I have written about Dr. Rejali before. Here is his home page. In thinking over my professors, I have decided he was the best one I ever had. It was not one single thing about him or even what he revealed about politics in his seminars that makes me praise him so highly.
What it was was his total engagement in every aspect of his career: teaching, writing, preserving the past, polemicizing in both academic and popular publications on the issue of most importance to him: the use of torture to control the populace. I noticed how everything he said and did fit together. I never felt with him that his life was one thing and his career another. Looking at him in the light of my concerns about the pressures of academic life on professors, I am wondering how he manages this seemingly simple thing of being just who he is.
His latest book is Torture and Democracy.
It looks as though he's in a place which allows him to be who he is, and that his research is an expression of a vital interest - and then it's also a burning issue that needs discussion, so it is interesting intellectually but also immediately useful. That would be why he doesn't experience the disconnects some others do.
Posted by: PZ | September 24, 2008 at 07:19 PM
Yes. But he is remarkable in other ways. He cared about my writing, for instance. He forced me to defend my positions. He warned me that I was getting into trouble in his class and told me how to fix my situation. He never pulled rank on his students or acted "the professor." His attitude was that we're in this together and must beat back the darkness.
He stands out as remarkable in a remarkable faculty, that of Reed College.
Posted by: Hattie | September 24, 2008 at 09:55 PM
I envy you this. I barely remember any of my professors. Well, I do remember Buckminster Fuller, but he was not exactly a day-to-day presence in the course which starred him.
Posted by: gerry rosser | September 25, 2008 at 07:08 AM