Roth on Wesleyan – Page 93 – Michael S. Roth became Wesleyan University's 16th president on July 1, 2007.

Thoughts on Scholarship and Public Life

June 24, 2015February 21, 2011 by Michael S. Roth '78

I was a student here in the seventies, and this included more than a little protest and activism. Even then I knew I was participating in a Wesleyan tradition of engagement, and now, as President, I still take pride in that tradition. In the last few years, we’ve tried to integrate that concern for the good of the world with the curriculum – notably the College of the Environment, the Koeppel Fellow in Journalism, and the Civic Engagement Certificate Program.

A milestone in these efforts occurred in the fall of 2009 when Wesleyan celebrated the opening of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life. The plans for the Center grew out of the recognition that Wesleyan students and faculty had for generations been finding ways to connect what they study on campus to their lives as citizens and activists. As the Allbritton website puts it: University-based intellectuals have been rethinking their connection to the greater public and, consequently, are forging knowledge-seeking alliances with innovators and leaders in government and the corporate world. Social scientists are developing innovative and productive relationships with other sectors of the public, including artists, grass-roots activists, and independent scholars. And it’s not just social scientists who are developing these relationships. You can find faculty across the curriculum doing so.

Wesleyan demands a lot of its faculty. We want them to be scholar-teachers, deepening the positive feedback between their research and their efforts in the classroom. We also encourage them to connect their intellectual work with issues that matter to the world off campus — to Public Life with a capital P and a capital L. Recent success stories that come to mind include Erika Franklin Fowler’s Wesleyan Media Project, Elvin Lim‘s work on the presidency, Erica Chenoweth‘s studies of politics and terrorism and Peter Gottschalk‘s discussions of Islamophobia.

But does Wesleyan want ALL the research of the university to be responding to issues of Public Life? How about basic research in the sciences? Does our faculty have to justify this kind of specialization by looping the work back to some political or social issue? Does detailed research in literature and languages have to be public (read “popular”) in order to be considered “Wesleyanish?” In other words, has a connection to “Public Life” become a litmus test for research here?

I’ve been led to ask this question by some recent conversations concerning historians and the public stimulated by Anthony Grafton, a wonderfully gifted scholar (with whom I studied) who is now president of the American Historical Association. Grafton has rightly defended the importance of basic research in the humanities and social sciences, but he has also called on historians to fight back against those who manipulate the past without concern for fundamental notions of evidence, argument or honesty. In other words, he wants to ensure that scholars can continue to work on topics that might not appear to be immediately useful, but he also wants to see some scholars engage in questions in the public sphere on the basis of their academic work. Not all the scholarship has to be about civic engagement, but we need some scholars to engage in the public sphere to protect the right to do that basic research.

In addition to our tradition of engaged scholarship, at Wesleyan we are proud to have faculty and students working on topics generated simply from the intense desire to know more about something that has come to seem important. Grafton puts it this way: We’re modeling honest, first-hand inquiry. That austere, principled quest for knowledge matters: matters more than ever in the current media world, in which lies about the past, like lies about the present, move faster than ever before. The problem is that it’s a quest without a Grail. The best conclusions we can draw, scrutinizing our evidence and our inferences as fiercely and scrupulously as we can, will be provisional. We support a culture of inquiry on our campus, one that is willing to live with the provisional so long as we have the opportunity to work honestly, intensively and with the necessary tools (e.g., equipment, languages, documents).

A connection to the public, then, is not a litmus test for the scholarship we support, but there is such a test. It’s connection to the classroom, the “modeling” of inquiry. We expect all the research supported by the university to have a positive feedback loop with teaching. We are committed to sabbaticals, grants and other support because faculty research enlivens pedagogy and learning on campus. That’s what the scholar-teacher model is all about.

When asked about the most rewarding part of his distinguished, prolific career as a historian, Grafton recently responded “teaching.” I know that many of our colleagues at Wesleyan would echo that notion. The opportunity to connect our research with the education of our students is one of the joys of working on our campus. It’s the heart of the “public life” (small “p”, small “l”) of our university.

Black History Month

June 24, 2015February 17, 2011 by Michael S. Roth '78

We’ve just passed the mid-way point in February, which means that there have already been a number of interesting events celebrating Black History Month. Students and faculty have been planning lectures, concerts, and social events that commemorate important events in the history of African Americans and other groups in the African Diaspora. This Sunday at 5 pm at Crowell Concert Hall is Jubilee, an annual event that celebrates the talents of students, faculty and community members. Wesleyan’s Center for African American Studies has a long, distinguished history of scholarship and activism, and you can find out more about events in Black History Month by visiting the Malcolm X House at 343 High Street.

I had lunch today with Ann duCille, Professor of English, who for more than two decades has been teaching students about literature, race, history, gender and theory. We talked about the changing landscape for Black Studies, and about the potential for doing some exciting things at Wesleyan in this field, in creative writing, and in our diversity efforts across campus. Ann’s interests range from Barbies to black feminist theory, and she has deep roots in the arts and academia. Ann has decided to retire at the end of this year, and she will be sorely missed by students and faculty alike. Only after I left the lunch did I realize that it was Ann’s birthday! To make up for this gross oversight, I’ll extend these birthday wishes publicly!!

Writers Among Us!

June 24, 2015February 16, 2011 by Michael S. Roth '78

There are so many extraordinary writers coming through campus these days that I find it hard to keep up. James Kaplan ’73 came back to campus last week to talk about his new Frank Sinatra biography The Voice. Kaplan was an art major at Wes and has gone on to a distinguished writing career. Alas, I was out of town visiting with alumni, but I hear it was a wonderful reading. Sarah Ruhl, a MacArthur genius award winner whose Vibrator Play shook up Broadway last year, talked to a large crowd in the Chapel. She also met with students who are currently rehearsing her Melancholy Play, directed by Michael Rau ’05. Performances are scheduled for February 24, 25, 26th. How exciting it must have been for the performers to talk with the writer about their interpretation of her work!

The feast continued this week with Liz Lerman reading from her new Wesleyan Press Book, Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes from a Choreographer. Liz has been working with Wesleyan students and faculty for years, and it was great to hear from her “notes.” Liz’s artistic practice is predicated on breaking down the boundaries between media and between disciplines. At Wesleyan, she has worked closely with scientists on embodied learning, and this work has resulted in some remarkable dance pieces. Be on the lookout for the performances from her group later this semester.

Tonight, February 16 at 8 in the Chapel, Michael Cunningham will be on campus as the Annie Sonnenblick Lecturer. Cunningham, the author of several novels, including The Hours and the recent By Nightfall, will read from his work and then be on campus for a couple of days to offer master classes for Wesleyan students. It will be thrilling for our young writers to talk with Cunningham about his fiction and his work for film.

These events are just a sample of the creative writing energy that is percolating on campus. The English Department and the Writing Certificate Program, the Koeppel Visiting Professor in Journalism and the Kim-Frank University Writer in Residence are all catalysts for new student writing. On top of it all, Amy Bloom offers regular opportunities in the Shapiro Creative Writing Center to meet together to discuss how to get that sentence just right. Now there’s something I should be attending!

February Thoughts of Spring and Summer

June 24, 2015February 10, 2011 by Michael S. Roth '78

Our expected snow turned out to be mostly rain, and the fact that this is a cause for a great burst of optimism tells you what kind of winter we’ve been having. Sophie said to me as we drove to school (she doesn’t want any more snow days!): “Does this mean it’s going to get warmer and warmer?” I didn’t have the heart to tell her “no.”

But it does certainly mean we can start thinking of warmer times. For example, I just noticed that the winter silent auction to raise money for the Green Street Art Center has been postponed until April 8. It’s just been too hard to get around, and the staff thought we’d be safer planning our celebration of the great work of the GSAC in the spring. But the online auction is still on for another week to raise money for Wesleyan’s wonderful civic engagement initiative in Middletown. The online auction officially closes Sunday, February 13th! Please encourage anyone you know to check it out and help us raise money for our students! Visit our online auction.

Kari and I are auctioning off a dinner at the President’s House (she’s a great cook and a better dinner partner; I’m a pretty good dishwasher), and if people don’t bid soon my mother is likely to get it! PLEASE HELP!!!

This is also the time that students can register for Wesleyan’s Summer Session. Between now and March 31, students can sign up for these intensive classes in the first part of the summer. You can take Foreign Policy at the Movies with Douglas Foyle, or travel to the Gulf Coast with Barry Chernoff to investigate the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. You can also make progress on general education expectations or try playing Gamelan. Check out the offerings.

It’s still winter, but it helps to think of some of the good things to come in spring and summer!

Colleagues, Books and Good Cheer

June 24, 2015February 7, 2011 by Michael S. Roth '78

On Friday afternoon last week a group of faculty members gathered at Olin Library to celebrate the publication of books by humanities and arts professors over the last couple of years. Dean Krishna Winston (who herself has published five translations of major German writers in recent years) compiled the list of books and authors, and we raised our glasses together to salute the achievements of our colleagues. What variety! From Jonathan Best’s history of the early Korean kingdom of Paekche to Elizabeth Willis’s contemporary poetry, from Joel Pfister’s study of the education of the “Yale Indian” Henry Roe Cloud, to Jane Alden’s history of the Chansonniers of the Loire Valley, our scholar teachers are shaping the future of the fields in which they teach. I enjoyed the chance to talk with Uli Plass, one of our great young teachers of critical theory whose books on the philosopher Theodor Adorno and on Frantz Kafka were nicely displayed. Uli is already working on a study of Adorno in Los Angeles. And what a delight to see the new (and huge!) manuscript from historian of architecture Joe Siry, whose latest study of Frank Lloyd Wright will be published by the University of Chicago Press in the coming year. Soon you’ll be able to see these – and the dozens of others – on the Wesleyan website: a new “virtual bookshelf” will help make the work of all the faculty at the university visible to students, parents and alumni.

Dean Winston has been a strong advocate for the vitality of the arts and humanities programs at Wesleyan, and Friday afternoon we had another reminder that this sector of the university continues to do such strong work. I was proud to be at Olin surrounded by colleagues, books and good cheer.

Liberal Learning and the University of the Future

June 24, 2015January 31, 2011 by Michael S. Roth '78

I’m just back from the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. The AAC&U is dedicated to “making the aims of liberal learning a vigorous and constant influence on institutional purpose and educational practice in higher education.” — That’s the mission statement, and today the organization works with a wide variety of schools to develop learning outcomes, democratic and inclusive practices, and coherent curricula consistent with the evolution of the liberal arts.

My first task there was to respond to a talk by Mark C. Taylor, whose book Crisis on Campus I’d reviewed in the Los Angeles Times. Mark is a Wesleyan graduate, who taught at Williams for decades and is now Chair of the Religion Department at Columbia University. Mark calls for the creation of a postmodern university, which for him means moving from silos to networks, abolishing departments and tenure, and organizing problems-oriented teaching teams. If we don’t act now, he foresees a deepening crisis in higher education akin to the housing bubble of recent years.

I emphasized some of the key areas about which Mark and I agree. He is right on the money in attacking the powerful, long-term trends toward specialization in university culture, trends which have a decidedly negative impact on undergraduate education. At many schools this has led to a fragmentation of intellectual life, with powerful departments defending their own interests without regard to the welfare of the institution as a whole. Who is going to articulate a holistic vision for undergraduate education when only specialized success is awarded professional prestige?

I have written elsewhere on the importance of giving our students the capacity for translation, or intellectual cross-training, that will allow them to tap into multiple networks of inquiry. Unlike Mark Taylor, I do not think that abolishing tenure will help in this regard. Most schools in America have most of their classes taught by untenured faculty (often graduate students), and the result is not more freedom and breadth. Instead, the poor job conditions for these instructors seem to encourage the replication of the status quo — little innovation, much conformity to disciplinary convention. In our current political context, one in which state, federal and foundation officials are often seized with the desire to regulate public culture, the protection of academic freedom that tenure affords is crucial.

I came away from these meetings realizing how fortunate we are here at Wesleyan to have a faculty that consistently works to improve the education we offer students even as our scholar-teachers continue to help shape the professional fields in which they work. Wes has its challenges, too, including overcoming the intellectual fragmentation that often attends specialization. But we have many professors committed to this task, and that is the most important factor for building the university of the future — a university in which faculty members make student learning the priority in ways that enhance our capacity for research.

Education and the Work of Social Justice

June 24, 2015January 21, 2011 by Michael S. Roth '78

Education can be an important vehicle of social mobility, for giving people the capacity to change their lives for the better. Education should allow students to expand their horizons and to choose (and work for) the kind of life they want to lead — rather than merely accept the lot in life that seemed to have been assigned to them.

Education can also be an important vehicle for protecting social privilege, for giving people the capacity to protect their own and their children’s social standing. Education can be an exclusive good, allowing the sons and daughters of the elite to remain on top.

At Wesleyan we have long believed in opening the university’s doors to talented, creative and ambitious students from all walks of life. We have worked hard to recruit students from groups previously excluded by elite institutions and to provide them with the tools for success here on campus and beyond. We know that everyone in the university benefits from having a diverse campus in which students, faculty and staff educate one another to think critically and creatively while valuing independence of mind and generosity of spirit. That’s our mission.

All around us, however, we see the effects of an educational system that functions to re-empower those with resources while undermining the chances for success of those who do not have that good fortune. There are, however, extraordinary men and women working to change that dynamic, and one of them is here today. Geoffrey Canada, president of the Harlem Children’s Zone, will be our Martin Luther King Jr. speaker this afternoon, and he will share his “simple yet radical idea: to change the lives of inner city kids we must simultaneously change their schools, their families, and their neighborhoods.” He does the work of social justice through education.

Mr. Canada’s talk helps kick-off the year’s Social Justice Leadership Conference. Students, faculty, staff and alumni are coming together to discuss a wide range of issues linking education to other efforts to enhance freedom and fairness. A schedule is here.

From beaches to snow drifts

June 24, 2015January 16, 2011 by Michael S. Roth '78

Over the last week I’d been traveling out West, and many Wes parents (and some of their sons and daughters) wondered how they would cope with the return to colder climes. Walking on the beach on Santa Monica, Sophie asked me more than a few times “Why did we ever leave this place?!” (Sophie was born in Santa Monica when I was at the Getty Center and Kari at UCLA.) Watching the sun come up was a treat:

: Sunrise in Santa Monica

I met with more than 200 alumni, students and parents who attended a great event at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and I then went on to Arizona to meet with a smaller but no less energetic group. The beauty of the beaches and then the desert was striking, but returning to Middletown’s snowy landscape has been invigorating.

As I make some final edits to my syllabus for the Past on Film, I wonder how our returning students will react when they see their campus filled with snow drifts from what journalists here are calling one of the “storms of the century.” Wes looks like a winter wonderland, and Foss Hill has been filled with young folks racing down into the snowpack of Andrus Field. And some of the sledders aren’t so young! Kari got me out there yesterday (even though I told her I’d grown allergic to velocity), and it was fun careening down the hill. Here’s the proof:

I remember well the last “storm of the century” when I was a student at Wesleyan struggling with my senior thesis in 1978. Having the snow to fall into, Foss Hill for sledding, and plenty of camaraderie from professors and friends made the winter warm and welcoming, as well as quite spectacular. It still does!

Looking Ahead, Getting Ready

June 24, 2015January 6, 2011 by Michael S. Roth '78

With the holidays now behind us and the students not yet back from winter break, this is a time some of us use for planning our projects for the next semester. Which is not to say there isn’t plenty of activity on campus. The Admissions Office hasn’t had much of a break at all, as the staff there has been busy preparing the thousands of applications we’ve just received for the thorough evaluation they will get in the coming weeks. The library is open again, and I see professors (and more than a few seniors) moving through the stacks getting their materials for research projects and senior theses. And in the science labs — staffed by graduate and undergraduate students along with faculty — the work continues on subjects ranging from Hedgehog signaling to the surprising capacities of songbirds, from self-medicating insects to self-regulating ecosystems.

I see athletes in the fitness center whenever I get over there and some of the coaches sweating off the extra holiday inches. Men’s and women’s basketball are already in the thick of tough competition, and the track team is competing at the US Military Invitational this weekend. We anticipate a great start to the new semester. Geoffrey Canada, who runs the Harlem Children’s Zone of Waiting for Superman fame, gives the MLK lecture on January 21, and on January 28 the great saxophonist Charles Lloyd brings his quartet to campus.

I’m looking forward to teaching my Past on Film class again, and have recently spent some time thinking about big-picture philosophy. Here’s a review I wrote about a book by two philosophers that was published in the New York Times this week.

Admiration and Gratitude at Year’s End

June 24, 2015December 22, 2010 by Michael S. Roth '78

Looking back on the year, I am filled with gratitude and admiration for Wesleyan’s capacity to create conditions for individual excellence and for intense commonality — the all night work that tests one’s intellectual endurance, and the joyful dancing, cheering and singing that expands our horizons. I think back to the senior theses writers being toasted for their accomplishments, to cheering on the softball team’s first NESCAC conference championship, and to the accolades for the extraordinary student performances in Richard III. I remember with sadness and respect our times of mourning, and I recollect with wonder the social entrepreneurship of our students building schools in Kenya, raising money for flood and earthquake relief around the world or working with elementary school students right here in Middletown.

The university continues to thrive because of the dedication of those who work and study here. Current and former students, I thank you for your exuberance and devotion to alma mater. Faculty who inspire us, and staff who make it possible for all of us to work at our best, I thank you. The ‘independence of mind and generosity of spirit’ of the Wesleyan community is apparent each and every day, and I am so grateful to you for continually creating this extraordinary place.

Best wishes for a restful break, a joyful holiday, and a very happy new year!