Michael S. Roth '78

Track Closed but Tunnels Open for Training

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As many on campus already know, the track behind the Freeman Center is closed for several months for extensive renovation. Many have voiced their frustration that this important exercise venue is no longer available.

For years I have also been asked by dozens of students and alumni why Wesleyan no longer allows students to use the tunnels under the campus. For many, the tunnels represent a place of experimentation, a happy alternative to the more controlled environments above ground. Of course, sometimes this “experimentation” got out of hand.

So, I’ve decided to re-open the tunnels, but to do so for the purposes of health and exercise! We have been repainting the vast maze of underground paths (and putting cameras every 50 yards or so to ensure safety and security), improving ventilation, and fixing water fountains, etc. The Wesleyan tunnels will be a great place to work out, meet other students, and to get back in shape for summer. We’re even thinking of having an underground battle of the bands!!

Spring is here, but let’s be weirdly Wesleyan and go underground!

Conformity, Education, Diversity

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I am just on my way back from Pennsylvania State University, where I gave a lecture on liberal education as the kick-off to a conference on the University and Society. My host was Matt Jordan a former graduate student of mine who is now an associate professor in Communications and an active participant in the Social Thought Program. As I was preparing to return home to Middletown, I posted the following on the HuffingtonPost.

As we marked the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war, over the last month many stories emphasized the false pretenses under which we entered the conflict, the surprising rapidity with which American armed forces deposed Saddam Hussein’s regime, and our extraordinary lack of preparation for the ensuing conflicts among Iraqi groups. Commentators used the idea of “groupthink” to describe the enormous enthusiasm for war in the spring of 2003 and how many in the political class went along with the invasion.

We must be wary of attributing too much power to “groupthink” for what came to seem like an inevitable United States attack on Iraq. After all, there is a good case to be made that many knew that they were simply disseminating false information in order to create a quasi-legal basis for war. These folks weren’t swept along by unconscious conformity with a group. They were lying to the American people and the rest of the world about the threat posed by Saddam’s regime.

We must also be wary of the retrospective notion that there was a universal desire for military action 10 years ago. From January through the summer of 2003, many thousands of people across the country participated in organized protests against the rush to war, and more than a million protestors hit the streets in Europe. On February 19 President Bush was quoted as saying, in his inimitable style: “Size of protest — it’s like deciding, well, I’m going to decide policy based upon a focus group. … The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security, in this case, the security of the people.” No focus groups or groupthink for him! We remember that for this president, thinking meant listening to your gut. And he wasn’t about to hear any outsiders’ perspectives that might get in the way of him hearing himself.

But soon after the war began, it became clear that groupthink had in fact played some role in the government’s (and the press’) eagerness for military conflict. Although incompetence and dishonesty were part of these war preparations, the quasi-automatic process of “groupthink” unconsciously swept many along into conformity with “expert” opinion.

William Safire discussed this in his “On Language” column in the summer of 2004, pointing back to William H. Whyte Jr’s coinage of the term “groupthink” in a 1952 Fortune magazine article. Whyte, the author of The Organization Man, bemoaned the “rationalized conformity” that had become a “national philosophy.” He was pointing to orthodoxy that is justified through conventions deemed efficient, right and good. Twenty years later, Irving Janis published Victims of Groupthink, in which he explored how cohesive groups create pressures so that “the members’ striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”

You can see the vicious circle: the more cohesion, the more pressure toward “rationalized conformity.” The more conformity, the more cohesion. Outsiders, and ideas from the outside, are not welcome. Everybody hears the same one-note chorus.

Meanwhile, in the same year in which the Iraq war began, the Supreme Court upheld affirmative action policies within a holistic admissions process. In 2003 the court recognized that maintaining diverse student bodies served an educational interest. Sometime in the next several weeks the court will issue its decision on Fisher v. University of Texas, and then on Michigan’s Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, the latest challenges to 2003 ruling. Many are expecting judgments that sharply reduce a university’s ability to take race into account as it tries to create a diverse campus culture.

Educators are rightly concerned that this will lead to more homogeneous student bodies. We are concerned not because of a shared political commitment, but because we know that homogeneity kills creativity. We know that diversity is a powerful hedge against the “rationalized conformity” of groupthink.

We have learned that when conformity is rationalized it becomes a powerful enemy of democracy. It is also a powerful enemy of learning. Inquiry, especially at the highest levels, depends on challenges to convention, as American writers on education have known from Jefferson to Emerson, from du Bois to Addams, from Dewey to Ravitch. Since the late 1960s many universities steered away from cultivated homogeneity and toward creating campus communities in which people can learn from their differences while still finding their commonalities. This means working in teams with folks from different backgrounds while developing shared loyalty to the school’s mission.

Alas, American universities have at times produced their own bizarre forms of conformity, even under the guise of celebrating difference. Partisan visions of social change are taken by some to have the status of established social science, and campus clubbiness can mean enforced homogeneity of political opinion. A colleague of mine was shocked when I raised this point with him about the leftist assumptions of many college classes. What did I mean, he asked, citing several schools offering classes that explored an impressive variety of radical movements.

As educators, we must fight conformity by subjecting it to scrutiny from a variety of perspectives. Without the push to explore alternative possibilities, we are more likely to miss potential opportunities, even rush headlong into catastrophes. Diversity of background, of values and of methods are all assets in developing iterative cross-pollination — ongoing inquiry that productively connects things that had not previously been brought together. Of course, not all combinations will be productive — some creative experiments fail. But without divergent thinking we will be more likely to fall into patterns of rationalized conformity that undermine research and teaching.

Conformity, whether rationalized or simply imposed, undermines our government, our press, and our educational systems. We have had to learn some hard lessons about this over the last 10 years. Surely one of them is that we must defend diversity as a tool for innovation and for responsible decision-making.

Senior Thesis Artists Are Awesome!

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The Senior Thesis Exhibitions have begun! I just came back from the Zilkha Gallery where I was so impressed by the intensity, humor and high level of skill evident in all the work on display. Congratulations to Allison Kalt, Ilyana Schwartz, Anna Shimshak, Tiffany Unno and Christina You.

Here’s just a taste of what’s on display:

Ilyana Schwartz – “figures”

 

Christina You – “YOU and me”
Allison Kalt – “SSRI (paintings)”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This must be why.  THIS IS WHY. 

Diversity Forum Update

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Many members of our community are working to make our campus more inclusive by focusing on three priorities we identified after the fall student forum, Diversity University: In Theory and In Practice. The priorities are: (1) improving interactions between Public Safety and students, (2) increasing the scope and intensity of the Making Excellence Inclusive program on campus, and (3) enhancing town-gown connections to increase opportunities for positive interactions between the campus and the city.

Dean Rick Culliton is overseeing a Public Safety Review Committee, composed of students, staff, and faculty members. The committee’s charge is to work with the director of Public Safety to address concerns raised by students last fall. The committee has recommended that Public Safety modify campus safety alerts to provide descriptions of suspects without using race as a descriptor, and Public Safety has adopted this practice. The committee continues to review the department’s policies and protocols, web presence, and schedule of trainings. Ensuring that there is a clear path for reporting concerns to the department is important. The committee also will serve as a liaison for an external review by Margolis Healy and Associates, a leading campus law enforcement consulting firm. The consultants will meet with students, faculty and staff on April 30 and May 1 to conduct a complete assessment of the Office of Public Safety.

Vice-President and Chief-Diversity-Officer Sonia Mañjon has been leading our work on the intensification of MEI. Faculty, staff, and students will receive a Campus Climate Survey on Monday, March 25, and I urge you to respond to this important document. One of the recommendations that has emerged from our MEI discussions already has been to pursue faculty and staff diversity more energetically, seizing opportunities to hire members of groups under-represented on campus. We have been doing so and are encouraged by the results. The Making Excellence Inclusive task force and the WSA committee on Diversity and Inclusion are expected to make recommendations with regard to MEI goals based on discussions with students, faculty and staff.

To address our third priority, improving town-gown relations, we have held a variety of meetings with local stakeholders in education, community enhancement and economic development. Vice-President John Meerts has been meeting with groups on-and off-campus, and we continue to explore ways to be a better institutional citizen and neighbor.

The next Diversity University Forum will be held on April 24, and will focus on diversity in the curriculum. Our work to build a more inclusive and caring community will continue with new student orientation in the fall of 2013, which will be devoted to “Diversity and Inclusion.” The Board of Trustees will focus its fall retreat on discussing diversity on campus.

Recognizing that building an inclusive campus culture is a work-in-process, Wesleyan remains committed to creating, as our mission statement puts it, a “diverse, energetic community of students, faculty, and staff who think critically and creatively and who value independence of mind and generosity of spirit.”

 

It’s Cold! Think of Summer (Fast)!!!

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The calendar says it’s spring, but it’s been cold and windy in Middletown. Best to turn thoughts to summer and the great offerings in the Wesleyan Summer session. Online registration for summer session classes closes at the end of the day on Tuesday, March 26th. You can sign up for courses in animal behavior or applied data analysis, computer programming or the graphic novel. It’s a great time to catch up on a course you’ve always wanted to take, or to finish a requirement for your major. Whether it’s drawing or economics, summer is a great time to study at Wesleyan.

Some students will use the summer to accumulate credits so as to be able to graduate a year early. There is, of course, considerable tuition savings in doing so. As we say on the webpage devoted to this option: “The three-year option is not for everyone, but for those students who are able to declare their majors early, earn credit during Wesleyan summer sessions, and take advantage of the wealth of opportunities on campus, this more economical path to graduation can be of genuine interest. A maximum of two pre-matriculant credits (such as Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, or college credits earned during high school) may be applied toward an accelerated program. Students pursuing the three-year option will be held to all the graduation requirements for the Wesleyan bachelor of arts degree. Students considering this option should consult during their first year with Dean David Phillips to review policies and procedures.”

So whether you are considering early graduation, or just want to spend part of your summer in small classes studying things that interest you, check out the Summer Session. If you don’t register online by March 26th, you can still fill out forms to register later. But isn’t it nice to think of summer in this chilly spring…

Steps Toward Inclusive Excellence: Campus Climate Survey

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Our Chief Diversity Officer, Sonia Mañjon, has arranged for students, faculty and staff to receive a survey today that will bring together information about the climate of diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus.

Results from the survey will also help to inform next steps for Making Excellence Inclusive. The surveys are voluntary and anonymous, with results presented in aggregate form. We will not report any data for groups of fewer than five individuals that may be small enough to compromise identity.

For students, we are using the Diverse Learning Environments (DLE) Survey hosted by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA. It asks about students’ perceptions of the climate on campus, of academic work, of interaction with faculty and peers, of participation in campus activities, and of the use of campus services. Students will receive an email explaining the survey with a link so that they can complete it quickly.

For faculty and staff we have developed a survey to better understand perceptions of community, career development, access to resources, and to collect general feedback on the culture of the institution. Staff and faculty will receive an email that explains the survey with a survey link.

I hope that many will take the time to complete these surveys. The data we collect will help us in our work to cultivate a campus culture in which everyone can flourish.

Next Wesleyan Coursera Classes

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This week two more Wesleyan classes debuted on Coursera. Richie Adelstein is teaching a six-week class called Property and Liability: An Introduction to Law and Economics. Andy Szegedy-Maszak is teaching The Ancient Greeks, a seven-week survey of Greek history from the Bronze Age to the death of Socrates. These are free, online versions of courses given at Wesleyan, and there is still time to enroll. Lisa Dierker’s class, Passion Driven Statistics, is a six-week project-based class that will begin March 25. Lisa’s class just received a great shout-out in Forbes magazine. Scott Plous’s Social Psychology class begins this summer and has already attracted amazing buzz.

Scott Higgins just finished up his class on The Language of Hollywood. Since I was also enrolled I can say that it was a great success. There is a strong demand for film studies classes, and his introduction to sound and color was a hit. One of the discussion threads on his class said that Prof. Higgins “deserved an Oscar,” but I especially enjoyed the hundreds of people who wrote in under the rubric, “Prof. Higgins, We Love You.”

I’m still working my way through my 14-week Modern and Postmodern class on Coursera. Students from around the world are giving me new insights into the material. One writes about thinking of Nietzsche as she watches her son ski into the woods, another about how she carries a copy of Baudelaire with her as she bikes around town. A student from across the globe writes that “learning makes me feel alive.”  I hope I can benefit from these diverse perspectives when I teach the class on campus next spring. Next week, Sigmund Freud and then on to Virginia Woolf!

No Rest for Wes Athletes

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During this break from classes, our athletes are also hard at work. This weekend three Wesleyan wrestlers are participating in the NCAA National Championships in Iowa. Jefferson Ajayi ’13, Howard Tobochnik ’13 and Josh Roometua ’16 are all in the Midwest getting ready to put the finishing touches on their great seasons. Coach Drew Black and the entire Wes wrestling community are cheering on these great All-Americans!

Speaking of All-Americans, Alexis Walker ’16 earned that designation for her amazing achievements in the long jump. She has had a great season, as has Sierra Livious ’14, who set a Wesleyan record in the shot put and then went on to better her own mark!

Wes softball and baseball players are off campus in warmer climes to start their seasons. Both have impressive, young teams with plenty of talent and ambition. The hearty lacrosse teams stay right here to battle the cold as well as their opponents. The women’s lacrosse team bounced back from a rough start against Williams and Hamilton to beat a tough Eastern Connecticut State University team. Maddy Coulter ’14, Kaylin Berger ’13 and Caty Daniels ’15 each recorded hat tricks in the 13-9 victory. The team is at home against Bates tomorrow (Saturday) at noon.

The men’s lacrosse team is on a tear, with early season victories against Williams, Hamilton and Lasell. David Murphy ’15 put in the winning goal against Williams, and Remy Lieberman ’14 had a hat trick against Hamilton. Graham Macnab ’14 had four goals against Lasell, and Mark Simmons ’14 is leading a great defensive effort from the goal. The men are up at Bates tomorrow for their next contest.

Of course, I can only mention a few of the students who are working hard and achieving much. Wesleyan athletes, like our artists, performers and researchers, are using the March break to excel. GO WES!

 

UPDATE:

Women’s crew varsity eight had a great weekend winning their event in Florida: Clare Doyle ’14, Kayla Cloud ’14, Emma Koramshahi ’16, Zoe Mueller ’13, Hannah Korevaar ’14, Robin Cotter ’13, Emily Sinkler ’14, Avery Mushinski ’15 and cox Brianne Wiemann ’15.

Keith Buehler ’14 was named an All-American and NESCAC player of the year in ice hockey. Keith joins two other Wes students who received this great honor from our conference: Adam Purdy ’13 in men’s soccer, and Laura Kurash ’13, in women’s soccer. Three in one year! In the previous 12 years we only had three other players so honored. Go WES!

Spring Break and the Theses Writers are Hard at Work

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Every March, faculty and students find the two weeks without classes a welcome breather before the intense rush toward finals and the end of the semester. For a group of determined seniors, though, the March break is crunch time as they prepare their senior theses. And there are many faculty who are working harder than ever as they read drafts and discuss final strategies with their honors students. March may come in like a lion and leave like a lamb (we hope) from the perspective of the weather, but for folks slaving away in their labs in Shanklin and Hall Attwater, or their carrels in Olin, or in the studios of the CFA, March is a key opportunity to bring projects closer to completion.

Sam Ebb, who I know as an active representative on academic matters from the WSA, is writing about compulsory voting, and why it may be a solution to solving the problem of economic inequality, misrepresentation, and the role of big money in the US. I wonder if Sam thinks we should try compulsory voting at Wes. Like Sam, Elizabeth Williams is doing a CSS thesis. Prof. Elvin Lim reports she is writing about the evolving role and involvement of the coal industry in the West Virginian economy, exploring the accumulated, path-dependent effects of the industry during its highs and especially its lows on the state’s post-industrial economy.

Michaela Tolman has been working at characterizing the types of neurons made by mouse and human embryonic stem cells, both in a culture dish and after transplantation to the mouse hippocampus. Under certain conditions we can generate inhibitory interneurons, which may be useful for suppressing seizures in mouse models of temporal lobe epilepsy, or so Laura Grabel tells me!

Like Amy Bloom, I’m a big fan of writer and musician Jason Katzenstein. Jason is writing a graphic novel, entitled Close To Me, about anxiety and love, both familial and romantic. How romantic is hairstyling in the Ancien Régime? Dean Andrew Curran tells me about another CSS thesis, by Eliza Fisher, who is studying the rise and consolidation of absolutism under Louis XIV and XV and the simultaneous creation of consumer culture. Her goal is to identify what the history of hairstyles in Bourbon France can tell us about the economic, sexual, and to a certain extent, political culture of the era. How cool is that?

Speaking of cool topics, Kari Weil told me about these COL theses: Samantha Januszeski is cooking up an analysis of the raw food movement in “You are what you eat”: An ethnographic study of Raw Foodism. Kyra Sutton is using her critical theory acumen to think about identity and religion in Islam’s Turn on the Couch: Psychoanalytic Theorizing of Muslim Identity in France. Ethan Kleinberg tells me that Savannah Whiting (Sociology and Romance Languages) is comparing the ways that Algeria figures in the work of Derrida and Bourdieu. Tobah Aukland (COL) is exploring Jewish art collectors and dealers in Paris from the late 19th century through Vichy in relation to issues of Franco-Jewish identity.

Jessica Wilson is finalizing curatorial decisions for her photography thesis exhibition. Jessica is interested in portraits of imitators. Nick Kokkinis (Math and Studio Art) is working on a painting senior thesis that Tula Telfair has described to me as post-minimalist. All I know is that post minimalism takes maximum effort!

Steve Collins reports that “the 16mm theses filmmakers are all tucked inside the editing rooms finishing their films.” Here are a few of his descriptions: “Ethan Young‘s black and white horror film is a nail-biting tale of a very scary house and some trauma that occurred there. It didn’t hurt the atmosphere that the crew found bags of sheep and goat carcasses in the abandoned house they were filming (they reported them to the police). Jenna Robbins is making a film about a young office worker struggling with her fantasies of perfection in order to find true love. Gabriel Urbina is editing and recording his score for his musical/hostage film, a classic Wesleyan genre mash-up combining gun-play with tap-dancing. And Chris McNabb is putting his deadpan wit and precise filmmaking into the final editing of Driven, his comic/melancholy tale of a suburban Dad pushed to his brink.”

Driven…and they call it a break….

Update:

Jennifer Tucker, who is organizing some lunch-time presentations by Wes students at the Allbritton Center later this term, wrote in from a research trip in England. She told me about the fabulous thesis of Aria Danaparamita, who will be presenting her work at a conference at Yale at the end of March. Aria’s title is British Borobudur Buddha: Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, Orientalist Antiquarianism and (Post colonial) Development in Java.

Sara Mahurin, who is a visiting professor in English and African American Studies, writes about the following students: “[…]; Alex Kelley is writing a fascinating creative thesis comprised of “vignettes” — meditative micro-narratives from the perspective of an aging biology teacher, each taking for its starting point some species of animal; Alex Wilkinson is writing about legacy and liminality in Faulkner.”

James Gardner’s thesis is a historical analysis of Afro-Germans from the 1800s to modern day. It focuses primarily on Germans of African descent, their history and the reactions to their presence during three main eras of modern German history. James writes that “my research is a reaction to racism and discrimination that I noticed Afro-Germans faced during my recent study abroad in Berlin and work with one of the women who spearheaded the Afro-German identity movement in the 1980s, Katharina Oguntoye.”

I’m happy to add more names and topics for the next several days…

Katja Kolcio just wrote in with this good news:  Elena Georgieva who finished her thesis on the  connection between science and dance at Wesleyan, just won an American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Honor Society Undergraduate Award for excellence in academics, research, and outreach (granted to only sixteen students every year).  She is presenting her thesis  to the Annual ASBMB Meeting in April 2013.  She also presented her work at the Harvard Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Conference in January.  Congratulations to Elena!