Shirking professorial responsibility

When The Current hosted professors Mark Lilla, professor of humanities, and Mark Carnes, Ann Whitney Olin professor of history at Barnard, for a panel discussion, the ostensible topic was the Core Curriculum. Campus-wide debate and criticism of the Core are as much a hallmark of a Columbia education as the courses themselves. Yet the discussion between Lilla and Carnes yielded insight into something arguably more interesting than the Core itself: the responsibilities of professors as educators.

Carnes explains his development of a new approach to teaching as something like an epiphany. While teaching Contemporary Civilization, he realized that its methodology was misguided. Carnes used Plato’s The Republic to explain the flaw in the Socratic method. As the dialogue progresses, Socrates speaks more, while the students speak less. Pedagogically, there is something wrong with the passivity of students. Carnes spent years developing his Reacting to the Past curriculum, which uses elaborate game formats in which students take on roles as historical characters to radically alter the student classroom experience.

Lilla’s philosophy of teaching, however, seems opposed to Carnes’s. Lilla argues that American teenagers come to college less educated than our international peers. It is his responsibility to steep Literature Humanities students in the intellectual tradition. He challenges his class and raises the bar of his expectations. In his model, the professor instructs from a position of knowledge, hoping to instill questioning and understanding in students.

Lilla and Carnes have different pedagogical approaches, yet as educators these men are strikingly similar. The idea that emerged most clearly from their discussion was a mutual passion for teaching and a willingness to go to great lengths to effect intellectual growth in their students. Carnes is leading a movement to incorporate Reacting-style teaching at other colleges. Lilla reads and comments on two-dozen multi-page reading responses for every class. In different ways, these professors provoke a reconsideration of professors’ roles at the University. Carnes and Lilla both stressed the energy they have expended in creating a rigorous classroom experience. Both indicated that their efforts were worth the extra work, because the student response speaks for itself.

The contrast between Lilla and Carnes on the one hand, and many experienced professors on the other, is painfully clear. Lilla and Carnes reiterated a common criticism of the University: many academics are chiefly concerned with their research and care little for their teaching responsibilities. Undoubtedly, every Columbia student has felt this way about a professor in the past or will feel this way before he or she dons cap and gown.

I have my own experiences. This past semester, I enrolled in a Global Core course with a prominent professor whose reputation as a lecturer was only outdone by his prowess as a writer. His writing captivated me, and when world news intersected with his area of study, I contacted him. I explained that I was looking to better understand the news that the media covered poorly. A simple book recommendation would have sufficed, yet this professor did not even acknowledge the e-mail.

Is this how I, as a senior, am to remember Columbia? Is this a reflection of how Columbia wants to be perceived as an institution? When the pursuit of extracurricular education is stymied by professorial neglect, it is true irony: the person who has devoted him or herself to a life pursuing knowledge cares not to help students pursue the same.

Columbia promotes the Core to prospective students as an opening of the mind—a chance for the entire college to have a shared intellectual experience that is the subject of passionate discussion on the steps of Low Library. We the students should know: the school was pitched to all of us once upon a time. The luster of this idealistic image—this marketing tool—is tarnished for everyone at some point.

One way to conclude would be to propose policy changes in hopes that future students would have a different experience. Fine-tune the tenure process to incorporate professors’ abilities to critically engage students. Provide incentives for experienced professors to teach Core courses, especially Lit Hum and CC. Finally, change the culture of this university. Promote a culture in which professors are eager to engage students outside of class and to cultivate their intellectual growth. Columbia is a fragmented, isolated place. Students are not alone in that feeling. When Lilla arrived at the panel, it became clear that in his three years here, he and Carnes had never met, despite both professors’ prominence.

Policy proposals from an outgoing senior are as valuable as the legislative priorities of a lame-duck president. Thus, the proper conclusion is an appeal to conscience. If the University stands for anything, it is the promotion of intellectual discourse and scholarly knowledge. Columbia has a responsibility to nurture its students’ academic growth. Some of the best minds in the world are gathered together here in a startlingly small geographic space. It is time we start treating our intimate space like an intimate community as well.

The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in History. He is a former Senior Editor of The Current.