Michael S. Roth '78

“We pride ourselves upon a practical idealism”

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This weekend I was re-reading John Dewey’s 1917 essay, “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy,” in which he famously calls for a re-orientation of philosophy away from a focus on general problems of knowledge and toward human problems.  The essay is a pragmatist manifesto, urging us away from knowledge as a spectator sport and toward inquiry as an activist enterprise motivated by social and personal concerns. The goal of our intellectual endeavors should not be to mirror reality accurately, but “to free experience from routine and from caprice.”

As I read Dewey’s essay about recovering philosophy, I found myself substituting “education” for “philosophy” time and time again. Many of his points about pragmatism and inquiry reminded me of how we have been describing a Wesleyan education. As we spoke about civic engagement this year, we have been calling on students and faculty to enhance the relevance of their work. When I have written about the “translational liberal arts,” I have been emphasizing the importance of converting what one is learning in the classroom to what one is doing off campus. The point of a liberal arts education, I stress time and time again, has never been more relevant than it is today because this kind of education develops resources for lifelong learning. That sounds a lot like Dewey’s call to recognize how even our “imaginative recovery of the bygone” is in the service of our current needs.

At the close of his essay, Dewey wrote: “We pride ourselves upon a practical idealism, a lively and easily moved faith in possibilities as yet unrealized, in willingness to make sacrifice for their realization.” “Practical idealism” is a phrase used by a president of Bowdoin College in the early twentieth century as well as by Gandhi a generation later. We’ve used the same words to talk about some of the important ingredients in a Wesleyan education. But Dewey warns us not to get too comfortable with our highfalutin ideals: “all peoples at all times have been narrowly realistic in practice and have then employed idealization to cover up in sentiment and theory their brutalities.”

We must all be careful not to fall prey to merely covering over our brutalities with ideals and sentiment. We must develop the intellectual and moral capacities to imagine a future that is worth striving for, and we must enhance our ability to create the tools for its realization. This is, to paraphrase Dewey one more time, a sufficiently large task for our education.

 

Take Back the Night, Give Back to Community

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Tonight (Thursday, April 7) is Take Back the Night, when members of our community gather to raise awareness about sexual violence and to create a safe, caring space for survivors to share their experiences. Just this week members of the administration participated in a conference call with White House officials and university leaders to discuss how we can reduce the most prevalent form of sexual violence on campus, attacks on women. We were helped in this conversation by the good work of the Sexual Violence Task Force, whose recommendations are currently being implemented. Come to the steps of Olin Library tonight at 7:00 to show your support!

Tomorrow night is Green Street’s Feast for the Senses auction fundraiser. The event, sponsored by Mary Beth and Stephen Daniel ’82, gets underway with a preview at 5:30. The monies raised will go to support our Summer Arts and Science Academy and the new Young Women’s Leadership Institute. Come on down to Green Street tomorrow, and be ready to bid!!

After marching with the Take Back the Night group last night I went to see Samantha Joy Pearlman’s senior thesis theater project, Devotedly, Sincerely Yours: The Story of the USO. My mother is a singer, and I grew up with the music of the 1940s featured in the show. It was such a treat! The band was great, and Samantha gave a funny, moving, FABULOUS performance. The show is at the CFA Theater tonight (Friday, 4/8) at 8 pm.

Preserve Excellence in Connecticut by Investing in College Students

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This morning I met with some of our state legislators to talk about topics of importance for higher education. Wesleyan is a member of the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges, and our sector provides significant opportunities for students across the state. About a third of Connecticut undergraduates attend not-for-profit private colleges and universities, but we award about half of the degrees in the state. The students we enroll are much more likely to graduate! An educated workforce is one of our state’s great resources, and our sector is a large contributor to this environment.

One of the issues we are most concerned with these days is cut to the state’s support for students with financial need — the CICS program. Connecticut residents have been eligible for grants at private institutions, and for many this support has been crucial. Governor Malloy has deep fiscal challenges to meet, and I have a great deal of respect for his efforts to visit citizens throughout the state to hear their responses to his budget plans. He has rightly noted that all citizens will have to sacrifice in order to put Connecticut back on the right economic track. Unfortunately, the plans announced for CICS go beyond shared sacrifice. In just a few years they would decimate the program on which so many of our students depend. About 14% would be cut next year, and the proposal is to cut 50% in year two! That’s just taking a hatchet to a very successful program. We need a scalpel.

We have been making our case in Hartford, and this morning we made it again at breakfast. Support for higher education in Connecticut is a crucial investment in our long-term economic health, and helping state residents stay close to home to complete their degrees makes a lot of sense. I am hopeful that the governor and our state legislators will find a way to preserve more of the financial aid going to undergraduates. This aid pays real dividends in the long run by promoting excellence in Connecticut.

Speaking of excellence in CT: Congratulations to the Huskies on an amazing run to the National Championship!

 

Arts Advocate, Neely Bruce

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It’s National Arts Advocacy Day, and one of Wesleyan’s own is being celebrated this evening in Middletown. Neely Bruce, Professor Music and American Studies, is being recognized for his lifetime commitment to the arts. Neely is a composer, conductor, pianist and scholar of American music, past chorus director for Connecticut Opera, and director of music at South Congregational Church. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! He is a beloved teacher here at Wesleyan, and last year his re-imagining of the opera Flora was the hit of the Spoleto Festival in South Carolina. The combination of historical research, compositional originality and production savvy in that project have characterized his work over many years here in Middletown.

Please join me in congratulating Neely Bruce. You can shake his hand down on Main Street at the Shadow Room today at 5:30! — That was Monday, but if you see Neely on campus, please salute him!

Softball Champs and Other Spring Sports

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It snowed a bit Thursday night, but spring sports are very much underway. The men’s crew team has started off with a series of great races, and the women rowers have also showed real promise. Women’s lacrosse is home on Saturday, April 2 against the always tough Tufts team, while the men travel north to meet their Tufts rivals. The tennis squads are busy competing, and the Cardinals travel to Maine (burrrrr) this weekend to face Bowdoin. Track athletes will try to stay warm while running circles around Coast Guard on Saturday. The golf team, in the civilized fashion befitting the sport, will wait until it warms up for their next official matches. Pete Taylor ’12 will be leading the group into competition. For hearty souls the baseball team will be right here at home this weekend, taking on Hamilton on Saturday and Sunday. It IS supposed to warm up a bit, so you can take in the game from Foss Hill or Denison Terrace.

The mighty Cardinal softball squad takes to the field against Middlebury on Saturday. Wesleyan’s women won the NESCAC championship last year, and they are looking ready to roll again. Come on out to the softball field just before noon to cheer them on!!

Let’s Reduce Bandwidth and Read More!

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The Wesleyan Student Assembly seems to have no idea of what to do with its enormous surplus, and so its leaders have offered the money to the administration for co-curricular programs. Starting immediately, the funds from the Student Activity Fund will be devoted to buying texts for book clubs, and we will organize weekend discussion sessions in all the residence halls. I am happy to announce that the Greek Societies have stepped forward to create special late night book clubs on memoir, autobiography and quest narratives.

In order to encourage more reading at Wesleyan, I have directed Technology Services to cut the bandwidth to the university by 66%. Many students have complained about the slow internet speeds at Wesleyan because they want to watch videos and other forms of popular entertainment. Grow up! We are an educational institution! I have decided to cut the wireless to all dorms after 10 pm, and we will reduce the pipeline to the internet.

Students are encouraged to send their ideas for reading groups to their WSA representatives. Close your computers and unite around books, you have nothing to lose but your chains.

 

Spring Theses, Flowering all Around Us

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As I tossed Mathilde the tennis ball yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice the spray of crocuses that were pushing through the soil in the backyard. It still seemed freezing to this California-spoiled guy, but spring was beginning to show itself. It’s been a hard winter, but our campus promises to be in bloom very soon.

I strolled over to the Zilkha Gallery to check out the group show of studio art senior theses. Each week now there will be a new group of artists showing their work. Drew Broderick, Robert Eastman, Alyssa Hutton, Cameron Rowland, and Elizabeth Sonenberg provided me with plenty to think about, and marvel and smile at. I was impressed by the delicate drawing, adventurous three dimensional installations and strong political perspective. Photographs by COL senior Alana Perino are on display in the Zelnick Pavillion, and they succeed in giving a strong sense of place that is both strange and familiar.

On Saturday night I’d popped over to Crowell to hear the senior thesis recital of Daniel Henry, an extraordinarily talented trumpet player. In addition to his own vibrant, funky compositions, Daniel’s 9-piece ensemble played music in tribute to the great Lee Morgan. I wasn’t able to stay for the entire concert, but what I heard was stirring. The ensemble was cruising along, and the audience was clearly in for a great ride.

Seniors finishing their theses are hunkering down for the final stretch, and those folks won’t be seen much on campus for the next couple of weeks. But those presenting their final projects in theater, music, dance and studio art will be out in force. Check ‘em out, and cheer them on!

Shasha Seminar: Exploring Histories of Race

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Each year Wesleyan hosts the Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns, bringing together scholars, students, faculty and alumni in an intensive series of lectures and discussions. Past programs have focused on popular culture, on environmentalism, on ethics and on international problems of violence. I remember the series of talks on food, which really made me think more carefully about the intersection of politics and economics on my kitchen table. And Joss Whedon’s 2009 discussion of how film and TV projects get made was funny and insightful. This year’s Shasha program, which runs from April 8-10, will explore ideas of race and how they have evolved over time.

Ideas concerning race have a long history, and it’s a history that continues to have powerful reverberations on politics and culture today. The organizer of the program, Andrew Curran of Romance Languages at Wes, has written on the history of the idea of race in relation to concepts of human origins, with a particular emphasis on the age of Enlightenment. The keynote speaker, Nell Painter, Honorary ’96, who for many years was a distinguished member of the history department at Princeton, has written the influential The History of White People, which will be the basis for her remarks on Saturday night. A leading historian of the United States, Prof. Painter is also an accomplished artist. Other discussions will explore race and science, the vicissitudes of race-thinking in Latin America and in China, and the ways that the idea of race still affects our conception of the human.

The Shasha Seminar offers a distinctive way of diving deep into a timely subject area in the company of curious, thoughtful and engaged participants. Alumni and parents join with students and outside experts to create an exceptionally lively series of conversations. If you are interested in learning more about the program, or in signing up for it, you can find information here.

Local Thoughts on Women’s History Month

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One of the most dramatic transformations of Wesleyan was the achievement of co-education in the early 1970s. The university had experimented with co-education at the beginning of the 20th century, but the male students just couldn’t deal with women studying alongside them. The contrast with the 1970s was great, and when I arrived in the middle of the decade it seemed that men and women were treated equally on campus. Of course, that was just one guy’s perspective.

And that guy was wrong. Having now spoken with many alumnae from the early 1970s, I have come to realize how difficult gender and sexuality issues were at Wes. Women reported routine harassment, a curriculum and campus culture geared to men, and a reluctance of the institution to change. But change did come, as richly talented women joined the student body and the faculty.

One of the important changes was the development of a Women’s Studies component of the curriculum, a process that culminated in the faculty approving a program in 1979, and a full major about a decade later. More recently, students and faculty changed the name of this concentration to Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, to better reflect the evolving teaching and research going on in the program. More on the history of FGSS can be found here.

There are plenty of other professors at Wesleyan who have been cultivating this vineyard. Suzanne O’Connell, for example, has received major support from the National Science Foundation to help women at all academic levels take part in programs that emphasize professional development in the geosciences. In addition to being a professor of Earth and Environmental Science, Suzanne also has been directing the Service Learning Center. Carol Wood has been a leader in making the mathematics field more inclusive. Carol is Chair of the Board of the American Mathematical Society, where she continues her long-term work of promoting possibilities for women in math departments across the country. The Edward Burr Van Vleck Professor of Mathematics at Wesleyan, Carol has been president of the Association for Women in Mathematics and represents the United States at the International Mathematics Union.

Su Zheng, Associate Professor Music, has been teaching and writing about the intersection of gender, sexuality, globalization and music. Her interests range from world music and experimental composition to heavy metal. Gina Ulysse, Associate Professor of Anthropology and African-American Studies, has been teaching and writing about gender, transnational feminism, race, class and performance — to name just some of her many topics. I was delighted to learn recently that Ruth Striegel, Walter A. Crowell University Professor of the Social Sciences, will be returning to the psychology department next semester. Her research and teaching on eating disorders has had a deep impact on our understanding of these phenomena, and her teaching has inspired generations of Wesleyan students.

The achievements of these fine scholar-teachers – and there are many others on this campus doing important work in this area – exemplify the Wesleyan spirit of engaging in academic work that reverberates in society. You can find a similar spirit among our campus activists fighting for reproductive freedom, gender equality and civil rights. It is Women’s History Month, and while much has changed here at Wesleyan, we can be grateful that the work of building a more inclusive community continues.

Thinking of our friends in Japan

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The news from Japan has been wrenching, and the human toll of the earthquake and tsunami is heartbreaking. Wesleyan has scores of alumni, faculty and friends in Japan right now, and our hearts go out to them in this terrible time of need.

If alma mater can be helpful in any way, please let us know.

If readers of this blog would like to support organizations responding to this emergency, you can find a list here.