Georgetown is too often knocked for its “pre-professional” orientation: So it goes, students here would rather press flesh and pad resumes than learn without a motive or ambition in mind. Still, many of us are ready to wait in excessive lines to hear top speakers, class credit be damned, and over the past months, students have had more reasons than ever to stand in line, thanks to a wealth of fine speakers on campus.
Lecture Fund deserves top mention for its recent coups: Last Wednesday, MSNBC’s Hardball stopped its “College Tour 2003” at Gaston Hall. Host Chris Matthews and his program might be more bombast than substance, but Lecture Fund thankfully didn’t stop with mere celebrity. A day later, the similarly high-profile but infinitely more substantive presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) gave a fine policy speech.
These are just two in a long series of top political figures, including Jesse Jackson, former Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, which Lecture Fund brought to campus this year. Still, we are left wishing for more variety in their selections, perhaps a cultural figure with something more stimulating than William Peter Blatty’s umpteenth tired rehash of The Exorcist. But what the Lecture Fund chooses to do, it does very well.
Luckily, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Distinguished Lecturer Series has picked up some of the slack, bringing outstanding thinkers from several academic fields to campus. While the program is primarily aimed at graduate students, undergraduates have just as much to gain. We commend Graduate School Dean David Lightfoot, who entered his post promising to improve the graduate program’s standing both at Georgetown and among fellow universities, for attracting top names to Gaston Hall.
In October, Princeton University philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah spoke on changing notions of racial identity along with noted writer John Edgar Wideman. Prominent historian and political thinker Garry Wills gave a thoughtful speech on Catholicism and the death penalty in November. This semester offers similarly impressive names, including Canadian Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour and biologist Richard Lewontin. But sadly, last semester these great speakers spoke to less-than-capacity Gaston audiences. These empty spaces might be readily filled by interested undergraduates, and we hope that in the future the Series is better marketed to them.
Exposure to great minds and great ideas is vital to the intellectual life of any great university. The students at the Lecture Fund and the Graduate School both deserve praise for bringing such to Georgetown. They’ve set a high standard we hope they will preserve.
