Tue 10 Nov 2009
Trouble the Comfortable
Posted by David under Robert Gaudino, Sam Crane, Steven Gerrard at 8:42 am
Reason #303 why Steven Gerrard is a great professor.
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean of the Faculty Steve Gerrard led a philosophical discussion on Saturday in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall. The hour-long function, part of the Spring Family Weekend activities, addressed questions concerning the nature of virtue and its ability to be taught at Williams.
Gerrard, roving around in the front of the hall as if in a classroom, began his presentation with the first scene from the Platonic dialogue Meno, in which the young and ambitious Meno asks Socrates: “Can virtue be taught?” Gerrard quickly turned to the medium-sized audience, composed almost solely of parents visiting the campus for the weekend, and asked them to make a list of virtues. The list was certainly a broad one,including a sense of justice, the ability to forgive, a sense of humor and the ability to trust and be trusted.
This was more than a decade ago. I hope that Gerrard has given the same talk many times since. The parents would love it.
“I take the Socratic method seriously,” he said, “and its first step is always meant to get everyone’s feelings out in the open.” But Gerrard added emphatically that the method is based on careful logical argumentation and criticism. The feelings and original thoughts are important, but they must be subjected to strong criticism.
“This is what Williams tries to foster and nurture,” he said. “My view is that true respect for others and other cultures does not come about with a mere exchange of feelings. When differences between cultures show themselves, one can say ‘we’re both right’ or one can say ‘I understand where you’re coming from, but I’m still right.’”
Gerrard says he sees only one plausible answer. “At the end of the day, we have to believe in Truth and we have to believe in the Good, and we have to fight for what we believe in. We have to ask these questions concerning virtue and what is right. And this is our job as teachers.”
Exactly right.
Gerrard paraphrased the Talmud to complete the discussion. “‘It is the job of the teacher to comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable.’ I believe that this is true. And I believe in Truth.”
Ahhh. But does Gerrard really believe that when the “comfortable” are he and his fellow Williams faculty? I hope so, but time will tell. For example, I have never seen a Williams (academic) faculty member criticize affirmative action. Have you? EphBlog is preparing to make some “trouble” on that topic.
Stand by for some “uncomfortable learning,” in the style of Robert Gaudino.
Speaking of Gaudino, Professor Sam Crane wrote:
First, Kane is not the heir of Gaudino. Gaudino confronted privileged Eph men with “uncomfortable” material truths, taking them to Appalachia and India to see first hand the ravages of poverty and prejudice. Kane is a Reagan-era conservative trying to defend The Bell Curve and its crude conceptualizations of intelligence. With his narrow understanding of culture and society, Kane would make Williams ever more exclusive. Gaudino worked against that impulse.
This is charmingly incoherent. I suspect that Sam has few, if any, meaningful conversations with “Reagan-era conservative[s]” and so has little, if any, idea about how we think. I have never heard of any current member of the Williams faculty described as a “”Reagan-era conservative.” But the more interesting phenomenon is how Sam has taken a Williams legend and twisted him to fit into the hegemonic ideology of Williams today. The thinking goes something like:
Robert Gaudino was a great teacher.
Standard Williams liberalism — Épater les prepsters — is a great belief system.
Therefore, Gaudino’s main focus was to confront “privileged Eph men with “uncomfortable” material truths.”
How Gaudino would chuckle at that characterization of his work at Williams!
Rory makes the same mistake.
Gaudino would have tact. Gaudino never would have written or said comment six.
I (did not) know Robert Gaudino. You, sir, are no Robert Gaudino.
“Tact,” eh? Stand by to eat those words. I suspect that my comment six would not rank among top 10 most outrageous things that Professor Gaudino said at Williams, probably each semester!
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26 Responses to “Trouble the Comfortable”
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concerned says:
This post is really the archetypal Kane post. Classy stuff.
rory says:
1. ephblog isn’t doing something, you are. this is why people think of ephblog as kaneblog: ” EphBlog is preparing to make some “trouble” on that topic.”
2. how mad are you? why is this getting a new post? i call bullshit.
3. quick and obvious rejoinder: Gaudino @ williams is fundamentally a different sphere than ephblog on the interwebs. One words things differently depending on the audience. As such, neither you nor I would know what Gaudino would have done on the internet.
4.You made the first claim that you were his heir, i disagreed. Neither of us knows who is right, but considering that Sam is much closer to people who knew Gaudino (as they’ve worked with Gaudino’s peers at williams) than either of us, i’d defer to him.
5. Sam’s comment is both coherent and powerful. That you mock it as “charming incoherent” says much about your intellectual closemindedness and nothing about Sam’s point.
JeffZ says:
To paraphrase Frank U., bring back voting arrows!
David says:
Rory objects to my usage of the royal EphBlog as in:
If others find this too annoying, I am happy to stop. But, in this specific case, I have received encouragement from EphBlog president Dick Swart ‘56. If he also wants to see “trouble” on this topic, isn’t the royal EphBlog usage fair?
I am not mad at all. This is getting a new post because I was randomly reading the Record looking for old articles about housing. I came across the Gerrard article, which I loved and made into a post (written several days ago). It was only yesterday that I added the bit about your and Sam’s thoughts on Gaudino. It seemed relevant (to me). “Trouble the comfortable” sure sounds like “uncomfortable learning.”
I never claimed to be Gaudino’s “heir.” I think that much of what I do here is very similar in spirit and technique to how he taught.
You would be mistaken. Is there a single current member of the political science faculty that worked with Gaudino? I don’t think so.
You’re right! I should do a better job of taking the high road.
wslack says:
@David: For the moment, I’m going to play the association card and say that from my experience of someone who has spent hours discussing Gaudino and his work, I disagree with your assertions. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with the alums who were so impressed that they give their time today in honor of him, and I think you’re off-base. Gaudino was not a provocateur – he was a questioning gadfly.
Look at the last name on the list.
What in the world are you basing this on? I suggest you review all of these links, if you have not done so already.
Come back to us after looking at those links, espeically the first-hand accounts of the guy, and let us know if you still stand where you were.
rory says:
@David: Sam didn’t just join the faculty, nor does he only know people in political science. cmon.
this post would have been far better without the snark re: me and sam, though that might be because i’m involved. i doubt i’m overly biased, though, by that.
jeffz says:
By the way, I have no idea what your big affirmative action bombshell is, but I have no doubt that it isn’t anything different from your 1,329 previous discussions of race and admissions here on RaceBlog. Is it me, or does it seem like every time there is a major event on campus involving prominent black speakers, DK feels a need to choose that moment to critique affirmative action or something similar? It is really off-putting (and no doubt intentional).
Sam says:
Kaneblog: where the bait is always repellent.
David says:
Jeff: “It is really off-putting (and no doubt intentional).” Actually, no. I have posted on race issues on many occasions, with no particular concern about what i happening on campus. If it will make you happy, I will postpone discussion of affirmative action until after the upcoming roundtable. In fact, the last (one?) time that someone complained about this (with regard to a race-related post on Inauguration Day), I took down the post lest the tender-sensibilities of our readers be offended.
Rory:
1) I hope that I am wrong on this! I hope that Sam knows all about Robert Gaudino and that he will share that information with students and alumni. He could add material to the Wikipedia article. He could blog about it at the Political Science blog. The more that the world knows about Guadino, the better.
2) But, in comparing Sam’s comment with what I know about Gaudino, my suspicion is that he knows little more than you do. And that is not Sam’s fault! Gaudino died 35 years ago. How many professors have been at Williams for that long? It is true that Sam joined Williams 20 years ago, but that was still many years after Gaudino had died. No doubt Sam had close relations with many of the faculty who knew Gaudino well but how much did Gaudino come up in those conversations?
Again, here is Sam on Gaudino:
This misses the main reasons why Gaudino is remembered to this day. “material truths”? “prejudice”? This is not what Gaudino was all about. This is how a certain sort of contemporary liberal professor wants to imagine Gaudino.
But, good news! I expect to blog and write much more about Gaudino in the future, so readers will have a chance to make up their own minds.
Ronit says:
@David: I look forward to any future posts on Gaudino and “uncomfortable learning” that are backed up by documentary evidence of his views.
jeffz says:
I for one vote for postponing. One man’s “tender sensibilities” are another’s “some tiny semblance of tact,” I guess.
rory says:
Sam joins 20 years ago. Many professors who worked with Gaudino were around 20 years ago. Many.
For example, Erving Goffman died in 1982. To this day, I interact with at least 3 professors who worked closely with him*. I hear stories that pretty much only insiders know about him from those professors and from professors who joined the department many years after his death that they got second hand.
we’re talking 2 degrees of separation at most. Plus, those faculty who are particularly well-respected become the subject of far more discussion than others @ their institutions. Gaudino’s almost assuredly one of them.
you again claim to know what gaudino was about better than Sam yet still have yet to provide any evidence (not that I want any, you’ve poisoned this well already for today) that you actually know what gaudino was attempting to do better than Sam. On the face of it, Sam’s far closer to Gaudino than you are.
i do not look forward to this affirmative action post at all. nor do i believe it will be any different from ones we’ve already had.
*including two who worked with him before 1974, i believe. At least one I know did.
jeffz says:
Oh, and Will, I like that: provocateur vs. questioning gadfly.
David says:
Will writes:
1) Excellent news that you are on the Gaudino board! Gaudino is one of my two Williams heroes. (The other is David Field, patron saint of trouble-making alumni.)
2) I have reviewed those links. In fact, I recently reported that some of them were broke and arranged to get the fixed. I have been gathering material and sending it to the Williams library to expand this collection. In fact, I think that the number of people who have read more about Gaudino than I have is a very small number. (Let me know when you finish his dissertation. Lots of great stuff in there!)
Most relevantly, I have done 99% of the work on his (still very rough!) Wikipedia entry. (Perhaps you could pass on that link to your fellow board members?)
3) On “provocateur vs. questioning gadfly.”
Gaudino might reply: “Gadflies ask annoying questions of the people you disagree with. Provocateurs ask you annoying questions. Which are more important?”
And, of course, anyone who reads the excellent Alumni Review article (pdf) on Gaudino knows that he was “no mere educational gadfly.”
Interesting that Will would describe Gaudino as a “gadfly” while the Alumni Review would claim that he was so much more . . .
I will leave it to Ken Thomas to provide the classical references to the gadfly versus provocateur distinction . . .
Dick Swart says:
Dear Readers,
The Royal EphBlog and David Kane:
To the extent that some may think this post of David’s and a series to begin November 18th have sprung full-blown from the knee of Athena, I submit this correspondence, with David’s concurrence, which shows the background development and my enthusiastic endorsement of the new series.
Dick Swart 1956
President
EphBlog
September 23, 2009
Dave.
If I were in one of my old jobs, here are some thoughts I’d have:
1. Have a standing head for your posts to establish you as a columnist
within the blog rather than the blog.
2. Start some sort of a running feud between you and maybe me
(Hope/Crosby, Benny/Allen) in terms other than the serious tones
extolled by your usual critics. In fact, recognize the negatives and at
least at one level, treat them with some sort of good humour.
3. Maybe write a post every couple of weeks in a slightly different tone
addressed to parents and what they think and students and what they
think.
The tone would not be accusatory or degrading, but truly asking for
their opinions so that you might learn about an issue from them. You
could call attention to the fact that you are asking rather than using a
rhetoric trick to tell them.
I am not trying to have you present yourself as Andy Rooney. Just as a smart
guy with a hair across his butt on a lot of topics that cry out for discussion.
Dick
September 24, 2009
Dick
I think that these are all interesting ideas. My short-term hope is that
EphBlog develops enough authors that it has new posts each day without me.
Then, I would concentrate my energies on one major post (higher quality,
more research) each week or even less frequently,perhaps under a standing
head like “Uncomfortable Learning.” We will see.
Dave
October 18, 2009
Dick,
I have been thinking about your column idea. I was thinking of having these
as a standard category under All Things Eph, perhaps (politely) reserved for my stuff, perhaps with the category ”Uncomfortable Learning,” (inspired by Bob Gaudino’s use of the phrase — I have been reading his 1955 Ph.D. dissertation this week-end).
Does that seem like a good idea? Warning: I would expect these columns to be
viewed by many as incredibly controversial, the sort of thing that will make folks like Sam Crane very angry.
I like to think that EphBlog can include both warm/inclusive and edgy/controversial under the same roof. But not everyone agrees . . .
Dave
October 18, 2009
Dave,
I think it can work. You and I know that ‘infuriating’ is the key to good response.
I’d like to avoid the pissing on each other. It generally isn’t the topic or
the premise that is the problem, it is personal diatribe from either your stuff or in many cases, the responders stuff. This might be because of a real person subject choice in some very few instances but seems more likely to come up in the running commentary.
I think you might be able to head-off these situations with a standing
lead-in to the column.
Set the expectations and take advantage of the exasperation.
Dick
Derek says:
Maybe Williams faculty support Affirmative Action because Affirmative Action is right? Because it is right. When the history of America, pre- and post- nation state status was to deny large swaths of the population of access to rights and services, something needs to be done to redress those wrongs.
But I’ll wait. Dave tends to always think the biting things he has to say are a lot more incisive than they end up being. I’m sure I speak for many when I say that the idea of Kane writing a column in which he intentionally wants to be provocative: Yeah, THAT sounds like a good idea.
dcat
Sam says:
“We are after all modern men. That means we will have no bright, sun-lighted, being-loving experience. No blinding fourth level. We refuse to leave the cave. We will remain with the concrete things of the world…Our theory will relate concrete things not transcend them, not destroy them with being.” Robert Gaudino, “Silence is Suspect.”
That quote is from a long report prepared by Kurt Tauber, close colleague for many years of Robert Gaudino. It is a rather long (one wants to say “Tauberian”) pdf; the quote is on p. 58 of the report, which is p. 64 of the pdf. It shows, I believe, Gaudino’s evolution away from Straussian political thought and a certain acceptance of a materialist view of knowledge and the world. And that is what I meant by “material truths” in the passage cited above.
Gaudino was obviously a complicated man. A Straussian by training, he clearly broke from Straussianism as he matured in his teaching and intellectual life. Indeed, Tauber is scathing on this score on pp. 57-58 of the report (pp. 63-64 of the pdf):
“This growing skepticism moved Robert Gaudino away from the arrogant dogmatism that characterizes unreconstructed Straussians like [Alan] Bloom, as well as from their most hysterical abuse of all things modern, from their elitism and contempt for the “vulgar, irrational mob,” as well as from their opportunistic political alliance with Right wing defenders of plutocracy and corporate capitalism.”
Tauber can be stirring at times…
In any event, I’m sure Kane will now jump up and down and say Tauber is a verified left-winger who is trying to claim Gaudino as his own. But the interesting thing about Gaudino’s legacy is precisely this: his thinking, and most importantly his teaching, was capacious enough that an avowedly left-wing colleague could work for years to develop and practice what he believed to be the core of Gaudino’s pedagogy. Tauber admits that Gaudino might not agree with all that Tauber was doing with what we might call “Gaudinoism” (that is, after all, the nature of a gadfly) but I am willing to believe that Tauber’s analysis of Gaudino’s evolution away from Straussianism is closer to the truth than anything Kane (a right wing, intellectually impoverished Randian libertarian) will come up with. Kane or Tauber on Gaudino: not even close.
Because that is what we will get when Kane gives us his awesomely uniformed reading of Gaudino’s dissertation: an effort to reduce Gaudino to the 1980’s assault on academia mounted by Alan Bloom and other assorted conservatives. Sorry Kane, but we can see that one coming from a mile away. (We can simply link to this comment when the inevitable Kane excrescence emerges) And that will be a falsely reductive reading. Gaudino, especially the later Gaudino, the Gaudino of experiential education and “strange encounters,” is much more than what Kane will make him out to be.
Speaking for “folks like Sam Crane” I think I can say with some authority that the patter of narrow-minded ideologues would be simply tiresome if it wasn’t so pathetic….
David says:
Sam,
I agree that the Tauber report is an excellent read. Indeed, I posted on his claim that Gaudino was “Gaudino “arguably the the greatest Williams College educator of the 20th century” a week ago. As a former student of Tauber’s I certainly agree that he was “stirring,” both in person and in prose.
Is my prose really so confusing? I don’t care about Gaudino’s (or Tauber’s) politics. Nothing could be less interesting than knowing, for example, who they voted for. I am interested in Gaudino’s techniques as a teacher, a provocateur, someone who believed in uncomfortable learning. This is not a right-versus-left issue, except insofar as a conservative student is more likely to be made uncomfortable by liberal ideas and vice-versa.
Perhaps a more productive way to continue this discussion is for you to highlight, here or elsewhere, some examples of “uncomfortable learning” in the Gaudino-style as it is practiced at Williams today. Many of our alumni and student readers would be interested in that.
rory says:
i wish i had gotten here earlier so i could have predicted the goalpost shift from:
” I have never heard of any current member of the Williams faculty described as a “”Reagan-era conservative.” But the more interesting phenomenon is how Sam has taken a Williams legend and twisted him to fit into the hegemonic ideology of Williams today.”
to ” I don’t care about Gaudino’s (or Tauber’s) politics….This is not a right-versus-left issue, except insofar as a conservative student is more likely to be made uncomfortable by liberal ideas and vice-versa.”
David says:
How is this a goal post shift? I am making two unrelated points, both true.
1) There is a dramatic lack of ideology on the Williams faculty. There is certainly no one (out of 250!) who could be described as a (public) Reagan-era conservative. This helps explain, I think, why Sam is so unused to discussing issues with people like me. (I am not exactly a Reagan-era conservative, but close enough for this discussion.)
2) Regardless of the politics of current Williams faculty members, we have the issue of Gaudino. I think that Sam misunderstands what Gaudino was about when he describes it as:
Now, we can have a reasonable discussion about the “heart” of Gaudino’s teaching, but my claim is that it has nothing to do with privilege. Many Ephs were “privileged” then. Many are now. A leftwing version of Gaudino might think that his focus is on shocking these rich Ephs with the “ravages of poverty and prejudice.” But that was not Gaudino. He thought that non-privileged Ephs had every bit as much to gain from “uncomfortable learning” as the “privileged” Ephs that Sam is focused on.
I agree that reasonable Ephs can and will differ about what Gaudino was “really” all about. And I look forward to future discussions with Sam and others about this topic.
Will Slack '11 says:
@David:
I will let you know what I think about his dissertation after you justify your assumption that I had not read it.
I appreciate that, and will include the link in my next correspondence with the entire trustees.
Questions like these are a main reason I participate here. The distinction that you (not Gaudino; please do not speak for the dead without a supporting citation) draw is that a provocateur is simply a gadfly that has come too close. (More later)
Ronit says:
Okay, fine, let’s check the secondary definitions for each term in M-W
Provocateur: one who provokes
Gadfly: a person who stimulates or annoys especially by persistent criticism
I dunno. Sounds like I’d rather be a provocateur than a gadfly.
rory says:
gadfly was originally a term used by Socrates to describe Aristotle, no?
sounds pretty good to me :P
btw, david, Sam’s explanation of his use of “material truths” as a component of a materialist view of the world would actually be about privilege. You’ve yet to present any evidence or reading of Gaudino (except for hints about his dissertation and Sam’s already noted a dramatic shift in Gaudino’s worldview since that dissertation), but Sam has. Sorry.
Also, considering that while I’m comfy in the ivory tower with a whole bunch of lefties yet I spend more time speaking to registered republicans* about politics than I do lefties, the assumption that Sam’s world of potential people to speak to about politics is only the faculty @ williams is questionable at best.
*until 08 when they switched in order to vote in the primaries for Obama. they’re now independents.
Ronit says:
I think there’s no question that David Kane is a gadfly about all things Eph.
Nathan Sanders says:
David at comment #20:
For faculty like me, whose political beliefs are not relevant to our classrooms, why should we be public with our politics? Whether I voted for Baldwin, Cheney, Obama, or Nader has absolutely zero relation to the things I teach, like whether uvular consonants trigger vowel lowering in Greenlandic Inuktitut, or whether English “or” is logically inclusive or exclusive.
How many of the 250 faculty fit a similar profile? Our politics aren’t consciously hidden because we’re afraid of the ramifications. They’re just incidentally hidden because they’re irrelevant to what we do in the classroom.
Derek says:
Nathan Saunders has Bingo! Discussions about political ideology on college campuses qualify as one of the most overstated worries precisely because they are almost irrelevant to what goes on in the classroom or elsewhere on campus. It allows the right to create a bogeyman that does not exist and then to instill it with great and worrisome power. (And we never hear about the dozens, maybe hundreds, of explicitly religious colleges with not only an ideological faculty that bends the other way, but with rules that demand political conformity from faculty and student alike. Thus the Brown English Department somehow comes to be the embodiment of all things politicized in academia and not, say, every department at Liberty or Bob Jones.)
dcat