The Old Lions of Academia

"Thomas H. Benton", a pseudonymous columnist in the Chronicle of Higher Education, waxes nostalgic over the intimidating intellectual aura of the dignified, demanding, authoritarian professors of his youth. I have mixed feelings about such things.

On the one hand, a professor of the kind portrayed so fearsomely by John Houseman in The Paper Chase demands and deserves respect. By accepting no excuses and demanding the students display mastery of the material, he forces the students to learn not just the class materials but the discipline to learn needed information under time constraints and be able to present it under stress. Like it or not, these are necessary skills in most professions.

On the other hand, my experience in taking classes from three of Thee University's "Old Lions" was that two of them were simply rude, condescending, and stuck in their own little private intellectual rut.

One, in American Literature, airily dismissed all fantasy and science fiction writing as merely "popular" and therefore unworthy of academic attention. His response when I wanted to do a semester-long paper on James Branch Cabell went something like this:

Professor: "Is he on the syllabus?"

Me: "No; that's why I thought I'd ask y...."

Professor: "Well, that answers your question, then."

The second, a history professor, had a reputation as being an interesting and opinionated lecturer. During a study-abroad trip to the United Kingdom, he apparently couldn't stomach it that I disagreed with him about Irish politics, resulting in a tirade while waiting on a Dublin railway platform in which he accused me of being irresponsible and ungrateful, and then refused to speak to me again the rest of the trip. I guess I can see how political opinions could be called irresponsible, but I still haven't figured out what they have to do with gratitude.

The third was one of the oldest history professors in the school. I thought of him as "the last of the New Dealers", and for all I know he might have entered academia during the Roosevelt administration. His lectures were quite openly biased toward a populist-liberal viewpoint, but he didn't seem to mind when I or other students argued with him. That's a quality I respect more than I respect any overbearing self-appointed Unanswerable Authority.

Still, it would be nice to be one.