Assessing Intellectualism

How do you get immediate responses to your e-mails from deans, an invitation to the home of arguably the most well known professor at Duke--despite the fact that you've never met him before in your life--and a sit-down interview with the president of Duke University in one week? I did it by telling them I was writing a story about, and engaging in a quest to find, intellectualism.

I can pinpoint the exact day my quest began. It was early December, and I was eagerly awaiting the release of TowerView--my first story for the magazine was inside, and visions of meaningful feedback and words of praise played like conceited imps on my mind. I had no idea that my piece would be totally overshadowed by another in the magazine, let alone by something written by a member of my fraternity--a member of my hall no less.

From the moment TowerView hit the racks outside Alpine Bagels, Jesse Panuccio's Manuscript, "My Anti-Intellectual Campus," drew provocative and thoughtful responses from many people. Or at least it did according to Jesse, who told me about them, since he was my friend, neighbor and occasional idea wall. I throw ideas at him like I used to throw lacrosse balls at walls in high school, and just as the ball would hit an imperfection in the brick and bounce off in crazy directions, the ideas that I throw at Jesse carom crazily.

Intellectualism was one of those terms that he would fire back at me, and I would never quite be able to catch. So this spring I decided to chase after the ball and pin down what the hell intellectualism actually is; if we want it; and how we get it. I chased the ball through interesting places and bounced it with interesting people, and I'm not certain I can predict where it will go if I throw it off Jesse again. But I've certainly learned a lot through my mission.

In response to the very first question of my first interview, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education William Chafe says, "I think intellectualism, like most --isms, is not really a very descriptive word," and my heart collapses as I begin to think of what I'm going to tell my editor. But he continues, "I'd rather talk about intellectual vitality, and what it means."

He's only making a semantic point; my story lives. His eyes narrow between heavily-creased eyelids magnified slightly by his glasses. "It's a passion for inquiry," he says. "It's a passion for asking questions and being fascinated by new intellectual possibilities."

He points to the two main policies Duke has pursued in recent years to create an atmosphere conducive to intellectualism--excuse me, intellectual vitality--on campus: Adding "intellectual vitality" as a criterion by which applicants to Duke are scored, and reshaping residential life to create a community in which students are comfortable engaging each other in thoughtful discussion outside the classroom. "What we would love to have is a situation where there's ample opportunity for students to think about spending their evenings in heated conversations about existentialism or genomics, and not simply see those issues as things they deal with only in class," he says, while Harvard cufflinks dance frenetically on his sleeve to the rhythm of his hand gestures.

In the eyes of many students, the entire Duke administration--the amorphous entity that controls all things Duke--wears Harvard cufflinks. "They're trying to turn Duke into another Ivy League school," students wail. Chafe dismisses this notion with a wave, arguing that there is no such generic Ivy League ideal. Duke is strikingly different from Ivy League schools because of its age--it's the youngest major university in the country--its Division I Athletics and its location in and connection to the South. Chafe argues that no matter what policies are put into place, they are within the context of Duke's unique past.

Dean of the Chapel William Willimon, who has conducted two major studies on student intellectual life at Duke (one in 1992 and the other in 2000), agrees with Fenn. He tells me later that the number one thing Duke can do to improve its intellectual environment is to work harder at, and not just play lip service to, getting good teachers. One colleague told him when he was working on his report, "Good teaching is a positive at Duke, but it'll never get you tenure."

Willimon adds that the biggest weaknesses of intellectualism at Duke are the "lack of faculty interaction, and, I think, lack of student engagement. It strikes me that among some Duke students there's a sort of passivity. They walk into the classroom, and say, 'Do it to me.'"

Fenn agrees, noting that she and a number of new faculty members have found Duke students to be very talented, but harder to engage in classroom discussion than students at their previous schools. "Students need more drawing out," she says. "I find that I bear more of the pedagogical load, that I do more of the work than I did before."

In his 2000 report Willimon argues for a number of the residential life changes that have been made recently--most notably moving sophomores to West Campus. He also stresses that the faculty is not just failing to connect in the classroom, but making very few attempts to engage students outside the classroom. He feels the latter is an essential part of a university's intellectual vitality. "We think it's normal that you never see adults on campus after 5 p.m.," he says. "I think it's sad when Duke becomes a commuter college... for the faculty."

Where Willimon counsels increased engagement and an expectation that students and professors get to know each other in more than a classroom setting, James B. Duke Professor of Biology John Staddon argues that the personalization of education has led to a decrease in intellectualism.

"Do you feel you want professors to know your name?" he asks me as we sit in his office. I look all over the place, glancing over the small wood carvings and books that decorate his office and avoiding his eyes as I try to figure out where he's going with this. I reply that I think it's a reasonable expectation in a seminar, but that there were subjects that could be reasonably taught in lectures with no direct interaction.

"In a seminar you need to have interaction," he says dismissively, his muted English accent taking on a slight tone of condescension as I had missed his point. "The issue is whether the interaction is impersonal: 'What do you think about this?' Not, 'what do you, Tyler, think about this?' What is your intellectual reaction?"

He sees the threat to intellectualism coming from the opposite direction from which the others see it. "There's a huge virtue to the classroom not being personal, because then you don't have to take things personally," he says. "If someone says something with which you don't agree, it's an insult to you. I think it's the fear of that--the fear that issues will get personal--that interferes with intellectual engagement."

As I question him further about his break from contemporary American educational theory, he grows fiercer. "Obviously if a student is excited about something or interested about something, a good teacher will encourage that in every possible way, but that doesn't mean you have to ask about his mothah, you know," his voice rises in English incredulity. "What brings them together is the subject."

Even though Staddon disagrees with the basic diagnosis for the fraying of intellectualism, he generally agrees with the others' definitions of the key term. He offers a definition of its antithesis--anti-intellectualism as "the idea that what I believe is true, so we're not going to talk about it anymore."

Implicit in Staddon's definition of anti-intellectualism is a definition of intellectualism, which Assistant Professor of English Maurice Wallace describes and expands upon a short while later in his office. "Intellectualism is the pursuit of the development of a critical mind," he says slowly and deliberately, one or two words at a time. "It is an effort to understand and comprehend why we think what we think. It is the will to challenge, to question, to think, to think hard and long about what it is we think we know anyway. It's about the production of knowledge."

Wallace vehemently disagrees with Staddon's belief that personalization inhibits intellectualism, and I'm a little embarrassed for even bringing it up. But he holds that other forces threaten intellectualism: "I think a good deal of student academic life is driven by market value and not enough by intellectual pursuits and a passion for, and even appreciation sometimes, for intellectualism, which I hold in high regard."

In the classroom, he strives to challenge his students' preconceived notions and conceptions about everything. But in his mind, many Duke students already travel down a pre-professional track. "I do lament the number of students who decide to pursue law school or business school or medical school out of a false idea that it's the next logical step toward a successful post-Duke career," he says. "I think there are too many students who are going to be, at best, mediocre professionals, who would otherwise be remarkable artists or writers or teachers, who don't trust their own talents and own minds enough to take the risks that come along with these pursuits."

ne particular Duke graduate, albeit from the class of 1955, who has pursued a career as a writer and a teacher. is Reynolds Price, James B. Duke professor of English at Duke and the author of over 25 books. He is also the dean of intellectualism at Duke, having blasted the University for its failings--particularly its anti-intellectualism--during his famous Founders' Day speech in 1992. Since then, he has been an oft-outspoken critic of the forces aligned against intellectualism at Duke.

After Price and I determine that our daytime schedules conflicted and he invites me to his house, I drive there with a touch of trepidation. His live-in assistant lets me into the house, and I take a seat in his living room and admire the art that covers his walls. Some medieval religious, one day-glo impressionistic, it's packed more tightly on the walls than in any room I have ever seen before. As I'm studying it, Price rolls in on his wheelchair--he has been a paraplegic since undergoing surgery to remove a tumor in his spinal cord during the mid-1980s.

"The notion that students bring to Duke, as they do to most American colleges and universities, is that college is largely an entertainment event," he says in a warm storyteller's voice, with a patina of southern and a time-worn softening of the low notes. "And entertainment is defined largely as social life with one's peers." An entertaining social life for many of these students is drinking with the goal of "drunkenness, nausea and unconsciousness." These students see academics and ideas as secondary to partying. With so many people seeing Duke in that light, he wonders what parents must be thinking.

"Who wants to put $130,000 to $150,000 into a young person's belonging to a fairly sleazy country club?" he says with a look of puzzlement that turns into a sly grin. "You could get into a really good country club for a lot less money, if that's what you want to do." When Price was an undergraduate, the University forbade students--even those who were of legal age--from possessing alcohol on campus. Punishment meant immediate expulsion and students took that seriously, hence drinking played virtually no role in campus life.

"The tradition that's developed over the last 30 years in the whole country--not just among Duke undergraduates--that drinking is the chief accompaniment to, or the chief cause of, pleasure has really been a dire one," he says. It reminds me of something Willimon said to me: "To have to hit yourself over the head with a sledgehammer during the weekend to have fun is a pretty sad way to live."

But Willimon considers drinking symptomatic of the emptiness in students' intellectual lives, whereas Price believes that because many students see college as a place for living it up and not for serious exploration of self or ideas they lack intellectualism. "Somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of our students appear to become what I call zombies, the living dead," he says almost conspiratorially, "People who just walk around--for whatever reasons--avoiding the tremendous amount of intellectual wealth which this place is very prepared to invest in your head."

Price is quick to point out, much as everyone else I spoke with did, that his criticisms do not mean he thinks Duke is a bad place--he would not have taught here for 44 years if he thought it was. He also laughingly stresses that he's not anti-fun, just that he rejects the notion of drinking to the point of drunkenness as a worthwhile form of fun--after I finish the interview, Price and an old friend and colleague share a fine scotch and swap reminiscences about North Carolina's writing community. He thinks that many students are missing the benefits and the non-alcoholic, intellectual joys of a place like Duke.

"I have spoken with a range of faculty members and administrators about intellectualism and I have countless memories of discussions with other students about intellectualism or its antithesis--'college is my last chance to have fun,' 'I want to go out and make money to make up for all the money I paid for this education,' 'I already know what I want to do in life, so why waste time with everything else?'--so now there's nothing else to do, and I'm off to see the Wizard.

I sent President Nan Keohane an e-mail, saying I'd love to interview her on intellectualism, but that I was sure she was too busy and could she reply to the four questions contained in the e-mail by Tuesday. It was a courtesy e-mail. To write a story about intellectualism on her campus without giving her the opportunity to comment would have been rude. So I was shocked when her assistant invited me to come in, and I'm still a little bit amazed as I'm ushered into the President's office. Keohane invites me to take a seat by the window and we sit in armchairs facing each other in her large office.

She acknowledges fairly early in the 30-minute interview that there are questions about the health of Duke's intellectual life. "There was a sense on the part of some folks that Duke was a place that tended to segment intellectual life into very specifically defined areas--the library, the classroom, the laboratory--and some students find it inappropriate to take intellectual life outside of those places into other parts of Duke," she says, her cutting blue eyes fixed on me. Her face is lined with responsibility and her features are sagging slightly this morning--she has just taken the red-eye back from the NCAA women's basketball tournament in New Mexico.

"Finding teachers who are committed to stimulating students to think and to discover and to take risks is one part of the equation," she says after I ask her how the intellectual atmosphere can be improved. "Having classmates and friends who do this is another part of the equation. Even if you have a very stimulating teacher, if there's nobody to talk to about your intellectual excitement, you can go off and muse about it in the gardens or you can write home about it, or you can call a friend on another campus, but there's nobody in your circle that you can turn to.

"Finally, you also have to have students who themselves, as individuals, are interested in doing this so that they open up conversations," Keohane continues.

But she downplays the notion that Duke's emphasis on research precludes good teaching or that professors at liberal arts colleges don't have to do research. Still, she recognizes that professors at small colleges are a self-selecting bunch in that they relish the intellectual engagement with students that comes in a small community. By the same token, Duke professors and students are generally self-selected and are less likely to value that engagement.

Nevertheless, Keohane believes that one key to increasing intellectualism on campus is to tighten the bonds of community so that students interact with each other and professors in more meaningful ways. In addition to the housing initiatives, she points to basketball as a possible force for intellectualism. A number of people I spoke with pointed to basketball as a distraction, and a drain of passion; Fenn mused that basketball was "something everybody cares about--we follow it to absurd detail. We know everything about everybody; we're following the stats; we know who's hurt; we know what the opposing team's point guard did for Christmas. And that's the kind of engagement we need to have in the classroom." But Keohane sees basketball as a potential unifier and stepping stone to engagement.

Basketball is a "great topic for conversations across generational lines because everybody at Duke, practically, is a fan. That ought to be a basis for easy comradeship between faculty members and students that then could be translated... because you're more likely to have the kind of conversation we've been talking about with someone you feel comfortable with. It could be the basis for getting faculty and students to feel more comfortable with each other, and therefore more likely to talk about other things." She pauses for a moment, then adds: "I'm not sure how often that happens, but theoretically it could."

Intellectualism is not a word the administration uses all that frequently, according to Keohane. It's often in the subtext to their decisions, because the overwhelming majority of administrators believe intellectualism is valuable, but it's rarely the explicit rationale for policy. But Keohane believes, "in the last analysis, it's something that students themselves have to care about."

Sitting in her office at the end of this quest, I know she's right. And I've proved it myself. In less than a week, I've conversed with professors and administrators, both about my specific topic of intellectualism and on a number of fascinating tangents. I've heard them complain that nobody comes to see them during office hours, and I've seen firsthand how eager many of them are to talk with students--about anything. I haven't done any homework and I haven't had anything to drink in nearly a week, and yet I've enjoyed myself immensely and learned a lot more than I do in most weeks.

Of course, if the administration values intellectualism, it can better communicate this vision to the faculty and to admitted students--who are in many cases socialized from Blue Devil Days onward to view Duke as a four-year party or a stop on the way to investment banking--but ultimately intellectualism does need to come from the students. We need to seek out our professors for discussions, we need to be brave enough to show passion in the classroom and we need to converse meaningfully with our friends, if in fact intellectualism is something we value.