Last week, Princeton offered Brinkley a tenured position. Meanwhile, Harvard's history department languishes with 14 unfilled chairs, and students have begun to complain of a paucity of courses and professors.
This sad incident brings to mind the words of another historian, named Douglass Adair, who once had the gall to admit the low priority he and his fellow historians place on teaching. In a somewhat impromptu speech at a meeting of the Organization of American Historians 25 years ago, Adair confided his feelings about teaching to his fellow historians. The "semi-educated adolescents" (that's us, the students) may be won over by the "low arts of pedagogical showmanship," said Adair. Essentially, any historian worth his dissertation topic would admit that research and not teaching is the distinguishing feature of the best academics.
Which brings us back to the Harvard study's findings. Light is correct; professors don't have a natural aversion to students. The problem isn't that they don't want to see us; it's that they've been taught not to care. Teaching is pure pedagogy--get it over with, and get on with your important work.
With teachers like these, who needs colleges?
The Right Wing
On a less existential note: Rumor has it that The Crimson engages in politically partial terminology. Certain campus voices claim that we use the term "right-wing" for conservatives, and yet the term "left-wing" never appears in these pages. Is this true?
Left-wing left-wing left-wing.
You can decide for yourself. For this week, however, the news unquestionably concerns the Right. I managed to procure (by stepping on it on my way out the door to breakfast) the first edition of Peninsula, the new Very Very Conservative campus journal. A couple of salient points about the magazine merit attention.
The first is the name. Peninsulae are connected to the mainland; this publication is certainly not. These right-wingers--pardon the teminology--are not on a peninsula of political thought, but an intellectual desert island.
On second thought, though, maybe these seekers of veritas know what they're doing. Peninsula is the political equivalent of the Italian peninsula--blocked from the mainland on one side, isolated from the rest of civilization on the other three, and at the middle of it all, the Vatican.
Also noteworthy in the premier issue is a glaring quote from the page four manifesto: "Simply put, no one should come to Harvard with a firm grasp of the truth just to lose it in the quagmire of attitudes present here." In other words, Peninsula will be the voice of those poor, huddled masses of Harvard students who fear a test of faith.
"Heavens," proclaim Peninsula staffers, "we wouldn't want young Harvard conservatives to lose their reactionary edge by plunging into an intellectual environment of vigorous political and social debate."
Just imagine--the Truth descending to the depths of public inquiry.
Fortunately for these conservative hatchlings, Peninsula will save them from the deadly "quagmire" of rational debate.