Have you ever wondered where the old intellectual truths have gone? Have you noticed that there seem to be fewer grand narrators around, fewer University and Messenger Lectures being delivered?
The University Lectures Committee has been tearing out what's left of its collective hair, trying to understand why there are fewer proposals for Messenger Lecture series and for University Lectures coming across its roundtable. Over the past half dozen years, the number and proportion of lecture proposals has clearly diminished. We don't know if this is because campus life has become busier, reducing time to reflect on individuals that we should be inviting to the campus, or if there is less consensus in an era when knowledges are undergoing a drastic reconfiguration, or if there are just no identifiable distinguished scholars. There certainly seem to be collections of scholars, as the trend is to submit proposals for assistance with conference expenses.
In an era in which the disciplines are exchanging boundaries, one would think that the University Lecture is even more appropriate. When Goldwin Smith endowed the Cornell University Lecture at the turn of this century, he specified that the lecturer should be a scholar who addresses issues, transcending her/his discipline, to an extended campus audience. This has been a time honored practice at Cornell, but the time between lecturers is increasing, and we actually skipped a semester in which we could have hosted a Messenger Lecture.
The terms in which Dr. Hiram Messenger (Class of 1880) endowed his lecture series were "to provide a course of lectures on the Evolution of Civilization for the special purpose of raising the moral standard of our political business, and social life." Arguably, a century after Messenger set this task, civilization is diversifying as much as it is evolving. While belief in a linear or singular path of civilization has become problematic, this is surely no reason why the Lectures Committee shouldn't be receiving several proposals for Messenger Lectures each semester. These are times when we need to bring the world's major scholars and public figures to Cornell to articulate the conditions of the shifting ground of intellectual activity. And in a time when universities are under pressure to justify their social and philosophical relevance on the one hand, and their budgets on the other, the campus community is shooting itself in the foot by not availing itself of the Messenger endowment.
In short, the University Lectures Committee faces a dilemma. Should we be entertaining the trend in which campus groups request financial assistance for conferences, or should we be expecting more proposals to bring in individual, distinguished lecturers? Our charge is to solicit and adjudicate requests for funding for University and Messenger Lectures. Certainly our charge includes co-sponsoring interdisciplinary conferences, symposia and colloquia, when our funding is indispensable to the event. And we have supported that secondary function. But the committee has been divided over the tendency for that secondary function to become our primary activity, so much so that it has fallen to the chair of the committee to appeal to the campus community.
Perhaps, if intellectual trends are so elusive or explosive, the best way to address them is collectively, in conference. Maybe this is why there seems to be more emphasis on this mode of intellectual exchange. Alternatively, perhaps the university community simply needs to be reminded of, and encouraged to submit to, the University Lectures Committee.
We have a pretty healthy budget and a pretty generous funding regime (which compares favorably with other universities of similar standing). We have submission deadlines of Sept. 1 for the fall and Jan. 1 for the spring semesters. We look for interdisciplinary appeal, and nominating and seconding letters from two or more departments or programs other than the nominator's department. For the Messenger Lecture, involving three to six lectures in a semester, we require additional letters.
We hereby invite comment or submission. Comment if anyone has a perspective on the apparent trend in requests to the committee away from individual and towards more collective intellectual activity. Submission if people want to take advantage of the generous endowments to the university committee for hosting distinguished lectures.
For information regarding submissions, please contact the University Lectures Committee Secretary Judy Bower, 255-4843, or jabl4@cornell.edu, and for comment, please contact the Committee Chair Philip McMichael at cpdml@cornell.edu or 255-5495.
Philip McMichael is professor of rural sociology and chair of the University Lectures Committee.
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