Common reading experience fosters intellectual debate across campus

By Susan Lang

When 4,000 people read the same book on a controversial subject, it's bound to trigger a lot of hot debate. Between the faculty panel discussion in Barton Hall on Sunday, Aug. 26, and almost 200 small group sessions Monday, Aug. 27, during orientation week, the heated intellectual discussion -- and the learning -- flourished on campus.

Kim Haines-Eitzen, right, assistant professor of Near Eastern Studies, leads a Guns, Germs and Steel discussion group in 394 Uris Hall with freshmen, from left, Stephanie Friede, Jenna Forman and Bryn Fuller. Richard Killen/University Photography

That's just what President Hunter Rawlings and Provost Biddy Martin intended when they assigned the reading of the book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond, to all first-year Cornell students, aided by faculty, staff and upper-class students who served as discussion facilitators.

"I liked having to read the book because it gave us something to discuss the first day or two here with people I didn't know," said freshman Rina Kundalkar, a biology major from West Palm Beach, Fla. Her small discussion group was facilitated by Rawlings in Court North, Aug. 27.

When Isaac Kramnick, vice provost for undergraduate education and professor of government, asked his group in 145 McGraw Hall if any had discussed the book with other incoming students on campus, almost one-third said they had. "I found that a very hopeful sign because one of the principal purposes for this project was to provide an opportunity for students to have discussions with each other that had some intellectual content and could go beyond 'Where are you from?' or 'What school are you in?'" Kramnick said.

While many students said they appreciated the common ground the summer reading of the book had provided, others had questions about the assignment. One student asked Rawlings during the group discussion why this particular book had been chosen.

"We chose it for two reasons," he replied. "First, the book makes a sweeping argument about a big problem and so gives you a lot to argue about. Second, it draws on many disciplines and, thus, fits Cornell's multi-college campus well."

Provost Biddy Martin leads a discussion group in the Court North 434 study lounge. Charles Harrington/University Photography

Vice Provost Isaac Kramnick's group meets in 145 McGraw Hall. Charles Harrington/University Photography

The Pulitzer Prize-winning book asserts that the differences in rates of development among world societies, cultures and races are more a function of geographical and environmental circumstances, such as the availability of plants and animals that could be domesticated, than a result of biological differences. When six faculty members and a graduate student explored the book's themes in a panel discussion in Barton Hall before a massive audience of incoming students, faculty and staff on Aug. 26, they stressed that even if Diamond's hypotheses are questioned, his thorough, and often necessarily repetitious, arguments served readers well by prompting them to think about important issues.

Illustrating the range of discussion on the book were the opinions of two participants in the panel discussion in Barton Hall. Michael Tetteh '01, a student in the master's in engineering program, and the lone student on the panel, called the book "a political masterpiece that makes it possible to dedicate more focus on the politics of racism and the racism of politics."

Daniel Usner, professor of history and director of the American Indian Program, however, objected to how Diamond weaves European colonialism into his sweeping survey of change in human societies and makes it seem "natural and inevitable."

Usner considered it "specious" for Diamond to keep asking why did Europeans conquer other parts of the world instead of societies from some other part conquering Europe. "The irony is that Diamond, while intending to transcend racialized explanations of difference and domination, actually descends into a geographical and biological determinism that comprises the bedrock of racism," Usner argued.

The next day, students had the chance to bring their voices to the discussion in small groups of about 15 students and two facilitators each.

"The students in my group were very insightful and articulate and, by and large, were not persuaded by the arguments put forth by Diamond but were quite interested in the subject," said Leslie Adelson, chair and professor of German studies, of the discussion group she led in Goldwin Smith Hall. "We explored issues ranging from whether Diamond's book was an effective tool to counter racist models of history -- we concluded that it was not -- to what are the distinctions, if any, between geographical determinism and historical fatalism."

"I don't think Diamond concerned himself enough with factors outside the environment," said freshman John Black, arts and sciences, from Miami, who was in the session with President Rawlings. Black asserted that Diamond never gave the other sides of the arguments and therefore lost significant scientific credibility.

In the Jerome H. Holland International Living Center, Stephen Zinder, chair and professor of the Department of Microbiology, had mostly international students in his group.

"We had a lively discussion, with the major topic being whether it was human nature to conquer weaker groups and how it was easier for one society to conquer another if it felt superior or religiously justified in doing so," Zinder said. "It also helped if there was an economic incentive." Most students thought that Diamond's idea that in modern societies we are under less evolutionary selection than are hunter-gatherers was reasonable.

Kramnick said his group thoughtfully discussed a wide range of issues, such as whether Diamond's approach was disrespectful of religion (the group's consensus was that it was not) and whether Diamond's assertions provided a rational explanation for intellectual development and differences among various cultural groups (the consensus was that it did not).

"I was struck, however, by the students' universal dismissal that anyone would have a racially based assessment of others," said Kramnick. "They basically thought that the book was unnecessary, in that no rational person would take the position that some people are superior to others."

In the first hour of Martin's group, the students each expressed what they had taken away from the book, their views on its basic themes and the role of religion and individualism in the fate of human societies. Martin began her second hour by asking the group to name at least one thing they learned and what questions they would want to explore further in their coursework or their own research.

The conversation spread to discussions of nature vs. nurture, how different cultures have different kinds of knowledge and what counts as knowledge or truth, what the roles of the photographs were in the book and whether the ways cultures developed were inevitable and natural or if there was an element of chance involved.

When Sara Svoboda, a first-year student in agriculture and life sciences, asked what the book contained for students in the arts, Martin replied: "You can look at this book as a writing or rhetorical performance and an act of stylization," and she pointed out Diamond's use of anecdote, repetition and the frame he used for the book, which involved answering his friend Yali's question about why white people developed so much "cargo" (material goods) and brought it to New Guinea while his black people had little "cargo" of their own.

When Martin asked her group at the end of the session how they liked the new Court residence hall, the students replied that they loved Court North and that their friends in other buildings were jealous. That prompted Martin to quip: "Well, if environment shapes destiny, you will all be expected to do well. After all, you're living in Court."

"I'm really glad we had this assignment," said Anita Ganesan, a first-year student in engineering from Boxborough, Mass., who participated in Martin's group. "When you first get here, it's awkward not knowing anyone, and I got to know a lot of people much more quickly on my floor by talking about the book."

"We are all enormously grateful to the staff in Student and Academic Services who assumed responsibility for implementing this project and organizing the events associated with it," said Martin. "Meg Nowak, Leslie Sadler, Barbara Romano, Anne Buckley Becker, Marissa Piliero, Karen Brand and Tanni Hall deserve particular appreciation."

Jared Diamond will be on campus to give a free talk on Guns, Germs and Steel Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 7 p.m. in Bailey Hall.