This year's Founders Day celebration became a fascinating lecture on China, courtesy of Jonathan Spence, a specialist on Chinese history and the Sterling Professor of History at Yale University.
Spence commented that as a historian he is accustomed to lecturing about China's past only to be questioned about China's present or future after he has finished speaking. “It got me thinking that perhaps China's past somehow is deeply tied to the current world,” he said. His most recent research — about a long-ago case of a schoolteacher and his cohorts accused of treason — has what he described as “deep, curious, and even disturbing resonances” with what is happening in China today.
In 1728, he explained, a schoolteacher from a small Chinese town attempted to kill the emperor and overthrow the dynasty by suborning a military general who he believed could be convinced of the wickedness of the emperor. The general, however, reported the plan of the schoolteacher and his colleagues to the emperor, who found them guilty of treason. Rather than punish the traitors, the emperor became very interested in the intellectual roots of their subversion and demanded that the teacher take him to the source of his ideas.
“This case turned out to be full of the most amazing twists and turns, and I found myself thinking about the history of the early Chinese Communist Party and particularly the Maoist years,” Spence continued.
The schoolteacher's punishment included four phases — reeducation, where the emperor taught the schoolteacher what it was like to be an emperor; retraction, where the schoolteacher had to write about was wrong with his original stand; pardon, where the emperor pardoned the schoolteacher; and projection, where the emperor ordered transcripts of all their exchanges published at the state's expense in hopes that the country as a whole would learn how easy it is to make serious mistakes.
Spence said that there exists in contemporary China a mirror of that case. “It exists in the arena of social justice, of individual intellect, of compulsory public renunciation of sectarian activity, of insistence of mutual responsibility for wrongdoing, and of arbitrary exactions of the law. In all those areas I find a strange and rather haunting resonance to my work from almost 300 years ago.”
Spence was introduced by Bruce Reynolds, professor of economics and director of the East Asian studies program, as “a scholar whose books have shaped a generation's understanding of China.” Spence received an honorary degree of doctor of letters.
Four secondary school teachers also were honored at Founders Day for excellence in teaching. Each received the Gideon Hawley Award, named for the 1809 graduate who was New York State's first superintendent of public instruction. Honored were:
— William G. Clarke, a biology teacher at Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in Brooklyn, New York. He was nominated by Diane Voskoboynik '02, who said that he “gave me the best answers to the questions I struggled with in high school, making a significant difference for me.”
— Arthur Piancone, a history teacher at Hackettstown (N.J.) High School. He was nominated by Alexandra Lohse '03, who said, “[Mr. Piancone] taught us responsibility, self-sufficiency, and determination — three extremely beneficial life skills.”
— Andrew Rork, a history teacher at Saddle River (N.J.) Day School. He was nominated by Megann Denefrio '03, who said, “Mr. Rork is an unbelievable teacher and a tremendously giving person with his time and energy.”
— Ann F. G. Serow, a political science teacher at Kingswood-Oxford School (West Hartford, Conn.). She was nominated by Charles Tuthill '02, who said that Serow “made sure that each and every person taking the course understood the subject matter.”
Each year the College recognizes secondary school teachers who have had a continuing influence on the academic life of Union students, who make the nominations.