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IN THE CLASSROOM
“Silence is Suspect”

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He conveyed a sense that what we were doing was, I don’t want to use the word deadly serious, but an existentially serious undertaking. These discussions were not academic. They were discussions that really mattered. Probably 8 o’clock, probably to 10 p.m., once or twice a week. It was one table, rectangular or elliptical. It […]
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It was in that course I think that he developed a number of the themes some of his colleagues on the faculty didn’t like. He used to distinguish between a college education and a university education, one being the training of good citizens and the other being unvarnished truths no matter where it lead you. […]
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He basically believed that not much had changed since Socrates, that pretty much all you had to know was right there. It was an unusual point of view. I mean, he has this sense about him that these were almost like revealed truths. You know, he had a strange quality to him. I don’t know, […]
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The other things that happened that fall was Jim Burns had run for congress against Silvio Conte, the long, long representative in Congress for Western Massachusetts–and he’d lost. And I think it was that same week we were reading Max Weber’s essay on politics as a vocation and talking about the level of commitment one […]
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I was always a little more cynical about what he had to say. I mean it’s maybe my nature, and also probably not as bright as those other guys too. But I’m basically cynical about hero worship. I mean, it’s something I find personally uncomfortable and I found it uncomfortable in my friends. In other […]
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Gaudino’s ironic approach, he said, “I’m supposed to give all of you a character evaluation, ie. a grade at the end of every term.” And at the time you would put a postcard in his mailbox and ask him what was your grade on the final and what was the grade on the course and […]
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My senior year, there was an annex to the Theta Delta house, physically connected on the second level, and wood paneled, it was called the “alumni dorm” in those days, for some reason. I guess they put up visiting alums, at least had. Then it put up four of us. Steve Lewis, Les Thurow, Ara […]
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It wasn’t a sword. It was a picture of Napoleon. And I think it was Herzog who said it ought to be the lawgiver because the lawgiver’s above the law.
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I remember one time he came into the room – I remember it very vividly because he had some outside visitors. We occasionally had visitors from other colleges who came to see what Williams was all about. There were a couple of people from another school there sitting in the back of the room, so […]
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Well, I remember a class I went to. I think it was on the Platonic dialogues and he, in great distinction with me, would simply start by asking questions. What does Socrates mean in Chapter 3, verse 4, when he talks about the commonality of life? What does Socrates mean when he challenges some person […]
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