Hugh Jenkins, professor of English, accepted the eighth annual Stillman Award
for Excellence in Teaching on Feb. 17, and called on faculty and students to
help preserve what he called the “heritage of free inquiry” against “religious
bigots, moral bullies, and intellectual terrorists.”
“At issue now is preserving the
heritage of free inquiry and the ideals of a free society that have lived for
more than two thousand years,” he said at Founders Day convocation. “The
intellectual privileges we have here at Union
and at similar institutions are vital in sustaining the basic rights of our
society as a whole.”
Jenkins, who joined the College in 1992, earned his bachelor's degree
from Carleton College,
and his master's and Ph.D. from Cornell
University. His research
has concentrated on 17th-century English literature including
English country-house poetry; the poetry, prose and drama of Ben Jonson and
John Milton; and the dramas of the Jacobean stage.
College Marshall Ruth Stevenson said her English department colleague
“[leads] the students to respond with knowledge and delight to the works of
those passionate, contentious, gorgeously literate writers, and, what's more,
[leads] them to develop for themselves cogent, imaginative thinking and clear,
elegant style.”
Jenkins gives daily quizzes, imposes a “grammar tax,” and writes miniature
essays on student papers that are, in themselves, “persuasive models of
independent thinking and cogent analysis,” Stevenson said.
Stevenson cited Jenkins' “infectious enthusiasm and curiosity” in the
classroom, for example, using a real skeleton to stage scenes from “The
Revenger's Tragedy.”
“[He] leads the students to the comprehension of the heart (and bones!) of
the matter, the dramatic interactions of human wishes, human institutions, and
human limitations,” Stevenson said. “He makes the texts an integral part of his
students' aesthetic and intellectual life.”
Quoting from student nominations, Stevenson said Jenkins “is 'amazing,'
that he is 'fantastic,' and, simply and gleefully that 'Hugh rocks!'”
The award was created by Abbott L. Stillman '69, a former trustee, to pay
tribute to the central mission of the College: teaching. Nominations are
solicited from the sophomore, junior, and senior classes. The faculty on the
Committee on Teaching review material submitted by the nominees and forward the
recommendation to the Dean of Faculty. Other finalists this year were Teresa
Meade, history; Robert Lauzon, biology; and Terry Weiner, political science.
Following is the complete text of
Jenkins' remarks at Founders Day:
It's hard for me to express how genuinely pleased and honored I am by
this award. I can't possibly acknowledge
all who have contributed to my teaching, so I would like in a general fashion
to thank those of you out there for helping me with what I do, and those of you
back there [College administrators] for not hindering me in doing it.
I mean both sincerely, even – perhaps
especially- the latter. We seem now to live in a country whose discourse is
dominated by religious bigots, moral bullies, and intellectual terrorists – most
self-appointed, but many elected, and some a strange combination of both. Such
people have little use for what we do; they prefer metaphysics to science,
prophesy to history, belief to reason, smug righteousness to rhetoric and
uncertainty, the closed circle of ideology to intellectual debate, the free
market and the profit motive to the free play of the mind. They have created a
climate in which debate becomes dissent, dissent lack of patriotism, and lack
of patriotism borderline criminality.
I've heard in little in their public discourse over the last few years that
make me believe these people would thrive at Union;
I don't think they would ever get past first-year preceptorial. And, in an astonishing
irony, they consider us – radical professors and ignorant students, or ignorant
professors and radical students – the crazy ones in the current culture wars.
As [journalist] Bill Moyers has said, “today the delusional is no
longer marginal.” In fact, it's not even considered delusional anymore. Here's
a direct quotation from a current government official: “We're an empire now, and when we
act, we create our own reality.” In my experience, two types of people (and I
don't mean to equate the two) try to create their own realities: doctrinaire Marxists
and complete lunatics. I'll let you decide which one you believe the speaker
belongs to.
In such a climate it is a great blessing just to be left alone to do
what we do. It's worth remembering that
the liberal arts mean the free arts, and a free society cannot survive without
them. As my great hero John Milton, writing in the midst of a civil war and in
a century of unprecedented religious conflict, wrote, “give me the liberty to
know, to utter, and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all
liberties.” We have that here at Union.
Our weakness makes us strong, saith the Apostle Paul, and I would argue
that we are strong and necessary not despite our arguments — with ourselves
and the world, and our craziness, for in a mad world only the mad are sane — but
because of them. We represent something great at Union
and something necessary, and something that is increasingly threatened. If you
think I am exaggerating that threat, you haven't been paying attention. Put
down your New York Times and turn off
your NPR and read and listen to what most Americans see and hear.
At issue now is preserving the heritage of free inquiry and the ideals
of a free society that have lived for more than two thousand years. The
intellectual privileges we have here at Union
and at similar institutions are vital in sustaining the basic rights of our
society as a whole. This makes them privileges worth fighting for, and their enemies worth fighting. This is not a Red vs. Blue or left vs. right issue. We
must all take up the fight if we truly believe in what we preach and try to
practice here at Union.
