Richard Walton
Philosophy
UM-Missoula
In this issue we conclude our series of articles on the funding of higher education in Montana with a very important contribution by Tom Mortenson. He makes a compelling case that the downward slope in State support for higher education in Montana described by George Dennison in our Fall issue must be reversed. He argues that during the last 16 years, "When it comes to the financing of higher education, Montana's leaders have been doing exactly the opposite of what the economic and social facts would imply that they ought to have done." In response to those who plead that adequate support for higher education would impose too heavy a tax burden he notes that the appropriations of State tax funds for higher education per $1000 of personal income have been steadily falling for nearly 20 years, and the amount is now only a little more than half of what it was in 1971, and is less than what it was in 1962.
We continue our series of articles from holders of Regents Professorships with an article on general education by Albert Borgmann, Regents Professor of Philosophy at UM-Missoula. Professor Borgmann has been a campus leader in the efforts to revise our general education requirements. We are sure that faculty members on the other campuses of the MUS will find his thoughts on the subject worthy of careful consideration. He makes a particularly interesting distinction between what he calls "deep diversity" and "shallow diversity," arguing that if diversity of the former sort is made the hallmark of general education programs the conflict between diversity's demands and the requirement of coherence and unity will disappear. While Professor Borgmann's claims for general education are ambitious, Prof. Michel Valentin, writing from a post-modern and Marxist perspective, argues for a much more ambitious goal for the liberal arts education. Readers will find Prof. Valentin's article provocative, indeed.
Fittingly, this issue concludes with a "Guest Editorial" on academic freedom, an ideal and set of principles on which the journal heavily relies. President Dennison's statement is a clear and forthright affirmation of the necessity of academic freedom, emphasizing its connection with the University's central mission, the transmission and discovery of knowledge--in short, learning. In part the statement arose out of criticism of some campus activities in legislative discussions in which it was alleged that those activities included the advocacy of positions which would be harmful to Montana's economy. Those of us who hold faculty appointments in the MUS will no doubt derive satisfaction from seeing effective rebuttal of these shopworn criticisms. But fairness would require that we consider the possibility that we, too, might benefit from pondering the President's arguments. The justification for the extraordinary freedom that we enjoy is teleological; intellectual freedom is a means to the general end to which we are devoted. It follows that the manner of its exercise ought to be consistent with its purpose. Over the past fifteen or so years, however, it seems that we have been rather more concerned with honoring "diversity" in expression, with allowing "all voices to be heard" than with promoting "open and free discussion in the interest of allowing truth to prevail," as the President puts it. Perhaps we might profitably consider that the mirror image of Justice Jackson's "unanimity of the graveyard" is the sterile cacophony of Babel.
The journal's editors have decided to include an occasional article on faculty hobbies in our pages. If our own colleagues are any indication, a significant portion of the faculties of the MUS institutions have reached that stage in their careers where they look forward to having well-earned free time. The news out of the Legislature suggests that the rate of those anticipated transitions may be accelerated, whether by pecuniary inducement or simply through despair. Hence, hereby a solicitation to all the impassioned numismatists, philatelists and their like among our readership: set aside a day or two of the coming summer break to write up an account of your avocation for us.
We issue this call in full recognition that many faculty members will be reluctant to respond, however devoted they may be to a hobby. There is something faintly unseemly about a college professor's having one. I learned this lesson early in my career when I casually mentioned in a conversation about the weather that the previous evening a radio operator in Antarctica reported that the temperature there was 70 below and the wind was blowing 60 miles an hour. "And how much time do you spend at that?" my Department Head asked in clear tone of reproval. More than most other professions, perhaps, the faculty life is expected to be treated as a calling; one must have no other loves than philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, etc.
Now that senior status has made me somewhat immune to colleagues' scorn I am able to confess that I have carried on a long-standing extra-professional affair; I have been a "ham" radio operator for more than 40 years. There have been many long periods of little or no activity, of course: during graduate school and the first years of teaching I even allowed my FCC license to lapse. But I have generally given time to my hobby as professional duties or opportunities and family life have permitted. It has been time well spent. A year or two ago a former student of mine, now a member of another philosophy faculty, wrote to ask whether I knew anything about digital electronics. The president of his institution had decreed that all courses counting toward the general education requirements must include either a diversity or a vocational component. (Now there's a decree worth pondering!) The choice for his logic course was obvious enough. I was able to answer him in the affirmative: indeed, I had been spending a day or two on digital electronic circuit elements in my introductory logic course for more than twenty years. In fact, my spare time study of digital electronics when these devices first became widely available in the Seventies led me to reconceive my logic course entirely.
But the greatest benefit I have derived from my radio activities has been the perspective it has given me. That perspective has a number of dimensions; for example, I am regularly involved with people from a wide range of walks of life, a welcome respite from the airy world of faculty interests and concerns. I often talk with people all over the world, too. A few weeks ago I received a letter from one of them, Jacky, a French ham with whom I had had a conversation recently. His letter came amidst the news of anti-American demonstrations in Europe, and shortly after I had read a discouraging article in The Economist reporting the results of a survey of European attitudes toward the U.S. "Dear wave friend Dick," it began, and went on to describe in detail my signal at his location west of Paris, and to invite me to visit him should I ever be in France.
Radio amateurs who speak different languages customarily address each other as "dear," or something equivalent, when communicating in written modes, i.e., morse code, radio teletype, etc., the modes preferred when crossing language barriers. Many friendships of long-standing have been struck up in this way. On the ham bands one often hears conversations between hams in the U.S. and other countries where it is plain that the parties have been talking regularly for years, know all about one another's families, and may have paid mutual visits.
For many of us belonging to cohorts a notch or two above "X" in the generational alphabet, the news of the day must sometimes bring to mind an old Kingston Trio song:
They're rioting in Africa
there's strife in Iran
...the whole world is festering with unhappy souls
the French hate the Germans
the Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs
South Africans hate the Dutch
and I don't...
I don't despair, for I easily maintain my equanimity, remembering that to scores of the good citizens of Japan I am "Dick-san," in Germany, the Netherlands, South America, and elsewhere I am "Dear Dick," and in France I have my "dear wave friend," Jacky.
Whatever success The Montana Professor has achieved in the past year it owes first to its authors. I hope that if you have enjoyed an article you read in the journal that you will take time to let the author know. Second in the calls upon our gratitude must come the journal's assistant editors and other members of its staff. Paul Trout, our very capable book review editor, has done an admirable job of shepherding reviews through the process of preparation and publication. Henry Gonshak and Steve Lockwood have been invaluable sources of advice and counsel on editorial matters, and each has written for the journal twice. Steve took on the monumental task of getting 2500 copies of each issue properly distributed and has done it quickly and efficiently. Keith Edgerton has handled our finances. None of these people receive compensation for their work; they do it as part of their professional service, while teaching a regular load and performing their other faculty duties. I hope that you will let them know that you appreciate their efforts.