This past May we hosted the Honors Education in Research Universities at the University of Kentucky. As the host, I offered the following keynote address.
May 21, 2024
“Grace, she takes the blame
She covers the shame
Removes the stain, it could be her name
Grace, it’s a name for a girl
It’s also a thought that changed the world
And when she walks on the street you can her the strings
Grace finds goodness in everything.”
When I arrived at the University of Kentucky, the President had commissioned a marketing consultant to come up with a new slogan for UK. The final selection, which you might have seen around, is “Wildly possible…” A play on our mascot, the wildcat, the imagery is intended to convey the concept that at the University of Kentucky, you can achieve anything. For marketing purposes, it works, we are “wildly” all sorts of things now.
Another suggestion that the President was particularly fond of was “Grace and Grit.” Here the idea was to play off both the southern heritage of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the sense of determination and hard work that is often associated with a land grant institution. When the slogan was presented by the President to the deans, one of my colleagues objected on the grounds that “grace is a theological term.” Discussion ensued and finally I spoke up. I said, “As the only biblical and rabbinic scholar in the room who is sometimes accused of being a theologian, I have to say, it never occurred to me to understand ‘grace’ in this context as referring to theology.” Of course, it is likely precisely because I am a scholar of biblical and rabbinic literature that I did not hear it in theological terms. In any event, it was ultimately rejected, I think, because the southern heritage is not unalloyed good (is anything?) and even the term “grit” has become problematic in educational spaces.
Grace, however, is a term I think we need to consider again.
Before we consider that, however, let’s reflect for a few moments on the state of higher education and why we have the honors colleges and programs that we represent. We are in graduation season and one commencement speaker noted, “Among all sorts of people in all kinds of places it has become the fashion to attack American education. … One such is that higher education makes [our students] immoral and godless. Another, closely related to the first, is that it upsets and disturbs young people. This may be phrased alternatively to read that the universities are teaching bolshevism.” This is from Robert Maynard Hutchins’ speech to the University of Chicago on June 11, 1929. Nearly one hundred years on and the challenges and debates have not progressed very far.
Hutchins’ speech may be familiar to many of us since it is the source of a quote regarding the nature of education that we often deploy. He argues that “education is not to teach [students] facts, theories, or laws; it is not to reform them, or amuse them, or to make them expert technicians in any field; it is to teach them to think, to think straight, if possible; but to think always for themselves.” I confess that I had not read this speech until fairly recently, yet I have had my own paraphrase that I often utter: “We are not to teach our students what to think but how to think.”
These broad and general goals of education only work, of course, in certain contexts because in our day, just as a hundred years ago, there are great pressures upon higher education to produce graduates who are “workforce ready.” Our students need (and they and their parents or whoever is paying the bills expect) skills, badges, and certificates that immediately translate into employment. In many states, the viability of majors is measured by the number of potential jobs in the field and, in turn, many state universities are measured (at least in part) by the number of graduates who are placed immediately into the workforce. I will save you the trouble of looking up the data, and simply assure you that there are not many jobs for graduates in Jewish Studies (it is CIP Code 38.0206 in case you would like to check). So, our vision of an education that is focused on learning how to think, rather than learning facts, skills, and expertise, is considered precious and quaint. But it is not a new condescension.
This tension between education and work force preparation, is precisely what gave rise to honors colleges and programs within land-grant institutions in the first place. As stated in the Morrill Land-Grant Act, the purpose of the land-grant colleges was, “without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.”1 “Without excluding other scientific and classical studies” (and notice that “military tactic” is equated with “classical studies”) says the act, in a throwaway nod to liberal arts tradition dating back to the 12th century European universities. Even in 1862, the government was promoting workforce development with the “practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.”
The drive towards practical studies, research, and professional degrees has thus been in tension with the broad, liberal educational goals for well over a century. Our colleague, Chris Snyder, the first dean of the Shackouls Honors College at Mississippi State University, has written an excellent short summary of the history of the development of honors published last year in the NCHC Monographs Series.2 In this piece, Chris demonstrates the way in which many US universities in the early to mid-twentieth century sought to balance this drive to become a research university and its concomitant growing graduate and professional programs with the traditional liberal arts education by emulating the cloistered living experience of Oxbridge colleges and their “great books” curricula and tutorial system of instruction. As the pressures to produce jobholders instead of educated adults increases and, consequently, small liberal arts colleges close every year, Chris brings forward the reasonable concern is, “If the numbers and influence of small liberal arts colleges continue to wane in America, can (or should) honors colleges carry the banner of liberal education into a more equitable and diverse future?”3
But is that what honors colleges are about? I seem to have made the argument, no I have assumed that we are all agreed, that a liberal education of the sort that Hutchins describes is universally accepted by all those in this room as the goal, the telos of education. It may well be that we all do agree on this, or at least to some degree, but I know that many of our leaders in this room are scholars and researchers in various STEM fields where factual knowledge and expertise is as vital a factor in their success as critical thinking and creative cognition. So, we are back to the central question of honors education, what is it? Or, what is it?
What is the “it” of honors education? While we would have some significant agreement around the room, I suspect we would also find that we have some key disagreements. I believe that honors education is, at its heart, a liberal (arts) education. As I said before, I believe that, in our honors classes at least, we are to help student learn how to think, not what to think. Thus, regardless of major, the fundamental goal of honors education is to provide all students with the critical intellectual tools with which they can then engage more deeply and thoughtfully in their chosen fields. “In their chosen fields” is important since, being part of a land-grant, R1 institution, our students are intentionally entering into fields that often require significant technical knowledge and expertise that Hutchins might find anathema.
I am, fundamentally, a pragmatic person. That is, I suppose why I have been an administrator for so long. Thus, I also believe that it is important to recognize that every honors program or honors college is and should be unique, reflecting the character, commitments, and resources of the home institution and, where relevant, the wishes of the benefactor.
So, what is “it”? What distinguishes an honors education? Is “it” the liberal arts foundation, the small class size, a discussion-based curriculum, supplemental advising and counseling, a distinct residential experience, a culminating thesis or creative project? The NCHC has, of course, long provided us with an excellent set of Shared Principles and Practices of Honors Education. It too begins with the affirmation that “The honors program or college aligns itself with the mission of the institution, responds to its strategic plan and core values, and embraces student-centered practices while actively welcoming diverse faculty, professional staff, and students into its community.” Ultimately, honors will reflect its home institution, we will each have our own flavor, our own interpretation, emphasis, and themes.
What “it” is then, may be the best of our home institution.
All this ruminating has been firmly rooted in the history and realia of higher education in the United States today, yet without touching upon the matters that have consumed most of us, for most of the last few years. That is, the topic of our conference itself, how do we have the hard conversations. Earlier today we heard from Dr. Sigal Ben-Porath and experienced the workshop with Irshad Manji. While the last 9 months the “difficult discussions” have focused upon the conflict in Gaza, the reality is that we have been struggling for years with a shifting landscape on college campuses. Our students, faculty, and staff are polarized on a wide variety of topics. The theme for this conference was, in fact, chosen long before October 7th [2023].
Seven years after that address by Hutchins that I cited earlier, he appended to his earlier statement and important intent and purpose for education. “[Education] is to teach them to think, if that is possible, and to think always for themselves. Democratic government rests on the notion that the citizens will think for themselves. It is of the highest importance that there should be some places where they can learn how to do it.”4 The year was 1936.
Honors education may be, as Chris Snyder argues, the last hope for liberal arts education in the US or perhaps it is the reinforcing steel in a constantly developing construct of “practical education.” Whatever the case may be, it should at least be a place where citizens learn how to think for themselves. We should be a place, perhaps the place, our community can hold open, thoughtful, and graceful conversations.
“Grace, it’s a name for a girl; It’s also a thought that changed the world.” These are the words of St. Bono, the patron saint of sunglasses, personal reinvention, and unwanted music. (I never did understand who wouldn’t want a free album directly deposited on your device. All that was lost was your naiveté, you never really had any privacy.) This song, simply titled, “Grace,” from the 2000 album All That You Can’t Leave Behind, beautifully explores the concept of grace, the importance of providing space and patience for one another and for seeing the best in even the ugliest of things.
Grace is a theological term. In theology, it describes the relationship between God and humanity, חן and חסד are the primary terms in Hebrew, cháris in Greek. It means the favor, kindness, and blessing that is extended to one who does not deserve it. Grace certainly is a theological term, but one need not be religious to understand it or practice it.
Grace is allowing others to speak and have a voice, while we listen and consider, contemplate, and inwardly digest what they have shared. Grace is allowing room for words and phrases that may be inelegant or indelicate, while assuming that they are not intended to wound or harm. Grace is assuming the best of others, of everyone. Grace is asking, “Tell me. What did you mean? I want to know more about your experience, your thoughts.”
What grace is not, is some artifice of culture and conceit that hides prejudice and bigotry behind polite manners and quiet voices. Grace is not civility, to refer to Irshad’s comments this afternoon.
Grace is what allows people of different viewpoints to communicate, to share ideas between one another and to learn from each other. Grace is what gives confidence to a minority of one to speak to an entire room, knowing they will be heard and respected, even if their opinion or views are not shared. Grace is what allows conversation to happen.
I think grace is what we need now. Perhaps that is what “it” is.
“What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because Grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things
Grace finds beauty in everything
Grace finds goodness in everything.”
- Title 7 U.S. Code § 304 ↩︎
- Snyder, Chris. “Oxbridge and Core Curricula: Continuing Conversations with the Past in Honors Colleges.” In Honors Colleges in the 21st Century, edited by Richard Badenhausen, 3-22. Nebraska: NCHC, 2023. ↩︎
- Snyder, p. 16. ↩︎
- See Snyder, p. 9. ↩︎
