My first class with him was Political Science 101 in the fall of 1967. It may have been like the second class that I ever attended in college. It was in Greylock, in one of those kind of antiseptic, sterile conference rooms. It was primarily freshmen with a few sophomores and everybody was seated around a conference table. And he came in. He was a small, slight man, initially unimpressive in appearance. And he laid out papers on the table and books and everybody gradually became quiet. He still hadn’t said anything. And then he sort of looked one way and then whirled his head another way and said something like, “Mr. McAndrews, politics.” And of course the person that he called upon was like the unlucky one marching in ranks who was hit by the early shot and then it went on from there. I never had the sense that I had with other professors at Williams who were employing what’s loosely called the Socratic Method. In many cases the Socratic Method sort of degenerated into a case of, “I’ve got the button–you’ve got to find the button.” What was hidden was sort of factual globs. The interesting thing with Gaudino was that he was an authority figure in the class, but it was an invitation to participate if not as equals then certainly as people whose opinions have potential value. And reading is listening in a way, listening to the voice of the writer. Up until that point in my life, you know, texts were facts were to be pulled out and memorized. The way that you were tested on text was that in Great Expectations, for example, that Jaggers washed his hand right after he came out of a courtroom. Did you read that far? That sort of thing. Whereas in Gaudino’s case, one book was to be set against another book which was to be set against the dialogue that was going on in the class. And of course the buzz word at the time was relevance. He was able to teach Aristotle and Nietzsche and Hobbes and Locke and people like that in ways that made them seem important to know, more than just dealing with centuries-old dead guys.

David Lee '71