Les M.
Yelp
I have visited Brown University off and on through the years and was an applicant to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. And I have been intrigued by the attention it has gotten as well over the years, most recently for the selection of Ruth Simmons as president (she is leaving very soon).
Known since the '60s as the hippest of the Ivy League, with the most flexibility and openness in its curriculum, Brown is also one of the most smallest in the group both in terms of numbers of students and actual campus size.
The campus is small, compact, and has many handsome red brick Georgian architecture. The atmosphere is laid-back but studious. I enjoyed spending time at the John D. Rockefeller Library while my sister went to classes.
My sister had nothing but praise for the school when she went there.
I am disappointed by a relatively recent event, though.
Ruth Simmons, its president, made a startling remark to Mike Wallace in his interview of the former. She recounted a slight she experienced from a faculty member at Harvard where she was doing her Ph.D. in Romance languages and literature, her field being17th century French literature.
Mike Wallace gave her an incredulous look--raised eyebrows and all--and actually said something like, "17th century French literature? How arcane! Whatever for?"
Ms. Simmons was apparently so caught up in her being able to vent her woeful tale of racial discrimination that she did not offer one whit of a defense of her field of graduate studies. 17th century France was the most powerful nation in the world, and French cultural domination is attested by a roll-call of the most celebrated intellects of that era: Pascal, Descartes, Moliere, Corneille, Racine, La Fontaine...this was the era of Louis XIV--le roi soleil--and Versailles and the birth of modern diplomacy.
The 17th century without France would be like the 20th century without the United States.* And we today are a lot closer to the 17th century in our outlook, customs, and institutions than we are to the time of Jesus Christ or the gladiators.
Granted Americans don't generally know much about world history, but Ms. Simmons's bemused silence vis-a-vis Mr. Wallace was pretty disheartening. In essence, she silently endorsed the prevalent but parochial attitude among our countrymen that world culture and history are primarily American. No need to dig further than Neils Armstrong, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, or George Washington, do we?
Let's hope that Brown's next president (Ms. Simmons is resigning her at the end of the current academic year) will offer a more spirited defense of the humanities, not just Aime Cesare, David Diop, etc.
We are built on the shoulders of those who came before us. An education ought to be inclusive. Unfortunately, Brown may offer too much of a "select-what-you-will" (and by extension, "ignore-what-you-will") approach.
* * The following century ("Le siecle des lumieres")--but equally unheard of by most Americans-- would bring with it both the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions.
The Enlightenment is the anti-thesis of what George W. Bush (and his co-religionists) stands for, but is impossible to understand without studying the 17th century.