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32nd Annual Hallie Lecture: Professor Joan Scott on the Ethics of Higher Education

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What is the role of higher education in a democratic society? How does that role change in times of academic and political repression? How does one begin to critique universities as spaces for critical thinking as well as corporate institutions? This year marked the 32nd annually held Hallie Lecture sponsored by the College of Letters, with guest speaker Joan W. Scott, author of Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom answering those very questions in the current context of attacks on higher education.  The lecture was preceded by a Welcome Reception at Zelnick Pavillion. 

“What’s always struck me most about Joan Scott’s work and about Joan herself is that ethical seriousness is under us,” Professor Ethan Kleinberg said, in his introduction of Joan Scott at the lecture.  “She’s never been content with critique for its own sake. Her scholarship asked us to consider not just what we know, but how and why we know it. To recognize that the pursuit of knowledge should never be separable from questions of justice, responsibility and care. That commitment stands for lifelong defense of academic freedom and the university as a space thereof.”  

Among the University’s most significant lecture series, the Hallie lecture honors Phillip Hallie, Professor Emeritus of philosophy and the humanities, and his best known work ‘Lest Innocent blood be Shed’, which explored good, evil, choice, and circumstance in the case of French Huguenot villagers during German occupation in World War II. 

Joan Scott began by outlining the challenges facing higher education and democratic society today: from the acquiescence of prestigious universities to federal oversight of curriculum, the elimination of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practises, the capitulation to Zionist demands that critics of Israel be punished as anti-semites, the failure to protect international students facing visa revocals, to the repression of faculty and student protestors’ free speech. 

 Joan Scott gave historic examples of higher education institutes compromising on their mission— during the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930s, to the ousting of faculty as suspected communists under McCarthyism across the United States in the 1950s. Calling attention to a deal for expanded federal funding that the White House offered nine universities in exchange for implementing educational policies in October, Scott spoke about viewpoint diversity in the classroom. 

“It’s no accident that the Compact issued in October seeks to impose viewpoint diversity [in the academy],” Scott said, adding that viewpoint diversity from the authoritarian administration’s point of view assumes that viewpoints are fixed, as the property of individuals whose minds aren’t changed by the influence of education. “Their viewpoint of diversity was a perversion of the university’s mission, an attempt to put political boundaries in the classroom in order to substitute biological inoculation for the ethically driven pursuit of knowledge.”

Speaking to the reality of U.S. universities dealing with these demands, Scott drew a line between mere compliance and ‘negotiating’, finding ways to accommodate demands to avoid the worst repercussions.  

Nonetheless, Scott maintained, “The idea that signing on with the fascist then or now is a way of protecting the University is delusional.” Rather, Scott defined the role of the University as ennobling and training democratic citizens. Scott referenced Michel de Certeau’s definition of Ethics, articulated through effective operations, and it defines the distance between ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’. The distance signifies a space where we have ‘something to do’. 

“I want to argue that higher education takes place in that space,” Scott said. “The ‘something to do’ is the critical work of knowledge production that enables us to get from what is to what ought to be. The ‘what is’ is our present knowledge, its limited ability to address social, political, or intellectual problems, to explain fully the distance between the democratic principles we aspire to and the realities that organize our lives… We don’t know what that ought to be is, but we might get there. ”

Scott then highlighted the importance of ‘critique’ as an impulse of our unquenchable desire to know, an intellectual instrument that refuses to be sated with present reality, training democratic citizens to be critical thinkers. 

“So first, desire,” Scott said. “I define the ethics of higher education as the cultivation of a relentless desire to learn more and better than you do now. Education at once unleashes and channels this desire for truth. Study turns one into a student, which is to say someone whose desire is structured by the voluntary assumption of limits unassailable and affable, limits that entail distinctions of true and false.”

This critique can be disruptive too, calling into question ethical values, as well as the interests they might serve. This begged the question: Can critique go too far?

“The scholars who founded the American Association of University Professors in 1915 understood this unsettling to be the mission of a democratic education,” Scott said, dissecting the genealogy of University administrators and faculty engaging in ‘Academic Freedom’ under free speech among its other tenets, as well as responding, reacting and organising when these freedoms were encroached upon. 

“In a way perversely, academic freedom was denied to professors with dissident political beliefs. Visited political beliefs in the name of academic freedom, and perversely, yet again, universities carried out the wills of government in the name of academic freedom, that is to prevent interference by politicians and so protect their claim to institutional independence,” Scott said. 

Scott spoke about the balancing calculus of a University’s state and corporate interests— when knowledge production shaped federal initiatives, begetting at the same time from federal funding, making the balance of state control and institutional independence difficult to accomplish. 

Closing the lecture, Scott clarified once again that what she was offering was a “utopian manifesto”, a set of ideals that challenges the various critiques of universities. Academic freedom is one of those ideals. “My vision of academic freedom harkens back to the progressives and considers that its job is to protect the most diverse of critics, those whose questioning induces vertigo [in] anyone who thinks one is good enough or unalterable. Those who challenge the orthodoxies of their disciplines, the limits of political rule, and accept ideas as unpowerful.”

Attendants asked questions about the current role of the AAUP, the connections drawn between Executive Orders in relation to distorting science and gender, and the methodology of critiquing one’s own values. Attendants, faculty, and Professor Scott then convened for a dinner after the lecture, in the Daniel Family Commons.

Written by COL Major Janhavi Munde, ’27

“Animal Houses” And How We Understand Them: Guest Lecture by Yale Senior Critic Trattie Davies

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On Nov. 5, the College of Letters co-sponsored a lecture on “Animal Houses” by guest speaker Trattie Davies, who is an Architect and Senior Critic at the Yale School of Architecture. “Animal Houses” is also a course Davies teaches MA students, exploring the visualisation of space from the perspective and function of non-human animals. The event was held in Boger Room 112.

Davies began her presentation with an excerpt from German artist Josef Albersm, which she said makes no sense upon first read but stretches open possibilities for thinking about art and design : 

“One and one is two—that’s business.

One and one is four—that’s art—or if you like it better—is life.

I think that makes clear: the many-fold seeing, the many-fold reading of the world makes us broader; wider; richer.

In education, a single standpoint cannot give a solid firm stand.

Thus, let us have different viewpoints, different standpoints.

Let us observe in different directions and from different angles…”

Davies then exemplified the value of looking at architecture from multiple perspectives by presenting two photographs of  Swiss-French architect designer Le Corbusier’s “Villa Garches”, a built example of Corbusier’s five points of architecture. The first photograph presented the traditional view of the Villa alone, a model that was to be respected and related. 

The second photograph looked at the same model from a different perspective: the weather had changed, the photographer had moved further back, however, Davies called “an awkward view”, where the photographer had moved back, and one could see the occupants engaging in a snowball fight. 

“The question is raised, how does life actually take place in space?” Davies asked, adding that closer observation of human spaces becomes more important to understand occupants’ lived history. For non-human animals, however, the case is entirely different.

“But if you look at animals— immediately, the questions of life are vivid and clear. A few years ago, I was like, ‘What is up with animal houses?’ and I had some old students [with me]. And the task was, pick an animal and then let’s meet and discuss.” 

Then Davies transitioned into explaining her students’ final presentation for the course— a collection that ranged from graphic art, audio-visual material, architectural designs, as well handmade woodwork. Students explored how animals occupied space, both temporarily and habitually, through case studies of fire ants, sea sponges, wasp nests, birds, and elk among others.  

One example explored the life cycle of the green darner, a dragonfly species found abundantly in North America. 

“It’s very hard to piece together this particular animal because it takes three generations to complete its migratory pattern,” Davies said. 

It only spends 4 months of its life in flight, and the student presenting assembled the building typologies of the spaces through which the different generations would pass, allowing for a view of the continuum of movement. 

Towards the end of the lecture, attendants asked questions about the kinds of material students used to construct their projects, the methodology they used to study behaviours of any given animals, and Davies’ main takeaways from this course.

 “For me, architectural design is like putting your foot in the water of a stream just by touching it. You incite an adjustment every day. It is an act of enormous control, with impact on every moment of our existence,” Davies said.

Written by COL Major Janhavi Munde, ’27

Masterclass with Rodrigo Cacho Casal: Quevedo’s silva to “Roma antigua y moderna”

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“What is a Ruin?”

On October 15th, the College of Letters hosted a masterclass in the COL library with Professor Rodrigo Cacho, who teaches Early Modern Iberian and Latin American Literature at the University of Cambridge. The masterclass facilitated a guided reading and discussion of Baroque author Francisco de Quevedo’s silva to “Roma antigua y moderna”. Prior to the masterclass, Professor Cacho joined COL juniors in discussing the silva in the Early Modern Period colloquium taught by Professor Ponce-Hegenauer and Professor Plass. 

Professor Cacho terms the silva “complex rewriting” of French Joachim du Bellay’s “Antiquitez de Rome”, a selection of poetry that COL juniors had also recently read and discussed in colloquium. 

“What is a Ruin?” was Professor Cacho’s question to attendants, kicking off the lecture. Responses ranged from remnants of a historic structure, to a material entrypoint for the onlooker into the history of the ruin. Guiding attendants through the nuances of the English translation and the intertextual artistic tradition within which Quevedo was writing, Professor Cacho unpacked how the text constructs memory, empire, and the transmission of culture by using “Rome” as a symbol for the achievements of Latin literature within the classical tradition, among other tenors.  Students also gained an understanding of the transformation of literary traditions from the Renaissance period to the Baroque by reading the two authors. 

The lecture facilitated close readings focussing on various figures and symbols within the text: the Tiber and other rivers, Lamia and Flora as mythical figures, as well as the role of the newcomer in understanding how Quevedo poeticises a timeless understanding of the history of Rome. 

“The city described by Du Bellay and Quevedo is as much a historical artifact as a metaphysical one. Rome is a metaphor for knowledge, which is both an endless archive of memory and a space for creativity… The author is looking at history with the universal eyes of memory as it was conceived in Platonic terms. All times are but one time, all art is but one art.” Professor Cacho wrote in his paper, “The Memory of Ruins: Quevedo’s Silva to “Roma antigua y moderna”, which juniors read as supplementary reading alongside Quevedo’s silva.

The silva begins by addressing an undefined newcomer beholding Rome’s ruins. As most COL juniors themselves were new readers of Du Bellay and Quevedo, they shared how the masterclass further informed their readings.

“The lecture guided me through the reading and inspired me to think so much more about the poem and its effects,” said Cassie Wo ’27, a COL junior. 

“I really enjoyed hearing about Cacho’s comparison of the content of Quevedo’s “Roma, Moderna y Antigua” and the form used to represent it. More specifically, the dichotomy between the antiquity of the Roman ruins and the modernity (at the time) of the metric form of the Silva, which was even considered experimental or avant garde,” said Ben Schietinger ’27, also a COL junior, who had presented on the silva in colloquium.  

After the lecture, students met with Professor Cacho to discuss their own readings of the text and ask questions. 

Written by COL Major Janhavi Munde, ’27

Scott Fergusson Masterclass:  A College Education, Lifelong Fascinations, and the Creative Process

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On April 11, the College of Letters and the College of Film and the Moving Image co-sponsored a Masterclass with 5-time Emmy winner, television and film producer Scott Ferguson. Ferguson has been the executive producer of shows and films including, but not limited to: Succession (2019-2023), The Night Of (2016), Heavy (1995), and Brokeback Mountain (2005). The event was held in the COL Library, with nearly 30 attendees crowding the seating area. From the hand-raises Ferguson prompted at the beginning of the talk, nearly half attendees were COL majors, with the other half being Film studies majors. Professor of the Practice in Letters Charles Barber and Ferguson sat in armchairs towards the front of the library, with a projector screen behind them, which would screen scenes from Heavy and Succession. 

“Well, first, I’m a huge believer in a university education, and I have two degrees from different schools, and both changed my life in a very good way.”

At Columbia University’s Film MFA program, Ferguson said he met remarkable people like James Mangold, Lisa Cholodenko, whom he had the chance to work with later.

Ferguson grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, where finding an “in” to the film business was difficult, and he had no family or industry connections as such. After his undergraduate years at Cornell University, he moved back to Pittsburgh and worked at a department store. 

“And then I finally said, I have to do what I can to get as close as I can.” 

Among other projects like making silent films, Ferguson officially entered the film industry at a television station in Pittsburgh, where he worked his way up. 

“I grew up in Pittsburgh, where there was no such thing as a film business. But you know, for me, going to school kind of changed [my] worldview and my ambition to try something, that I never would have conceived of, had I not gone there.” 

Among the many questions students asked, one was on the value of attending film school beyond making connections.

“I did spend, like, a handful of years [working] between undergrad and grad, and I made the observation [in] Cornell [as an undergraduate myself], which  had a MFA actor program, and the young actors who had just finished undergrad went straight into grad school, versus the ones who spent a handful of years outside– I was much more impressed with people who had some real life experience.” Fergusson responded.

“You may or may not need it,” he said. “A couple of the most accomplished people I’ve worked with in the industry never went to college, David Mamet and Scott Rudin, and they didn’t need college to make it at the highest level.”

Ferguson spoke about a niche topic he discovered in college, while taking a Roman History class for major requirements. It turned into a lifelong fascination, which also helped him connect with people in the industry.

“When it was time to meet on Succession, I had lunch with Jesse Armstrong. And he and I were talking, but we barely talked about the show. I saw the pilot and read the pilot draft. They had shot a season before me. We ended up talking about Julio-Claudian emperors almost the whole time. And that stuff is useful. It’ll come in handy, all that weird knowledge.”

In the late 50s, and 60s, Ferguson said, there was the emergence of the auteur theory, which lionized the role of the director as the chief author of a given production. Now, he feels, the emphasis is on writers and showrunners. At the same time, Ferguson related, that doesn’t mean that people in the industry configure all creative decisions unilaterally. He emphasized still, the value of collaborative thinking and pitching, even if decision making in these kinds of industries is centralized. 

“And so being [collaborative process] where you know you’re feeding off of each other is kind of what I’m talking about. There’s this alchemy that what we achieve is bigger than the sum of its parts; but also, the sum of its parts is kind of this fun life that I’ve enjoyed.”

Written by Janhavi Munde, COL Class of 2027

COL & CLASSICS ALUMNI PANEL 

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Communications Lead, Cybercrime Enforcement Attorney, Registrar. What do these professions have in common? 

On 26 March, COL alumni Heather Teixeira ‘08, Chris Kaltsas ‘11, and Emma Graham ‘19 returned as panelists to talk–among other things–about how their education informed their work, at the Gordon Career Center (GCC). The talk was co-sponsored by the Classical Studies Department and the GCC, with three of four panelists also having majored in the COL. The panelists’ experiences exemplified how a COL education doesn’t lead into a single-stream career path, but truly a ‘gateway to everything’. 

Heather Teixeira ‘08 leads communications on HIV and tuberculosis vaccine development for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). She spoke about how studying classics and history informed what she would want to do. On a practical level, she is often confronted with scientific language past her level, at work. She carries with her skills she learned in her undergraduate years: looking at dense language, unfamiliar terms, and finding what’s really important to communicate to a wider audience.

“I learned to not feel intimidated by something that isn’t immediately intelligible, and to work it through.” 

Check out heather’s thesis, published in 2008: Poetry, Politics, Persuasion: The Rhetoric of Demosthenes and George W. Bush

Chris Kaltsas ‘11 is an attorney practicing at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP (DWT) in San Francisco, California. Prior to Chris’s practice at DWT on cybercrime enforcement and litigation, he served as an attorney at the U.S Department of Justice for 7 years. He remarked that when you think of working for the federal government, you don’t immediately think of a classical background. But in his role as crime coordinator, his  interest in artefacts of any variety allowed him to work on interesting cases, including in art crime.

CHECK OUT CHRIS’ THESIS, PUBLISHED IN 2011: Spartacus Mythistoricus: Winning Spartacus into the Mythical

Emma Graham ‘19 is Registrar at David Zwirner Gallery, a global contemporary art gallery. Emma focuses on managing the art inventory of the gallery – including coordinating shipments of artwork, condition checking artwork, and installing large scale exhibitions. She shared that her work requires thinking through puzzles and how different moving parts can fit into a space, which doesn’t necessarily seem like it connects to her educational background. But when she thinks about what the process of learning an ancient language or translation was like at university, it involved the same process of logistically thinking through a problem, as it does at her work. She further related how she found community in her industry with people who have studied classics, history, and literature. 

“My first boss took a chance on me, because we shared that (studied) past together.”

CHECK OUT  EMMA’S THESIS, PUBLISHED IN 2019: Work at the Ancient Roman Villa: Representations of the Self, the Patron, and Productivity Outside of the City

Written by Janhavi Munde, COL Class of 2027

Viewing Medieval Manuscripts in Olin’s SCA

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Do you know the difference between a manuscript and a facsimile? 

COL Sophomores do. On February 19th, COL Sophomores visited Olin’s Special Collections and Archives to view medieval manuscripts with Head of Special Collections, Tess Goodman. Students learned about manuscript-making, historical factors affecting use of parchment and paper, arrival of the printing press, and the significance of decorations, ink colours, and manuscript layout – all of which related to the texts studied in the Medieval Colloquium under Professor Hadel Jarada and Professor Tushar Irani.

By understanding the way manuscripts are made, students gained insight into multiple examples of how–when you know what to look for– centuries-old manuscripts can reveal evidence of dynamic multi-cultural inter-regional, cross-religious exchanges. Focussing only on the evidence of the ‘Abbasid era texts, students saw evidence of the Graeco-Arabic translation movement which brought East-Roman study of Aristotelian logic and philosophy, Galenic medical science, Ptolemaic geometry and astronomy, and more into the Arabic cultural sphere (and then back again in exchange with Greek scientists!).

Similarly, a text read for the Colloquium as an example of Persianate literature: ibn Al-Muqaffas’s ‘Kalilah and Dimnah’, was translated into Arabic for the ‘Abbasid caliphs as a part of a large scale turn towards Persian cultural heritage and away from the Roman.  This historical context explains why the frame narrative of ‘Kalilah and Dimnah’ endows translators Barzawayh and Buzurgmihr with acknowledgement and praise for their achievement. This cultural, political movement brought knowledge and culture from regions as distant from Baghdad as India and China, allowing us to expand our concept of the COL’s cultural focus. 

Students considered a range of texts from 12th century Armenian manuscripts, to 18th century editions of the Bible and the Qur’an. With quills, parchment, and paper as witness, students did an oral-drawing of manuscripts. In this exercise, one student described the manuscript in front of them, to their partner who then drew the described text to the best of their ability. This exercise instilled focus onto structural details of manuscripts: margins, line spacing, embossment, font style, column divisions– which, as Professor Jarada and Professor Irani explained, were all deliberate authorial choices that communicated information about style, genre, and textual authority. 

All that said, the bell’s just rung and class is out!

By Janhavi Munde, COL Class of 2027

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