Anthropology 101

Anthropology is one of the few academic disciplines which has little or no representation in high-school education, at least in the United States. As a consequence, very few students come to college with any knowledge of the discipline. To the extent that incoming students expect anything, they may expect exoticism, and are usually prepared for the generally relativist slant of anthropology. It is sometimes a shock to them when the introductory class consists more of lineages of fore-fathers and -mothers, successions of schools of thought, than exotic aesthetics. Our interest in preserving disciplinary genealogies aside, Anthropology generally presents itself to undergraduates as an underdog; a scrappy, critical discipline with no strict rules but with a big heart and a chip on its shoulder. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that those finally drawn to the discipline, diverse though they may be, usually share to a greater or lesser degree some sense of estrangement from "their own" culture. For the young anthropologist, often, to study the other is actually a disguised form of self-recognition. In the discovery that elsewhere things are done differently they find a warrant for their own discomfort with this or that social arrangement in their own space and time.

Anthropology is, too, more directly, a form of "self-recognition" for a growing number of "diasporic" children who are drawn to Anthropology because it promises to teach them something about "their own culture"--that to which they belong by dint of parentage. The professional anthropologist (of whatever ethnic or cultural provenance), however, is committed to an agnostic and comparative stance amidst the diversity of societies and cultures, and therefore rests uneasily with the hope for direct and unmediated cultural learning which so many "heritage" students bring to the classroom. He or she, it should be said, is just as uncomfortable with the yen for the exotic and the appalling with which many students arrive, as well.

Many graduate students enter Anthropology because it has a reputation as being the discipline with the greatest concern for global inequalities and marginalized peoples. Political economy and activist engagement to change the iniquitous distributions of rights and resources are emphasized in many graduate Anthropology departments. Elsewhere, a systematic induction into the canons of sociological and anthropological interpretation is prioritized at the outset. At Princeton, both approaches are subsumed in the introductory "Pro-seminar" sequence under a rigorous education in reading; an ethos and an ethic of reading. The specific texts chosen as "introductory" vary from year to year, and the relative emphasis on various developments in the history of the discipline also varies. What remains constant is the imperative to read generously, carefully, and against the grain of received categorizations. Graduates are meant to understand that there is neither evolution nor supersession in a forward march of Anthropological thought, but rather a consistent heritage of comparison, contrast--of, in the recently fashionable word, "encounter." It has been said that anthropology is what anthropologists do, and this minimal definition is offered to incoming graduate students at Princeton as a call to innovate, and a license to think beyond the boundaries of our discipline. However, as any anthropologist could tell you, what a group refuses to discuss is often more revealing than what they explicitly point your attention to.

At its best, the recruitment and initiation strategy Anthropology follows consists of a challenge to students: Don't rest comfortable in your common-sense interpretation of the world, every viewpoint is partial (in all senses), ethics is part of knowledge. Worthy and important lessons to learn, and difficult ones.

History 101

The interests of the undergraduate who enrolls in a history course are often at odds with the objectives of the professor and preceptors. Undergraduates want to learn narratives: simply "what happened" in the past. Some lecture courses may, in fact, be structured primarily to give students a sense of the basic who, when, where, and what of a particular historical era. In many other courses, though, professors aim to teach students historiographic critique of the type professional historians practice. Students are asked to evaluate historical works for a convincing argument. They are asked to compare historians' accounts of the same events or eras against each other. This, after all, is the work of the professional historian. Such demands can be disorienting. To many undergraduates it seems so presumptuous to question the authority of a professional historian who has published a book. Undergraduates aren't even necessarily clear why one would question a primary source about the "facts" it presents. They are in the class to find answers, not proffer opinions.

There are problems asking undergraduates for this type of critique, of course. Such critique is best informed by careful study of the primary sources, or at least of multiple secondary sources. New graduate students, by contrast, usually show little reluctance to critique. Keen to demonstrate their shrewd, critical eye, they go to extremes in an attempt to prove their historical savvy. By the third or fourth week of the first semester, they are shredding each assigned book for the enlightenment of their classmates and professors. Eventually, graduate students realize that this, too, shows a lack of historical maturity, and they spend the remainder of their time in coursework struggling to come back to a more moderate yet penetrating stance on the books they read.

History graduate students at Princeton first unleash their critical savvy on the works assigned in History 500, the one course required of all students in the first semester. A Princeton tradition, History 500 seeks to convince students interested in everything from late antique Rome to the development of nuclear physics that history is a coherent discipline. The fissures between sub-specialties soon become apparent in the course. Students of the modern era are scornful of works written based on a few shreds of evidence, while students of earlier eras explain that is all they have. Those inclined toward theory grow frustrated with those who eschew it. Meanwhile the professors who teach the course--which rotates through the department--debate its purpose. Should they introduce students to classics of the field? Cutting edge material? Should they trace historiographic arguments? Discuss methodology? Focus on turning points in the profession? No matter the approach, someone is always dissatisfied. And so students are thrown off balance, realizing there are more reasons to enter this discipline, and more approaches to it, than they had thought.

Undergraduates often want to relate history to the present. They can become are baffled when professors and preceptors counsel against historical comparisons across time. Professional historians assiduously disavow this interest in the present themselves, careful to set each historical case in its idiosyncratic context and thereby avoid prescriptions. Graduate students quickly learn to express their disdain for interest in the present, so much so that those studying the twentieth century are mockingly referred to as "journalists." Such a stance may be important methodologically, but it is perhaps disingenuous. Who can study the past for a lifetime without some interest, ultimately, in its relevance to our lives today?

There is a certain middle ground, then, on which teacher and undergraduate student must meet. Undergraduates need to accept that even as they seek to learn "what happened," history is contingent and its contours debatable. Professors and graduate students may meanwhile need to accept that the undergraduates' objectives in studying history are more transparent, and perhaps self-referential, than their own.

Near Eastern Studies 101

Princeton's Near Eastern Studies department used to pride itself on the past: the portrait of its founder, Philip Hitti, adorns 102 Jones Hall, the main classroom where Generals and dissertation defenses are held, and the expertise of the department has largely been in classical civilizations. In some respects, not much has changed: Four languages (with their area studies) are on offer: Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Hebrew, with each undergoing its own cycle of rise and decline. For instance, prior to 9/11, Turkish was the rising star, and the Ertegun endowment ensured that students who chose to research Turkish culture and history lacked for nothing.

The strength of the department has always been its medieval focus, and it has sometimes imitated the stereotype of "Oriental" patronage and timelessness in its own practices. One tradition which preserves this aura are its Wednesday brown-bag lunches which symbolize learning through patronage. Inaugurated every year by Bernard Lewis, professors and visiting faculty give short talks on "light" topics before opening the floor to many bright questions from disciples. This is the place where you heard from the horses' mouths the limericks, the anecdotes, the wit, which cement a coterie.

There are no strict guidelines on what courses one should take or when one should do generals. Incoming graduate students have always complained about the lack of methodology classes. In fact, some professors offer the subject straight up. No theory, hands-on training with biographical dictionaries, textual analysis - methodology seen as the acquisition of archival and bibliographic skills which depend on very good language proficiency. Departmental specialties like Islamic Law and early Muslim traditions validate the strength of the textual training. Generally, the fields covered by a graduate student's education are those one should have mastered in order to get a job in a similar department: political thought, the Muslim city, classical Arabic prose and poetry. Nowadays, such generals fields are not necessarily geared toward the topic of the thesis.

The events of 9/11 and the outlandish media attention dedicated to Bernard Lewis (best-sellers included) highlighted and transformed the study of Islam as never before. The term "Islamism" should denote a political ideology, a new phenomenon that represents itself as a return to the past, but much American scholarly and popular comment on Islamism reinforces again the essentialist and reductionist position central to Orientalist tradition. Further, advocates of this hard-line position maintain that Islamism is not only totalitarian and generates terrorism but it has come to replace Communism as the gravest threat facing the West. Within the rhetoric of the Bush administration, Islamism is an evil scourge, a return to barbarism spread by opponents of civilization--a position with some proponents in the Princeton department.

In NES, Bin Laden has been jokingly evoked as the patron saint of the latest revival in area studies. With courses at full capacity, many American students enroll in search of an uncomplicated explanation of the anger directed against the US. If they are taught that Islamism is the response of a general failure to modernize in the Middle East, they are reassured of their righteousness and innocence.

The patriotic language in the past five years has strained the field, creating a need to feel "useful." Some scholars have gravitated to think tanks--privately funded institutions aiming to produce knowledge that can affect public policy, where topics of interest include (predictably): al-Qaida, suicide bombings, terrorism, Wahhabism. That one promising junior faculty member from Near Eastern Studies resigned in order to take a non-academic position with the Bush administration reflects the direction in which the field is migrating. Facing overenrolled classes, the dilemma facing Near Eastern Studies today is how to be "relevant," without bowing to dogmatism of the left or the right.

Physics 101

Interior decoration of a typical physics department would usually include a portrait or two of famous physicists; Einstein perhaps, who, apart from leaving a mark on a number of diverse areas of the discipline, has also created one (or at least one-- relativity), and succeeded in capturing the hearts and minds of the general public with witty comments and a playful image. The Princeton Physics Department is typical in that portraits and photographs of Nobel laureates and otherwise distinguished scientists line the walls. It does, however, require a bit of time for the idea to sink in that those images were actually taken here, at this university. After a while, though, Jadwin Hall, the home of Physics at Princeton, inspires neither awe of "the masters of old," nor elation (for a graduate student probably yet undeserved) at being among the great minds of today. Rather, it is a combined feeling of time running at an academically slowed-down pace and progress (hopefully) being made by people that you can meet for tea every day at four.

A graduate student coming to Princeton has to decide on one major question with two possible answers, and has to take one general examination with two possible outcomes, a process requiring one to two years. The choice between "experiment or theory" and the form of the examination are both a consequence of the maturity of the discipline: specialization in certain branches (such as high energy physics) is strong enough that the worlds of theory and experiment intersect not in the lab downstairs, but mostly through scientific publications, and answering "experiment and theory" is perhaps only possible in young fields at the interfaces with, say, life sciences. The department has no required courses, no homework or any other obligations apart from the generals, a combined oral and written exam covering the canon of undergraduate physics in the first, and a selection of graduate topics in the second, part (though this format is probably about to change, since new generals requirements have been adopted by the department).

School physics is very uniform in the way it is taught in different places - there is a general consensus about its subdivision into major fields (mechanics, quantum mechanics, statistical physics & thermodynamics etc), with a few "internationally recognized" textbooks, such as Landau's mechanics or Jackson's electromagnetism. At this stage of historical development, physics has been relatively stable for at least several decades if not a century, and learning it involves making successive passes through the same subject matter at increasing level of detail. As illustrated by the words from the preface of collected generals problems book, solving problems is an essential part of physics education: "Guitarists play the guitar until their fingertips are calloused. Similarly, physicists solve problems. And hopefully, physicists practice solving problems until doing so seems easy." The emphasis on paper-and-pencil problems with definitive and exact results is there for the undergraduates as much to show understanding as to automate the technique, with the obvious pitfall of learning to do only the latter.

This might be a point worthy of note. Physics definitely involves skill with using mathematics, which is very different from doing pure mathematics; in addition there is neither time, nor knowledge or need (in most cases) to employ the rigor of complete mathematical proof, which would in a lot of cases obfuscate the content - the description of natural phenomena - with formalistic details. A pedagogical challenge is to connect both: teaching what phenomena should be represented by terms in the equations and which ones have negligible effect and can be omitted; seeing which formal solutions will yield physically possible results before actually going through the algebra; being able to imagine scenarios described by the result on the sheet of paper and seeing if they make sense.

In order to build first and later cement this link between formalism and description, there exists a collection of canonical problems, or simple idealized systems that physics undergraduates have to solve and understand. These idealizations, such as pendulums and spin lattices, have inherent value in that they describe certain phenomena, but are also a playground on which professors explain successively "heavier mathematical artillery" by recourse to a system that the student already knows. Thus one might learn the same mechanics three times - as part of introductory physics with simple mathematical tools such as basic analysis; later as advanced mechanics in Lagrangean and Hamiltonian formulation; and perhaps again before the general examination, when analogies with the other fields of physics become apparent, based on the shared underlying formalism (Lie groups, for example).

Having absorbed the uniform body of knowledge that allows us to be understood in whatever language (apart, say, from insignificant differences such as US or German symbols for physical quantities), answering the question and after passing the test - of similar kind that some of the faces on display in the hallways passed right here - one can start observing for oneself how well our toy worlds "without friction, with perfect mixing, and small coupling constants" describe reality. Regardless of the conclusion, part of the fun seems to be in thinking that we now better understand the clockwork that makes the real universe go round.

Politics 101

For graduate students, Politics manifests as several disciplines rather than one. There is no Politics proseminar--such a course might anchor incoming graduate students by explaining what does and does not constitute the field, but faculty are unlikely to find enough common ground on these issues to design the syllabus. Different universities do not even agree on a name for the discipline, which they variously call Politics, Political Science, or Government. Instead, each subfield (Political Theory, Comparative Politics, International Relations, American Politics, Public Law) has its own separate introductory seminar, its own canon with attendant views on theory and desirable research topics, its own weekly research seminar for students and faculty, and its own social identity, not to mention divisions over method, which--though civil--cast tension both across and within the sub-disciplinary groups. With such divisions, the shared milestones of graduate initiation in the Politics Department (the general examination, the prospectus defense) may be insufficient to instill an overarching sense of the discipline in graduate students. On the other hand, decentralization and division may be by design the hallmarks of this program, requiring that each graduate student discover the discipline independently through the dissertation. A more rigidly defined pathway of graduate education might stunt the intellectual development of both individuals and the department by forcing valuable subjects outside the boundaries of acceptability, while increasing the department's vulnerability should the remainder decline in fertility and relevance with time.

Recruitment of undergraduates is hardly a problem for Politics, a perennially popular major attracting a truly heterogeneous crop of students. Politics is a common base for news junkies and a preferred foundation for pre-lawyers; it provides a jumping-off point for prospective applicants to the competitive Woodrow Wilson School major, as well as a home for those whose applications are denied. It is also a source of fundamentally interesting classes irrespective of major--although subfield seminars are a hallmark of the Politics curriculum, sexy topical courses on war, security, development, and particular world regions attract to the discipline many students whose primary focus lies elsewhere, in arts, humanities, sciences, or athletics. Politics students are active, if not activist--students can tack into current events through any number of disciplines, but many choose Politics out of a faith in pragmatism and relevance. That is, political analysis serves (or should serve, or is expected by students to serve) as a means to the end of fixing important problems. At the least, the study of politics should explain real issues and exhort participation and engagement in their solutions. A sense of power necessarily undergirds the study and paths of politics, sending a thrill to future political candidates, future protesters, spies, lobbyists, and even political scientists. Politics above all implies a sense of preparation for the real, especially at Princeton, with its storied and ongoing connections, its visits from and its institutional ties to the powerful. The study of politics in this context invites vicariousness, envy, inspiration, and emulation, and should provoke some measure of examination and rejection, but leaves uncertain implications for students' future interactions with problems and with the powerless.