[Rather than pontificate on academic freedom, important though it
is right now, I want to reflect on academic joy, about what can be so
exciting about the life of the mind—even in the modern university.]
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AN ODE TO ACADEMIC JOY  
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Robert Jensen
January 21, 2024
Common Dreams
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_ Rather than pontificate on academic freedom, important though it is
right now, I want to reflect on academic joy, about what can be so
exciting about the life of the mind—even in the modern university. _


"Watching today’s heated debates over academic freedom and freedom
of speech on campuses, I find myself sometimes itching to be back in
the fight and at other times grateful that I retired five years ago,"
writes Jensen, (Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash)

 

In 26 years of teaching at the University of Texas at Austin, I never
shied away from controversial topics in the classroom or from
political controversies on the streets. I have been sharply critiqued
(that’s welcome and healthy) and on occasion canceled (that’s not
been so productive) by people from the right, left, and center,
depending on the issue (capitalism, racial justice, transgender
ideology, U.S. foreign policy, environmental degradation).

Watching today’s heated debates over academic freedom and freedom of
speech on campuses, I find myself sometimes itching to be back in the
fight and at other times grateful that I retired five years ago.
Though I’m out of the game, I find myself still intensely interested
in joining the conversation. The debates of the moment are important,
but my instinct from the sidelines is to offer what may seem trivial:
a reminder of how much fun intellectual life can be.

So, rather than analyze the current crises and argue about policy, I
offer a reflection on teaching that I wrote in 2012, one of several
“statement of teaching philosophy” essays I had to write over the
years for performance reviews. Rather than pontificate on academic
freedom, important though it is right now, I want to reflect on
academic joy, about what can be so exciting about the life of the
mind—even in the modern university.

STATEMENT OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY, JANUARY 2012

After years of research, I have developed a three-stage teaching
method that breaks new ground in pedagogical theory: Stage 1: Pay
attention. Stage 2: Be astonished. Stage 3: Tell about it.

The first thing to say about this sophisticated advance in our
understanding of university teaching is that I stole it from Mary
Oliver’s poem “Sometimes.”

If it appears that I’m trying to poke fun at university
professors’ self-indulgent tendency toward pomposity, I am. Since I
am a university professor who occasionally can be self-indulgent and
pompous, I have standing to poke fun. Frankly, we don’t poke fun at
ourselves enough. That’s part of my teaching philosophy: Poke fun at
myself, as often as possible, especially in front of students.

In this regard, poets perform an important service for professors. If
we professors are ever tempted to claim that we have had an original
insight into the human condition, we should pause and remember this:
There’s at least one poet, and likely dozens, who had the insight
long before we did and who expressed it far more eloquently than we
could ever hope to do.

I don’t teach poetry, but I often read poetry to my class. That’s
part of my teaching philosophy, to remind students that whatever the
subject, poets have something important to say to us. I read to my
students even though I have had no voice training and am not
particularly good at reciting poetry. That’s part of my teaching
philosophy, too. I think it’s healthy for students to see professors
stumble. When every word we utter in class is precise and polished, it
can create distance between professor and student. Students are too
easily impressed by us, and they can come to believe we are our
performances. Better that they see we are human beings, struggling and
stumbling, so that intellectual work doesn’t appear to be something
only specialists can do. Our job isn’t to be smart but to help
students understand that they can be smart, too.

So I read to my class, from Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry, from Marge
Piercy and Faiz Ahmed Faiz. I play songs, too, though I’m sensible
enough not to sing in class.

Back to Oliver. Those three recommendations comprise her
“instructions for living a life.” They also are serviceable
instructions for teaching. I try to pay attention, not only to the
scholarship in my field but to the world around me, which means I try
to get out in the world beyond the university as often as possible. I
am constantly astonished by the human capacity for both depravity and
love, and I spend considerable time trying to figure out these
paradoxes. I tell about it as often as possible, as a teacher, public
speaker, and writer.

After 20 years of teaching at the University of Texas at Austin, I
have written numerous statements about my teaching philosophy. Each
exercise is an opportunity for me to challenge myself. The somewhat
unorthodox style of this essay comes not from a lack of respect for
the assignment but a desire to challenge myself in a new way. This
might be because, after 20 years, I have a sense that I’m a better
teacher than ever, but at the same time I’m less sure why that might
be the case.

Here’s one plausible answer to the question of why my teaching might
be better today: I’m more comfortable with ambiguity than when I was
younger. As we age we have a choice. We can conclude that we’re
right in our assertions about the world and proceed based on that
assumption. Or we can conclude that we’re right and proceed based on
the assumption that we’re missing something.

I have spent considerable time studying the role of news media in our
culture, politics, and economy. I am confident that the assertions I
make about that institution and those systems are compelling. I’m
pretty sure that I’m right, and I argue strenuously that those
assertions are the best way to understand journalism and society. And
I also wonder about whether I’m indeed right.

Time for another poet. Faiz Ahmed Faiz concludes his poem “The City
from Here”:

_There are flames dancing in the farthest corners,
throwing their shadows on a group of mourners.
Or are they lighting up a feast of poetry and wine?
From here you cannot tell, as you cannot tell
whether the color clinging to those distant doors and walls
is that of roses or of blood._

I read that poem to my journalism students as a reminder that when we
look, we look from one perspective. “When you look at the city from
here,” from any one place, it can be easy to confuse roses and
blood. Since we are always looking from somewhere, caution and
humility are important. I read that poem to remind students that their
point of view is a point of view. I read that poem to remind myself as
well.

With that winding introduction, here’s a concise statement of my
teaching philosophy: I have the best job in the world. I get paid a
salary that allows me to live comfortably and give back to the
community. To earn this salary, I am asked to spend my time thinking,
reading, writing, and talking, all things I enjoy doing even when not
being paid. On occasion, I have to go to a boring meeting or file a
stupid report, which can at times be annoying. But all in all, this is
a really good gig. The least I can do is pay attention, be astonished,
and tell about it with as much joy and passion as possible. When I do
that, I think I’m a pretty good teacher, and I think I do that most
every day I walk into the classroom.

But I’m not 100 percent sure I’m as good as I think. When I look
out at my students and see roses, maybe that’s just how the city
looks from the lectern. Perhaps I simply don’t see the blood.

Time for a closing metaphor, this time borrowed from Wendell Berry’s
poem, “To Know the Dark”:

_To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings._

We are the best teachers when we aren’t afraid of the dark. When I
began teaching, I went into the dark with the biggest flashlight I
could find. That light allowed me to see many things, but the
intensity of the beam obscured other things, those traveling in the
shadows. That light allowed me to feel smart, but these days I am less
reassured by being smart. The older I get, the more I realize that
being smart isn’t going to get us all the way home.

So these days I carry a smaller flashlight, and I turn it off as often
as I can muster the courage. My best teaching is when I go dark.

_Robert Jensen, is professor emeritus in the School of Journalism and
Media at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of many
books including The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson:
Searching for Sustainability and Plain Radical: Living, Loving, and
Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully. He is the co-author, with Wes
Jackson, of An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse,
Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity, which will be published by
the University of Notre Dame Press in fall 2022._

_Common Dreams is a reader-supported independent news outlet created
in 1997 as a new media model.  Our nonprofit newsroom covers the most
important news stories of the moment. Common Dreams free online
journalism keeps our millions of readers well-informed, inspired, and
engaged.  We are optimists. We believe real change is possible. But
only if enough well-informed, well-intentioned—and just plain fed up
and fired-up—people demand it. We believe that together we can
attain our common dreams._

* pedagogy
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* teaching
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* universities
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