECUTIVES
by
Peter A. Benoliel
Plain and simple, a liberal
education, is the optimal vehicle in
undergraduate years for preparing
for a business management career.
I speak not as an academician but
rather as a practicing executive who
contends daily with the many-faceted
challenges of business, utilizing many
of the techniques and disciplines
taught in business schools.
The latter remark introduces a
concept which I think we continue
to lose sight of in assessing the role
of educational institutions, namely,
the distinction between education
and training. It appears to me that
the great bulk of what is today
called education is really training,
whether it be in specific professional
disciplines such as engineering,
medicine and the law, or in more
prosaic but no less necessary vocational training.
In no way do I wish to demean
or minimize the importance of
training or the role of educational
institutions in providing it. My
immediate point is that the majority
of our students complete their
undergraduate years under the
misconception of being educated,
when in reality they are undergoing
sophisticated training. This brings
me to my central point, which is
that the undergraduate years of a
Spring 1993
student, especially if that student
wishes a career in business management, would most profitably be
spent not in taking business courses
leading to a degree but rather in
undergoing a liberal educational
experience.
It then becomes incumbent
upon me not only to define what I
mean by a liberal education but to
enumerate those qualities, characteristics and skills that may be
necessary for a fulfilling career in
business management. I must further
make a distinction between those
characteristics which for the most
part are innate and those which are
acquired. Understand, please, that
in describing characteristics, I am
thinking of those individuals who
will rise above middle management
into levels of top responsibility.
Necessary Innate Characteristics
1. High degree of intelligenceintellectual curiosity
2. Creativity
3. Goal orientation
4. High energy-drive
5. Leadership capabilitiesinter-personal skills.
Acquired Characteristics
1. Problem solving-analytical
skills
2. Synthesis capabilities-ability to
relate seemingly disparate factors into a meaningful whole
3. Perspective-ability to maintain a balanced consideration of
factors-an overview
4. Critical judgment-in part, a
synthesis of the three preceding
characteristics
5. Specific skills acquired through
on-the-job training supplemented
by formalized modes of
instruction, including school
courses, seminars, reading:
LETTERS from Santa Fe
... THE MAJORITY
OF OUR STUDENTS
COMPLETE THEIR
UNDERGRADUATE
YEARS UNDER THE
MISCONCEPTION
OF BEING EDUCATED,
WHEN IN REALITY
THEY ARE UNDERGOING
SOPHISTICATED
TRAINING.
page nine
�The above is not an all-inclusive
list, and there are areas where no
sharp distinction can be made
between those characteristics
acquired and those innate. Further,
it may legitimately be doubted
whether the specific skills I have
enumerated can be acquired on the
basis suggested. I differ, and will
endeavor to explain why by submitting my concept of a liberal education.
My ideal student would have
exposure to the natural sciences,
engineering, and/ or mathematics,
with in-depth study in some specific
area. This should comprise at least
25 percent of a student's undergraduate activity. Such a student
should also have an introductory
exposure to the social sciences, and
this area of activity might occupy as
much as fifteen percent of his time.
The balance, and certainly no less
than half of the student's activity,
should be in the humanistic studies,
with in-depth involvement in at
least one area. I recognize that in
any such educational process there
are certain elements of training as
distinct from education. In my
experien ce, these can be minimal,
a nd the emphasis should be on a
Socratic, dialectical approach.
Hopefully, it is not necessary to
paint the picture in full to see that
such an educational experience is
almost precisely designed to develop
more fully the innate characteristics
I previously cited as needful for a
manager, as well as enabling that
individual to acquire the aforementioned skills of analysis, synthesis,
perception and critical judgment.
To put it another way, I strongly
contend that such a program,
designed as it is to expose a person to
the achievements--scientific, technical, political, social, philosophical
and artistic-of great minds past
and present, will nurture the heart
and mind of the student, so as to
incite to fever pitch his curiosity,
increase his ability to assimilate
new ideas and skills, nurture and
sensitize his spiritual, moral and aesthetic sensibilities, and promote the
self-generation of perspective and
overview. In short, develop the
critical and analytical faculties
without dulling that individual's
vision.
Now it may be fairly asked
how, in fact, such a n individual
with no specific skills is able to
enter the job market. I would submit
that, at entry level, any management or professional position (the
law and medicine excepted)
requires very little in the way of
skills that such an individual would
not have or could not readily acquire.
I speak of positions ordinarily filled
by newly g r a duated engineers,
scientists and holders of degrees in
business. An honest appraisal of
starting positions would show that
they demand very little in the way
of technical knowledge that the
individual would not already possess
or could not acquire on the job,
supplemented by study.
I contend that merely to train an
individual as a mechanical engineer,
as a ch em ist, o r in business is to
unnecessarily narrow his vision, and
possibly deny him broader horizons.
All this does have clear implications regarding current attitudes of
the academic world and of business. I
L E T TE R S f r o m Sant a Fe
S p rin g 19 93
Technical-Engineering,
Scientific
Financial
Legal
Marketing
ManufacturingProduction
Behavioral Sciences
I CONTEND THAT
MERELY TO TRAIN
AN INDIVIDUAL AS A
MECHANICAL ENGINEER,
AS A CHEMIST, OR
IN BUSINESS IS TO
UNNECESSARILY
NARROW HIS VISION,
AND POSS/BLY DENY
HIM BROADER
HORIZONS.
pa ge t e n
�suggest consideration of the following
ideas strongly implied by my views:
1. The undergraduate degree
in business should be eliminated. It is
not necessary and has little relevance
to the individual's intellectual and
spiritual development, let alone
what he or she will encounter in the
business world. This does not mean
that individual courses in finance,
accounting, marketing and distribution
should not be retained for individuals
to take as electives, although my
personal predilection is to avoid such
courses in undergraduate years. This
kind of material is easily assimilated
later by a well-trained mind.
2. More extensive use should
be made of cooperative programs
which enable the student to leave
the academic world for specific
activities, work or research in the
"real world." There need not always
be a specific relationship between a
student's academic program and his
"co-op project."
In other words, I am suggesting
that no one be admitted to business
school fresh out of college.
4. Greater use should be
made by the world of business and
industry of graduate business
schools by allowing managers to
take sabbaticals of one month to a
year for attending graduate business
courses.
5. Business and
industry should not
require that an
individual have a
degree in a specific
skill in order to gain
entry into a position. It should be a
relatively simple
matter, through testing and interviewing, to ascertain an
individual's capabilities to adequately
perform job entry positions.
Adequate provision should be
made by business to enable individuals to supplement their on-the-job
training with specific courses in
specific disciplines.
6. Business and industry is missing a valuable resource by requiring
that all people have college degrees
before being given consideration
for management positions. There
was a time when a college degree
was not a requisite. Now, it has
become tantamount to working
papers. This is unfortunate.
Individuals with energy, ambition
and intellectual capabilities can and
should be given all possible opportunities.
about the first three suggestions.
The latter three carry with them
many practical problems, not the
least of which revolve around the
resources of smaller companies,
many of which do not have the
managerial depth and financial
capabilities to support the kind of
programs suggested.
There has been a marked tendency among our brightest students
to pursue careers in law, government
and scientific research in preference to
business management. In many
cases, they do so with a mistaken
view that business does not serve the
noble purposes embodied in other
callings. It is not the purpose of this
paper to refute such a contentionexcept to suggest that well-managed business enterprises are crucial
to the nation's and indeed the
world's social, economic and political
viability, and I say this in terms of
the quality of human existence.
In today's world of international
trade and the growing activities of
the multinational enterprise, talented
and committed business leaders are
in increasing demand. How best to
develop them? Robert Goheen,
former president of Princeton
University, once remarked, "The
true basis of a liberal education is its
power to nourish a mind-its ability
both to enliven and enlarge a man's
conscious jurisdiction. It seems to
draw out our potential for awareness,
for rational understanding, and thus
to extend our capacities for beneficent service, for responsible action,
wherever we happen to find our
chosen work."
3. The principal form of academic training for business should
be the graduate M.B.A. programs
offered by many institutions. I
would submit that more relevant
use of M.B.A. programs would be
made by individuals who have had
at least two year's experience in the
business world.
I realize the above suggestions
may be greeted with a great deal of
justifiable skepticism. I wish to
emphasize that I am quite serious
Peter A. Benoliel is chairman and
CEO of Quaker Chemical Corporation
and former member of the St. John's
College Board.
Spring 1993
LETTERS from Santa Fe
page eleven
�AN ORAL EXAM FOR THE
Soon those new college graduates who have not yet found
employment will be knocking on
corporate doors asking for jobs.
The business world will affirm and
reaffirm its belief in liberal education, and then rush to hire graduates
with business degrees. The liberal
arts graduate will try to convince
his future employer that, h aving
studied philosophy or literature or
sociology or a bit of math, he can do
everything, or at least something.
Perhaps a little honesty on both
sides would help.
Though a liberal education may
b e o f in estim a ble benefit to the
indiv idual, its immediate social
utility is not readily apparent-a
doctor is not a better doctor
because he has read Homer in the
original Greek. Such an education
may well contribute to an individual's
personal edification during his
p rofessional life-but that's really
beside the point to the employment
officer looking at the recent graduate
on the other side of the d esk.
Sensing that it has a hard case
to make in the face of the natural
skepticism of the business community,
liberal education has come up with
some ready, but shaky, responses.
The first involves "skills."
"N o, o u r graduates have n o t
studied accounting or business law
or marke ting, but they have high
intelligence and have developed
truly useful skills, skills of thinking,
speaking, communicating. Their
combination of brains and skills
makes them fast learners and
universally helpful." This isn't a
totally useless argument, but the
business community usually needs
more than skills. It needs employees
with "content" as well. And business
and technical programs have been
able to attract increasingly impressive
students over the years ; their
graduates have native ability, skills
and useful knowledge.
The second line of defense for
liberal arts g radua tes is to argue
that what they know is useful, even
if not technical. That knowledge of
literature and English, of philosophy
and his tory, of mathematics a nd
science gives their minds a kind of
furnishing that h as social and
economic utility if properly directed.
Through reading and study, the
liberally educated candidate may
actually know more than others
about human nature, its limits, and
the achievements of men and their
failures. He or she may best be able
to grow on the job, to adjust to
changes, write more powerfully,
see problems and propose solutions
more cogently, work independently
and not fear to explore the limits of
technical expertise.
These kinds of things one can
learn from studying history, literature or philosophy. It is no surprise
tha t the t op executives of the
nation's best companies have been,
far more often than not, educated
in the liberal arts, n ot a technical
field.
But caution is in order. If w hat
the liberal arts gradu ate studied
under the guise of a liberal education
was nothing more than the latest of
fashionable attacks o n Western
LETTE R S fr o m Sa n ta Fe
Sp rin g 1993
NEW LIBERAL ARTS
GRADUATE
by
John Agresto
THOUGH A LIBERAL
EDUCATION MAY BE
OF INESTIMABLE
BENEFIT TO THE
INDIVIDUAL, ITS
IMMEDIATE SOCIAL
UTILITY IS NOT
READILY APPARENTA DOCTOR IS NOT
A BETTER DOCTOR
BECAUSE HE HAS
READ HOMER IN
THE ORIGINAL GREEK.
pa ge t we l ve
�•
civilization, or if his philosophy
and literature courses did not teach
him to learn from the world's great
thinkers and writers but, rather, to
play theoretical games, treating all
ideas as "culture-bound" or expressions of authorial prejudices, or if
he was taught that all history is
really the history of oppression and
oppressed groups, then you probably
have before you a person who
knows less than the most narrowly
focused business-school graduate.
So much academic garbage passes
itself off as liberal education these
days that all of us have to be careful.
So, what should you ask before
hiring a liberal arts graduate?
Here's a list:
•Can you write clearly and
persuasively? Can I know exactly
what's on your mind through the
medium of a piece of paper and will I
take it seriously?
•Have you worked in the business
world? I would not put graduates
with business-related courses
above the ones who worked for a
business in the summer. Interest
verified by experience is 10 times
better than a course in accounting
and 50 times better than a course
on "The Image of the Businessman
in Modern Drama."
• Can you work cooperatively?
Since a good part of liberal education
is very introspective and solitaryand cooperative work on exams
and term papers is usually, rightly,
frowned on- look for some evidence
of sociability. Did the applicant, for
example, go through four years
taking notes in large lecture classes
or did he put himself into the give
and take of conversation in small
seminar classes? And, though
independence is hardly a vice,
make sure the person knows that
working for someone, not just with
someone, is expected every day.
This is sometimes a hard lesson for
liberal arts graduates to learn.
• What do you think about this job
as a career? The last thing you need
is a graduate whose philosophy has
taught him that he is noble and
businessmen are corrupt. If the
graduate has been indoctrinated
with the notion that the world of
business and industry is a species
of ugly materialism, vulgar commercialism or the work of social
elements only one step above the
criminal class, he is of no use. Let
him stay in the academy.
• What did you study and what did
you learn? Not all liberal education
is great or even good. Did the candidate before you study broadly
and widely in major fields covering
important topics or was he narrowly
trained? A course on rape and
rebellion in contemporary poetry is
no substitute for a course on Dante
or a seminar in calculus. Did he
read books? Good books? Did he
take these books seriously? Do not
be afraid to ask these questions!
Finally, see if the applicant's
education had an effect on his character. Did four years of college
make him thoughtful, inquisitive,
brave and serious?
Or just
haughty, pedantic, smug and vain?
Pursue these questions, for they
not only will make businesses happier
but might even do something to
improve liberal education in this
country.
S prin g 1 99 3
L ET T E R S f r o m S a nt a F e
NOT ALL LIBERAL
EDUCATION IS GREAT
OR EVEN GOOD. . . A
COURSE ON RAPE
AND REBELLION IN
CONTEMPORARY
POETRY IS NO
SUBSTITUTE FOR
A COURSE ON DANTE
OR A SEMINAR IN
CALCULUS.
This article originally appeared in
the Wall Street Journal, April 23, 1991.
page th i rt ee n
�JUST SAY NO TO COLLEGE
by
Aram Bakshlan, Jr.
From ele mentary school
onward, I had always learned more
from independent reading and
conversation than from the standard
gruel dispensed in class, taking to
heart the Shakespearean admonition
that
No profit grows where is no pleasure
·~
I
ANTICIPATING NANCY
REAGAN BY TWENTY
YEARS, I "JUST SAID NO "
-
IN MY CASE, TO THAT
MOST MINO-BENDING
OF HALLUCINOGENS, A
SECOND-RATE LIBERAL
ARTS DEGREE.
pa ge f o urt ee n
Few things in life are worth
standing in line for, especially on a
sweltering summe r d ay in
Washington, D. C. Higher education
certainly didn't seem like one of
them in September of 1963, when,
overcome by the dinginess of
George Washington University 's
d owntown campus, and the industrial-s treng th effluv ium issuing
from long queues of nervous,
sweaty registering fre s hme n , I
made what may well have been the
d efining choice of m y life.
A n ticipa ting N a ncy Reagan b y
twen ty years, I "just said no"- in
my case, to that most mind-bending
of hallucinogens, a second-rate liberal arts degree. It meant chucking
a ge n e r o u s ly ap p o rtio n e d yet
u n appetizin g acad emic sch ola rship, but my mind was mad e up:
rather th an go to college, I would
get an education.
More immediately, I decided to
abandon campus and walk a few
blocks to the old Circle Theatre on
Pennsylvania Avenue. By h appy
chance, Lucino Visconti's exquisite
film a d a p ta tion of G iuseppe di
Lampedusa's The Leopard was playing and the erratic air conditioning
system was working that afternoon;
two a u s p iciou s om ens in a row
convinced me that I had made the
righ t decision. As I watch ed th e
world-weary patrician hero turning
h is b ack o n the g ilded s h a m of
risorgimento Italy, I felt a smug
kinship, excusable, perhaps, for one
still in his teens.
a nd a greeing w ith Sydne y
Smith (to the aggravation of numerable famil y members over the
years) that there is "no furniture so
charming as books." So much so
that, from junior high school onward,
I regularly played hooky to visit the
vast, dusty secondhand bookstores
that still dotted the Washington
landscape in the 1950s and 1960s.
Nearly all of them, Lowdermilk's,
Pearlman's, Estate, Savile, and Park
Books, are gone now.
Tod ay's book fanciers, usually
forced to choose between ov erpriced antiqua rian dealers and
chain retailers limited to standard
current titles, w ould be amazed at
how far-and wide-a few dollars
could go in those literary old curiosity
shops. Nicely bound broken sets of
the collected works of Volta ire
could be bought for all of seventyfi ve cents a volume and Hom er,
Plato, Thu cyd id es, Xen ophon, Le
Sage, Cla rendon , Cervan tes,
M arcu s
Aurelius,
G ibbon ,
M acaulay , Carly le, Thackeray,
Dickens, Sterne, Smollett, Daudet,
de Maupassant, Surtees, Suetonius,
Sherid an, Aristophanes, Chau cer,
Emerson, Parkman, Pascal, Moliere,
Madame de Sevign e, Saint-Simon,
P e pys, Pope, Joh n son, Bos well,
Monta ign e, Dry den, Goldsm ith,
Goethe, Byron, Tennyson, Kipling,
de Ligne, Luther, and Dante, not to
mention more recent a nd rou tine
titles, could b e h ad for a son g,
L ET TE R S f r o m S a nta Fe
Sp r ing 19 93
ta'en ; In brief, sir, study what you most
affect ....
�sometimes in morocco or calf.
"Good as it is to inherit a
library, it is better to collect one."
wrote Augustine Birrell, and at that
time, even a newspaper carrier
turned copyboy like myself could
afford to start. The very act of
working to pay for each volume
seemed to quicken one's appetite
for reading it, a principle that
probably applies to students who
have to work for their tuition.
Serving as a copyboy, first at the
(now-defunct) National Observer
and then at the (now-unrecognizable) U.S. News & World Report, also
meant access to good reference
libraries and interesting conversation
with the less stuffy writers and
editors. One of the earliest pleasures
of my own writing career came
when, a few years after I had left
the National Observer, I appeared in
its pages as a book critic and was
able to renew earlier acquaintances
on a more equal footing.
Reading, writing, and intelligent
discussion are the keys to a good
liberal arts education in academia; I
simply sought, and was lucky
enough to find, the same essentials
in the outside world without being
subjected to the nuisance of gym,
the irrelevance of Geology I, and
the forced purchase of dozens of
badly written textbooks, as expensive
as they were worthless.
This is not to say that I owe
nothing to formal education.
Several inspiring elementary and
secondary school teachers tolerated
my maverick streak and encouraged
my interests in history and literature.
As a day student at a cozy if somewhat down-at-the heels little academy
called Woodward Prep, I even
learned the elements of real, as
opposed to apparent, political
power: Control communications
and law enforcement and it doesn't
matter who is president.
Editing the school newspaper
and literary supplement and
commanding the hall monitors
meant real power and real rewards:
Extensive writing on the topics of
one's choosing, more free time and
fewer scheduled classes, and the
ability to slip out for an illicit beer (I
was tall for my age) with the connivance of one's subordinate hall
monitors.
At the same time, a curriculum
that still included Latin meant an
early grounding in the fundamental
structure of languages that would
make later acquisition of rudimentary
French and German easier. How
Latin came to be dropped by some
high schools as "irrelevant" baffles
me to this day; it is the most practical subject many secondary school
students will ever study. Given a
little Latin, years later you will be
able to get the gist of street signs,
simple news clips, and broadcasts
in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and,
in a pinch, even Romanian.
Unlike the author of a recent
bestseller, I do not claim that everything I needed to know I had
already learned in kindergarten.
But I can honestly say that everything I needed to learn-in school,
that is-I knew by the twelfth
grade. While my own curiosity
deserves some of the credit, so
does a motley but worthy crew of
teachers, not one of whom was an
education major.
They included a deaf, dentured
retired colonel, Merritt Booth, who
taught algebra and geometry with
the logic and precision they
deserved; a dedicated young
English teacher named Bill Gaull
who, while working his way
through law school, took the trouble
Spring 1993
LETTERS from Santa Fe
to encourage bright students to
read non-syllabus authors like
Fielding and Tolstoy; a one-legged
Seventh Day Adventist history
master named Donald F. Haynes
who, although somewhere to the
right of the John Birch Society,
graded fairly and taught passionately; and a wonderful 76-year-old
chemistry teacher, "Doc" Valaer,
whose enthusiasm for his subject
was such that, although a teetotaler,
he had written a book entitled
Wines of the World, painstakingly
analyzing their chemical compositions without tasting any of them.
My graduate and post-graduate
teachers, while more famous, have
all been untenured and unofficial:
editors, authors, politicians, journalists, artists, and a widening circle of
interesting friends.
The odds are that I would have
missed out on most of these opportunities if I had kept my scholarship
and followed the off-trodden rut of
academia, where as early an observer
as William Penn remarked that
"much reading is an oppression of
the mind, and extinguishes the natural
candle, which is the reason of so
many useless scholars in the
world." At the very worst, I might
have ended up as a tenured, politically correct hack.
Fortunately, all I had to do was
just say no.
From The American Spectator,
September, 1991.
pa ge fift e en
�PROFILE
St. John's College:
An independent, non-sectarian, four-year liberal arts college.
Founded:
Established in 1696 in Annapolis, Maryland, as King William's School and chartered in 1784 as St. John's College.
Great Books Program adopted 1937. Second campus in Santa Fe opened in 1964.
Curriculum:
An integrated, four-year, all-required liberal arts and science program based on reading and discussing, in loosely
chronological order, the great books of Western civilization. The program requires four years of foreign language,
four years of mathematics, three years of laboratory science, and one year of music.
Approach:
Tutorials, laboratories, and seminars requiring intense participation replace more traditional lectures. Classes are
very small.
Student/Faculty ratio is 8:1.
Degrees Granted:
Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts. Master of Arts in Liberal Studies.
Student Body:
Enrollment is limited to about 400 students on each campus. Current freshman class made up of 55% men and 45%
women, from 30 states and several foreign countries. Sixty-five percent receive financial aid. Students may transfer
between the Santa Fe and Annapolis campuses.
Alumni Careers:
Education - 21 %, Business - 20%, Law - 10%, Visual and Performing Arts - 9%, Medicine - 7%, Science and
Engineering - 7%, Computer Science - 6%, Writing and Publishing - 5%.
Graduate Institute:
The Graduate Institute in Liberal Education is an interdisciplinary master's degree program based on the same
principles as the undergraduate program. Offered on both campuses year-round. Readers of the newsletter may be
especially interested in applying for our summer session. For more information please contact the Graduate Institute
in Santa Fe (505) 982-3691 ext. 249 or in Annapolis (301) 263 - 2371.
LETTERS from Santa Fe
St. John's College
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501-4599
ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED
U.S. Postage
PAID
Non-Profit
Organization
Permit No. 231
Santa Fe, NM
�
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Newman, John Henry, 1801-1890
Verkuil, Paul R.
Keohane, Nannerl O., 1940-
Benoliel, Peter A.
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Presidents
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Text
LETTERSJrom Santa Fe
St. John's College, Santa Fe. New Mexico
Winter 1992
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
by John Agresto
President, St. John's College
Santa Fe, New Mexico
INSIDE
POLITICAL
CORRECTNESS
AND BEYOND
page3
THE POLITICAL
SEDUCTION OF
THE UNIVERSITY
page 7
ON
DEPOLITICIZING
THE UNIVERSITY
page 9
UNIVERSITIES
MUST DEFEND
FREE SPEECH
page 11
SAY THE RIGHT
THING ... OR ELSE
page 14
"Learning is Good" is not only the motto of the college John Belushi attended in
Animal House, it is also the simple and universal belief of virtually every American. If
there is anything in which we have confidence and from which we all expect great
things, it's education.
Nonetheless, every now and then there comes along something so disturbing, so
stupid, that almost everyone is led to ask if higher education has not simply lost its
marbles. Consider the view that education is not instructive, or informative, or
liberating, but "political." Consider the notion that higher education really entails not
free inquiry but the repression of some ideas and the imposition of others. Consider the
position that says that certain words of ordinary speech -- take "freshmen," for instance
-- are insensitive, offensive, or otherwise incorrect and should be stifled.
The last example is both trivial and telling at the same time. One of my daughters
is now applying to college and a number of the questionnaires ask if she will be entering
as a transfer student or as a "frosh." (I guess even colleges know that "freshpersons" would
be unspeakably barbaric-- or is there a hint of a forbidden gender preference even in
there?) When Political Correctness -- PC -- means that even ordinary, useful words are
now to be banned, think of how incorrect ideas now fare on college campuses.
So, this issue of Letters is about the underpinnings and manifestations of PC at
college today. If "all education is political," if what students do when they go to college
is become exposed to the "advanced" political views of an academic class of tenured
radicals intent on making converts rather than on enlightenment, then education is in
deep trouble. If professors now aim (in my friend Edwin Delattre's phrase) not to
liberate students' minds but to possess them, then liberal education has rotted from the
inside out, and we all have reason to be furious.
Some of the articles and essays I've included in this issue of Letters review the incidents, the "highlights," if you will, of PC madness. In my opinion, the situation is
both better and worse than they portray. Better because political correctness is not in
any way a universal phenomenon in higher education. The instances of imposed speech
codes, of students being sent for sensitivity re-education, of professors being shut up
or disinvited from speaking their incorrect views are extensive, but finite. Anyone can
name scores of good colleges where nothing like this occurs. Federal courts have stood
by the principle of free in<Iuiry even when universities have buckled. And even at the
worst universities there are still students and teachers who remain unintimidated.
But in some ways the situation is worse, because political correctness is not a matter
of adding up incidents, but a change in the nature and meaning of what education is. It
�IF "ALL EDUCATION IS
POLITICAL," IF WHAT
STUDENTS DO WHEN
THEY GO TO COLLEGE
IS BECOME EXPOSED
TO THE "ADVANCED"
POLITICAL VIEWS OF
AN ACADEMIC CLASS
OF TENURED
RADICALS INTENT ON
MAKING CONVERTS
RATHER THAN ON
ENLIGHTENMENT,
THEN EDUCATION IS
IN DEEP TROUBLE.
pa f: e t wo
hasn't yet been accepted by the public, but
it is now, in large measure, the intellectual
norm in higher education that the very
meaning of education is not what we
thought it to be even as recently as ten
years ago. For example, we had no trouble
ten years ago talking about Great Books.
Nevertheless, I've watched articles in the
Chronicle of Higher Education go from
speaking about Great Books, to "great"
books, to "the so-called 'great books."'
We had no trouble ten years ago believing that all of education should introduce
students to the principles, the highlights,
the works and discoveries of this their
civilization. Now that's viewed as political and ethnocentric. And because it's
viewed as "political," we 're told thatthere 's
no way we can object to the use of the
classroom as a propaganda pulpit since,
after all, education has always been "political."
Finally, education seems to have dismissed as fiction the notion that people
can go from opinion to knowledge and,
concomitantly, thattrue knowledge is universal. Everywhere we see repeatedly
trotted out the three main food groups of
the academic mind: race, gender and class.
So those categories we once thought to be
accidental are now believed by many to be
simply determinative. If this were true, it
would mean that liberal education isn't
possible.
The good news is that the views of the
politically correct propagandists rest on
false, perhaps even mindless, presuppositions. If (and it's a major if ) these
propositions can be rebutted freely on
campus, things will get better. It is the
attempt notto have them debated freely by
the proponents of political correctness that
leads them to call their opponents everything from right-wing to racist, sexist, and
homophobic.
Interestingly enough, it is the humanities part of higher education (where political correctness has far more of a following than in science or engineering) that
has been losing so many students. Predict-
LETT E RS
frn m Santa Fe
ably, the response of the PC crowd is, no
doubt for the first time in the academic
lives of the vast majority of them, to make
their courses required. So, after ridiculing the "canon" of old texts they institute
a new canon -- a canon of courses on
allowed opinion.
How can we know if PC thinking is
prevalent on a college or university campus. Well, you can observe a Jot just by
looking, as Yogi Berra probably said.
Look at college catalogues. Before you
look for speech codes, look at what's
required curricularly. If, rather than a year
of foreign language, they require a course
in Understanding Diversity, you've got a
place where PC probably lives and prospers. If, rather than courses in the history
of science or in philosophy they demand
you take a course that falls under a "recognition and affirmation of difference,"
you've found another one. If, rather than
a course in mathematics, they require
some time spent with one of the sub-fields
of the growing area of oppression studies,
you've hit a PC jackpot.
What can be done? Plenty. If the prestigious liberal arts college your son or
daughter was thinking about attending
gives evidence that awareness, correctness, and sensitivity are how they interpret their missions, encourage a look elsewhere. If the English Department seems
to think that all great literature is the
product of the author's time and place, or
power relationships, or the result of hidden but now exposable prejudices and
biases, suggest courses in mathematics or
geology. Ifthe college thinks there's something wrong with teaching about the principles and works of this civilization-- that
the study of Western Civilization has to
be redirected or diluted--then suggest a
major in medicine or business. And if
someone you know is interested in a place
where civility is expected but where there
is no such thing as a view that cannot be
examined or an idea that cannot be argued, ask me for one of our catalogues. •
Wint e r
1992
�POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
AND BEYOND
Taken From Remarks by
Lynne V. Cheney
Chairman, National Endowment
for the Humanities
Through the ages, history, literature, and philosophy have been sources of immense
satisfaction. But the humanities, particularly in Western civilization, have also been
contentious; and that has certainly been the case in recent years. Today I want to talk
about some of the reasons for this contentiousness, focusing particularly on "political
correctness," or "p.c.," as it's sometimes called.
Political correctness typically involves faculty members trying to impose their views
on others, and the results can be funny--particularly when the forces of political
correctness try to identify ever new forms of offense. At a recent conference at Yale, for
example, a distinguished professor of literature suggested that limiting the humanities
to the study of humankind was a form of "speciesism." Speciesists, I have learned, are
people who refer to their dogs and cats as "pets"--a term much too condescending to be
politically correct. Or the speciesist is the person who talks about "wild" animals, when
the proper description is "free roaming."
Smith College did its part to add to the English language when it recently warned the
incoming class to beware not only of classism and ethnocentrism, but also of "lookism,"
a form of oppression that involves putting too much stock in personal appearance.
I thought I'd begin by telling a story. It begins in the spring of 1990 when the English
Department at the University of Texas at Austin decided to revise its freshman
composition program. Henceforth English 306, the required composition course
taken by some 3000 freshmen, would focus on race and gender; and all classes would
use the same text, an anthology called Racism and Sexism.
This book--the central required text for every section of freshman English--begins by
defining racism as something only white people can be guilty of, and it tells students that
sexism is unique to men. It goes on to portray the United States as a society so profoundly
racist and sexist as to make a mockery of all our notions of liberty and justice. There are
no comparisons with other cultures offered, no context to show how American ideals and
practices actually stand up against those of the rest of the world--or the rest of history.
The overwhelming impression that this textbook leaves is that every injustice of race or
gender that human beings ever visited upon one another happened first and worst in this
Wint e r
I 99 2
L E TT E RS
from San t a F e
THE NEW MC CARTHYISM -LIKE THE OLD --
OFTEN WORKS ITS WAY BY
NAME-CALLING.
pa ge th ree
�IT WAS ONCE THOUGHT
THAT TEACHERS WHO
USED THE CLASSROOM
TO ADVANCE A POLITICAL
AGENDA WERE BETRAYING
THEIR PROFESSIONAL
RESPONSIBILITIES. BUT
ON MANY CAMPUSES NOW
FACULTY MEMBERS HA VE
TAKEN THE POLITICAL
TRANSFORMATION OF
THEIR STUDENTS AS A
MISSION.
country. And the only way we can redeem
ourselves, the textbook tells us, is to change
fundamentally the way we produce and
distribute wealth. Abandon capitalism, in
other words.
Now, one might well think that the
decision to focus English 306 on Racism
and Sexism would cause some debate. For
one thing, English 306 is a course intended
to teach students how to write. Will they be
better writers when they have stopped referring to poor people and instead speak of
the "economically exploited," as one essay in the book instructs them to do?
Some people in the English Department did object to the plans to revise course
306, but they had little effect, until finally,
Alan Gribben, a noted scholar of American literature, decided to go public. He sent
letters to newspapers around the state, and
citizens began to express their opinions
about the English 306 revision. Fifty-six
faculty members from across the university signed a "Statement of Academic Concern." The revised course was revised again
so that English 306 would include a broader
array of subjects, a diversity of viewpoints,
and extensive instruction on how to analyze, argue, and write.
But Alan Gribben was unable to take
much pleasure in this victory. He found
himself vilified at campus rallies. He was
the victim of hate mail, rumors, and anonymous late-night phone calls denouncing
him as racist. Most members of the English Department stopped speaking to him,
and they certainly didn't send graduate
students his way or put him on departmental committees. Finally, in the spring of
this year, he announced his intention to
leave Texas, where he had been for seventeen years, and move to Montgomery, Alabama, where he will teach at a branch of
Auburn University. "If I continued to live
here," he told a newspaper in Texas, ''I'd
have to live under siege."
Several aspects of this story make it an
almost classic example of what is happening on many campuses today. There is,
first of all, the idea underlying the English
pa~e
four
LETTERS
from Santa Fe
306 reform that it is perfectly all right-even desirable--to use the classroom and
the curriculum for political purpose. This
would once have been regarded as unethical. It was once thought that teachers who
used the classroom to advance a political
agenda were betraying their professional
responsibilities. But on many campuses
now faculty members have taken the political transformation of their students as a
mission. They believe deeply in the radical critique offered by books like Racism
and Sexism and see themselves furthering
the cause of social justice by using the
classroom and the curriculum to advance
their views, and they go about their mission openly--indeed, proudly. "I teach in
the Ivy League," a Princeton professor
recently told the New York Times, " in
order to have direct access to the minds of
the children of the ruling classes."
There are people, myself among them,
who object to making teaching and learning into the handmaidens of politics. There
ought to be an attempt to get at the complex truth of our experience rather than
imposing a single-minded, political interpretation on it. Yes, there has been oppression, but the history of Western civilization in the United States is also marked
by the discovery and blossoming of remarkable concepts: individual rights, democracy, the rule oflaw. In 1989, before
Tiananmen Square, the distinguished Chinese dissident Fang Li Zhi put it this way:
"What we are calling for is extremely
basic," he said, "namely, freedom of
speech, press, assembly and travel. Concepts of human rights and democracy."
He went on, " The founding principles of
the U.S. government are a legacy [of the
West] to the world."
I think of it as my great good fortune
that I have opportunities to speak for the
freedoms we enjoy. It is not only my right
but my pleasure to dissent from university
officials who decide, as officials at the
University of Maryland did during the
Persian Gulf War, that students cannot
display the American flag. It might offend
Winter
1992
�someone, they said; and they relented
only after students called in the media. It
is not only my right but my pleasure to
dissent from university officials who decide, as administrators at Rice University
in Texas did, that students could not tie
yellow ribbons to trees in the main academic quadrangle.
But I also recognize that I am able to
express myself so freely because I am
neither part of a university nor do I long
for a university career. The views I hold
represent dissent from the orthodoxy that
reigns on our campuses, and such dissent
is not very well tolerated there. That's the
most significant part of Alan Gribben's
story. He disagreed, and he was driven
from the university.
About the time Gribben was resigning,
I received in the mail a copy of the minutes of a University of Texa'S English
department faculty meeting. The person
who sent them to me was appalled at talk
that had gone on in the meeting of "flushing out" other opponents of the revised
English 306 syllabus. This student recognized the signs of the new McCarthyism,
and he was afraid of becoming himself a
victim of it. "Please let me remain anonymous," he wrote. "If it came out that I had
written to you--or to someone else similarly disreputable--! wouldn't be [here]
for long."
The new McCarthyism--like the old-often works its way by name-calling.
People aren't labeled "communist" now,
but "racist." Harvard professor Stephen
Thernstromfound himself denounced that
way. His offenses included using the word
Oriental to describe the religion of l 9thcentury Asian immigrants and assigning
students to read an article that questioned
affirmative action. New York University
professor Carol Iannone found herself
called racist for writing an article in which
she said that certain literary prizes have
been awarded on the basis of race rather
than literary merit. She was not the first to
make such an assertion. Two of the five
judges on the National Book Award fie-
Winter
1992
tion panel had said the same thing. Nevertheless, Carol Iannone was said to be racist.
Sexual harassment is a phrase that has
been similarly misused. In the politically
correct world of the post-modern campus,
it can, apparently, mean almost anything.
At the University of Minnesota not long
ago six members of the Scandinavian
Studies Department were charged with
sexual harassment by a group of graduate
students. The complaint provided a long
list of the professorial activities that had
led to the charge: not greeting a student in
a friendly enough manner, for example.
Not teaching in a sensitive enough way.
Not having read a certain novel. The
charges against the professors were finally
dropped, but not until the faculty members
had incurred considerable expense and
suffered deep, personal pain. One professorreported that it cost him $2,000 to have
a lawyer draft a response to the complaint.
Another confessed that he wept when the
charges were finally dropped.
On crucial issues, faculty members are
silent. Perhaps apathy plays some part, but
concern for reputation, concern of professional well-being--these, I suspect, play a
role as well. The University of California at
Berkeley has adopted an ethnic studies
requirement to go into effect this fall . Now,
this requirement was a major step for the
university. There are no other required
courses, and so instituting one represents a
sharp break with practice. But on this
crucial matter, only one-fifth of the eligible faculty members voted. The measure
passed narrowly and it seems reasonable to
suspect that among the 1,500 or so faculty
members who didn't vote were some who
had doubts.
What is the purpose of the ethnic studies requirement? Is it a response to political
pressure? Are curricularrequirements now
to be set by interest groups who lobby for
them? If, on the other hand, the aim is
educational, then aren't there other courses
that should be required? Perhaps a course
in American history, one that would stress
LETTERS
from San t a Fe
pa g e five
�THE TERM FRESHMAN IS
FORBIDDEN -- IF YOU USE IT,
ONE STUDENT WARNED -YOU COULD BE TAKEN
BEFORE THE JUDICIARY
BOARD.
p ag e s i x
the democratic values we share and thus
provide balance to the ethnic studies approach, which emphasizes differences that
set us apart. Perhaps a course in world
history that would prepare students for the
decades ahead in which people of all countries and continents are going to be increasingly interdependent. Shouldn't a foreign
language be required? If the goal is really
to understand people different from ourselves, isn't foreign language study the
most effective route? Surely among the 80
percent of faculty who didn't vote were
some who had such questions, but the
atmosphere on our campuses today doesn't
encourage questions. And expressing
doubts can be costly.
This is true not only of large universities, but of some smaller institutions too.
Professor Christina Sommers of Clark
University has been interviewing faculty
and students across the country, and she
has particularly striking interviews from
Wooster College in Wooster, Ohio. At
Wooster, the textbook Racism and Sexism--the textbook that the University of
Texas finally rejected--is required reading
for all freshmen. Or fresh persons, I should
say. The term freshman is forbidden at
Wooster. If you use it, one student warned
professor Sommers, you could be taken
before the Judiciary Board.
Another student described the seminar
required of all fust-year students. "Difference, Power, and Discrimination," it is
called, with the subtitle "Perspectives on
Race, Gender, Class, and Culture." According to the student, the seminar resembled "a reeducation camp" more than a
"university program." "Now we know," he
said, "that when we read the Declaration of
Independence that it's not about equality
and inalienable rights--but it is a sexist
document written by white male elites."
Faculty, who are evaluated on their
"gender sensitivity," said they are afraid to
speak out. According to one, to do so
would be "suicidal." Another said, "I am
getting old and tired and I do not want to
get fired. Until there is an atmosphere of
LETTERS
f'om S a nta Fe
tolerance, I do not want to go on the
record." Promised anonymity, he noted,
"What you have here, on the one hand, are
a lot of students and faculty who are very
skeptical, but they are afraid to voice their
reservations. "
The point of opposing political correctness is not to silence those who advan6;e it, but to open their views to challenge and debate. This often happens when
p.c. enters the larger world, but it will not
happen on our campuses, I fear, unless
those of us who Iivein the larger world help
it to happen.
When it is time for us to help our
children choose a college, we should ask
hard questions about which campuses not
only allow but encourage a diversity of
opinion. When it comes time for us to
make contributions as alumni, we should
ask how well the college we attended is
doing at making sure all sides are heard.
Those who serve on boards of trustees
should encourage discussion of free speech
itself. Does political correctness reign on
this campus?
The New York Times reported on its
front page about a group, mostly English
professors, who are uniting to prove that
political correctness is nothing more than
the product of overheated conservative
imaginations. But they are going to have
a very hard time maintaining that view.
There are too many examples of p.c. at
work, powerful examples like that of Alan
Gribben. And there are people from across
the political spectrum -- not just conservatives but liberals as well--coming together
now to defend free speech on our campuses.
The stakes are high. The issue here is
whether the rising generation of Americans will come to understand what free
inquiry is -- and how it can sometimes be
hard --and how it is always necessary if
truth and justice are to have a chance. •
Winter
I 992
�THE POLITICAL SEDUCTION
OF THE UNIVERSITY
Taken from - Campus - America's Student Newspaper
by Debra Cermele
SENIOR - THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
There is no such tlring as "great" literature.
Or so Professor Lennard Davis instructed the class at the beginning of his University
of Pennsylvania "British Novel" course last spring. "Harlequin Romances," Professor
Davis said, "are part of the same continuum as the novels we are going to be reading."
Although none of the students voiced disagreement, he proceeded to spend the entire
semester saving them from the "oppression of [the] imperialized discourse" to which
they had supposedly been exposed. His own book Resisting Novels clearly underlines
what he teaches his class: "We can no longer smugly think of the novel as the culmination
of the human spirit."
Instead of analyzing the quality of the English classics as works of art, the class
investigated the ways gender, class and sexuality influenced political power within these
novels. Rather than being a' critical and comparative examination of the ideas that
shaped Western thinking, Professor Davis's lectures were sessions for him to preach
politics and sociology to a captive audience. For example, Joseph Conrad's Kurtz and
Marlowe, Professor Davis insisted, were involved in a homoerotic relationship.
Frankenstein's monster, whatever Mary Shelley may herself have believed, represented her
"repressed female sexuality."
Whenever students tried to raise issues more relevant to the study of English literature
as literature, they were dismissed with indifference. Professor Davis was eager, however,
to engage students in class discussions on such topics as a Daily Pennsylvanian columnist's
ramblings on classroom behavior of women and the fact that the film Glory was produced
and directed by white males.
Unfortunately, this example is not atypical of what many college students are
experiencing at most of the nation's universities, particularly in humanities departments.
Nowadays, the prevailing wisdom dictates that the purpose of a professor is not to
enhance the critical ability and knowledge of the next generation, but to transform
society in revolutionary ways. And what better way is there to accomplish this than by
subtly charging humanities discussions with ideas that are, at root, political? Many
humanities courses are lectures that affirm, as fact, dubious ideas that are in reality at the
center of debate not only within the humanities, but within the natural and social
sciences. An overview of questions that tries to be fair to all sides is simply not presented
in these classes, and many students are therefore unaware that essential debates even
exist. Why else would no one dispute Professor Davis's contention that "views of gender
are socially constructed in such a way that we think they are natural?" Indeed, there
was no reason to dispute such a "fact." They had heard it many times before in many other
classrooms.
The desire to jettison the study of Western culture or at least to depreciate its
importance is also trendy. The study of the history of Western ideas is now regarded as
nothing more than the "hegemonic culture" seeking to regenerate itself, to the exclusion
of "marginalized" groups. (This "hegemony" is comprised of white European males,
now often handily referred to as "whitemales.") According to a column by Richard
Wi n t e r 1 992
.......
LETTERS f ' o m Sa nr u l'e
WHO ARE MARX AND FREUD,
FOUCAULT AND DERRIDA,
IF NOT, DEAD, WHITE,
EUROPEAN MALES?
page
seven
�Bernstein entitled "Academia's Liberals
Defend Their Carnival of Canons Against
Bloom's 'Killer B's'," the new scholars
hold that the ultimate purpose ofliterature
is to reflect the sociological perspective of
the author: "[These] scholars particularly
scorn the idea that certain great works of
literature have absolute value or represent
some eternal truth. Just about everything,
they argue, is an expression of race, class,
or gender."
A sprinkling of Marx and Gramsci
completes the justification for the
politicization of the academy, the establishment of a new curriculum dictated
mainly by political concerns. If culture
exists only to maintain an unjust balance
between classes, races, and genders, then
the "marginalized" must rise up and eradicate the oppression they experience from
the study of "whitemale" culture. Thus,
the academy must toss out what the new
proponents call the "narrow, outdated interpretation of the humanities and of culture itself' and welcome with open arms
the writings of all of those who claim to
have been marginalized by "whitemales."
(This practice has been graced by the
politically correct with the euphemism
"multiculturalism.") Since literary quality
is no longer relevant, it is sufficient, indeed
required, for texts to reflect the extent to
which the writer has been oppressed
by the dominant culture.
These new ideologues are actually
displaying a profound hypocrisy in three
important ways. In the first place, those
who have dedicated their academic careers to destroying the "canon" have themselves become canonical. The fact that
students now speak in the jargon of postModemist, neo-Marxist, or feminist critical theory reveals that a new orthodoxy
has merely replaced the old.
In addition, if they really were advocates, as they maintain, of a relativistic
view of culture, they would not be seeking
to deprecate the study of Western culture.
For a relativist, nothing has any more
objective value than anything else; it thus
p age e i g ht
should not matter which culture American students are studying. Yet these scholars seek to dissuade students from examining the classics. That is, they are imposing value judgements while denying that
value judgements can be made.
Third, by summarily dismissing Western ideas as the political rationalizations
of "Dead White European Males"
(DWEM's," as they are now affectionately called), the scholars are perpetrating
the worst kind of hypocrisy: they are
simultaneously making use of specifically that which they seek to reject. That
is, the interest in studying other cultures is
a specifically Western idea. Historically,
almost all other world cultures have proven
to be singularly closed and xenophobic.
The ideas of seeking to find value in other
ways of life--which these scholars maintain is unique to their own philosophy-emerged only through
the evolution of Western civilization.
Moreover, ideas
such as feminism and
post-Modem criticism,
which the scholars like
to pretend are so new,
come directly from
those very same
"DWEMs" who are
vilified by the new Establishment. Who are
Marx and Freud, Foucault and Derrida, if not
dead, white, European
males? Even those feminists who hail
Simone de Beauvoir know that Sartre was
her main influence. However, these scholars conveniently ignore the essential importance of Western ideas to their very
own ideologies.
There is no disputing the wisdom of
acquiring a knowledge of other cultures.
Before it is possible to determine the
universals of human nature, it is necessary to examine as broad a spectrum of
perspectives as is possible. However, it is
of little value merely to study isolated
LETTERS
fr o m Sa nt a Fe
examples of other cultures in a vacuum
while neglecting the history of ideas that
formed one's own culture. The student
then has nothing with which to compare
new values, ideas, and achievements. For
an American, what would studying the
I Ching mean without an understanding of
Western ideas?
Before abandoning the study of Westem culture, academics should consider
that by rejecting the study of works that
universalize the human experience, they
deny that there is a fundamental basis
from which different cultures can build a
mutual understanding of circumstantial
differences. In fact, by denying any common ground, they perpetuate the notion
that individuals of different races, sexes,
ethnicities, sexual preference, etc. have
not only superficial diversity but built-in
differences that preclude any concept of a
human experience.
What is this but thinly
disguised racism and
sexism?
The ultimate purpose of a university
should be to engage students in a dialogue of
ideas, with the aim of
understanding the truth
about and problems of
the human condition. If
today's students are exposed only to the new
trend in academia, the
only ideas they will
absorb is that they themselves are either
victims or perpetrators of oppression. Instead of gaining a knowledge of human
nature, they will only come to "understand" the separatist doctrine that ethnic
minorities and genders have irrevocably
incompatible mentalities. They will come
to "realize" that only people with the same
genitals and melanin concentrations can
understand each other. The new Establishmenthas declared that its goal is to change
society. Unfortunately, it may do just that. •
Winter
1 992
�ON DEPOLITICIZING THE
UNIVERSITY
by Robert Weissberg
Perhaps only the politically masochistic would want to hear for the hundredth time all
the stories of imposed speech codes, required courses on racism, and the bizarre
Newspeak world of "equal opportunity" employment. Only administrators seem compelled to deny that the Left has successfully invaded and colonized university life.
Disagreements presently concern only such questions as "how much?" and "what are the
consequences?"
Opposition to politicization seems as self-evidently correct and defensible as the
programs of the politically correct are wrongheaded. Undoing the politicization has thus
become the rallying cry in the battle against the tenured radicals, the deconstruction
workers, and the pandering administrators.
Opposition to the "politicization of the university" is an appealing call to arms. It
permits us "reach out" and be diverse. Nearly everyone from the religious right to the
Marxist left is susceptible to the plea that the university should not be an incarnation of
the communist-run agitprop schools of the 1930s. Like wartime stories of atrocities,
tales of introductory English courses celebrating the virtues of feminist environmental
lesbianism are good for enlistments.
OPPOSITION TO THE
PC-LEFT MUST STOP HIDING
BEHIND THE POLITE AND
HIGH-SOUNDING CALL FOR
DEPOLITICIZING THE
UNIVERSITY. THERE MUST
BE A WILLINGNESS TO
DEFEND POSITIONS ON
SUBSTANCE.
The Limits of Anti-Politicization
As a political slogan, the battle against the politicization of university life clearly has the
tactical and psychological virtues of comfortable legitimacy. Easy politics. Unfortunately, it will not prove very serviceable during the battle. It may even be a delusional
disorder.
First, it puts us on difficult-to-defend grounds, a situation reminiscent of when priests
preached that the purpose of sex was procreation, not recreation. Deep down, it is not
convincing. We have all confronted the leftish charge that all education (and all
everything, for that matter) is at core political. From a practical perspective, we must
accept that there is enough truth in this claim that to maintain the polar opposite puts one
in an untenable position. When the Left returns our fire with the charge of hypocrisy they
Winter I 9 9 2
LETTERS
frnm Santa Fe
page
nine
�will score points and we honestly cannot
wiggle out of it.
If we define politics in the broadest
possible way, even the natural sciences
such as physics and chemistry have lurking within them a conception of the world
constructed on some obscure politically
derived premise of order and causation.
In my own field of political science I
cannot imagine teaching an antiseptically
politically clean course despite every precaution. A disagreeable outsider will surely
detect a bias in the readings, a tendency to
give some perspectives greater class time,
and other manifestations of propagating a
political faith. Political preaching can be
minimized, we can warn students, we can
bring in visitors to add balance, but it is
foolish to believe that it could be eliminated altogether. It is a situation akin to
food purity--we cannot eliminate food
impurities so we set minimum acceptable
standards for mouse droppings and insect
parts.
How Is the Battle To Be Fought?
The real battle is about substance, not
the desirability of political neutrality.
Race-based admission is wrong not because it allows group conflict to intrude
into the sheltered world of ideas; it is
wrong because it debases the idea of individuality and the principle of merit.
Teaching freshmen that all literature is
oppression is not a political crime, it is a
crime against clear thinking and the purpose of education. Compulsory sensitivity
training is wrong not because it permits
only one portion of the political spectrum
access to students; it is wrong because it
smacks of totalitarian thought control.
Rampant multiculturalism is wonderful
only if one is a fan of ethnocentrism and
domestic violence.
To be blunt, opposition to the PC-Left
must stop hiding behind the polite and
high-sounding call for depoliticizing the
university. There must be a willingness to
defend positions on substance. If somepag e
ten
L ETTE R S
from Santa F e
thing is bad historical analysis, it should
be called bad historical analysis, not the
intrusion of trendy leftish politics into
historical analysis (though it may be that,
too). There should be no shame and embarrassment in saying that some things
are right and others wrong. When Western civilization is attacked by delusional
wannabe third-worlders, it is pointless to
demand an end to the politicization of the
curriculum--one must be willing to say
that it is a better form of civilization.
Reluctance to defend in public what should
be defended is to ultimately lose the war.
We must not become like those highly
assimilated German Jews who refused to
defend themselves because " it might
cause trouble."
This coming out of the closet will
focus the battle. Rather than fight unproductive though psychologically safe skirmishes over side issues, the core evils will
be addressed. Affirmative action will be
opposed because it violates principles,
not because it brings politics to the university. Deconstructionism is not wrong
because it interjects politics into literature, it is wrong because it rests on nonsensical assumptions and yields gibberish, not insight. Until this occurs, combating the PC-Left will resemble little more
than disjointed civilian resistance to a
well-organized occupying army--perhaps
some sabotage, a little sniping and noncooperation, but nothing that amounts to
more than a nuisance. •
Robert Weissberg and I were at Cornell
together over 20 years ago. We lost track
ofeach other until last year, when Letters
appeared in his mailbox. This article is
taken from a longer piece sent to me just
before we went to press. Ifanyone cares to
write Bob (Department of Political Science, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, Urbana Illinois 61 8013696), a large packet of essays will no
doubt follow - I .A.
Wini er
1992
�WHERE DO WE DRAW
THE LINE?
Once we accept the idea that higher education entails opening rather than closing minds, we are still confronted
with what, if any, the appropriate limits of speech and action might be. These two essays, with different answers,
are the best I could find on the topic. - J.A.
UNIVERSITIES
MUST DEFEND
FREE SPEECH
by Benno C. Schmidt Jr.
The most serious problems of freedom of expression in the U. S. today exist on our
campuses. Freedom of thought is in danger from well-intentioned but misguided efforts
to give values of community and harmony a higher place than freedom. The assumption
seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce "correct" opinion rather than to
search for wisdom and to liberate the mind.
On many campuses, perhaps most, there is little resistance to growing pressure to
suppress and to punish, rather than to answer, speech that offends notions of civility and
community. These campuses are heedless of the oldest lesson in the history of freedom,
which is that offensive, erroneous and obnoxious speech is the price of liberty. Values
of civility, mutual respect and harmony are rightly prized within the university. But these
values must be fostered by teaching and by example, and defended by expression. When
the goals of harmony collide with freedom of expression, freedom must be the
paramount obligation of an academic community.
Much expression that is free may deserve our contempt. We may well be moved to
exercise our own freedom to counter it or to ignore it. But universities cannot censor or
suppress speech, no matter how obnoxious in content, without violating their justification for existence. Liberal education presupposes that a liberated mind will strive for
the courage and composure to face ideas that are fraught with evil, and to answer them.
To stifle expression because it is obnoxious, erroneous, embarrassing, not instrumental
to some political or ideological end is--quite apart from the invasion of the rights of
others -- a disastrous reflection on the idea of the university. It is to elevate fear over the
capacity for a liberated and humane mind.
Mr. Schmidt is president of Yale.
This article is adapted from a longer
speech delivered at New York's
92nd Street Y.
The Wall Street Journal,
Monday, May 6, 1991
Acts of Suppression
The freedom of speakers on our campuses goes to the heart of academic freedom.
However bizarre, off-beat, or outrageous a speaker may be, however compelling the
concerns of protesters, the right to speak is as fundamental an issue of principle as any
W int e r
1 992
LETTERS
fro m S a nt a F e
p a ge
e lev e n
�UNIVERSITIES CANNOT
CENSOR OR SUPPRESS
SPEECH, NO MATTER
HOW OBNOXIOUS IN
CONTENT, WITHOUT
VIOLA TING THEIR
JUST/FICA TION FOR
EXISTENCE. LIBERAL
EDUCATION
PRESUPPOSES THAT A
LIBERA TED MIND WILL
STRIVE FOR THE
COURAGE ANO
COMPOSURE TO FACE
IDEAS THAT ARE
FRAUGHT WITH
EV/LANO TO
ANSWER THEM.
page
twelv e
campus can face.
This is why I believed so strongly that
essential principles of academic freedom
were violated at Yale, though not by Yale,
earlier this year when protesters, for the
most part not from Yale, shouted down
Health and Human Services Secretary
Louis Sullivan and effectively prevented
him from making himself heard to a group
that had invited him to speak.
A more vexing question of freedom of
expression concerns the actual use of university authority to suppress freedom. This
is the most serious example of confusion
and failure of principle in university governance today. It reminds us how frequently in history threats to free expression have come not from tyranny but from
well-meaning persons of little understanding.
There is no more important line drawn
in our entire corpus of First Amendment
law than the line between threats and fight
ing words--which may be appropriately
punished--and offensive speech generally.
For if concerns about dangers of violence
are permitted to balloon into justification
for punishing any expression that offends,
a vague and unpredictable engine of suppression is loosed. Free expression is lost.
Any statement that might give offense is at
risk.
Yet in many universities this is the
critical line that has been blurred or abandoned in the effort to create a civil, inoffensive community. Some of the nation's
finest universities have empowered groups
of faculty and students with roving commissions to punish offensive speech.
At the University of Michigan, before
judicial intervention, persons were subject
to discipline for any statement that "stigmatizes or victimizes ... on the basis of
race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, creed, national origin, ancestry, age,
marital status, handicap, or Vietnam-era
veteran status ... that creates an intimidating, hostile, or demeaning environment
for educational pursuits." A pamphlet that
listed examples of proscribed speech inLETTERS
f'°m Santa F e
eluded "a male student makes remarks in
class like 'women just aren't as good in
this field as men.' " Another: "Your student organization sponsors a comedian
who slurs Hispanics." So along with utterly boundless options of offensiveness,
we have guilt by association. A federal
judge threw this out.
The University of Wisconsin promulgated a prohibition of "racist or discriminatory comments ... that intentionally demean the race, sex, religion [etc.] of any
person or persons ... and create a hostile or
demeaning environment for education."
Its disciplinary code indicates that "jokes
that have the purpose of making the educational environment hostile" are an example of the sort of thing that is barred.
The University of Pennsylvania prohibits any comments that "stigmatize or
victimize individuals on the basis of race
[etc.] and that create an ... offensive academic, living, or work environment." The
University of Connecticut had prohibitions on speech that included "conduct
causing alarm by making personal slurs."
The ban extended to "inappropriately directed laughter, inconsiderate jokes ... and
conspicuous exclusions [of others] from
conversation." This too was narrowed after a judicial challenge.
In the recent Brown case that has received such widespread attention, press
accounts might justify the view that the
student who was punished had directly
and intentionally threatened other individuals with violence. This can surely be
punished. The problem is that the Brown
rule under which discipline was imposed
forbids students from subjecting "another
person, group, or class of persons to inappropriate, abusive, threatening, or demeaning action based on race, [etc.]."
Under this wide-open formulation, a
group of students, faculty and administrators can decide after the fact when speech
should be treated as "inappropriate action." Thus, although the facts of the particular case may well have been within the
very narrow prohibition of threats that
Winter
1992
�free-speech theory and practice have long
accepted as legitimate, the rule that authorized this discipline seems vastly wider,
indeed almost boundless.
The chilling effects on speech of the
vagueness and open-ended nature of many
universities' prohibitions of offensive
speech are compounded by the fact that
these codes are typically enforced by faculty and students who commonly assert
that vague notions of community are more
important to the academy than freedom of
thought and expression. Such a view is
disastrous to the independence and creativity of the academic mission.
A sad footnote to this erosion is the
complacency with which many who ought
to know better are responding, or failing
to respond. An editorial in•the New York
Times took the position that because Brown
is a private university, and therefore not
bound by the First Amendment, it need
not treat free expression as a paramount
value and should therefore balance the
needs of freedom and the needs of civility
on campus.
This is profoundly wrong. A university ought to be more devoted to freedom
than the larger society , which has other
goals that compete with the search for
truth. This search is the paramount end of
the university, its reason for existence.
Moreover, universities have a special capacity to answer obnoxious speech. The
communal character of the university, the
fact that it is replete with opportunities for
expression, the capacity of students, faculty, deans and presidents to answer forcefully and promptly, all present manifold
opportunities to counteroffensive expression.The current wave of suppression is
largely directed at expression that is said
to demean racial minorities, women, gays
and lesbians, religious groups, persons
with disabilities, and other groups that
tend to be victimized by ugly stereotypes.
Racism and other such prejudices are antithetical to the academic mission of the
university, because the search for truth
requires that each individual in the uni-
Wint er
I 99 2
versity be judged on the basis of his or her
individual academic merits. But it does
not follow that the university should suppress any speech that can plausibly be
thought to be racist. A university ought to
be the last place where people are inhibited by fear of punishment from expressing ignorance or even hate, so long as
others are left free to answer.
I have often heard the argument lately
that uninhibited freedom of speech was
somehow more appropriate in the days
when our universities were more homogeneous, while today's far greater racial,
religious and cultural diversity call for
controls in the interest of harmony and
community. That so many people of good
will would make such an argument shows
how far we have drifted from our confidence in and commitment to freedom. I
can only imagine what Madison or Holmes
would have thought of this inversion of
the theory of free expression. It is precisely societies that are diverse, pluralistic, and contentious that most urgently
need freedom of speech and freedom of
religion.
very dangerous. The political process is
too prone to agitation about various sorts
of speech to be a wise and stable source of
enduring principle. If freedom of thought
on campus is to be protected, the universities themselves must summon up the
clarity of purpose to defend the principles
ofliberty on which the academic mission
must rest. •
A UNIVERSITY OUGHT
TO BE MORE DEVOTED
TO FREEDOM THAN
Not the Answer
THE LARGER SOCIETY,
The courts have begun to see bits of the
problem that surface occasionally in legislation, and by and large have reacted
with justified bewilderment. But the last
place universities should look for protection of freedom is the courts. Private universities are in most cases not covered by
the First Amendment because their actions are not those of the state. And judges
will properly tend to approach issues of
freedom within universities with much
deference based on long traditions of academic autonomy.
Nor does the answer to these problems
lie in federal legislation. Rep. Henry Hyde,
with the support of the ACLU, has proposed a statute that would subject private
colleges and universities that receive federal funds to the strictures of the First
Amendment. This is well-intentioned but
LETTERS
from San1 a Fe
WHICH HAS OTHER
GOALS THAT COMPETE
WITH THE SEARCH FOR
TRUTH. THIS SEARCH
IS THE PARAMOUNT
ENO OF THE UNIVERSITY,
ITS REASON FOR
EXISTENCE.
page
thir!een
�SAY THE RIGHT THING
... OR ELSE
by
Judith Martin and
Gunther Stent
The New York Times,
Wednesday, March 20, 1991
Can the university, with its special trust of protecting free
speech, be hampered by the restrictions of civility? What kind of
a frill is etiquette, anyway, for those in the noble pursuit of truth?
These questions are raised whenever a loose-tongued student
turns publicly nasty. When Brown University recently expelled
such a student, many argued that all restrictions of free speech are
intolerable in the university. Brown's president, Vartan Gregorian,
agreed with that premise and neatly reclassified the offensive speech as behavior.
But the premise is wrong.
The special trust of a university is not to
foster unlimited speech: It is to foster unlimited inquiry. And totally free speech
inhibits rather than enhances the free exchange of ideas.
The law cannot restrict such speech without violating our constitutional rights. But
etiquette, the extra-legal regulative system that seeks to avert conflict before it
becomes serious enough to call in the Jaw, can and does. You may
have a legal right to call your mother a slut, but you won't if you
know what's good for you.
Nor could you convince many people that the controversy that
such remarks are likely to provoke will lead to advances in
knowledge.
The university needs to enforce rules banning speech that
interferes with the free exchange of ideas. It must protect the
discussion of offensive topics but not the use of offensive
manners. It must enable people freely to attack ideas but not one
another.
pag e fo u rteen
LETTERS
Education is impossible without the order that prevents intimidation and mayhem. When children first enter school, they must
be taught to sit still, refrain from taunting their classmates, show
respect for their teacher and wait their turn to talk, or they will
never be able to learn.
To those who find it horrifying that the university should
allow a lesser degree of free speech than the law permits, it might
be pointed out that the law itself restricts free speech in its pursuit
ofjudicial truth. Try saying some of the things in a courtroom that
the law will protect your right to say in a barroom.
Jurisprudence uses etiquette in courtroom procedure, not only
to restrict speech but to impose standards of dress, comportment
and forms of address--matters over which universities have long
since abandoned authority.
Legislators and diplomats also know the value of keeping
speech within the bounds of civility. The parliamentary etiquette
book, "Robert's Rules of Order," proscribes "disorderly words"
and forbids speakers "to arraign the motives of a member" during
strongly worded debate. "It is not the man, but the measure, that
is the subject of debate," decrees its section on "Decorum."
The rougher the conflict, the more manners are needed. Only
when insults, harassment, disrespect and obscenity are banned
can people engage in truly substantive argument.
Of course it is also a personal insult to call someone a racist or
sexist. Incivility is no more acceptable in
defense than in attack.
Rebuttal, however, is a staple of open
debate. Members of the university community should always have the opportunity to attack ideas--but not to attack
people. The university should be obliged
to provide a forum for anyone who wants
to argue for or against an idea, provided
the argument is made in good faith and a
polite manner.
This standard of academic etiquette
must be required not only in the classroom and lecture hall but
wherever the community of scholars gathers--residence halls,
dining commons, recreational facilities. Invective, whether spoken or conveyed through posters or graffiti, in the classroom or
in the community, is detrimental to rational debate, to which
universities are dedicated. •
ATTACK IDEAS, NOT PEOPLE
Judith Martin writes the Miss Manners syndicated column.
Gunther Stent is chairman of the department of molecular and
cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley.
from Santa F e
Wi ni er
1 992
�ANNOUNCEMENTS
The creation of an Institute for
the Study of Eastern Classics
on the Santa Fe campus
St. John's College
Receives 3.1 Million
Dollar Trust
St. John's College
Summer Seminars for Adults
1992
St. John's College has been awarded a
grant of $207,320 from the Lynde and
Harry Bradley Foundation. The grant will
be used in the creation of an Institute for
the Study of Eastern Classics on the Santa
Fe campus. The institute will offer a oneyear, graduate level, non-credit, certificate program in the classic texts of Eastern civilization.
In addition to studying the major works
of China and India, students also will
receive a full year of language studies in
Chinese or Sanskrit. The institute will be
staffed by St. John's tutors.
We have always taken Great Books
seriously at St. John's, and this institute is
a way for us to take seriously the classic
texts, the literature and the philosophy of
the East.
St. John's College recently received the
largest single gift in its history.
Mara and Charles Robinson of Santa
Fe, New Mexico have established a trust
that has resulted in a 3.1 million dollar gift
to St. John's.
The Robinsons have been actively involved with St. John's College since 1982
when Mrs. Robinson enrolled in the
Graduate Institute on the Santa Fe campus. She graduated in 1983 with a master's
degree in liberal education. Between 1984
and 1990 Mrs. Robinson served on the St.
John's College Board of Visitors and Governors and has since continued her participation in various aspects of the college.
"My experience as a student in St.
John's College and as a member of its
Board of Visitors and Governors has made
my respect for St. John's grow through the
years. My husband and I believe strongly
in the program and ideals of St.John's and
our support expresses our confidence in
its leadership as well as its goals. We hope
that future students will profit from its
educational program and enjoy as stimulating an intellectual experience as I have
throughout my studies at St. John's."
This gift is equal to approximately
10% of the total current St. John's endowment. Needless to say, we are not only
grateful, we are overwhelmed by the
Robinson's generosity. - J.A.
This summer St. John's College offers six,
week-long seminars and one workshop in
Landscape Drawing. Participants may enroll in one seminar each week for 1, 2, or
3 weeks. Each seminar is limited to 18
participants.
Inquiries should be directed to:
James Carey, Director
Institute for the Study of Eastern Classics,
St. John's College
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501-4599
Phone: (505) 988-4361
We are very grateful to the W. H. Brady
Foundation for underwriting this issue of
Week One - Jul~ 19th - 25th
Dante - Purgatory
or
Novels of the Southwest
Willa Cather - Death Comes to the
Archbishop
Rudy Anaya - Bless Me Ultima
Scott Momaday - The Ancient Child
\;\eek T\\o - Jul~ 26th - \ugust Isl
De Tocqueville - Democracy in
America
or
Opera
Mozart - Don Giovanni
Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier
Week Three· .\ugust 2nd - 8th
Shakespeare - Merchant of Venice,
As You Like It, Twelfth Night
or
Dostoevski - The Devils
or
Landscape Drawing - Workshop
For information write: St John's College
Summer Seminars - C, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501-4599
LE TT ER SfromSanta Fe
Faculty Position - Kenyon College
Kenyon College has a course of study called the Integrated Program in Humane Studies (IPHS). It is a multi-year, team-taught course
based on the classic texts of European and other world cultures. They are now looking for a program director whose duties would
include teaching, curriculum development, administration, and leadership of an ongoing faculty seminar. A doctorate, teaching
excellence and scholarly achievement are prerequisites. A cover letter, vita, examples of scholarly work and three letters of reference
should be directed to Academic Dean's Office, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, 43022, by February 28, 1992.
Winter
1992
LETTERS
from Santa F e
page fifteen
�PROFILE
Founded:
Established in 1696 in Annapolis, Maryland, as King William's School and chartered in 1784 as St. John's College. Great Books
Program adopted 1937. Second campus in Santa Fe opened in 1964.
Curriculum:
An integrated, four-year, arts and science program based on reading and discussing, in loosely chronological order, the Great Books
of Western civilization. The program requires four years of foreign language, four years of mathematics, three years of laboratory
science, and one year of music.
Approach:
Tutorials, laboratories, and seminars requiring intense participation replace more traditional lectures. Classes are very small. Student/
faculty ratio is 8: 1. St. John's is independent and non-sectarian.
Degree Granted:
Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts.
Student Body:
Enrollment is limited to about 400 students on each campus. Current freshman class made up of 55% men and 45 % women, from 30
states and several foreign countries. Fifty-seven percent receive financial aid. Students may transfer between the Santa Fe and
Annapolis campuses.
Alumni Careers:
Education - 21 %, Business - 20%, Law - 10%, Visual and Performing Arts - 9%, Medicine - 7%, Science and Engineering - 7%,
Computer Science - 6%, Writing and Publishing - 5%.
Graduate Institute:
The Graduate Institute in Liberal Education is an interdisciplinary master's degree program based on the same principles as the
undergraduate program. Offered on both campuses year-round. Readers of the Newsletter may be especially interested in applying for
our summer session. For more information please contact Nancy Buchenauer, Directorof the Graduate Institute, (505) 982-3691 ext. 249.
LE TT ER SfromSanta Fe
St. John's College
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501-4599
ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED
Bulk Rate
U.S. Postage
PAID
Non-Profit
Organization
Permit No.231
Santa Fe, N.M.
�
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Letters from Santa Fe
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A newsletter published by the Santa Fe President's Office that includes articles about liberal education.
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St. John's College Meem Library
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16 pages
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Letters from Santa Fe, Winter 1992
Description
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Letters from Santa Fe, St. John’s College—Santa Fe, New Mexico, Winter 1992
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Agresto, John
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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1992
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
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text
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pdf
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Cheney, Lynne V.
Cermele, Debra
Weissberg, Robert, 1941-
Schmidt, Benno C., 1942-
Martin, Judith, 1938-
Stent, Gunther S. (Gunther Siegmund), 1924-2008
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English
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Letters_from_SF_1992_Winter
Presidents
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