Texts:Rom-E-80e-E-SRW

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November 21, 1980

To Whom It May Concern:

Statement by Robert McClintock pertaining to the review of his work for potential promotion to full professor initiated by the senior members of the Department of Philosophy and the Social Sciences.

I understand that such a review is one in which performance is assessed impersonally: what I have done and how it measures up against an impersonal standard of achievement is the only question. Hence my aim here is to put before you what I have done as fully and accessibly as I can. I understand there are four relevant domains of activity: scholarship, teaching, service to the College and to the profession. The documentation I am presenting is contained in two large binders, accompanied by copies of two books I edited and of my major book, Man and his Circumstances: Ortega as Educator. Binder Acontains reviews and other material relevant in assessing the influence of my scholarship, plus copies of my articles published prior to my book Man and his Circumstances. Binder Bcontains copies of my writings, published and unpublished, written since completion of that book. The following remarks should help my senior colleagues orient themselves in this material, and find outside opinions about its worth should they wish to look for those.

Scholarship

My scholarship reflected in the texts presented can be grouped under four headings: 1) study of José Ortega y Gasset, 2) study of self-education, 3) study of the interrelationship of political theory and educational theory, and 4) study of the intellectual foundations of American educational scholarhip. Some remarks will follow with respect to each area.

  • José Ortega y Gasset: This is the most mature area of my scholarship. My major achievement here is Man and his Circumstances: Ortega as Educator. Page proofs of this work have entered into prior reviews; the relevant matter here is the reception of the book. Binder Acontains copies of the eighteen reviews that I know of which have appeared of the book, as well as copies of letters about the book from Jacques Ellul and Julian Marias and a sample of citations of the work to give evidence of its influence. Prior to publication of the book, I published articles on Ortega in School and Society(A35), Columbia Forum(A38), and one that appeared in both The Journal of Aesthetic Educationand the Revlsta de Occidente(A41). Since publication of the book, I have published two pieces on Orteqa in The New Republic(B8 & B14) and I have been the major speaker at a three day symposium on Ortega, Unamuno, and Falla (B47). If in addition to the reviews, letters, and citations mentioned above, you would like to query scholars further, may I suggest Professor Edward Malefakis of the History Department at Columbia, Professor Philip W. Silver of the Spanish and Portuguese Department at Columbia, and Professor Juan Linz at Yale University, all of whom I know are acquainted with the work
  • Self-education: This was a significant theme in Man and his Circumstancesand in some of my prior publications (A37, A46, A47, & A51). Since that book, it has been a major concern in my writing. Toward a Place for Study in a World of Instruction (B6) is my most substantial essay on the theme, to which Universal Voluntary Study (B12) and Some Thoughts on ’Permanent Education' (B16) are companion pieces. The proposed text, Solitaire: The Conduct of Life (B18) was based on these reflections. As part of this general concern for selfeducation, I have had a line of work devoted to encyclopedias as informal educative agents: two proposals (B4 & B24) and the substantial reviewessay ,Enkyklios Paideia: The Fifteenth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica(B27JT Further, as ways to get a better handle on this theme, I have outlined two ambitious research projects designed to illuminate the history of self-education, the first from 1972, an Educational Biography Project (Bll) and the second from 1977, Man and Judgment: Studies of Educational Experience and Aspirations: A Prospectus (B36). Finally, most recently I have essayed an introspective account of my own self-development over the past decade in the form of a long letter to Lambros Comitas (B5), which is a step toward fulfilling a promise of a book on Eros and Educationmade in a note in Toward a Place for Study. In Binder A, there are letters from Ivan Illich concerning some of this material and reprints of articles from Manasshowing some of its resonance. In addition, Ronald Gross, one of the more untiring publicists for the importance of self-education might be queried about my influence among those concerned with self-education. Further, I believe Professor Patrick Suppes of Stanford may have an opinion about the published portions of this work.
  • The Interrelation of political theory and educational theory: This is probably the matter of most fundamental interest to me. It was a theme central to Man and his Circumstances— the topic of civic pedagogy. Since that work, I have done a great deal of serious thinking about the theme. A small part of this thinking has been published, see Diderot (B19), Rousseau and the Dilemma of Authority (B20), Pestalozzi (B21), and The Dynamics of Decline (B41). Some of the more important fruits of this thinking were made public in my lecture series last Spring at New York University, Citizens and Subjects: Educational Politics in Historical Perspective (B46). By far the most important record of this thinking, the very process of it, however, will be found in my unpublished essays and drafts: Toward a Usable Past (B13), The Civic Interest and the Purposes of DHEW (B29), From Problems to Predicaments (B31), The Executive as Educator (B33), Humane Learning and the Future (B34), Power and Pedagogy: The Citizen and Subject (B38), Education, History of (B39), and Education and Social Thought: Intellectual Mobilization (B42). In addition, in the letter to Lambros Comitas (B5), I give an account of the process and issues at stake in this thinking and make a point which I should reiterate here: I am content to leave most of this work unpublished because, in writing for real public effect, I have come to recognize the difference between writing witha political and educational theory and writing at arms length about political and educational theory. By this contrast, I mean the difference, say, between Rousseau's corpus, written with a political and educational theory, and Rawls' corpus, written mutely in an historical sense, about political theory. That which I hold important for me to do is the former, to write with a coherent, humane, and powerful political and educational theory; the above mentioned work that I have performed over the last decade, the published and unpublished, is all work aboutpolitical and educational theory by which I have been clarifying for myself the ideas I want to write with, not necessarily about. Although only partially published, it is all work accomplished as a means to an end, and all of it, I submit, is relevant in this review as evidence of my seriousness and productiveness as a thinking scholar.
  • Critique of American educational scholarship: This is a line of work that has been latent in almost everything I have written; slowly my capacity to make it explicit is building. Since working on my dissertation, the latent existence of this critique has been evident to me through avoidance reactions by some who have felt threatened by my intellectual enterprise. The basis for this critique was my explicit concern in research over the summers of 1970 and 1971 that I did primarily in Germany and secondarily in France — the matter became clearer to me, how to make the matter clear remained an unsolved problem and I produced nothing tangible from those summers. During my sabbatical at Frankfurt, I produced three unpublished pieces, one unfinished, two finished. The unfinished piece, a draft Review of Rousseau as Educator(B22) became the germ of a major work in progress. The two finished pieces, Uber Horace Mann (B23) and Reflections on German Higher Education (B25) helped me sort out whether I wanted to be a European educational scholar or an American educational scholar centrally concerned with a deficiency in that body of scholarship apparent to me from my knowledge of European achievements. Opting for my fundamental concern with American educational scholarship, I have proceeded to transform my long-standing, latent concern part way into an explicit critique through the still incomplete draft of Rousseau and American Educational Scholarship(B44). What is available to be read in this review of my performance are drafts of the first three chapters — I anticipate eight chapters in the completed work. These draft chapters are, of course, not finished drafts, but they reflect a great deal of accomplished research on Rousseau and the history of the interpretation of Rousseau, on the history of educational history in English, and on the intellectual foundations of German educational scholarship. When completed, the work will be one of major stature, of that I am confident. Currently I am struggling with a question, however: is the current depression in the graduate study of education a good time to complete the work if it is to have significant effect? This question, too, is explored at greater length in the letter to Lambros Comitas (B5).

Let me call your attention briefly to four additional matters pertaining to my scholarship.

  • First, for the four areas of scholarship indicated above, I have tangible performances, published and unpublished, susceptible of evaluation. In addition to these four areas, there is a fifth of major and long-standing concern to me, the study of Greek educational, political, and philosophical experience. The fruits of this study informs much of what I have written, but I have not written anything explicitly about the Greeks. I think I have demonstrated, however, through the cumulative use of the ancients throughout my corpus, and in my teaching as well, that I have the capacity to write an original, significant work on Hellenic experience along the lines indicated in the letter to Lambros Comitas (B48).
  • Second, please note that I am submitting considerable unpublished material. I have been requested to submit it, and I do so because to me it evidences a significant body of achieved reflection, one that has, despite the diverse occasions giving rise to it, an over-all coherence as well as three sustained emphases — self-education, the critique of American educational scholarship, and the relation of political and educational theory. The oft-mentioned letter (B5), itself part of the whole corpus, gives the proper directions for so evaluating it as an integral part of my total scholarly output, published and unpublished.
  • Third, throughout this statement, I am making an effort to indicate possible sources for independent assessments for the diverse aspects of my work. In the Post Script to the letter to Lambros Comitas (B5), I discuss a significant problem in finding the proper reference group for my scholarship. Among recognized historians of education outside Teachers College, Henry J. Perkinson at NYU is probably the best acquainted with my work; Patricia Graham at Harvard and Geraldine Clifford Jonich at Berkeley might also be queried. Most academic historians specialize in more bounded periods that I do; hence the best referees for the worth of my scholarship as a whole would probably be historians of political thought, who work under constraints somewhat similar to those under which I work — Professors Julian H Franklin and Herbert A. Deane would be good possibilities at Columbia.
  • Fourth, much of the scholarship I have been requested to submit is unpublished, and all of it, the published and unpublished, is, on its highest level, very demanding work, highly fragmentary and occasional in composition, but unified by a deep grounding in a broad range of study and reflection. Whether in what I write I am in command of what I purport to command or whether I am not — the real quality of the entire body of my scholarship taken as a whole — can be assessed authoritatively, I fear, by very few people. Ideally, an authoritative assessment should come from someone with a substantial acquaintance with Ortega and his intellectual milieu who at the same time possesses a thorough knowledge, and sympathy for, Plato, Rousseau, Kant, and Weber, as well as having a fundamental interest in the relation between political and educational theory in the Western tradition. Such a person could, I think, give an authoritative assessment of the doctrine of scattered occasions that I have produced over the past years, and the one person, whom I do not know except through his work, who might best provide an authoritative assessment, should he be willing to read all the material, would be Professor Allan Bloom at Toronto. If outside referees are necessary to establish the worth of my entire work, he would be, in my opinion, the best choice.

Teaching

Five matters relative to my performance in teaching should be considered: 1) the general function of my teaching within a graduate school of education; 2) my service courses; 3) my role in doctoral programs; 4) my work nurturing doctoral dissertations; and 5) my efforts placing students during and after their doctoral work.

  • General teaching function I teach Western cultural history as it bears on educational experience, past and present. My teaching serves an unusual function: in a highly differentiated, specialized, functionalized curricular structure, I am a teacher whose function is to stand for a cohering, comprehensive, internalized cultural tradition.
  • Service Courses I have developed a repertory of short courses (five weeks = 1 point each) on major figures in the Western tradition. These provide a flexible format — students with varied specialized interests and varied prior preparations can all profit — a format through which I can express both the depth and the breadth of the tradition as it bears on educational matters. Copies of representative syllabae will be found in B48. Among TC faculty members, David D. Avdul has taken some of these courses and might be asked for an opinion on their character and quality, or a random sample of students in various sections over the past few years might be queried.
  • Role in doctoral programs My academic title locates me in the history and education program, in which I have always been an active and engaged faculty member. Within this program I have had a small group of doctoral students working closely with me on diverse aspects of the intellectual history of Western education. I do not think, however, that my potential in doctoral instruction can come to fulfillment by seeking solely to develop a close-knit, tightly-defined program in the history of Western education. Rather, I think that interest in what I stand for as a teaching scholar cuts across a number of programs. Consequently, in both advisement and intermediate to advanced courses, I have worked closely, not only with a small cohort of students in history and education, but also with students in the politics and education program interested in political and educational theory, as well as diverse students in philosophy and education, sociology and education, comparative and international education, and in the curriculum and teaching department. (On pre-dissertation doctoral advisement and advanced instruction, consult Michael Rosenfeld, Barbara Martinson, Daniel de Castro, Maxine Bookstaber, Judith Maleter, Teresa Levy-Martin, Gerda Lederer, etc.)
  • Dissertation mentorship I have not sponsored a large number of dissertations, partly because I serve, as explained in (3) above, a cross-cutting role in various doctoral programs. Dissertations I have sponsored or am sponsoring have been on diverse subjects — the politics of university student movements in the fascist era in Italy, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charles Saunders Pierce, Augustan political education as reflected in Vergil’s Aneid, a comparison of black Bildunqsromanewritten in the United States and the Union of South Africa, and so on. In addition I have been closely involved in some dissertations in philosophy and education, and recently some in politics and education. Obviously, in covering such a wide range, the authoritative guidance I can give is often diluted and I must concentrate first on helping a student assemble

    a dissertation committee that draws together the best possible specialized assistance from the Columbia orbit and second on holding before the student the highest academic and literary standards that I can. My ability to guide students well who are working on very diverse subjects is a major positive asset in my doctoral mentorship, especially in a small department responsible nevertheless for a very broad range of subject matter and disciplinary skills. Frank Moretti, Richard 3. Wolff, Neville Choonoo, Connie Warren, Robert Palaich, and Frank P. Purcell can give you evaluations of my work as sponsor and dissertation advisor.

  • Placement efforts I take seriously, early on in the process of doctoral advisement, the problem of helping students find intellectually fulfilling work. During the past decade the realities have been such that students cannot expect to find, on completion of their doctorate, an assistant professorship awaiting them. Early in their work, I push students to start probing the adjunct teaching opportunities with which the Metropolitan area is rich — over a number of years these can be built into intellectually fulfilling full-time opportunities. The success of this strategy has been reasonably good, although it depends primarily on the personal and intellectual qualities of the student and his or her initiative relative to the networks of opportunity; my role is mainly one of giving support, writing recommendations, and making timely suggestions. Frank Moretti, Richard 3. Wolff, 3inx Roosevelt, Michael Rosenfeld, and Frank P. Purcell (who is the one person who has worked closely with me who is not adequately” placed) can be queried about this dimension of my teaching role.

Service to the College

I assume that my contribution within the Department is familiar to my senior colleagues and need not be dwelt upon. I note that I have performed no formal administrative responsibilities during my career in the College — in cases where scholars have been asked to perform such responsibilities, effective performance of them would be a tangential, positive factor in assessing qualifications for full professor, I would imagine, but I trust that the absence of such performance is a wholly irrelevant factor. The main matter in this domain therefore comes down to my participation in collegial selfgovernance: I will indicate my record and say a few words about the rationale informing my participation.

  • Participation in College self-governance In 1975-76 I was an active member of the College Policy Council, representing the Division, serving on, and chairing, the College Relations Committee. In this latter capacity, I initiated and drafted a report on the relation between the faculty’s ability to articulate a sense of public educational purpose and the College’s ability to raise endowment funds. This report was accepted in the Spring of 1976 by the CPC (B28). Professor Dwayne Huebner can give an assessment of my work on that committee. In 1977-78 and 1978-79, I again served on the CPC, representing the Division, and was an active member of the Faculty Caucus. During the Fall of 1977, on behalf of the latter group, I wrote an informal report, Thinking about the Budget (B37), which was widely distributed throughout the College community. In addition for 1977-78, I served on the Budget Committee and through it nurtured the development of a tuition assistance plan eventually adopted by the College. Joe Higgins, Margaret Jo Shepherd, and Harold Cook can best give assessments of my work on the Faculty Caucus; Harold Noah, Richard Whittemore, and Sloan Wayland can assess my work on the Budget Committee. The following year, while continuing some work on a subcommittee of the Budget Committee, I served as chairman of the Agenda Committee. Lawrence Cremin can assess that performance. That year, 1978-79, my major preoccupation was running the search for a lead person in the politics and education program, which should be familiar to my senior colleagues. Joe Grannis can assess the affirmative action dimension of that search relative to the norm throughout the College. During 1979-80 and the current academic year I have been serving as one of the College’s two elected representatives to the Columbia University Senate, serving on its Committee on Education.
  • Rationale of participation My participation in activities of self-governance in the College, whether on the Departmental or Collegewide level, has been grounded on the conviction that intellect is important, the one matter of fundamental importance, even in a time of fiscal constraint. In an institution, the raison d'etreof which is people studying, it is of basic importance to maintain at the highest possible level the intellectual scope and value of the curriculum and to minimize the impediments that block access to that curriculum by potential students. To maintain the scope and quality of the curriculum and to minimize the impediments to its study in a time of fiscal constraint for both institutions and individuals have been my goals in my participation in collegial self-governance. In my letter to Lambros Comitas (B5), I explain more fully how I arrived at those academic priorities.

Service to the Profession

I am a member of a number of professional associations, but none of them, except perhaps the Conference on Political Thought, reflects my own combination of professional interests sufficiently well to make it worth my while to take an active role in them. My professional service has therefore been reactive, a matter of responding selectively to diverse requests made of me from time to time. Thus I have 1) presented papers to diverse groups at a steady but modest rate; I have 2) fulfilled certain advisory roles in the profession; and I have responded to an invitation to perform an unusual, significant role in the management of a major federal agency, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

  • Professional papers My résumé lists my participation in professional meetings. Noteworthy in this was the paper delivered at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (B12), that at the American Educational Research Association (B20), that at the Padagogik- seminar at the University of Frankfurt (B23), written and delivered in German, and that at the symposium jointly sponsored by the Syracuse University School of Education and School of Library Service (cf. B27). Most important have been my recent lectures, three on Citizens and Subjects: Educational Politics in Historical Perspective (B46), sponsored by the NYU General Studies Program, and the lecture, Ortega, Quixote, and the Dream of Europe (B47), sponsored by the University of San Francisco. Lawrence Cremin was at one of the NYU lectures and can

    give an assessment of it, Jinx Roosevelt, among others, can assess the whole series. The lecture at the University of San Francisco was important to me, as it was the first time I spoke to a large audience (150-200 persons); William J. Monihan, S.J., organizer of the symposium, or the Gilbert Chase or any of the other panelists, can give an assessment of my performance.

  • Advisory roles: My main work here has been as an academic consultant to The New Columbia Encyclopedia; as a member of the editorial group that produced the book, The Changing Agenda for American Higher Education(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), (David Mathews can assess this); and as a member of the Advisory Board to the Project on Independent Scholars sponsored by The College Board and funded by FIPSE (Ronald Gross, director of the project, can assess my contribution).
  • Special Assistant to the Secretary of HEW: From May 1976 through December, I served on the immediate staff of David Mathews, then Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. My informal title was scholar-in-residence; my main function was to comment to the Secretary on things I thought merited my commenting on or that he wanted me to comment on, from the immediate issues on the next day’s agenda, to the basic principles at stake in the over-all situation. More is said on this role in the letter to Lambros Comitas (B5). A representative sample of the written fruits of this function are the following: The Civic Interest and the Purposes of DHEW (B29), Organization of a Network for Collecting and Refining Ideas (B30), From Problems to Predicaments: Reflections on the Paradigms of Social Policy Formation (B31), The Executive as Educator: Toward a Renewal of Public Policy (B33), Humane Learning and the Future (B34), and Draft: Agenda Explanation — Conceptual Problems in Social Policy (B35). In addition,

    I helped organize and participated in the Airlie House Conference on the Changing Agenda of Higher Education sponsored by the U.S. Office of Education and the American Council on Education, December 17 and 18, 1976, and did the same with Linking Services by Linking People: A Social Policy Conference held October 25-7, 1976 at the University of Southern California. Further, I was a central participant in numerous internal HEW discussions of policy and its processes in the Washington Office and regional offices in Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, and Seattle. Since in all of this, I was directly responsible to David Mathews, he is the main person from whom an assessment of this work should be sought. In addition, I worked closely with Robert H. McKenzie on the Secretary’s immediate staff, and independent of that staff, Harold L. Hodgkinson, might have an opinion of my work.

I end with a list of claims to performance that I expect will be assessed in this review:
Scholarship
I have written a major study of Josd Ortega y Gasset, which has been recognized as the best book on him in English, one of the few inescapable studies of him in any language, and which, in addition, has been recognized by knowledgeable critics as a book that speaks compellingly to fundamental problems in present-day culture, education, and public life.
I have written substantial essays, published and unpublished, analyzing the processes and importance of self-education. The published portion of this work has been recognized by people primarily concerned with the matter as highly significant.
I have written a complex body of material through which I have clarified important concepts pertinent to the relations between politics and education, concepts which I expect in the future I will be able to write, not merely about, but with,in substantial efforts at the education of the public.
I have made significant progress making explicit a critique of American educational scholarship that has been tacitly recognized as latent in most everything I have written and that will call fundamentally into question, when completed, the existing intellectual basis for the study of education in the United States.
I have laid the foundations for a major work on the value of Hellenic experience for present-day education and public affairs, although this claim will be evident only to those willing to read my work as a whole with care, and even then the claim will appear tentative.
Teaching
I have been able to define and implement a general purpose role for my teaching within the College's functionally differentiated curriculum, a role that is consistent with what I stand for and functional in the College's activities.
I have effectively combined flexibility with intellectual depth and responsibility in defining my roles within the process of doctoral instruction.
I have been a good "educator" for those who have sought me as their dissertation sponsor or close advisor; I have been effective and constructive in working with highly diverse students who have all sought advice from me in their doctoral studies: such flexibility is essential in a small department responsible for covering a wide range of matter and disciplines.
I have been effective in helping doctoral students find and make their way in the face of adverse employment opportunities.
Service to the College
I have more than done my share in the collegial conduct of Department business.
I have exerted unexampled initiative in College-wide selfgovernance: as a member of the College Policy Council, I have served on three major committees, chairing two of them with unusual efficiency and productivity; shepherding through the third a significant substantive policy initiative; I have written a substantial report on the budget which has had wide and continuing influence; I have been elected to the Columbia University Senate, a significant sign of College-wide recognition by my peers.
Service to the Profession
I have maintained a limited, but steady flow of professional papers of high guality.
I have been sought out in diverse advisory capacities and performed them well.
I have been asked to bring my distinctive intellectual abilities to bear at the highest level in the management of HEW and done so effectively.

I look forward, either to positive action in this review, or to a detailed critique showing how my claims are invalid or insufficient, according to the criteria, applied in my case, that hold consistently in such promotion reviews.

Sincerely yours,

Robert McClintock Associate Professor of

History and Education

Attachments: Résumé — Robert McClintock Contents — Binder A Contents — Binder B

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