Two weeks ago, NAS President Peter Wood announced that his organization would undertake a research project to evaluate “the curriculum, student activities, and campus values of Bowdoin College,” with an eye on establishing what a contemporary liberal arts education looks like. The research project follows a simple question, "What Does Bowdoin Teach?"
NAS chose the liberal arts college of Bowdoin both for its outstanding reputation (ranked #6 by U.S. News & World Report) and the public exchange between Bowdoin President Barry Mills and Thomas Klingenstein. On a golf outing last year, Mills and Klingenstein apparently entered into a conversation that prompted Mills to “take seriously the conservative perspective,” as it related to the ethos at Bowdoin. Mills mentioned the thought-provoking exchange in his fall 2010 convocation address, suggesting that the Bowdoin community must be prepared to acknowledge a genuine “diversity of views.” In that speech, Mills went so far as to say that “creative tension is a positive force in a community committed to intellectual excellence and vitality. There should never be a time when we have a political litmus test for faculty or even inquire about political persuasion. In my view, this is simply not relevant to the intellectual enterprise of the College.”
Yet, Klingenstein was unsatisfied with Mills’s response and offered his own version of the story (“A Golf Story,” Claremont Review of Books, April 2011), along with some observations on Bowdoin’s history curriculum and faculty—and a sharp jab at Mills’s inability to address the root of the problem. In Klingenstien’s words:
Mr. Mills does not have the answers to the problem of liberal bias at Bowdoin because he's not really convinced there is a problem. When he summarily dismissed me, the Tea Party movement, and Larry Summers, or reflexively embraced Nussbaum, or grossly understated the number of liberal faculty at Bowdoin, he demonstrated an unwillingness to take seriously the conservative perspective. This, I propose, is why he was unable to see any way to address the problem that he posed.
The obvious disparity between the two men’s perceptions of their conversation on the links reveals a “diversity of views” (from a just-so anecdote) that bears witness to the ongoing challenge of political correctness, thus making Bowdoin an ideal candidate for NAS’s first-hand look at a contemporary liberal arts college in action.
Bowdoin College presents itself as an unusually good opportunity for the kind of inquiry we propose. The concern has been raised by its president in a college-wide forum that “diversity of views”—especially” conservative “views—is inadequately represented on campus. The Bowdoin community has responded to this challenge with interest. An outside critic has emerged whose assessments have sharpened the debate. Though there remain many in the Bowdoin community who appear untroubled by the quarrel, a substantial number seem willing to admit that the situation could be improved by fair-minded inquiry.
A subsequent article by KC Johnson at Minding the Campus (“Bowdoin’s History”) deepens Klingenstein’s brief analysis of the history faculty, providing the following observation:
Normally small and mid-size departments—at least in theory—look for scholars with a broad range of interests. In its U.S. history contingent, Bowdoin has taken the opposite approach; outside of the 19th century, the department’s preference has been for narrowness—ensuring that students won’t encounter any specialists in U.S. economic or business history, U.S. constitutional history, U.S. intellectual history, U.S. diplomatic history, and U.S. military history or U.S. political history outside of the 1830-1865 period.
Now we watch and wait, to see what comes of the NAS research project.
NAS chose the liberal arts college of Bowdoin both for its outstanding reputation (ranked #6 by U.S. News & World Report) and the public exchange between Bowdoin President Barry Mills and Thomas Klingenstein. On a golf outing last year, Mills and Klingenstein apparently entered into a conversation that prompted Mills to “take seriously the conservative perspective,” as it related to the ethos at Bowdoin. Mills mentioned the thought-provoking exchange in his fall 2010 convocation address, suggesting that the Bowdoin community must be prepared to acknowledge a genuine “diversity of views.” In that speech, Mills went so far as to say that “creative tension is a positive force in a community committed to intellectual excellence and vitality. There should never be a time when we have a political litmus test for faculty or even inquire about political persuasion. In my view, this is simply not relevant to the intellectual enterprise of the College.”Yet, Klingenstein was unsatisfied with Mills’s response and offered his own version of the story (“A Golf Story,” Claremont Review of Books, April 2011), along with some observations on Bowdoin’s history curriculum and faculty—and a sharp jab at Mills’s inability to address the root of the problem. In Klingenstien’s words:
Mr. Mills does not have the answers to the problem of liberal bias at Bowdoin because he's not really convinced there is a problem. When he summarily dismissed me, the Tea Party movement, and Larry Summers, or reflexively embraced Nussbaum, or grossly understated the number of liberal faculty at Bowdoin, he demonstrated an unwillingness to take seriously the conservative perspective. This, I propose, is why he was unable to see any way to address the problem that he posed.
The obvious disparity between the two men’s perceptions of their conversation on the links reveals a “diversity of views” (from a just-so anecdote) that bears witness to the ongoing challenge of political correctness, thus making Bowdoin an ideal candidate for NAS’s first-hand look at a contemporary liberal arts college in action.
Bowdoin College presents itself as an unusually good opportunity for the kind of inquiry we propose. The concern has been raised by its president in a college-wide forum that “diversity of views”—especially” conservative “views—is inadequately represented on campus. The Bowdoin community has responded to this challenge with interest. An outside critic has emerged whose assessments have sharpened the debate. Though there remain many in the Bowdoin community who appear untroubled by the quarrel, a substantial number seem willing to admit that the situation could be improved by fair-minded inquiry.
A subsequent article by KC Johnson at Minding the Campus (“Bowdoin’s History”) deepens Klingenstein’s brief analysis of the history faculty, providing the following observation:
Normally small and mid-size departments—at least in theory—look for scholars with a broad range of interests. In its U.S. history contingent, Bowdoin has taken the opposite approach; outside of the 19th century, the department’s preference has been for narrowness—ensuring that students won’t encounter any specialists in U.S. economic or business history, U.S. constitutional history, U.S. intellectual history, U.S. diplomatic history, and U.S. military history or U.S. political history outside of the 1830-1865 period.
Now we watch and wait, to see what comes of the NAS research project.
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