The President's Page - April 5, 2000

The Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts

Those of you who were able to attend Alumni Day this February may have noticed that Joseph Henry House is undergoing major renovations. The house, next to Nassau Hall and East Pyne and near Firestone Library, will become the center for the new Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. The Society is one of several new academic initiatives made possible by alumni support of the Anniversary Campaign. Together with other new programs such as the Institute in Integrative Genomics and the Center for the Study of Religion, it will help assure the long-term vitality of our academic endeavors.

The Society of Fellows will bring to the University each year as many as eight scholar-teachers who have recently completed their doctoral dissertations at other institutions. During their three-year appointments the fellows will have ample opportunity to polish these dissertations into publishable texts and to work with faculty in their field of specialization, without the relentless pressure of the "tenure clock." In this respect, the Society resembles the post-doctoral appointments that have become part of the culture in engineering and the natural sciences. Thanks to gifts from alumni and foundations, we were able to begin the program this year, and two fellows are now on campus. One of the fellows, David Chamberlain, a classicist by training, is taking advantage of his time at Princeton to continue research and writing on his dissertation topic, Herodotus, the Greek author known as the "father of history." He is also delving into new areas of interest. He is giving a course this semester on reading and writing "hypertext," that is intended to teach students how to use emerging electronic media to gain a new perspective on what it means to read and write prose, both creatively and argumentatively. This topic is not one Dr. Chamberlain would likely pursue if he were an assistant professor of Classics, trying to meet the many requirements of a tenure-track appointment.

The significant latitude to pursue individual research and teaching interests is a defining element of the Society and distinguishes it from traditional post-doctoral appointments.

In addition, unlike other post-doctoral programs, the Society considers teaching as a central component of appointments. Fellows precept for lecture courses and offer courses they create, at the graduate and undergraduate levels, including Freshman Seminars. The other fellow on campus this year, Peter Gordon, an intellectual historian, has precepted in Professor John Fleming's course on Masterworks of European Literature. Last semester Dr. Gordon offered a course in his field, German Intellectual History: The Thought of Martin Heidegger, and he is currently team-teaching Literature and the Arts from the Middle Ages to the Modern Period with Professors Theodore Rabb and Michael Sugrue.

I cite these examples in part to illustrate the opportunities for fellows to work with senior Princeton faculty members who are recognized as master teachers, and in part to underscore the Society's central focus on interdisciplinary study. Distinguished universities and colleges must evolve in order to retain their vitality. The liberal arts are in transition, and we need to build different bridges among the disciplines and stronger bridges between individual departments. More than reacting to change, we wish to chart the course for and give direction to the evolution of these intellectual disciplines. The ability to attract a new cohort of distinguished fellows each year will help keep us informed about new directions and possibilities for interdisciplinary study while infusing our programs with the additional vitality that helps institutions successfully embrace change.

Chair of the Humanities Council and Edmund N. Carpenter II Professor in the Humanities Alexander Nehamas leads the Society assisted by a group of senior fellows chosen from Princeton's faculty. As part of their responsibilities, these faculty recently selected the first full "class" of junior fellows. From over 900 applicants, they chose an international group of fellows-an Italian and a New Zealander are among them-trained here and abroad in a variety of fields including history, art, public policy, art history, and classics. One of the senior faculty fellows, Josiah Ober, chair of the Department of Classics, suggests that the responsibilities of the senior fellows include assisting this diverse group of junior colleagues to form their own intellectual community, where they will be comfortable testing ideas and exploring new areas. At the same time, the senior fellows will help forge connections for the junior fellows throughout the University to help them become full members of the Princeton community and to assure that the positive effects of the Society will not be confined to Joseph Henry House but dispersed widely. As Professor Nehamas has remarked, the Society "will provide us with a permanent, but constantly renewed, group of young, talented and imaginative scholars. All of us-students, faculty and the fellows themselves-will learn new things."

Some have noted with regret that Princeton will train these young fellows only to lose them to other institutions. The Society is a social investment in the overall quality of education and helps fulfill Princeton's responsibility, "In the Nation's Service and in the Service of All Nations." We expect that as the fellows take up positions elsewhere, whether here or abroad, we will have helped to assure the central role of the liberal arts throughout our society. That, in the end, benefits all of us.

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