Friends of Live Your Virtue:
This message is for everyone who’s life and actions guide others. In other words, it’s for everyone — but especially for teachers, no matter what form that may take.
Like many of you, I found the death of George Floyd in police custody deeply disturbing, and I’ve been struggling with a need to address, in some way, the pain and suffering of injustice in our society. I hope you’ll forgive the personal dimension of this post, but in the final analysis, our future depends on being genuinely present in our roles and relationships as educators, scholars, and guides. What our friends in sociology have taught us, if we can hear the lesson, is that no knowledge is disembodied; linkages to practical exigencies may be hidden for a time, but when the classroom goes dark and the library closes, we and our students have lives to live — or lose.
Nothing any of us can say today will assuage the pain in our communities, and there is no easy response to the anger and outrage erupting in our streets. COVID-19 has pulled back a curtain of often-wilful obliviousness and revealed inequities that aren’t new, inequities woven into the fabric of our communities. Any person of color can tell you what it’s like to be caught in that fabric; our future and our ideals depend on finding the strength to hear each other and not look away.
It may be difficult in a moment of sorrow or despair not to feel isolated and impotent. And yet, I believe that what we do matters — more today, more in the coming days than ever. And my confidence is born not of ivory-tower hubris or naïveté but of what I have seen in thirty years of teaching philosophy. You have seen it too: former students making better lives and healing and leading their communities. In this moment of wrenching truth, as we try to make sense of our pasts and our possible futures, I believe we have a crucial role to play. In fact, it is our calling as teachers to help our communities make sense of the past, to imagine beyond the present, and to invite more voices into the Great Conversation. To the extent that we believe in the good of autonomy, community, and pluralism within the scholarly community, we commit ourselves to inclusivity and equity, even if we sometimes falter. The same must be true outside the classroom.
Or perhaps we need the courage to reject the boundary between the classroom and life. The disciplines we teach explore the depth and breadth of the human condition, from the noble to the despicable, and that can become a source of strength and transformation. However narrow our particular expertise, the cumulative effect of education in all its forms is today what it always was: To equip and empower people for lives of curiosity and reflection, autonomy and community and pluralism, and above all, the pursuit of excellence. It’s no mystery why some among us view higher education with suspicion. Teaching people to think critically and for themselves is disruptive. Ask Socrates. But I am not afraid to say that history has taught me that there is no other remedy for the evils of power and ambition than a sense of identity informed by empathy and bonds of community forged around seeking truth and the common good.
Let’s begin with care for our community: Support each other in this work, give your students gifts of understanding and insight, and above all, model the strength it takes not to look away from unpleasant or inconvenient truth.
Thank you again for your commitment to our mission. You are needed more than ever.
Matthew