Summary

Kronman describes science through the research ideal, then draws a comparison to technology. He argues we use technology to increase out power and defy fate, but that it ultimately obscures understanding of the world. Social science is likewise dominated by the research ideal, with Economics leading the charge.

However, the humanities have no such guide, and Kronman paints that field as lost and weak, especially since the field’s instructors have PhDs from large research universities. This, he says, has led to the rise of fundamentalism, which currently has no counter in the world. Kronman hopes that Secular Humanism will enjoy a resurgence in humanities departments, again providing instruction in the meaning of life.
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In the second chapter of the book, Tony Kronman gives us a 53 page (pp.37-90) summary of the three phases of the life of the humanities in American higher education and he certainly doesn’t leave the reader in suspense about his assessment of the current relationship between the humanities as taught and the meaning of life.  

It has been stripped of its legitimacy as a question that teachers of the humanities feel they may properly and competently address with their students in a formal program of instruction. It has been exiled from the classroom and kicked out of school, so that today it survives only in private, in pianissimo, in the extracurricular lives of teachers and students, even those in liberal arts programs whose distinctive purpose presupposes the vital importance of this question itself (p.45)     

Phase 1, which I like to call “The Christian Gentleman Phase”, started in 1636 at that other college at the Eastern end of Route 2. The Puritans were quite keen on education, but it was much more focuses on shaping the character of their students than producing original scholarship. Everybody pretty much memorized the same thing (Latin, Greek, the classics, the Bible), and were to use these works and the men in them as sterling examples of behavior. (Given my limited knowledge of the classical world, I do wonder if Aristophanes, Catullus, Terrence or Petronius got much play in these classrooms. Also, the lives of Alcibiades and Caligula were probably what financial analysts like to call contrary indicators) There wasn’t much distinction between areas of study, the faculty were the staff, and generally the president of the college taught the senior capstone of the course. (More on this in a moment) Dr. Kronman lays out the two assumptions that girded this world.

 1)    Teachers have an unassailable authority on matters moral thanks to their experience.

2)    Every branch of study is connected to everything else, so don’t leave out anything.

Williams was, at this time, more or less a little po-dunk college out in the sticks of the Berkshires, but it did have one Mark Hopkins of “the log” fame, who pretty much lived up to all of this. He was the president of Williams, he taught the capstone course and it is fair to say that he was much more interested in the character of his students than their (or his to be honest) intellectual accomplishments. 

His (Hopkins’) triumph as one of the old-time college presidents must be attributed, in no small degree, to the success with which he refused to permit learning to assume an ascending importance in his life. (p.27, Mark Hopkins and the Log, Yale, 1956)   

I must admit that the thought of a 19^th century Christian madrassa came to mind while reading this part, though the greater tension was probably between the education itself, based on the liberal arts, those subject fit for the study of “free” men, which meant the gentry in Europe, and the useful arts, for the study of artisans, which was championed by Ben Franklin and probably quite a bit more useful in the development of the continent. This leads to the second phase in the life of the humanities, “The Secular Humanist Phase”. 

As the 19^th century progressed, America saw the ideal of the German research university transferred to its soil (Dr. Kronman will go into more detail on this in the third chapter. Here’s a bit of foreshadowing, the research ideal has a lot to answer for). Cornell, Johns Hopkins, even Harvard got the fever under President Eliot, and, boom, out goes character formation as the goal of a college education and in comes learning and scholarship. The explosion of knowledge in the 2^nd half of the 19^th century put to bed any idea that a student could come out in four years with a grasp on the totality of knowledge, which meant that some things had to be left out, which eventually led to the ideas of majors and electives and to the formation of distinct academic disciplines. 

If we use Williams nomenclature and say that knowledge was being divided into divisions 1,2 and 3, then 2 and 3 were prospering in the new world thanks to their use of the scientific method. Div 1, however, doesn’t use the method, so it had to pay its way in this new world by continuing to talk about the purpose and value of human life. What separated these new humanists from the Mark Hopkins type? Well, each believed there is a common human nature, but the secularists: 

1) Thought that a common human nature did not preclude pluralistic beliefs about the meaning of life.

2) Thought that human nature, though open and malleable, still followed a discrete number of life paths (warrior, artist, priest, etc) and that these paths could be studied.

3) Thought that transcendence could no longer chalked up to the supernatural, but to rather Platonic values that were larger than any one person. 

The great conversation among western thinkers, from Biblical to current time is essentially how each person was trying to sort out how their lives and thoughts related to these timeless values. Unfortunately, while the age of secular humanism was advancing, forces were gathering that led to Phase 3, The Death of the Dead White Male (my terminology, not Dr. Kronman’s) 

In Phase 3, the Great Conversation itself is attacked as the limits it proscribes: a singular core human nature, a limited number of patterns to human life, and an elite, though slowly growing canon, are held up as illusory and masked expressions of power used to marginalize other cultures and ideals. This, accompanied by the spread of the research ideal from the sciences into the humanities, sounded the death knell for the search for life’s meaning in the humanities department. Chapters 3 and 4 will go into this in far more detail. 

I would have liked Dr. Kronman to spend a bit of time talking about how this change in higher ed mirrored the economic changes going on in the country as a whole, since Phase 1 to Phase 2 rather neatly follows the model of artisan/apprentice work in antebellum America to the rise of the factory and mass production in the second half of the 19^th century and Phase 2 to Phase 3 from mass production/consumption to customized production/consumption in the second half of the twentieth century. Were the humanities just following the money?

I know that this will have a lively comments thread because Wick is here and participating in EphBlog, so I have my work cut out for me.

The shortest summary of Wick’s paper is that US tax policy allows educational non-profits to save much more of their endowment than other non-profits. Because colleges don’t have to spend as much of their endowments, Wick asserts that this requires the government to issue more Pell Grants to make up the difference, and implies that in the alternative, colleges would make up more of the difference by lowering tuition. Consequently, Wick argues that Colleges are “raiding” the federal treasury by decreasing the base of taxable income when they raise money to increase their endowment. Wick also correctly points out that the debate is not so much over the answer he proposes (with which I disagree in large part, unsurprisingly, but more on that later), but that this question has not yet been asked at all.

Wick, I certainly commend you for pointing out this issue, and I agree that it’s something that warrants a great deal more discussion than it currently has. However, I think that it cannot be limited to colleges, or even education, and that it’s much more difficult to logically draw a bright line around colleges than Wick thinks it is.

A more detailed summary, interspersed with commentary, below the cut.

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[This thread is an elevation from another post. In consideration of other discussions, it may be lowered in priority or temporarily removed. -K]

Frank, hwc, ‘04 and All,

First, thanks for your responses. Because this is not the kind of seminar where we can look across the table at one another for guidance, I hope I may use them as a series of starting points in examining Goff-Crews (and Hu-DeHarts’) concrete proposals.

As you seem to note, the consultants’ section of the report, and the report in general, is more-than-complex in structure. I tend to prefer that proposals begin with a very short goal or mission statement and a series of bullet points. Literary theorists (and we later) may ponder that the policy recommendations of these reports are not clearly highighted by such bullet points, or even vertical bars and bold titles.

Rather, they seem subordinated within the larger narrative of the reports, a narrative that (I think it is fair to say) seems disjointed and confusing … in that old question from first-year philosophy, what do we make of how this is presented to us?

But before we get to “narrative” and structure, perhaps it is time to do what others have done– pull out the specific proposals of this section of the report, and place them in something like bullet point structure (with my comments, which I’ll keep very brief).

Goff-Crews’ specific proposed action items (using her headers) are thus:

Proposed Diversity Initiatives to Improve the Quality of Student Life

1. Create [a] centralized academic support center:
(self explanatory?)
2. Consider reshaping transition programs:
Goff-Crews suggests that existing Humanities, Social Sciences and Sciences summer transition programs have their components extended into term-time, “strengthening” their impact”.
3. Use New Residential Plan to Enhance Initiative: [my emphasis]:
Goff-Crews suggests the development of a “full-blown” diversity training model for HCs and JAs, and use the new house system as a “new opportunity” to enhance “awareness” of “diversity.”
4. Enhance Role of Associate and Assistant Deans in the Diversity Initiative Efforts:
Goff-Crews suggests that the Deans take a stronger role in campus life, that the officially make themselves available to address racial/diversity issues, and that they become more “connected” to such issues by assigning one Dean to diversity/race issues.
5. Make campus protocol and expertise on racial incidences transparent:
In short, appoint an Omsbudperson to as point-of-contact for racial issues, and distribute a policy document that outlines procedures.
6. Enhance diversity of Health Services staff:
(self-explanatory?)
7. Regularly discuss diversity issues among senior staff:
(self-explanatory?: senior staff should meet every six weeks to explicitly address these issues).
8. Consider creating fellowship opportunities to attract more diverse senior administrators to Williams:
(self-explanatory, but within, the suggestion is that current senior staff can explicity serve as mentors for a more diverse junior staff)
9. Recognize and enhance support staff efforts to support student development:
recognize that ’support staff’ such as secretaries, dining services etc play a key role in student life, and “regularly” educate these support staff in diversity issues.

Do we believe in these proposals?

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[Originally published 1/24/06 -KT]

Dear Seminarians,

As I first heard the story, Laszlo Versenyi used 1975 to mark the first year in the evolution of American higher education when he felt that he could no longer conduct a substantive exploration of Plato in his first-year courses.

Well over a decade earlier, in the fall of 1963, Allan Bloom had sat in the common reading room of Cornell’s Telluride House, writing similar concerns into the House Log. Those concerns would become, in part, The Closing of the American Mind. A few weeks later, the young Paul Wolfowitz would add to the log that Allan Bloom was the first “intelligent conservative” he had ever met.

At about the same time, John Sawyer was, with Kaplan and Goff’s petition against the fraternity system in hand– and with far more concerns about the social and academic systems of the College–, travelling with a group of students and professors to listen to Clark Kerr’s Godkin Lectures at Harvard.

Working from previous conceptions of the University– which he rather boldly declared “illusions of its inhabitants”– Kerr declared that the modern university was a “new type of institution in the world.” Lamenting that the previous century had “turned the philosopher on his log into a researcher in his laboratory,” Kerr outlined the vision of a MultiVersity– a dynamic institution serving divers and even incompatible purposes– an institution “neither entirely of the world nor entirely apart from it”– an institution whose fundamental pursuit of knowledge would extend far into its surrounding community.

Kerr’s handling of Mario Savio’s free speech movement would hamstring his position as President of Berkeley, lead to the election of Ronald Reagan as governor of California, and to Kerr’s own removal by Governor Reagan in 1967. On the “fraternity question” and so much more, however, Jack Sawyer would begin to parallel a similar vision at Williams. A cursory examination of the course catalogs of Williams versus other institutions reveals that Williams dared to be the first to act to change the content of American education– far “diversifying” the then-current disciplines and endeavors of the liberal arts college, and many other institutions in turn.

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The CEP, after investigating the curriculum for possible improvements in the area of diversity, has identified 3 main areas for improvement: (1) student interests that can be fulfilled by faculty teaching at Williams ["student interests"]; (2) hiring priorities that would help Williams enhance it’s curricular diversity ["hiring priorities"]; and (3) Re-examining the People & Cultures requirement ["the PC requirement"]. The committee will be discussing the latter two in April and May.

Please note that all commentary in square brackets is mine.

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This entry discusses the one-page student experiences report, which is descriptive, and the 10-section student support services report, which is prescriptive. Since the two reports are very different, I shall discuss them separately.

I don’t have time to go into detail on all of them, but the diversity report includes 50 very interesting tables and graphs; see here for a list.

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Recent CGCL discussions on the Diversity Initiatives report have centered around political diversity. While certainly a worthwhile topic, I feel we’ve gotten to the point where we’re simply beating a dead horse (< sarcasm> clearly a David Kane et al and Ephblog first). I will most definitely concede that the vast majority of the Williams faculty and student body falls left of center in political viewpoints, but I have never once felt that my professors’ beliefs had factored into their teaching; nor have I ever felt any level of “proselytizing” on their part.

As a rightward-leaning moderate, I have certainly encountered opposition from students in a number of class discussions. Regardless, I cannot remember any instance where a professor disregards a student’s opinon because it doesn’t jive with his or her political convictions. That’s all I’ll say about that.

In beating this dead horse, we have ignored much of the reason and purpose behind the diversity initiatives report itself. Namely, Morty himself points out that a significant portion of such an effort centers on the following issue:

“To put it more generally, we want to move toward the day in which every Williams student, faculty, and staff member can feel that this is their college, not a college for others to which they’ve been invited. We have not reached that day yet, but we will.”

Though I have regrettably little time to delve into such a deep and difficult topic–I write this as my sixth graders take a practice New York State English Language Arts standardized test–I feel that it is a question that has thus far received fairly little attention on our part. Reading through the comments section of the Diversity Initiatives report, one can easily see why many students feel largely alienated from “mainstream” Williams culture. Thus I ask fellow Ephbloggers to leave the dead horse to rest once and for all, and move on to a new–and far more worthwhile–topic. I’ll add my own comments later when and if I get the chance.

After reading Dick Nesbitt’s article and perusing the accompanying table showing enrollment by race, several things stand out to me. Follow the jump for all my thoughts…

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I have a few comments to make about David’s remarks about political diversity at Williams. First, I think that it goes without saying that there should be more political diversity among the faculty at Williams. However, framing the issue in terms of professors allegedly “willing to publicly argue the republican /conservative/ libertarian view” is not helpful. I have taken many public positions in favor of the war in Iraq and the Bush’s administration’s national security policy in general, but I have never thought of myself as arguing for the Republican Party or Bush himself. This is true both inside and outside the classroom. My credibility with students, and I would suspect the reason my classes are always overenrolled, is precisely due to the fact that Williams students generally do not welcome ideologues disguised as scholars. Just because 95% or more of the Williams faculty are registered Democrats, does not mean that we should have an affirmative action program for Republican scholars.

I also think President Schapiro is largely correct in his belief that “prosleytizing” is not a major problem on campus, although I disagree with the implication that Williams could not be a better place in terms of intellectual diversity. I have no idea what my colleagues do in the classroom on a daily basis, but I have not heard many horror stories about students being subjected to daily rants and tirades about current political issues. I do not remember any Faculty Senate meetings taken up with resolutions opposing the Iraq War or letters to the editor signed by 100 faculty members protesting this or that issue. While the case of Jennifer Kling is truly sad, I would be shocked if you could find anything even remotely close to that today. Again, I would agree with Morty that active “proselytizing” is a fringe concern in 2005 and has been for many years.

Since I suspect that much of the discussion here will be fairly
critical, let me conclude with a few optimistic thoughts. First, compare Williams with any of our peer institutions and I think you will find a much greater tolerance for so called conservative ideas here than elsewhere. Second, as a faculty member who is rightly or wrongly thought to be conservative (I am certainly conservative in comparison to the vast majority of my colleagues, but probably not in comparison to the population at large), I can say that I have never experienced any serious trouble with my colleagues on political grounds. President Schapiro has always been supportive of things I have tried to do here and I know from personal experience and actions that he is supportive of intellectual diversity.

Unfortunately, I have to run but I look forward to reading more of what everyone has to say. I certainly support critical thinking on issues of intellectual diversity and everything else related to Williams, but let’s also keep in mind the many positive elements of Williams. There is no other place in the nation that I would rather be–that would be true even if we did not have the wonderful Taconic Golf Course.

James McAllister

President Morty Schapiro’s Introduction to the Diversity Initiatives merits careful study. It perfectly captures the confusion, obfuscation and borderline dishonesty which plague discussions of diversity at Williams and elsewhere. Although Morty (and Williams) deserve praise for the openness with which this study has been conducted — especially for the publication of a variety of data tables — the overall result lives down to my already low expectations.

The confusion and obfuscation start at the very beginning.

The most significant change in higher education during our time may be its increasing inclusion of students, faculty, and staff from groups that had previously been excluded from its campuses.

First, the notion that there was a great deal of exclusion at Williams and places like it is, historically, false. Morty may not have read The Chosen by Jerome Karabel, but those of us who have know that there is little if any evidence of significant discrimination against Asian American, Latino or African Americans (AALAA) since 1900 in elite admissions. If you had the grades (and the money), you got in (unless you were Jewish). If you didn’t have the grades and the money, you didn’t get in, regardless of race. There were, of course, individual acts of discrimination — see pages 232-233
of The Chosen for a particular disgusting example involving a Williams graduate — as well some schools, like Princeton, with particularly backward attitudes, but it is just false to claim that the number of AALAA students at Williams and other schools prior to 1965 would have been much higher in a colorblind world than it was in our imperfect world. It would not have been. Discrimination, at the admissions stage, probably affected dozens of students, not hundreds much less thousands. The real victims of elite discrimination in the 20th century were the Jews. The Report has little if anything to say about that.

Second, the most significant change in higher education — outside of exploding sticker price — in our time (meaning, say, post 1950) has been sorting by IQ. In the 1950’s, lots of not so smart (white) men got into Williams and places like it. (Not you, Dad.) Now, with very few exceptions, almost every student at Williams is from the far right tail of the Bell Curve.

Now, Morty knows these things, and there is nothing wrong with a little pablum from a college president. Yet issues surrounding diversity at Williams are difficult. The closer we can get to an honest description of the facts, the more progress we can make.

Although mission statements are mostly fluff, it is nice to see Morty provide a clear goal for Williams.

The College’s mission to provide the highest quality liberal arts education is enhanced by the rich variety of backgrounds and experiences that students, faculty, and staff bring to the task of educating each other.

I agree that the goal of Williams should be “to provide the highest quality liberal arts” in the world. I also agree that diversity of all types helps with that goal. I can’t imagine that Williams could be as good as it might be if there were, for example, no international students on campus. But it is a long leap from this premise to the actual policies that Williams currently follows, and even longer to the policies that people like Evelyn Hu-DeHart would like to see Williams follow.

More importantly, as every good economist (like Morty) knows, there are trade-offs. Every time you let in an under-represented minority (URM, which in a Williams context almost always means Latino or African American), you deny admission to someone else, someone who might be smarter, who might be poorer, who might even be a minority herself. (Williams denies admissions to dozens of Asian American applicants with much stronger SAT scores and high school grades than those of some of its URM admittees.) Williams is poorer because that student is not present. But she is also invisible. It is hard to judge the cost of rejecting her if none of us can clearly see what she might have added.

The hard decisions are, as always, made on the margin. The first 20 URMs that Williams admits are as good as any Jewish or Asian or WASP Eph. The second 20 are also. But by the time we get to number 100 of enrolled, not just accepted, we are talking about applicants with significantly weaker high school records than their classmates at Williams.

In the class of 2009, Williams is 20% URM. The hard question for those who love Williams is whether this number should be 10% or 30%.

One of the stranger parts of the discussion involves Morty’s desire to focus on “intrinsic” factors.

For all the progress Williams has made in becoming more open and supportive, the case remains that some people, because of factors intrinsic to them, are excluded from the College or have less full and satisfying experiences here.

Does this make sense? Morty implies that by “intrinsic” he means things like race and gender that we are born with, not factors like religion. (Let’s leave aside the question of whether or not one can be born a Jew.) The problem is that no one is born Hispanic, at least by the definition of Hispanic that is used by Williams.

Again, I realize that the Diversity Initiative can not be about everything and that it is reasonable for Morty/Williams to focus on some aspects of diversity rather than others. But, don’t claim to be focusing on “intrinsic” factors and then spend time on cultural ones.

Greater awareness of this fact, resulting from the compelling testimony of current and former members of the campus community and from analysis of data on student demographics and student experiences, led to the launching at the beginning of this academic year of the Diversity Initiatives.

Isn’t this borderline dishonest? Unless I am mistaken, there were no plans to launch a great big Diversity Initiative until the Nigaleian fiasco of last fall.

But the most disingenuous section of the Introduction involves those dreaded conservative critics, bane of left-thinking college presidents everywhere.

Several submissions to the Web site raised issues regarding the political beliefs of faculty. These echo concerns expressed more publicly about college faculties in general, usually in terms of suspected proselytizing to students. These submissions failed to gain traction through the Initiatives process, perhaps because few people, if any, on campus believe such proselytizing takes place, and because one’s political views are considered to be a characteristic that is acquired rather than intrinsic.

Why is this dishonest? First, Morty acts as if the primary, if not only, concern about political diversity raised by outsiders involved fears of “proselytizing.” But, as anyone can see, not a single outsider raised this concern. There are several discussions of diversity of political opinion among the faculty, but they almost all fall in the category of diversity-of-opinion-is-a-good-thing. Of course, few if any readers of the Diversity Initiative are likely to read those comments, so Morty can safely (?) misrepresent their contents.

I suspect that I speak for the vast majority of the political diversity camp when I claim that the problem is not that Williams has leftist professors. Some of my friends are leftist professors! The problem is that Williams has virtually no professors willing to publicly argue the Republican/conservative/libertarian view. That is a problem.

Second, Morty acts as if concerns about “suspected proselytizing to students” are crazy kookery. Why should such ridiculousness get any “traction” with the members of the Coordinating Commitee? Tell that to Jennifer Kling ‘98 (and her family). The New York Times reported back in 1996 that

Jennifer Kling left Williams College here to join the National Labor Federation in Brooklyn with dreams of organizing the poor to create a more just world.

Instead, Ms. Kling found herself trapped in a cramped, tense apartment building, unable to walk outside. Every second was charted. During the day, she filed papers, wrote articles and worked a phone bank, selling advertisements in the organization’s publications. In the evenings, she was required to attend political lectures that would often go until 4:30 A.M., when she was finally allowed to collapse into sleep in a small room with five other women.

Six hours later, at 10:30, the wake-up call would come over the loudspeaker, and Ms. Kling and about 50 other members of the group, which has been called a cult, would start the cycle all over again.

”They didn’t encourage idle chatter,” she said. ”Time was precious. Every minute was pre-scheduled. They kept you so busy that you didn’t have time to think about leaving.”

It took a terrified Ms. Kling weeks to build up the courage to sneak out of the building one morning last year and take a bus home to her family in Missouri.

Scary stuff. The entire article is provided below the break. If any of our seminar participants were on campus in this era, please provide some background and details in the comments.

Morty might like to claim that this is just some sad story unconnected to “proselytizing” by the Williams faculty. After all, only those crazy conservative wingnuts think that this might be a concern at Williams, land of the open-minded professor.

Indeed, Western Massachusetts Labor Action became almost an institution on campus and enjoyed a reputation as a sort of Salvation Army with a political edge, a place where socially conscious students could go to work with the poor. Its connection to Mr. Perente-Ramos was not readily apparent, and the local group’s lead organizer was invited to economics and political science classes to lecture on the region’s social conditions.

Kling and others were sucked into this cult directly from a Williams classroom. My former professor Kurt Tauber, now retired, is mentioned by name. I believe that other Williams professors still on the faculty were involved as well.

Now, just because a few students were lost to one cult does not mean that having outside visitors is a bad idea or that students shouldn’t be encouraged to participate in social work in the local community. But Morty does us all a disservice when he pretends that “proselytizing” is a fringe concern. Nothing to see here. Just move along.

Why should a concerned alum trust the rest of the Report when it is so misleading about this sordid history?

All in all, the Introduction is weak. I realize that Morty (rightly) feels constrained in how “presidential” he must be in this context, but a little more directness and a lot less dissembling would have reassured me that the entire Diversity Initiative was a worthwhile project and not just a circular PC love-in, an exercise in which the people that mattered knew the answer before the first meeting was held. I am not reassured.

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Did you hear? Williams is really good at sports. The Ad Hoc Faculty Committee on Athletics was formed at the behest of President Morton Schapiro to explore the status of athletics at the college. A part summary, part discussion of their report follows.

Varsity athletics have a profound impact on Williams College — even moreso than at Division I colleges, because there only 5% of the student body is composed of varsity athletes, and here 30% of students are varsity athletes. Over half of Williams students say that their status as an athlete or a non-athlete defines them at Williams, and 70% of students believe that athletics are significant or dominant in organizing social life — a feeling that is much more pronounced among students that are not varsity athletes. Only 30% of students feel that varsity athletics enhances the educational mission of the College.

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