Last week, Tom Atwood '08 lamented the absence of intellectualism at Dartmouth outside of the classroom ("In Search of Intellectualism," April 12). He claims this is especially problematic given that most admissions brochures claim that a significant share of the learning at Dartmouth is done outside of the classroom. I agree with this assessment; however, it is even more disheartening that intellectualism is slipping away from the classroom as well as the campus at large in favor of election-year rhetoric and special interest talking points.
In a political theory class my sophomore year, we debated whether or not the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were "Just Wars" according to the theories proposed by Christian thinkers like Aquinas and Augustine. The battle lines had been drawn a week earlier, and included members of The Dartmouth Review and a prominent conservative College Republican on one side, and an associate editor of The Dartmouth Free Press and a then-featured opinion writer for The Dartmouth on the other.
The debate between these junior campus celebrities devolved into whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as well as a referendum on President Bush in the thick of his reelection campaign. At one point, those opposing Bush and Just War's applicability to Iraq silently held up a USA Today front page declaring a stalemate in Iraq while the other team responded with irrelevant Sept. 11 and "Support the Troops/Stay the Course" rhetoric right out of the Sean Hannity radio program. We entirely missed the point on Just War as one set of talking points vied against another.
In another class, the professor would routinely refer to one student as the "Class Republican," approaching him daily for the party line perspective on one issue or another. Despite being more of a moderate, though, he would be forced to explain and even defend certain orthodoxies that were not his own simply because of his self-identification as a Republican.
Other students are often complicit in these class setups. Numerous times, including just this past fall, classmates have approached me asking for "back up" in class discussions that have gone wildly off base into the realm of ideologies and political dogmas. This assumes that somehow the force of another student with the same viewpoint will make a difference in the credibility of that point, basically guiding class discussion by election and contest. Despite being flattered by this classmate's perception of me as capable of rolling into class discussion on my battle-ready conservative tank of freedom, I actually did not agree with the path down which the debate was heading, and held my fire.
These are just a few examples that I have observed. Lately, students hijacking the class may not even comment on the academic subject at hand, and instead interject with whatever evidence they may deem fit in some heinous new form of class participation. National candidates, trustee candidates and even Student Assembly candidates have become bigger issues in and outside of the classroom than the academic subjects we are meant to study. Further, membership in certain groups is now equated with categorical endorsement of their issues du jour in and outside the classroom. Even the innocents and non-affiliated students can be easily typecast like the Class Fascist. Sensationalist election rhetoric, fiery op-ed pieces, and the talking points of groups of all different stripes have dominated campus discourse for years and are now seeping into our scholastic endeavors.
Maintaining a vibrant, politically-aware, passionate student body should be a very important goal for Dartmouth students, faculty and the administration. However, bringing extracurricular talking points into the classroom along with those passions is very harmful to intellectual expression and the learning process. We have already allowed these candidates and opinions to saturate the pages of our papers, journals, and campus forums - I can't go anywhere on campus without hearing something about the candidacies of Stephen Smith '88 and Sandy Alderson '79 from professors and students alike. Four months ago Adam Shpeen '07 and Tim Andreadis '07 occupied similar roles in our community discourse.
As we approach the presidential election in 2008 and spring student body elections, we need to remember that personalities and rhetoric are not the basis of a liberal arts education. Together we must avoid the temptation to bring campus and national political baggage into class to substitute for more robust academic thought.
