The President’s View

Even if you are not a fan of the opera, you may have heard a note or two of controversy about The Metropolitan Opera’s current production of Tosca, which we were fortunate enough to broadcast in high definition at our Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts earlier this month.

Tosca, by Giacomo Puccini, is one of the world’s most beloved operas, set in Rome against the backdrop off the Napoleonic wars. It tells the story of a pious and faithful singer, Tosca, who is in love with a painter, Cavaradossi. Without giving away the story — as I know you will want to find it out for yourself — the painter is imprisoned by the Chief of Police, Scarpia, after a bit of political intrigue, and Scarpia, whose eyes have fallen upon Tosca, promises to release the young painter only if Tosca will submit to Scarpia’s wishes. A lot of treachery ensues, impassioned by wonderfully lyrical music.

The controversy about this Tosca concerns the staging by Swiss-born director Luc Bondy. Audiences had become very attached to the 1985 production of Tosca designed by Franco Zefferelli, which really sought to recreate the Rome of the period with lavish sets and fidelity to the libretto. I have been fortunate enough to see that production several times, and remember well the set for Act I, which takes place in the Church of Sant’ Andrea Della Valle in Rome, and reproduced the church’s interior almost entirely. In the new production, by comparison, everything is stark, spare, and at times, some of the vital religious and cultural contexts get lost in all the gloom.

Of course, you would need to see it for yourself and decide the merits of this new production. It is such a great pleasure for us at Fairfield University to be in our second year of broadcasting the MetLive in HD series. When we started the program last year, we had no idea whether it would be well received. So far, it has been a great success, and as an opera lover myself it is wonderful to be able to have these presentations so close to home.

A critical dimension of our mission as a University is that we hope we serve as a source of entertainment and cultural enrichment for the entire community. Certainly, we are always thinking about ways in which we can serve in this capacity, and the response to the MetLive series has been very encouraging in this regard. This season promises to be a very good one indeed. Aida will be presented this Saturday, Oct. 24 at 1 and 6 p.m., followed by Turandot in November and Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann in December, so there is much to look forward to. I refer you to our Web site for more information if you are interested.

The introduction of high definition technology at our Quick Center for the Arts has also allowed us to introduce two additional series of programs. The first is TimesTalk Live, a program of conversations between literary figures and journalists from the New York Times. John Irving, author of The World According to Garp, will be presented live on Oct. 28, and we will be presenting an interview with Stephen King on November 11.

We have also introduced live high definition presentations of Britain’s National Theatre. The next one will be in January, a play by Mark Ravenhill based on a novel by Terry Pratchett, and then in April we will be presenting “The Habit of Art,” a new play by Alan Bennett, which is an imagined conversation between W. H. Auden and the composer Benjamin Britten.

These are just a few of the programs that we present at the Quick Center. It is our ongoing hope that we can find new and exciting ways to engage as a University with all of our neighbors. I invite you to come to campus and enjoy all these intellectually and artistically stimulating programs.

Recently at Fairfield, we have started an MFA program in creative writing, and the response so far has been very enthusiastic. The student writers in the program will spend most of their time working alone, but twice a year they will gather together for a 10-day residency at St. Edmund’s Retreat at Enders Island.

If you’ve never been, Enders Island is an extraordinary place of beauty and inspiration. Located at the mouth of the Mystic River, it was developed as a private residence in the early 20th century by Dr. Thomas. B. Enders, and in 1954, his widow decided to give the island to the Society of St. Edmund, a small religious order. In recent years the mansion and the chapel have served as a place of retreat and spiritual renewal for thousands of visitors. “The way the world is today everything is noise and movement and there is no place to just sit and be quiet,” Fr. Tom Hoar, SSE, the president of the retreat center once observed. “We invite people from dawn to dusk to come and enjoy the facility as a place to do that: sit and be quiet.”

This past weekend, I was honored to be the recipient of St. Edmund’s Medal, presented by the island’s Board of Trustees. The event provided me the opportunity to reflect on the importance of these islands of contemplation that we need in our lives, and also to reflect on the life of St. Edmund himself.

St. Edmund of Abingdon (1175-1242) led a life that in its complexity and pace is remarkably similar to the kinds of busy lives that so many of us live today. Born Edmund Rich, he had a talent for mathematics which led him first to Oxford where he taught geometry — at the time, the cutting edge of the sciences. Later, he became a priest and taught theology, until he was tapped to become the treasurer of the then newly completed Salisbury cathedral. From then on, he just got busier, serving as a parish priest, and preaching the crusades, until Pope Gregory IX urged that he be elected the Archbishop of Canterbury. No sooner had he been appointed then he served as an emissary, (kind of a special envoy) to help negotiate a peace treaty between Henry lll and a group of rebellious barons. His later life was full of political complications as he worked to preserve the independence of the Church and the limited democratic institutions guaranteed by the Magna Carta from the machinations of King Henry. In the end, he retired to the Cistercian Abby of Pontigny in the Champagne district of France where he died.

The historical sources and records that we have suggest that despite the very high offices that St. Edmund held, he remained a man of true humility, who showed great kindness to the poor and generosity of spirit to all whom he encountered.

So here we have a man who lived the kind of fractured, high-paced life that we live today — a man who adapted to the circumstances of a rapidly changing world. Yet he seems to have made these adaptations without losing touch with the integrity of his being, grounded in the love of God and in his commitment to be of service to others that is the natural extension and expression of the love of God.

It is this integrity that shines through in the accounts we have of St. Edmund who once said: “I would rather say five words devoutly with my heart than five thousand which my soul does not relish with affection and attention. Sing to the Lord with understanding: what a man repeats with his mouth, that let him feel in his soul.”

We live in a world just a as fragmented as that of St. Edmund’s, and the challenge we face is similar: How do we remain whole and integrated persons despite all the adaptations that the world demands of us?

This is why we stress the integration of life and learning in our pedagogical approach at Fairfield University. Teaching our students the skills that they need to be adaptive in a complex world while living a life of personal integrity is what we hope to accomplish. To paraphrase St. Edmund, we want to develop our students so that what they repeat with their mouths is fully in harmony with what they feel in their soul.

How do we do this? Well, there a innumerable intentional programs we have developed to create the appropriate learning environment, but the one that is perhaps most unusual is that we try to ensure that our students understand the importance of spiritual reflection. We encourage them to take the time to just “sit and be quiet” as Fr. Hoar would put it.

It during these periods of contemplative reflection that we are most likely to touch base with the foundation of our nature, and to have those experiences of wholeness and harmony that will help us to feel at home with ourselves no matter what comes our way. These integrating moments of spiritual reflection will help us to live lives filled with the spiritual joy that St. Edmund expressed and exemplified.

There’s been much in the news recently about energy efficiency — particularly the shift toward more energy efficient vehicles — and yet one of the things you notice when you travel abroad is how much further ahead much of the rest of the developed world is when it comes to the pursuit of renewal energy, and a general enthusiasm for other earth friendly practices. I was reminded of this by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times a few weeks ago who wrote of a Silicon Valley based company that is the leader in building the machines that make solar panels. They have 14 solar panel factories around the world — in Germany, Italy, Spain, China, and Abu Dhabi for example — but not one factory in the United States.

In fact, the renewable energy industry is the second-largest industry in Germany at the moment (after the auto-industry). What a dynamic boost a similar dedication to renewable energy would give our economy !

One could point to public policy as the problem, as Friedman does. Yet public policy shifts in response to public opinion. While we have made progress in the United States, we simply haven’t moved with enough conviction and accepted our place as “stewards” of the earth, taking responsibility for maintaining healthy sustainability practices in our daily lives. Our public policy is to a large extent a reflection of this lack of urgency.

I think universities have a big role to play here. After all, our students are with us to learn, and to think about the big picture and questions like global warming and the economics of energy, not to mention the ethical dimensions of personal responsibility at the heart of the sustainability movement. The architects, engineers, business leaders, and scientists of tomorrow are on our campuses right now. If we can encourage them to see themselves as stewards of the planet during their student years, then we can reverse the habits that have led to our current environmental woes. And as universities, we should also practice what we preach and implement green practices where possible. There’s no point in lamenting — in the classroom — the damage we are doing to the earth, if we are going to carry on as usual as an institution.

In 2007, I joined hundreds of other college and university president’s in signing the American College and University Climate Commitment, an effort to address global warming by trying to reduce and ultimately neutralize greenhouse gas emissions on our campuses. In the years since we’ve adopted or enhanced our environmental initiatives at Fairfield. This increased eco-consciousness has also shaped our curriculum and the way our students live. For instance, last year a group of our students developed their own Earth House community, where they composted, recycled, and used earth-friendly cleaning products in order to live as greenly as possible. They set an example for the rest of us to follow.

We have scores of initiatives underway — including very expensive parking fees which have encouraged several employees to car pool (the car poolers pay half as much). We’ve revamped our plumbing to save water, and outfitted nearly 8,000 lighting fixtures with energy-efficient lamps. We are also in the final stages of a new Jesuit Residence and Community Center, which will have a sod covered roof and other features, so that the building will conserve energy by taking advantage of the warming and cooling properties of the earth itself using a geothermal energy system.

By far our biggest environmental effort to date has been the construction of our own combined heat and power plant, which was up and running in the fall of 2007. By using a turbine and clean-burning gas, we are able to produce most of the electricity that we need. Meanwhile, the heat that is produced by the process is recovered and used to warm many of the buildings on our 200-acre campus, and the same system is used to cool our buildings in the summer. In doing this, we have reduced the campus’ sulphur dioxide emissions by 96 percent, and the nitrous oxide emissions by 17 percent.

There’s still so much to do, and there are still areas where we need to focus our attentions. The main thing, I think, is for all of us to become increasingly conscious of our obligation to be stewards of the earth.

This week, I sent this message to the Fairfield University community concerning the news regarding Project Pierre Toussaint:

To the Fairfield University community:

In the past few days, our community has been shaken by the news concerning the arrest of and criminal charges against Doug Perlitz ’92, founder and former director of Project Pierre Toussaint, a program to educate and help impoverished boys in Haiti. I am deeply saddened by this tragic situation.

Since its establishment in the mid-1990s as an independent non-profit organization, Project Pierre Toussaint garnered the support of several individuals from the Fairfield University community. Fr. Paul Carrier, S.J., former University Chaplain and Director of Campus Ministry, initially provided financial support to the program through the use of collections received from weekly Masses at the Egan Chapel of St. Ignatius Loyola and other donations. Collections historically have been used to support charitable organizations and service activities.

As the project continued to grow in scope, Fr. Carrier, Doug Perlitz, and others formed an independent charitable organization known as The Haiti Fund, Inc., in order to support and carry out expanded fundraising activities for Project Pierre Toussaint. Fairfield University did not have a role in the management or board oversight for either of these organizations. Since Fr. Carrier’s departure from the University in 2006, engagement with the project by individual members of the University community lessened steadily.

The University learned about a year ago that the project’s Board of Directors had removed Doug Perlitz as director. The board communicated to its many benefactors that there had been accusations made against Doug Perlitz involving the sexual abuse of boys. The board hired an investigator to review the matter and decided to remove Doug Perlitz as director.

If the allegations against Doug Perlitz are true – of course, he should be presumed innocent until proven guilty – then it will be a tragic outcome for the affected group of children in Haiti and the irreparable harm caused them, as well as for the members of the University community who donated their time and support to this cause – with the firm belief that it was for a good cause – and who will have been misled. It is important that the judicial process move forward appropriately for all parties involved in this matter.

As a University, it is important that we take appropriate steps to respond to this situation. We will engage outside counsel to conduct an internal review of the nature of campus support for these organizations, as well as the accounts where weekly Mass collections and other special gifts were deposited and disbursed. It is important to note that these accounts are subject to the University’s standard financial controls and procedures and we do not expect to find any irregularities.

For our on and off campus communities, there will be an opportunity this Sunday following Mass to come together and express their feelings and concerns about this tragic matter. In addition, we will organize an appropriate forum on campus for members of our community to engage in discussion and dialogue about our mission as a Jesuit and Catholic university, and core principles related to helping and serving the poor and economically disadvantaged. Information regarding this discussion forum will be forthcoming.

Please join me in praying for all involved in this difficult situation, especially the children of Haiti.

Sincerely,

Rev. Jeffrey P. von Arx, S.J.

President

All of us will have our own unique memories of Sept. 11, 2001, memories filled with shock, grief, and sadness. In the history of every nation there are such watershed moments where no one goes untouched, and after which nothing will ever be quite the same again.

But if history teaches us anything — and as a historian by training, I certainly hope that it can do so — then it teaches us that it is how a people respond to an historical trauma that determine the ultimate significance of events like 9/11. Such events can become a source of continued bitterness, or they can become transformed into memorials that stand in the collective memory as a reminder to reach for a higher consciousness, to seek peace instead of war, and to feel compassion instead of anger.

This is also true in our personal lives. We all suffer. We are all on the receiving end of tragedy and disappointment to a greater or lesser degree. What matters ultimately is how these experiences are incorporated into our character. It is what we make of our experience — even the bitterest experiences — that determine who we are. It is not what we say or what we think that defines us. It is what we do.

Earlier this year, the President of the United States signed into law a bill that designates today — Sept. 11 — as a “National Day of Service and Remembrance.” At the time, New York Senator Chuck Schumer said that “Sept. 11 should not only be a day for mourning — it should be a day to think about our neighbors, our community and our country. We can take a tragic day in our nation’s history and turn it into a force for good. We can make it a day one which we can give back in remembrance of those who lost their lives.”

At Fairfield University we have made service an integral component of our educational approach, an emphasis that springs from our Jesuit tradition of “helping soul.” We expect all of our students to begin quite early in their undergraduate careers to give back to the community around them. Some will teach literacy, or volunteer to build houses in this country or overseas. Others will work with social service agencies, or be active on campus in our efforts to be environmentally responsible. A week ago at our Convocation, Diane Wilson, the author of An Unreasonable Woman: The True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas, addressed our incoming class of 2013. Ms. Wilson is a shrimper from Texas who fought to keep a plastics company from polluting the waters on which she and other depended for their livelihood. Her story is a remarkable one, because she stood up for what she knew was right and fought powerful interests in the process, standing up alone to government and big business until finally, others began to join her in the fight.

The reason that we want our students to have contact with remarkable people like Ms. Wilson, is that we want them to see how important it is that that they also are inspired to do the right thing, and to act in the service of the common good.

I believe that at this moment in our history — with our country facing a difficult road ahead economically and unemployment reaching 10 percent — that we are going to have to rediscover our community instincts if we are going to be the nation that we want to be. We are going to have to develop the habit of reaching out in assistance to those who need our help. It is time to put habits of the “me” generations behind us, and rediscover the true joys of working together for the good of all.

If the tragic events of Sept. 11 can be transformed in our historical consciousness into a call to service, then the men and women who lost their lives 8 years ago will have a truly fitting memorial.

Now and then someone will ask: “What does a university president do?”

One story I always like to tell is about the time when a reporter from our student newspaper asked if they could “shadow” me for a day. I said: “Sure, why not.” So the day began with a meeting at 8:30 a.m. with an academic committee, and continued like most days do — with meetings, followed by meetings, concluding that evening at a reception with a local alumni committee here in Fairfield County. When the reception wrapped up, this young reporter turned to me and said: “Do you do this everyday? I’m exhausted.”

Well, long days are hardly a rare thing for any of us, but I think what distinguishes the role of a university president from most jobs is the sheer number of constituencies that a president interacts with.

I once made a list of the constituencies that a president has to be aware of for a presentation I was asked to make, and the list was two pages long. I won’t reproduce that here but in broad strokes there are the internal constituencies, and the external constituencies.

To name just a handful of the internal constituencies, they would include the academic deans, the vice presidents, our trustees, faculty from all the departments, student affairs, the admissions and financial divisions, the computer and networking services division, our campus safety officers; then there are the soccer teams, the swim teams, lacrosse and volleyball teams and their coaches and so on; then there are the clubs like the glee club and the student government and the debate team, and the staff and students who support our living and learning communities on campus, like our Ignatian Residential College and our Just-Us living and learning community; then we have the various centers that have a public engagement component, like our Center for Judaic Studies and the Center for Faith and Public Life, or our Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts which plays a critical dimension as a place of engagement in the realms of arts and ideas for the broader community. I would include in this parents and alumni with whom I always try to meet if time permits, and of course, critically, personal interaction with students themselves. A chat with them on a one-to-one basis is one of the highlights of my experience.

Then there are the external constituencies: There are our University friends and donors, the Chamber of Commerce, the press, the Church, the Diocese, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, the Bridgeport Higher Education Alliance, the United Way, the town of Fairfield and the city of Bridgeport in all of its official dimensions, and simply countless other bodies that a university interacts with.

While there are substantive conversations going on all the time, a large part of the job is ceremonial, to be frank. This part of my job is a bit like that of Queen Elizabeth (on a much smaller scale of course). It is to represent the University at official functions — to fly the flag, as it were, to cut the ribbon, and dedicate the plaque.

It is also important that I be informed about things, especially as they relate to our strategic initiatives, even when they are matters that I don’t need to be directly involved with. It means that a lot of my day encompasses taking in information so that I’m not in the dark and can intervene or assist if I feel that it is required. I’m reminded of  the portrayal of General Kutuzov at the battle of Borodino as portrayed by Tolstoy in War and Peace. He sits on his horse, as various aides-de-camp gallop up to tell him what is going on on the battlefield. He knows that he has a specific function, and that is not to gallop down into the field and to issue orders, but instead, to stand back and look at the big picture. Someone has to integrate all the components and take the long view.

There are those moments when swift action is called for. Last year, for instance, we had a few students who were ill with the H1N1 influenza, all of whom were fine after a few days of bed rest. But under the circumstances, it was important that we took a very pro-active position when it came to informing our students and their families, establishing a clear line of communication with the media, and getting the proper health officials involved. When these types of critical circumstances arise, making sure that we respond as a University with the highest standards of professionalism is always paramount, and I consider that my responsibility.

All university and college presidents have to be involved in raising money too. Typically, my week is broken up by travel to visit alumni and benefactors in Washington,  Boston, New York, California or elsewhere. All of that travel has the same aim — to draw attention to the important work that we do at Fairfield and to the kinds of educational opportunities that we are trying to provide for as many capable students as possible. Air travel is just part of the job. Too bad it’s not as much fun as it used to be, especially these days, as I have two artificial hips with metal components and am invariably held up at security.

I suppose one dimension to my particular job that differs from that of most university presidents is that I am a Jesuit priest. I had the recent experience of welcoming our class of 2013 and then proceeding to the chapel to give a homily on the readings for the Sunday of that week, and I’ve had the opportunity to preside at the weddings of some of my former students, which is a tremendous privilege.

These roles do not conflict. Indeed, St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, was very clear that it was the mission of the Jesuits to “help souls,” and while this can take many expressions, certainly one way that we can help souls is to create a safe, nurturing environment in which they can develop their minds and their spirits, and thereby liberate our students to become the men and women that they have the potential to be. That’s what we try to do at Fairfield, and working to keep all the constituencies collaborating together in relative harmony to achieve that end is the essence of what my job is all about. 

No writer on the mission of universities has a higher profile at the moment than Stanley Fish, Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University. During the 1980s he was a tremendously influential, almost notoriously controversial literary theorist. More recently he has emerged as a frequent contributor to the Op-Ed page of the New York Times where he presents thoughtful and compelling meditations on what the role of the university should be in contemporary society. Agree with Fish or not, he is a lively and brilliant thinker, and it is a credit to the Times that they have given the subject of higher education the attention it deserves.

Now, in many respects Fish’s position on the role of the university could not be more antithetical to the views that we hold at Fairfield University. Fish, in his book Save the World on Your Own Time and in an article by the same name that ran in the Chronicle of Higher Education some years ago argues for what one might call a value-free academic setting, where universities should be exclusively dedicated to research and teaching, without getting involved in shaping their students’ moral perspective or behavior through any other means. He writes, “teachers should teach their subjects. They should not teach war or peace or freedom or obedience or diversity or uniformity… Or any other agenda that might properly be taught by a political leader or a talk-show host.” In effect, he argues that the only advocacy that should be going on in the classroom is advocacy for intellectual thoroughness and honesty. Universities, in other words, should not take “partisan” positions.

As a Jesuit and Catholic university, we certainly agree that teachers should be primarily advocates for intellectual honesty and thoroughness. However, we also believe that it is vital that we take an active role in developing our students as whole persons — attending to their moral, spiritual, and personal development. More specifically, part of the Jesuit mission is to work in the service of faith, “of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement.” So we do expect that our classrooms will often be places where the promotion of justice will be debated and advocated. This has always been the Jesuit educational philosophy. We teach values, as well as math and science and biology. So on this point, the Jesuit view and the view of Dr. Fish diverge.

However, one place in which we appear to agree is on the importance of a core curriculum of studies — a central tenet of Jesuit pedagogy and a matter of ongoing innovation at Fairfield. We also think that it is important that our students are taught, specifically, how to write. All of our undergraduate students need to take courses in composition, and they need to take many other classes, in sciences, the humanities, the arts, philosophy, and mathematics, before they can concentrate on an area of particular interest. Some may think that this core-curriculum approach is out-of-date, but in a sense a core curriculum is essential if we want to develop students with the capacity to think across disciplinary boundaries and make connections between, say, a position on the role of the individual in a civil society that has been arrived at through philosophical meditation, and the economic impact of globalization, which the student has been exposed to in economics or political science.

More importantly, the virtue of a core curriculum is that it teaches students how to think and reflect and make distinctions no matter what they are presented with after their core studies have been completed, and the writing requirement ensures that they will know how to express themselves once they have reached a conclusion.

Earlier this week in the Times, in an article entitled “What Should Colleges Teach?” Fish argues the same point. In it, he notes that at many universities students fulfill their “writing” requirement by taking classes that are not specifically focused on the art and craft of writing itself, with predictable results. He concludes that the solution is for universities to adopt a core curriculum for their students, including courses exclusively dedicated to writing in itself.

The benefit of a core curriculum he writes “is its ability to foster a ‘common conversation’ among students, connecting them more closely with faculty and with each other,” adding that a course that teaches writing “should be the real core of any curriculum.”

One of the things that we stress at Fairfield — increasingly so — is the importance of building a community amongst our students. In a few weeks our class of 2013 will be arriving, and while their academic schedules will be demanding, they will also be expected to be engaged during their “spare” time. They will to join a University club — like the newspaper or radio station, or perhaps an intramural sport like volleyball or basketball. Inside the student residence halls, they will find that there are programs in place that will draw them together, and help them form bonds of mutual respect and shared responsibility with their peers.

Ultimately, after they have been with us for awhile we’ll ask each student to take a further step: to take a position of leadership. Perhaps they will join the student government, or mentor students in our neighboring public schools, or go on a service learning trip to build houses in Appalachia or South Dakota.

In short, over the course of their years at Fairfield our students will be led to discover who they are through the bonds of community. It is our conviction that once a student becomes engaged with their classmates and have taken a role of responsibility, that they will have gone through a critical maturational stage that is essential if they are to go out into the world as capable young men and women.

This approach is consistent with the Jesuit educational philosophy that has been in place for almost 500 years. The Latin expression that has been used to describe this pedagogical approach is “cura personalis” or “care of the whole person.” It is based on the understanding that it is not sufficient to teach a student a practical skill. In order for a person to become who they are capable of becoming, they need to be engaged in all dimensions of their personhood — their mind, certainly, but also their body, their soul, and their character need to be engaged, formed, and integrated into a whole person along the way.

Not everyone would agree that a university should be bothered with all of this. They would argue that a university should expose students to the best of what has been written and thought, and that this alone should be sufficient. There are others who would maintain that the model of the future is that of the “student consumer” who is paying to acquire a marketable skill. There are powerful economic pressures — on students and institutions — to succumb to this view.

But what isn’t taken into account by those who would adopt this more instrumental view of education, is how important it is that our society continue to form young men and women who are capable of being responsible citizens, who understand their obligation to participate in our democracy; to defend our rights and institutions; to lead our governments, our school boards, our planning and zoning commissions and what have you ; to teach our children — in short, young men and women who accept that they have an obligation to be of service to the common good.

There may have been a time when these values were instilled at earlier stages in a student’s life, but I don’t think we can comfortably assume that any more.

I was encouraged by a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education  about former U.S. Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who is trying to compel colleges and universities to teach their students how to be “competent public citizens.” He is even suggesting that colleges be measured for their success at producing “public-spirited adults.”

He notes, to his dismay that after teaching for a semester at Harvard in 2005 that his students “were about as illiterate in terms of the skills of participatory democracy” as the students he had taught at an inner-city school 30 years earlier. “The message I got from that was that we not only had not made progress in 30 years,” he says in the interview, “but that we’ve retreated, at a time when it is increasingly important for citizens to feel self-confident about their ability to solve the problems of of their communities.”

As he says in an interview, “If our democracy is not important enough for it to be part of a person’s schedule of life preparation, then I think democracy is in very deep trouble.”