Liberal Education

Year-End Thanks

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Looking back on the year, I feel so grateful for the combination of caring and ambition, cooperation and intensity that marks our Wesleyan community. I think of the wonderful welcome our athletes gave the new students on move-in day, and of the stellar seasons that our men’s and women’s soccer teams had this fall. I think of the powerful theatrical experiences on campus – from the joy of musicals to the awe of classic dramas re-imagined by our students and faculty. Perusing the virtual faculty bookshelf, I admire the scholarly achievements of our professors, from studies of Frank Lloyd Wright to genealogies of racism, especially since I know well the contributions our scholar-teachers have made to the intellectual development of their students. And every day I am grateful for the contributions of the Wesleyan staff, who make all these achievements possible. The hard work of our staff, from reading admission files to planning graduation events, is the foundation of so much of what we are able to accomplish.

The Board of Trustees continues to guide the institution with affection, intelligence and generosity. Trustees, faculty, alumni, students and staff are dedicated to ensuring that our university remains at the forefront of forward-thinking liberal arts education. I am grateful for being part of this team.

I wish you all a restful break, a joyful holiday and a very happy new year.

Choosing Classes, Choosing Majors (Certificates? Minors? Clusters?)

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Wesleyan students are busily deciding on the classes they intend to take next semester. It’s an exciting and sometimes frustrating time. Students may have heard since their first term about Don Moon’s government class on the moral basis of politics (a top choice since I was an undergrad), while others will be eager to learn about the history of architecture from Joseph Siry (whose classes have also been popular for a very long time), or from Katherine Kuenzli, (whose class on Wagner and Modernism is cross-listed in 5 depts!). If students want to take a very popular course with limited enrollments, then they may well be frustrated. But a good antidote to this is to go to Wesmaps and search for classes with free seats (just check that box). You are likely to discover some real gems — be they classes in data analysis or biology, to classes in religion or a brand new new one on the history of the European novel.

As students plan for the spring term, sophomores in particular are thinking through how they will focus their studies. Choosing a major can seem very difficult, especially if one has diverse interests. It’s crucial that students talk this through with their advisors. I remember not being able to choose among philosophy, psychology and history — and then a dean asked me why I thought I had to choose. I wound up creating a university major that combined these fields. Today, many students double major, while others add certificates (much like an interdisciplinary minor) or other points of focus. I always suggest that students worry less about how their major(s) will look to others after graduation and focus more on what they are most interested in. What is it that generates your greatest intellectual passion? Your major will let you deepen that passion and discover how it might be relevant to what you do after graduation.

Professors are busy too, of course. Not only are we grading exams and papers from the fall, but we are thinking about those spring courses and how to make them as compelling as possible. I’ve been teaching the Past on Film since the Ice Age, but next term it will be very different than in previous years — we are going discuss how photography makes a difference in our cultural and personal recollections. We’ll also be looking at several films that hadn’t made it onto the syllabus in prior years.

We professors also look forward to seeing where our intellectual passions lead us. Our journeys are informed by the engagement with the interests of our students as we continue learning together.

Out West (so far that it was East)

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In the week of Fall Break (before the storm and the power outage), I was in Berkeley and then Beijing giving lectures and attending a colloquium. At the University of California at Berkeley, I spoke to a group interested in the intersection of arts and humanities research with liberal learning, and with another research group focused on critical theory. Here are the video links through UC Berkeley:

http://www.youtube.com/user/UCBerkeleyEvents#p/u/8/JjR4yFYzmQY

http://www.youtube.com/user/UCBerkeleyEvents#p/u/10/YsUmCqQ_jQk

The  scholarly meeting in Beijing was jointly organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Science and Wesleyan, with special leadership from our journal in the philosophy of history, History and Theory.

The theme of our discussions was “tradition,” and the meeting was structured around twenty essays, half written originally in English and half in Chinese. Translators did yeoman’s service in preparing the written materials in advance and in providing simultaneous translations throughout our discussions. Here in this photo is our great translator Guofei with philosophy professor Stephen Angle:

I was very interested to learn that the question of traditional culture has become an important topic for Chinese humanists and social scientists. People start talking about tradition when it is being put under pressure, and the extraordinarily rapid economic growth and social changes in China have led many in the scholarly and political worlds to reflect on what is being lost during the recent push towards modernization. There was much discussion by our Chinese colleagues of the resources available to the present from the long history of Confucianism, now coupled with varieties of what they referred to as dialectical thinking. Our host, Prof Gao, gave a fascinating presentation on how during the Ming dynasty there was a current of liberalization that took classical traditions as its enemy. Today, though, this current is itself a tradition that can be reactivated.

We discussed, thanks to Debra Satz (a philosopher from Stanford), how market forces often undermine traditions even as they depend on them to work properly. Wesleyan faculty Steve Angle, Joe Rouse, Ethan Kleinberg and Phil Pomper all contributed essays that examined historical and philosophical aspects of the topic — from neo-Confucianism to Russian state power, from science to critical theory. We missed having Vera Schwartz with us, though she provided invaluable planning advice.

In conversation with our Chinese colleagues, we all learned about specific issues in intellectual history, and I certainly became more alert to how our usual frames of reference are very much situated in a particular American context. And you can see from the photo that our Wes context as represented in China was too male.

My presentation at the meeting dealt with what I called “the tradition of anti-tradition in American views of education.” I focused on views that linked education and freedom, and on the Emersonian notion of self-reliance. I was surprised and delighted when Prof. Gao quoted Emerson in his concluding remarks at the conference.  I also lectured about liberal arts education at Beijing Normal University. The group of faculty and grad students there were especially interested in breaking away from narrow, vocational forms of higher education. I learned so much from their thoughtful questions and concerns. Here are some links to news reports in China about the meeting:

1. Xinhua,
http://news.xinhuanet.com/photo/2011-10/28/c_122211192_4.htm
2. China Daily
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/zgrbjx/2011-10/28/content_13998853.htm
3. Netnews
http://news.163.com/11/1028/21/7HFVVLLN00014JB5.html
4. Hexun news
http://news.hexun.com/2011-10-28/134675182.html
5. China Academy of Social Science (notes)
http://www.cssn.cn/news/422865.htm
6. 21CN
http://news.21cn.com/caiji/roll1/2011/10/28/9601196.shtml

The China social science press billed this the first high-level Sino-American Research Exchange. We plan to have the next meeting in Middletown, probably in 2013. The theme, Unfinished Enlightenment, will build on the work we did for this meeting, and I am confident it will make the Middletown-Beijing axis a powerful one in the humanities and social sciences.

Traveling with the Liberal Arts Message

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I’ve been on the road for the last several days, visiting the University of California at Berkeley’s Townsend Humanities Center to give two lectures.

http://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/publicworld_roth.shtml

http://townsendlab.berkeley.edu/critical-theory/events/michael-roth-trauma-shame-photography-guilty-thoughts-emotional-teacher

The first had to do with the long tradition of liberal arts education in the United States, and how we must defend and reinvigorate that tradition today. The second was based on my my scholarly work on photography and critical theory, with particular attention to how one might face pedagogical challenges in contexts in which affect is running very high. These were filmed, so they should be on the web soon.

I had the opportunity to visit the California College of the Arts campus in San Francisco. It’s a high energy place, and I was so pleased to feel the vibrancy of the work on architecture, design, and art that I saw displayed.

CCA in San Francisco

I visited with some alumni while in the Bay Area, and several Wes folks came out to UC to hear the talks. It was great to see them!

I am now in Bejing to participate in a colloquium on Tradition co-sponsored by Wesleyan and the Social Science in China Press.

Our philosophy of history journal History and Theory has spearheaded this joint program, with great leadership from Professors Steve Angle and Ethan Kleinberg. It’s my first trip to China, and though it will be very short, I’m looking forward to building ongoing relationships with our colleagues here. I’m also giving a lecture at Beijing Normal University on why liberal arts matter and will get together with alumni before heading home. I have to be ready for class on Monday!

Essays on Living With the Past

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Very exciting news for me today. A new collection of my essays arrived at Broad Street Books. Memory, Trauma and History: Essays on Living With the Past has just appeared from Columbia University Press (http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14568-8/memory-trauma-and-history). Some of the essays, like those on the history of medical thinking about memory disorders, date from several years ago. I wrote others, like those on photography, critical theory, and liberal education, since returning to Wesleyan as president. It’s a thrill to see them collected in this volume, especially with the cover image by my friend David Maisel, a wonderful California photographer. You can see more of his work at: http://davidmaisel.com/.

Innovative University

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This past weekend the trustees were in Middletown for their annual retreat. Our theme this year was “the innovative university,” and we worked together to think through how Wesleyan might get out in front of some of the major changes in higher education. Technology, of course, is driving many of these changes, as is a strong desire (for many) to lower the cost of education while making it more vocational. In this context, how could Wesleyan preserve and build upon some of its great traditions of scholarship and learning while also creating opportunities for new modalities of education in the future? How do we expect student learning and faculty research to change over the next decades, and in what ways can Wesleyan contribute to making those changes as positive as possible? These were some of the broad issues the Board discussed with faculty, staff and student representatives.

We have been using Wesleyan 2020 and a strategy map that complements it as a framework for allocating resources and planning the future of the university. We have three overarching goals that animate all our other objectives: to energize Wesleyan’s distinctive educational experience; to enhance recognition of the university as an extraordinary institution; to maintain a sustainable economic model. At the retreat we talked about a number of possible innovations that would be “disruptive” — that would change the platform for the educational experience of students. These ranged from significantly changing the time to degree, to collaborating with other institutions for joint programs, to adding many more online opportunities to our curriculum. I am particularly interested in how we can contain the cost of a degree while simultaneously offering every student opportunities to participate in the arts, athletics, internships, and independent research. There is no doubt that doing all this while maintaining our capacity to support original work by faculty will be especially challenging. But it is a challenge we take on because of our belief that the deepest educational experience depends on the scholar-teacher model.

Like many of the trustees, faculty, and students present, I left the meeting thinking that the urge to streamline education to meet some imagined vocational standard was a big mistake. At many other institutions, under the guise of “innovation,” calls for a more efficient, practical college education are likely to lead to the opposite: men and women who are trained for yesterday’s problems and yesterday’s jobs, men and women who have not reflected on their own lives in ways that allow them to tap into their capacities for innovation and for making meaning out of their experience. Under the pretense of “practicality” we are really hearing calls for conformity, calls for conventional thinking that will impoverish our economic, cultural and personal lives.

Hearing the passionate dedication of our trustees, I felt energized to rethink how we might change Wesleyan while remaining true to its core values. The mission of universities focused on liberal learning should be, in Richard Rorty’s words, “to incite doubt and stimulate imagination, thereby challenging the prevailing consensus.” Through doubt, imagination and hard work, students “realize they can reshape themselves” and their society. At Wesleyan, we recognize that challenging the prevailing consensus can actually enrich our professional, personal and political lives. The free inquiry and experimentation of our education help us to think for ourselves, take responsibility for our beliefs and actions, and be better acquainted with our own desires, our own hopes. Our education contributes not only to our understanding of the world but also to our capacity to reshape it and ourselves. That may be the most profound innovation of all.

 

 

Diversity and Transformation

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On Friday, in New York, the president of Middlebury and I co-hosted a meeting of liberal arts college representatives about diversity and innovation. It was an exceptionally stimulating gathering, facilitated admirably by Susan Sturm and Freeman Hrabowski. Susan is the George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility at the Columbia University Law School, where she also directs the Center for Institutional and Social Change. Freeman has been president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County for 20 years and is widely recognized for his success in steering African American students into research and professional positions in the sciences.

Provost Rob Rosenthal and VP Sonia Manjon joined me at the meeting. The discussions made it clear how important our diversity work is for some of our major initiatives. For example, we have been adding resources and leadership strength to our civic engagement programs over the last few years; now we  must ensure that all our students have opportunities to work in community, find productive internships, and generally translate their education into practical terms off campus. We recognize that inclusion and difference are important to the success of civic engagement; now we must turn that recognition into specific goals for tapping into the strengths of our diverse community.

Over the last few years we have also been emphasizing the role of creativity and innovation throughout our liberal arts curriculum. At the meetings in New York, it was clearer than ever to me that we must leverage the creative spark that comes from having teams of heterogeneous students, faculty and staff. At Wesleyan we have become adept at celebrating difference; now we must become better at finding ways to turn the different perspectives we bring to projects into forms of creative energy. This is less about personal identity than it is about harnessing the productive synergies that come from bringing together folks from different backgrounds with different points of view.

For Wesleyan to continue to thrive in the long run, we must show the relevance of a liberal arts curriculum to students from diverse backgrounds around the world. In our scholarship, teaching and co-curricular activities, we must make this education relevant as a resource to those concerned about the future shape of higher education. By embracing the transformative power of diversity, Wesleyan can help shape the future of higher education rather than just react to the emergent cultural and economic conditions for colleges and universities.

Starting on Labor Day

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Many people ask me why Wesleyan begins classes again this year on Labor Day, a holiday that celebrates the American worker and marks the unofficial end of summer. When the faculty approved the calendar a few years ago, we discussed the tradeoffs of either starting earlier (most were against that), or backing up too close to Christmas and winter holidays (a big problem for our students wanting to return home for break). We were also juggling the length of orientation and reading week. In the end, we decided that Labor Day would remain a holiday for most of the staff, but that faculty and students would begin their classes on the first Monday of September.

Labor is much on the mind for our students as they begin the term. Some of that is in the nature of choosing classes. A few students want to know “how hard is this class?” “How much work will I have to do?” This is almost always an impossible question to answer just by looking at the syllabus. Some professors assign ten books or more to read during the term, while others focus on one or two. That doesn’t mean that the class with the shorter reading list requires any less work. Just check out Brian Fay’s course reading Spinoza’s Ethics — no walk in the park, but a deep dive into a major philosophical work. The truth is that every class offers increased intellectual rewards the more work you give to it.

But labor is on the mind of our students and their families in a more general sense this year.The job situation in the United States is just awful, and it has been depressingly bad for far too long. At the end of last week we learned that the US economy created no new jobs in August, and in a few days President Obama is scheduled to give what is billed as a major address on jobs. The real wages of working men and women in America have been declining for several years now, as the gap between the rich and the rest grows impossibly wide. The most pressing question facing the American economy for the next decade is how we will create and sustain decent jobs. Everything else is a distraction.

It’s no wonder that already parents have begun asking me how I think our Wesleyan education is going to equip our students as they head off into the job market in the spring. One can certainly understand their anxiety. Although a college degree is clearly an advantage, the job market is just awful even for grads with an impressive diploma. After four years of a liberal arts education, what kind of labor will open to our new alumni?

The answer isn’t simple, but it is clear that employers are often looking for workers who can think creatively, solve problems, seek opportunities and be self-motivating. Employers, when they are able to hire for good jobs, are looking for people who can learn while they are working — folks who aren’t just wed to some single skill they learned in the classroom to deal with a challenge that may no longer be relevant. At Wesleyan we believe deeply in the translational liberal arts — a broad, pragmatic education through which one learns how to apply modes of thinking and innovation in a variety of contexts. Even as the contexts change (whether that be through technology, politics or the economy), we believe our students will be well equipped to make their way in the world. We believe our alumni will be at the forefront of those creating and sustaining the jobs of the future.

But this isn’t just an article of faith. Wesleyan also offers practical advice, internship information and personal connections through our Career Resource Center. The CRC is currently located in the Butterfield residence hall complex, and in January it will be moving into the center of campus (in the old Squash Building currently be renovated). Even as students start their classroom labors today, they should remember to pay a visit to the CRC sometime this semester.

Happy First Day of Classes! Happy Labor Day!!