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Dena Fam · Linda Neuhauser · Paul Gibbs
Editors

Transdisciplinary
Theory, Practice
and Education
The Art of Collaborative Research and
Collective Learning
Transdisciplinary Theory, Practice and Education
Dena Fam • Linda Neuhauser • Paul Gibbs
Editors

Transdisciplinary Theory,
Practice and Education
The Art of Collaborative Research
and Collective Learning
Editors
Dena Fam Linda Neuhauser
Institute for Sustainable Futures School of Public Health
University of Technology Sydney University of California
Ultimo, NSW, Australia Berkeley, CA, USA

Paul Gibbs
Centre for Education Research and
Scholarship
School of Health and Education
Middlesex University
London, UK

ISBN 978-3-319-93742-7    ISBN 978-3-319-93743-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93743-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950455

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
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Preface

Transdisciplinary Theory, Practice and Education: The Art of Collaborative

Research and Collective Learning is a timely publication. It calls on academics,
practitioners, community members and students to jointly navigate the interstices of
traditional scientific knowledge and societal knowledge as a means to more effec-
tively deal with our planet’s most pressing issues. Complexity and persistent global
problems such as the poverty, social inequity, climate change impacts and economic
crises that plague both developed and developing countries today will not be solved
through siloed disciplinary thinking alone. As both the editors and authors of this
book have proposed, a transdisciplinary focus that draws from various disciplinary
practices but is blind to the boundaries between them, and seeks contributions and
partnership with a range of different perspectives and stakeholders (from both the
public and private sectors), is needed.
The importance of different perspectives is demonstrated in the contents page,
which highlights the breadth of international contributors to this book. These include
many of the leading thinkers and institutes in transdisciplinary research, practice
and education worldwide. These contributors have not only added to the theoretical
development and discourse on transdisciplinarity, but have also helped inspire inno-
vation at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), where educational pro-
grammes have been developed to integrate disciplinary knowledge through
practice-based and problem-focused learning at both the undergraduate and post-
graduate levels. The new Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation at UTS (2016)
serves as a marker of our view of the centrality of transdisciplinary approaches to
future skill development and problem solving for society. The faculty continues to
build upon the work of many of the contributing authors who have paved the way
for the development and evolution of transdisciplinary thinking.
I applaud and thank the editors for bringing together such a broad network of
collaborators. This not only brings to light the range of intercultural endeavours tak-
ing place in China, the USA, France, the UK, Switzerland and Australia, but also
importantly brings to the fore the rich and valuable contribution Indigenous knowl-
edge and local community perspectives make to collaborative research endeavours.
A key characteristic of many of the contributions in this book is the conceptual shift

v
vi Preface

from producing ‘science for society’ to ‘science with society’. The important recog-
nition that working in partnership with societal actors (researchers, citizens, policy
makers, business, industry, etc.) across the research, innovation and implementation
processes aligns the outcomes of research with the values, needs and expectations
of those impacted by that research.
What the contributors to this collection of transdisciplinary case studies, theo-
retical reflections and educational programmes are proposing is a new paradigm of
research and practice for finding solutions to global challenges. It is an approach in
which collaborative research, collective learning and active stakeholder engagement
are core rather than peripheral elements. By providing exemplary cases of transdis-
ciplinarity in practice, this book is in effect an inspiration for others to step beyond
the boundaries and experiment, to embrace participatory processes and relational
thinking to more effectively create a more sustainable and equitable future.

University of Technology Sydney Attila Brungs

Ultimo, NSW, Australia
Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney Dena Fam
Ultimo, NSW, Australia
Endorsement

Interested in transdisciplinarity? Want to improve your teaching and research? This

book is packed with useful lessons. Whether you want a stronger theoretical ground-
ing, insights into how peers approach teaching of transdisciplinarity, or transdisci-
plinary research case studies, this book offers a range of imaginative approaches.
Dena Fam, Linda Neuhauser and Paul Gibbs have done a superb job of pulling
together contributions from 46 authors presenting diverse teaching and research
examples from around the world. They lift the lid on this important topic – one that
will only grow in significance as research and education organizations embrace the
challenges of supporting researchers and preparing students to deal with the myriad
complex social and environmental problems the world is confronting.
Gabriele Bammer,
Professor of Integration and Implementation Sciences,
The Australian National University
With their new book, Transdisciplinary Theory, Practice and Education: The Art
of Collaborative Research and Collective Learning, Fam, Neuhauser and Gibbs
supply a valuable resource for all those interested in transdisciplinary research.
Adopting an international perspective, the editors recognize the importance of
thinking about transdisciplinarity broadly. This emphasis on breadth is reflected in
the book’s helpful structure, which combines the perspectives of theorists, educa-
tional experts and transdisciplinary practitioners from around the world. Theorists
will profit from the first part, which contains a wide-ranging set of chapters that
supply conceptual clarification, a history of transdisciplinarity, and discussions of
the nature and reach of transdisciplinary thinking and learning. The second part is
especially valuable – it contains a number of insightful contributions that address
the need for more systematic and practical discussion of transdisciplinary educa-
tion. Finally, the third part presents several detailed case studies that address trans-
disciplinary integration challenges in a number of contexts, including those of

vii
viii Endorsement

Indigenous worlds, the spaces occupied by migrant factory workers, and art/science
collaborations. All in all, this book should be of significant value for anyone engaged
in transdisciplinary practice, including researchers, teachers and community
partners.
Professor Michael O’Rourke,
Department of Philosophy Faculty,
Michigan State University
In the face of current public and environmental problems, which are often not
just complex but also ‘wicked’ (meaning that they defy a definitive solution as each
attempt to solve them implies that some elements are foregrounded whilst others
necessarily neglected) academic and extra-academic experts and stakeholders feel
an urgency to join forces. Recognizing that disciplinary specializations can yield
deep knowledge of isolated elements yet is incapable of comprehending the com-
plex and dynamic systems in which such elements figure, working alone risks miss-
ing the problem. Such collaborations are necessary for developing solutions that
work not just in computer simulations or laboratoria but also in the messy world
where natural processes unexpectedly change their course and people can behave in
meaningful yet nonetheless surprising ways. To reach that goal, not just interdisci-
plinary but novel transdisciplinary methods of research are required that integrate
not just different disciplines but also extra-academic perspectives. Students must
familiarize themselves with these methods, which are also linked to novel approaches
like action research, participatory research and design science. Particularly given a
shared awareness that this task cannot be performed by experts in isolation, this cre-
ates what I have called elsewhere a paradox of our education: Can we prepare our
university students for life in such future hybrid academic and non-academic
environments?
Bearing this background in mind, this very rich volume is indeed a very timely
book: it makes fresh connections between geographically and methodologically
distinct approaches to transdisciplinary research, and it offers convincing examples
of applying such transdisciplinary research in an educational setting, while also
reflecting on the challenges, risks and benefits of this endeavour. For it is by no
means a modest task for experts, for students or for extra-academic stakeholders, to
share each other’s experiences, ideas, interests and norms regarding the complex
problem that brings them together. Indeed, seeking a joint solution for this requires
that they co-develop the whole process, including the determination of what actu-
ally the problem is – whilst all along reflecting upon and articulating their different
normative and socio-cultural positions that might impede this process.
Such a transdisciplinary research has been developed particularly in the context
of sustainability and public health problems, yet this volume also demonstrates its
viability in other domains, including the arts and social sciences. Indeed, upon read-
Endorsement ix

ing this very well-composed collection, the reader is invited to reflect not just about
disciplines and problems but to engage in reflection upon what it is to live, work and
think together on our planet.
Reflective equilibrium is an integrative and normatively conscious process that
could help to jointly discuss the methodological and theoretical pluralism offered
here, and co-decide about our attentive actions upon balancing this pluralism against
the principles and norms relevant for the problems and ourselves.
Dr. Machiel Keestra,
Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies (IIS),
University of Amsterdam
I thoroughly enjoyed Transdisciplinary Theory, Practice and Education: The Art
of Collaborative Research and Collective Learning edited by Dena Fam, Linda
Neuhauser and Paul Gibbs. I have been interested in learning more about how
researchers and teachers were integrating TD in pedagogy in different educational
contexts around the world. This book covers just that. It gives an overview of differ-
ent ways of doing TD research and teaching in Australia, China, Switzerland, the
USA and the UK. It also offers a broad theoretical discussion which brings together
diverse discourses that have not always spoken to one another or taken advantage of
parallel trains of intellectual development in diverse fields such as collaborative
learning, design theory, innovation approaches and systems theory, to name but a
few. Different case studies also include a variety of concrete methods and ways of
working together that promote different examples of boundary breaking collabora-
tion, such as communities of practice, design competitions, field trips and living
labs. The chapters that dealt with different types of transdisciplinary pedagogy
within university settings were inspiring. The chapters that discussed more open
change processes in problem-solving contexts that extended beyond the university
also opened my mind to new possibilities when working across different cultural
and intellectual divides.
This book raises some challenging questions. For example, what role can TD
pedagogy have in present day university systems? How can TD approaches to learn-
ing and teaching contribute to present day sustainability challenges? What are the
institutional barriers to such pedagogy? In some of the more ideologically based
chapters, I also found myself provoked and inspired by metaphorical writing which
suggest other positions and possibilities for research and education based on indi-
vidual values, self-knowledge, feelings and being. While multiple epistemologies
and ontologies are gaining ground in many subject areas as the basis for more effec-
tive ways of dealing with present day sustainability challenges, such approaches
sometimes contest the very foundations of what research and education have tradi-
tionally stood for. This forced me to ask myself an unfamiliar question, namely can
x Endorsement

one go too far in opening up to different claims to knowledge and still call oneself a
researcher and/or educator? What quality standards should or could we apply to TD
research and education? I will be returning to this book, and its innumerable ideas,
arguments, concrete examples and references that deserve further thought and
consideration.
Dr Merritt Polk
School of Global Studies
University of Gothenburg
Contents

Part I Theorising Transdisciplinarity As a Collaborative Practice

1 Introduction – The Art of Collaborative Research
and Collective Learning: Transdisciplinary Theory,
Practice and Education����������������������������������������������������������������������������    3
Paul Gibbs, Linda Neuhauser, and Dena Fam
2 Learning in Transdisciplinary Collaborations: A Conceptual
Vocabulary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   11
Julie Thompson Klein
3 Practical and Scientific Foundations of Transdisciplinary
Research and Action��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   25
Linda Neuhauser
4 Transforming Transdisciplinarity: An Expansion of Strong
Transdisciplinarity and Its Centrality in Enabling Effective
Collaboration��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   39
Katie Ross and Cynthia Mitchell
5 The Role of Pliability and Transversality Within Trans/Disciplinarity:
Opening University Research and Learning
to Planetary Health����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   57
Jason Prior, Carole M. Cusack, and Anthony Capon
6 The Transdisciplinary Evolution of the University Condition
for Sustainable Development������������������������������������������������������������������   73
Basarab Nicolescu

xi
xii Contents

Part II Transdisciplinary Learning (Education)

7 Meta-considerations for Planning, Introducing and
Standardising Inter and Transdisciplinary Learning
in Higher Degree Institutions������������������������������������������������������������������   85
Dena Fam, Tania Leimbach, Scott Kelly, Lesley Hitchens,
and Michelle Callen
8 Transdisciplinarity: Towards an Epistemology
of What Matters �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 103
Kate Maguire
9 Transdisciplinarity and the ‘Living Lab Model’: Food Waste
Management As a Site for Collaborative Learning������������������������������ 117
Alexandra Crosby, Dena Fam, and Abby Mellick Lopes
10 Nurturing Transdisciplinary Graduate Learning and Skills
Through a Community of Practice Approach �������������������������������������� 133
Chris Riedy, Cynthia Mitchell, Juliet Willetts, and Ian Cunningham
11 Making Collective Learning Coherent: An Adaptive Approach
to the Practice of Transdisciplinary Pedagogy����������������������������������    151
Elizabeth Clarke and Craig Ashhurst
12 Making the Link Between Transdisciplinary Learning
and Research�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 167
BinBin Pearce, Carolina Adler, Lisette Senn, Pius Krütli,
Michael Stauffacher, and Christian Pohl
13 Collective Learning in an Industry-­Education-­Research
Test Bed���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 185
Tanja Golja, Shilo McClean, and Krista Jordan

Part III Transdisciplinary Case Studies

14 Shielding Indigenous Worlds from Extraction
and the Transformative Potential of Decolonizing
Collaborative Research���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 203
Jason De Santolo (Garrwa & Barunggam)
15 Collaborative Research and Action: The Changzhou
Worker Wellness Project ������������������������������������������������������������������������ 221
Linda Neuhauser, Xiaodong Wang, Yun Hong, Xiaoming Sun,
Zhanhong Zong, Xingyu Shu, Jingshu Mao, Eve Wen-Jing Lee,
and Sono Aibe
Contents xiii

16 Creative Partnerships and Cultural Organisations: “Enabling”

and “Situating” Arts–Science Collaboration
and Collective Learning�������������������������������������������������������������������������� 241
Tania Leimbach and Keith Armstrong
17 Climate Adapted People Shelters: A Transdisciplinary
Reimagining of Public Infrastructure Through Open,
Design-Led Innovation���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 257
Brent Jacobs, Jochen Schweitzer, Lee Wallace, Suzanne Dunford,
and Sarah Barns
18 Reflections on Collective Learning: Open and Closed ������������������������ 275
Valerie A. Brown
19 Philosophical Reflections: A Coda���������������������������������������������������������� 289
Paul Gibbs
Contributors

Carolina Adler (née Roman), an environmental scientist and geographer, has a

career spanning both research and practice in the public and private sectors. She
obtained her PhD at Monash University (Australia) in 2010, focusing on climate
change adaptation in mountain regions. The relevance and significance of her work
to policy led to an invitation to join the Society for Policy Scientists. She served as
Vice President in its Executive Council. She was awarded with the 2010 Harold
D. Lasswell Prize for best dissertation in public policy. She is a Research Fellow at
the Environmental Philosophy Group and Transdisciplinarity Lab (TdLab) at ETH
Zurich in Switzerland. She is also Executive Director of the Mountain Research
Initiative, an organization hosted by the Swiss Academies of Sciences. In this role,
she is tasked with coordinating scientific research and networks on global change in
mountains.

Sono Aibe Master of Health Science (MHS), is Senior Advisor for Strategic
Initiatives at Pathfinder International. She works closely with Pathfinder’s executive
leadership to strategize and expand Pathfinder’s sexual and reproductive health pro-
gramme development and design, especially in the Asia region. She is also advanc-
ing Pathfinder’s global and field advocacy strategies, serving as the technical lead
for integrated reproductive health and environmental conservation programmes in
East Africa, and developing new partnerships worldwide. She holds degrees from
Harvard University and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Keith Armstrong’s engaged, participative practices have long provoked audiences

to comprehend, imagine and envisage collective pathways towards sustainable
futures. He has exhibited widely in major international new media festivals, bienni-
als and galleries and has produced major commissions at the Powerhouse Museum,
the Queensland Museum, the China Science and Technology Museum, Beijing, and
Media Art China amongst many others.

xv
xvi Contributors

Craig Ashhurst’s background is diverse, with time spent as a bookseller, youth

worker, teacher, developer of educational software and management consultant.
Teaching and learning have been a central thread linking his various roles. Craig has
taught from kindergarten to the postgraduate level and holds multiple qualifications
in education. His master’s thesis was a study on ‘wicked problems’, those complex
social problems with multiple stakeholders. Since 2013 he has been working on his
PhD, titled ‘One-Team – Where Worlds Collide’. His thesis explores collisions of
worldviews in developing policy related to wicked problems. He is based in the
Fenner School at the Australian National University and his research is being con-
ducted in association with the Federal Attorney General’s Department. Craig formed
his own company in 1995 and has worked in both the private and public sectors,
mostly with large organizations or departments. His company, Niche Thinking Pty
Ltd, has done consultancy work with a focus on innovation, strategic thinking, facil-
itation, design and translation across a range of disciplines. He has specialized in
facilitating the thinking of diverse groups of stakeholders facing complex
problems.

Sarah Barns is an urban researcher, digital producer and strategist whose work
focuses on place-making and the disruptive potential of digital transformation in
cities. Her work spans industry innovation, place-making and smart cities. She
delivers advisory, design strategy and consulting services to a range of government
and private sector clients. Sarah was awarded a UK Urban Studies Foundation
Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in 2013 through Western Sydney University to
address the urban governance and policy implications of data-driven methodologies
for strategic planning and civic participation. The fellowship involved residencies in
New York and London addressing the use of urban science in local governance
contexts. She has led the digital place-making studio Esem Projects since 2010 and
has a passion for the role of place and urban design in fostering connected and resil-
ient communities.

Valerie A. Brown AO, BSc, MEd, PhD, is currently Professorial Fellow and
Director, Local Sustainability Project, at the Fenner School of Environment and
Society, Australian National University. She is Emeritus Professor of the University
of Western Sydney and was its Foundation Chair of Environmental Health 1996–
2002. The Local Sustainability Project is a collective action research programme
working in Australia and internationally with organizations, local government and
communities on whole-of-community change 1989–2016. Her recent books are The
Human Capacity for Transformational Change (with John Harris, Routledge 2014);
Tackling Wicked Problems Through the Transdisciplinary Imagination (also with
John Harris, Earthscan 2010); Collective Learning for Transformational Change
(with Judith Lambert, Routledge 2013); Sustainability and Health (with John
Grootjans et al., Allen and Unwin 2005); and Social Learning and Environmental
Management (with Meg Keen and Robert Dyball, Earthscan 2005). Her website is
www.valeriebrown.com.au
Contributors xvii

Michelle Callen has a diverse communications background spanning publishing,

politics and currently higher education. Being the first in her family to benefit from
a university education instilled a belief in the transformative power of education and
the importance of a quality, accessible and equitable higher education system.
Working at the University of Technology Sydney has provided an insight into creat-
ing an educational experience that truly equips graduates with the skills needed for
their future careers, whatever they may be. Involvement in a project to help develop
interdisciplinary courses sparked a determination to understand and articulate the
difference between interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary education. The project
has become an ongoing pathway to identifying and tackling institutional barriers to
enabling cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary learning,
research and collaboration.

Anthony Capon is the inaugural Professor of Planetary Health at the University of

Sydney. A former director of the global health institute at United Nations University
(UNU-IIGH), Tony is a public health physician and authority on environmental
health and health promotion. For more than 20 years, he has been leading transdis-
ciplinary research and capacity building efforts on the broad theme of urbanization,
sustainable development and human health. Since 2008, he has advised the
International Council for Science (ICSU) on their global interdisciplinary science
programme on health and well-being in the changing urban environment using sys-
tems approaches. Tony is a member of The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet
Commission on Planetary Health which published its report ‘Safeguarding Human
Health in the Anthropocene Epoch’ in 2015. He has served in numerous honorary
leadership roles with professional and not-for-profit organizations including the
International Society for Urban Health and the Frank Fenner Foundation.

Elizabeth Clarke is a transdisciplinary researcher and practitioner with interests

spanning complex integrated systems, sustainability science, research–policy
engagement in development and knowledge management. She has a background in
natural resource and rural systems research and development. She is a Research
Fellow in the Leverage Points for Sustainability Transformation Project at Leuphana
University’s Institute for Ethics, Transdisciplinarity and Sustainability in Germany,
as well as Lecturer at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian
National University, where she teaches society and environmental change, sustain-
able rural systems, and research methods, design and practice. She has extensive
experience in international research for development and has worked in senior roles
with the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
These roles have been with the Consortium of the International Agricultural
Research Centres, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry
Areas (ICARDA) and WorldFish. Prior to that, she worked with the Australian
Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) in knowledge manage-
ment, communications, research management, government liaison and
governance.
xviii Contributors

Alexandra Crosby is the Director of Interdisciplinary Design at the University of

Technology Sydney. She studied Visual Communications and International Studies,
completing her PhD in 2013 on local environmentalism enacted through site-based
creative community events in contemporary Indonesia. She has worked extensively
on cross-cultural projects in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. She develops and
uses interdisciplinary research methods, such as hybrid forms of mapping and par-
ticipatory futuring, to understand the complexity of current situations and commu-
nicate possible futures. She is part of the Mapping Edges research studio.

Ian Cunningham is an environmental engineer and researcher who works at the

intersection of engineering, appropriate technology and social change. His practi-
tioner experience has predominantly been within the civil society and tertiary edu-
cation sectors. His work has included the design of programmes in Australia which
integrate traditional knowledge and Western science, and programmes in South and
South-East Asia which involve working with grassroots organizations in the areas of
energy, education, water supply and sanitation. Currently, he is a PhD researcher
with the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney,
exploring the role of strength-based approaches in citizen-led rural water supply in
the Asia-Pacific region.

Carole M. Cusack is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney.

She trained as a medievalist and her doctorate was published as Conversion Among
the Germanic Peoples (Cassell 1998). She researches and teaches on contemporary
religious trends (pilgrimage and tourism, modern pagan religions, new religious
movements, and religion and popular culture). Her books include Invented Religions:
Imagination, Fiction and Faith (Ashgate 2010), The Sacred Tree: Ancient and
Medieval Manifestations (Cambridge Scholars 2011), and (with Katharine Buljan)
Anime, Religion, and Spirituality: Profane and Sacred Worlds in Contemporary
Japan (Equinox 2014). She has published widely in edited volumes and journals
and is the editor (with Alex Norman) of Handbook of New Religions and Cultural
Production (Brill 2012) and (with Pavol Kosnáč) Fiction, Invention and Hyper-­
reality: From Popular Culture to Religion (Routledge 2017). With Rachelle Scott
(University of Tennessee, Knoxville) she is editor of Fieldwork in Religion
(Equinox).

Jason De Santolo (Garrwa & Barunggam) is a researcher, creative producer and

father committed to forging a sustainable world for future generations through
transformative research strategies, storytelling and practices of renewal. He is cur-
rently a Senior Researcher at Jumbunna Institute at the University of Technology
Sydney. Born in Larrakia homelands – Darwin, his tribal affiliations are Garrwa and
Barunggam. He moved to Aoteaoroa/NZ at an early age, growing up to eventually
study treaty and international environmental law. His unique research practice inte-
grates video, creative practice and renewal strategies through a Garrwa-driven
decolonizing research paradigm. In 2014, he received a UTS Research Excellence
Contributors xix

Scholarship to undertake a creative doctorate that explores the renewal of song tra-
ditions through his passion for filmmaking and collective aspirations for self-deter-
mination and sustainable autonomy.

Suzanne Dunford is a Principal Project Officer at the NSW Office of Environment

and Heritage. She has been working in the field of climate change since 1998 in a
variety of state government agencies and roles, in diverse areas including renewable
energy, energy efficiency, planning policy, urban greening, community resilience,
climate change and communications. Most recently, her work has focused on how
systems and communities adapt to climate impacts and on developing tools and
resources that build adaptive capacity in NSW.

Dena Fam is a system thinker and transdisciplinary collaborator at the Institute for
Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney. Over the last decade
Dena has worked with industry, government and community actors to collabora-
tively manage, design, research and trial alternative water and sanitation systems
with the aim of sustainably managing sewage and reducing its environmental impact
on the water cycle. Her consulting/research experience has spanned the socio-­
cultural (learning for sustainability), institutional (policy analysis) and technologi-
cal aspects of environmental management. With experience in transdisciplinary
project development, Dena has increasingly been involved in developing processes
for teaching and learning in transdisciplinary programmes and projects. In particu-
lar, she has been involved in documenting and synthesizing processes/methods/
techniques supporting the development of transdisciplinary educational pro-
grammes and projects. Dena has led and co-led international transdisciplinary net-
working events, grants and projects, including an Australian-funded teaching and
learning grant.

Paul Gibbs is Director of Education Research at the University of Middlesex. He is

a professor of the university, founder of the Centre for Education Research and
Scholarship and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Open University in Hong
Kong and the University of Cyprus. In 2017, he published three books: Why
Universities Should Seek Happiness and Contentment; The Pedagogy of Compassion
at the Heart of Higher Education; and Transdisciplinary Higher Education: A
Theoretical Basis Revealed in Practice. He is also series editor of two series of
books for Springer Academic Press: ‘SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in Education’
and ‘Debating Higher Education: Philosophical Perspectives’. He writes on the
marketing of higher education.

Tanja Golja PhD, is a researcher in design education and educational design at the
University of Technology Sydney. She has a special interest in understanding the
design of principled transdisciplinary learning environments and theoretically
sound educational development. As Head of Transdisciplinary Education Innovation,
she is leading the educational design and development of a suite of cutting-edge
xx Contributors

transdisciplinary programmes (including the award-winning Bachelor of Creative

Intelligence and Innovation, the Master of Data Science and Innovation, the
Bachelor of Technology and Innovation and the Graduate Certificate in
Transdisciplinary Learning), in collaboration with industry and multidisciplinary
academic teams.

Lesley Hitchens is Professor of Law at University of Technology Sydney and, since

2013, Dean of the Faculty of Law. She practised as a lawyer in Australia and London
and has held academic appointments at English and Australian universities. Her
main research area is media and communications regulation, with a particular focus
on the relationship between media policy and regulation, and, more recently, the
impact of new media on traditional regulatory approaches. Her research also has a
comparative focus, concentrating on Australia, the UK (and the EU) and the USA.

Yun Hong is Secretary-General of the Changzhou Family Planning Association,

China. Her practice is focused on community health promotion.

Brent Jacobs is a Research Director working in natural resources and climate

change adaptation at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of
Technology Sydney. Brent’s background is in agricultural science. He has gained
broad experience in agricultural systems and ecophysiology through teaching and
research in universities in Australia and internationally. Brent has worked in the
areas of natural resource management, structural adjustment and development of
assistance packages to accompany natural resource reforms for the NSW
Government. His current research interests include the development of integrated
techniques to assess the resilience, vulnerability and adaptive capacity of communi-
ties in the development of climate adaptation strategies. Brent leads the Adaptive
Communities Node of the NSW Government’s Climate Adaptation Research Hub.
In quieter moments, he contemplates how an agronomist came to be doing transdis-
ciplinary research on bus shelter design.

Krista Jordan is a Development Manager for ‘Animal Logic’. She has worked in
the digital film, advertising and television industry for over 20 years. After complet-
ing a Bachelor of Visual Communication at the University of Technology Sydney,
she began her career working on commercials for clients including Qantas, Lexus,
Kelloggs and Visa. Her feature film credits include Babe, Moulin Rouge, The
Matrix, Matrix: Reloaded, The Thin Red Line, Hero and Happy Feet. Later in her
career her interest in the human component of creative practice inspired her to move
into the areas of human resources and learning and development. Previous roles
include creative and technical recruiter and Head of Recruiting and Human
Resources (Flying Bark Productions).

Scott Kelly is a Research Director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures. He is an

interdisciplinary researcher with qualifications in both natural and social sciences.
He has taught and practised within the disciplines of engineering, economics, risk
Contributors xxi

analysis, sustainable development and climate change policy. Scott has a passion for
using computational methods and data analytics for modelling complex real-world
problems. He has held academic appointments at both British and Australian
Universities. Scott received his Ph.D. in 2013 and in 2015 was elected as a Junior
Research Fellow of Darwin College. He holds research affiliations with the
Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies and the Energy Policy Research Group at the
University of Cambridge. He has published over a dozen peer-reviewed journal
articles and multiple book chapters covering subjects such as energy systems,
economics, catastrophe modelling, climate change policy and sustainable
development.

Julie Thompson Klein is Professor of Humanities Emerita at Wayne State

University in Detroit. She has also been a Visiting Foreign Professor in Japan, a
Fulbright Professor in Nepal, a Foundation Visitor at the University of Auckland in
New Zealand and Mellon Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of
Michigan. She has a PhD in English from the University of Oregon, and is past
president of the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS), a former editor of
the Association of Interdisciplinary Studies Journal Issues in Interdisciplinary
Studies, and a recipient of the Kenneth Boulding Award for outstanding scholarship
on interdisciplinarity. Her books include Interdisciplinarity (l990); Interdisciplinary
Studies Today (1994); Crossing Boundaries (1996); Transdisciplinarity (2001);
Interdisciplinary Education in K-12 and College (2002); Humanities, Culture, and
Interdisciplinarity (2005); Creating Interdisciplinary Campus Cultures (2010); and
Interdisciplining Digital Humanities (2015). She is associate editor of the Oxford
Handbook on Interdisciplinarity (2010, 2016) and co-editor of the University of
Michigan Press series: Digital Humanities@digitalculturebooks.

Pius Krütli is senior scientist and co-director of the Transdisciplinarity Lab (TdLab)
of the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich (www.tdlab.
usys.ethz.ch). He studied environmental sciences at ETH Zurich. His PhD was
about repository siting for nuclear waste with a special focus on justice. Pius has
widened his justice-related research in recent years to other topics like medicine and
sustainability. Justice is an important consideration in sustainability, and it has
become a focus of his research and teaching activities. Transdisciplinarity is a major
vehicle and approach in all these activities.

Eve Wen-Jing Lee MA, is Special Advisor for Asian Projects at the Health Research
for Action Center, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley
(USA). She has long been an advocate for women’s health issues, reproductive
health and rights. She was a Programme Officer of the Ford Foundation’s China
office for 9 years, and her work included designing, managing, developing, moni-
toring and evaluating programmes in the fields of sexuality, reproductive health and
rights in China and the Asia region. She was also a Senior Consultant for Pathfinder
International and the Population Council, and Vice President of the Public Media
xxii Contributors

Center, a public interest advocacy and communication agency providing technical

assistance and institutional capacity for China’s NGOs.

Tania Leimbach teaches in the Design Architecture and Building, School of Design
and the Faculty of Social Science, School of Communication at the University of
Technology Sydney. She has worked in exhibition design, curating and collections
management for public and private galleries, and has professional experience in
visual art and design education across a range of learning environments, including
museums, secondary schools and tertiary education. Her current research involves a
review of sustainability in the tertiary sector and developments in the integration of
sustainability into tertiary curricula across disciplines and diverse learning
contexts.

Abby Mellick Lopes is a design theorist with 15 years’ practical and academic
experience in the field of design for sustainability. She is currently Senior Lecturer
in the visual communications programme at Western Sydney University, and a
member of the Digital Humanities Research Group and the Institute for Culture and
Society (ICS). Her current research projects explore the liveability of Western
Sydney in a climate-changed future, and repair cultures in Sydney. She also
researches in visual communications and has a long-standing interest in how image
ecologies mediate socio-material relationships, which was the topic of her PhD
titled ‘Ecology of the image’ (2005). She publishes widely, most recently contribut-
ing several chapters to The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design (2016). In 2015,
she co-edited a special issue on design and social practice theory for the interna-
tional Journal of Design Research (with Dr. Dena Fam), and another for the Global
Media Journal: Australian Edition, entitled ‘Initiating Change by Design’.

Kate Maguire is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Professional and Social

Sciences at Middlesex University, London, and Director of its transdisciplinary doc-
toral programmes. Her background is in social anthropology of the Middle East,
trauma psychotherapy and authority dynamics. Since coming into higher education,
she has engaged in developing innovative research pedagogies and methodologies
relevant to professional practice. She has delivered papers on transdisciplinarity,
aligning it to anthropology and examining its relevance to the contemporary pursuit
of answers to complex micro and macro problems. She was drawn to professional
practice research for the same reasons she remains informed by anthropology: to
focus on the interconnectedness of knowledges rather than their separation.
Co-generated knowledge has a role in creating the conditions for a more equitable
share in decision-making processes to improve the societies in which we live.

Jingsu Mao MD, is Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at
Nanjing Youdian University, China. She is also Director of the Department of Public
Management at Nanjing Youdian University’s School of Humanities and Social
Sciences. Her teaching, research and practice are focused on studies of population
and maternal and child health in China.
Contributors xxiii

Shilo McClean PhD, is the author of the books: The Digital Playing Fields: New
Rulz for Film, Art and Performance (Currency House, July 2010), Digital
Storytelling: The Narrative Power of Visual Effects in Film (MIT Press, 2007, 2008,
2009) and So What’s This All About Then: A Non-user’s Guide for Digital Effects in
Film (AFTRS 1998). She was a consultant to Animal Logic on the production of
their Art of the Legend of the Guardians book (2012) and was the University of
Technology Sydney (UTS) producer of Data Arena Showreel, a 360° 3D stereo-
scopic computer-generated immersive film by Animal Logic released in 2015. The
Data Arena Showreel continues to screen in UTS’ bespoke Data Arena screening
space. Currently, Professor McClean is Head of the UTS Animal Logic Academy
and Chair of the Sydney ACM SIGGRAPH Professional Chapter.

Cynthia Mitchell’s passion for improving our collective ability to articulate, do and
value transdisciplinary research began when an engineering professor said of her
research student’s work, ‘I just can’t see a PhD in this’, and an education professor
said ‘I can see three’. Cynthia is Deputy Director and Professor of Sustainability at
the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney, where
she has been pioneering transdisciplinary research since 2001, principally in learn-
ing, water services and international development. She founded, and for 13 years
directed, the Institute’s higher degree research programme. Her research has won
national and international awards from academia and industry. She has an honorary
doctorate from Chalmers University in Sweden for her interdisciplinary work for
the environment, and is a fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and
Engineering, a fellow of Engineers Australia and a fellow of the Institute of
Community Directors of Australia.

Linda Neuhauser is Clinical Professor of Community Health Sciences at the School

of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley (USA), and is Visiting Professor
in the Department of Social and Population Sciences at Nanjing Youdian University
(Nanjing, China). She is also Co-Principal Investigator of the Health Research for
Action Center (HRA) at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Her teaching,
research and practice are focused on using participatory methods across disciplines
and societal sectors to engage diverse groups to identify and solve problems. She and
her colleagues have used participatory and transdisciplinary methods to co-create,
co-implement and co-evaluate health and social interventions in many countries.

Basarab Nicolescu is an honorary theoretical physicist at the Centre National De

La Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). He is a professor at the Babeş-Bolyai University
in Romania and at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He is a member of the
Romanian Academy and president and founder of the International Center for
Transdisciplinary Research and Studies (CIRET). His publications include Science,
Meaning and Evolution: The Cosmology of Transdisciplinary and From Modernity
to Cosmodernity. His most recent book, The Hidden Third, is the English translation
of Théorèmes Poetètiques. He has lived in France since 1968.
xxiv Contributors

BinBin Pearce is a lecturer, curriculum developer, and researcher at ETH Zurich in

the Department of Environmental Systems Science. Her focus is on developing tools
and methods that foster students’ ability to perceive and resolve complexity in the
real world with clarity and creativity. She is a part of the teaching team for a year-
long course for first-year bachelor students, ‘Umweltproblemlösen’ (Environmental
Problem Solving) and for a masters-level course called ‘Transdisciplinary case
study’. She is also the coordinator and coach for the Transdisciplinarity Lab Winter
School ‘Science meets Practice’, a week-long training programme which aims to
enable PhD students from all disciplines to see how perspectives in research can be
interpreted for societal needs. She completed her bachelor’s and master’s study in
environmental engineering at Stanford University and obtained her PhD from the
Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Christian Pohl with a PhD in environmental sciences and a habilitation degree

from the University of Bern, is co-director of the Transdisciplinarity Lab of the
Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich (www.tdlab.usys.
ethz.ch). TdLab is in charge of the department’s transdisciplinary case study teach-
ing. Christian Pohl studied environmental science, followed by a doctoral thesis on
uncertainty in environmental assessments. As a postdoc, he moved to the field of
science studies and analysed interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. Over
the last decade he has contributed to the development of the theory and practice of
transdisciplinary research, specifically in the field of sustainable development (cf.
Principles for Designing Transdisciplinary Research, Handbook of Transdisciplinary
Research, and Methods for Transdisciplinary Research). Together with td-net of the
Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, he has developed a compilation of methods
for coproducing knowledge.

Jason Prior is a Research Director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the
University of Technology Sydney. As an architect, planner, urban sociologist and
legal geographer, Jason’s programme of transdisciplinary research focuses on pro-
cesses of spatial governance across a range of disciplines including law, architec-
ture, property rights, planning and environmental management. Whilst at ISF Jason
has led over 20 research projects on spatial governance in relation to sexuality,
religion, health and well-being, and environmental risk amongst other topics, with a
particular focus on how spatial governance influences issues of equity, vulnerability
and resilience. His research has been carried out in Australia, France, Italy, the
People’s Republic of China, the USA, Canada and the UK, and arises through col-
laboration with national and international research institutions, government, indus-
try, communities and the spatial professions. Jason’s research has been published
widely in a diverse range of journals including Urban Studies, Environment and
Planning A, Journal of Sex Research, Urban Policy and Research, Critical Social
Policy, and the Journal of Cleaner Production. He recently completed a four-­volume
collection with Professor Carole Cusack (The University of Sydney) titled Religion,
Sexuality and Spirituality: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies (Routledge,
2016). See: https://m.uts.edu.au/staff/jason.prior
Contributors xxv

Chris Riedy is the Director of Higher Degree Research at the Institute for Sustainable
Futures at the University of Technology Sydney. Chris applies futures thinking, par-
ticipatory processes and social theory to practical experiments in transformative
change for sustainability. Between 2014 and 2016, he helped the Wintec Institute of
Technology in New Zealand to establish a new Master of Transdisciplinary Research
and Innovation. He runs workshops on cross-disciplinary supervision at the University
of Technology Sydney and is currently developing a transdisciplinary learning lab to
give research students a taste of transdisciplinary research. Chris is a Senior Research
Fellow of the Earth System Governance project and a member of the editorial boards
for Futures and the Journal of Futures Studies. He has published 35 peer-reviewed
articles, one book and more than 50 research reports. He writes a blog on thriving
within planetary boundaries called PlanetCentric (­ http://chrisriedy.me).

Katie Ross is curious about ways to create change. She wonders what types of
strategies and approaches work best in certain situations, and what ‘palette’ of
approaches leads to the most meaningful and well-directed change towards sustain-
able futures. Luckily, she is a Research Principal at the Institute for Sustainable
Futures at the University of Technology Sydney, where she can explore this interest
daily. She specializes in transdisciplinary action research that agitates for change in
social, technical and governance systems. Katie has more than 10 years’ experience
working in sustainable development, resilient service systems and innovative capac-
ity building. Since joining ISF in 2010, Katie has led and contributed to applied
research in ISF’s renewable energy, climate change mitigation/adaptation, water/
sanitation, international development and gender/equity research areas. Katie has
qualifications in environmental science (Columbia University) and sustainable
development (Victoria University / Macquarie University), and is pursuing her doc-
torate on the impact of tertiary transdisciplinary learning and service learning.

Jochen Schweitzer teaches Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship and is the

Director of the MBA Entrepreneurship at the University of Technology Sydney’s
Business School. He is also Founder/Director of U.lab, a multidisciplinary innova-
tion hub. Previously, he has worked as a design thinking coach, management con-
sultant, production-planning engineer and cultural programme coordinator. His
research, teaching and consulting focuses on issues of strategy, collaboration, entre-
preneurship and innovation with a special interest in design thinking, urban plan-
ning and open innovation. Jochen seeks to expand the capacity of strategy and
design into truly interdisciplinary and open opportunities for innovation and entre-
preneurship. He collaborates broadly and his work has been recognized internation-
ally and published in academic journals and books.

Lisette Senn worked for 11 years as a primary school teacher in Switzerland (in the
canton of Baselland). For 2 years she was a coach for pedagogical students to help
with strengthening practical teaching skills in the classroom. Lisette studied envi-
ronmental sciences at ETH Zurich and obtained a master’s degree in ecology and
evolution within the Department of Environmental Systems Science (D-USYS) in
xxvi Contributors

2012. She has also worked as a scientific assistant and officer at Agroscope, the
Switzerland’s research institute for agricultural sciences and biodiversity. Since
January 2013 she has been responsible for organizing a case study course
(Introduction to Environmental Engagement) for first-year bachelor’s students in
D-USYS. Since the fall of 2016, this course has been re-launched as ‘Environmental
Problem Solving’.

Xingyu Shu PHD, MPH, is Assistant Professor in the School of Humanities and
Social Sciences at Nanjing Youdian University, China. He is also a researcher at the
Institute of Population and Health at Nanjing Youdian University. His teaching,
research and practice are focused on population programme management and pub-
lic health in China.

Michael Stauffacher has a PhD in sociology and is a professor at ETH Zürich. He

is co-director of the Transdisciplinarity Lab of the Department of Environmental
Systems Science at ETH Zürich. He has been teaching and researching for more
than 20 years at ETH Zürich, has been a guest researcher at the Potsdam Institute
for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and at Lancaster University (UK), and has had
teaching appointments at Stellenbosch University (SA) and Leuphana University of
Lüneburg. He serves as President of the Swiss Academic Society for Environmental
Research-SAGUF and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Swiss Academy
of Humanities and Social Sciences-SAGW. In his teaching, he is interested in
project-­
based, student-centred and research-oriented learning. His teaching is
problem-­oriented and interdisciplinary. Close interaction with societal actors is of
key importance, both in developing teaching courses and in running the course. For
a full CV, teaching activities and list of publications, see http://www.tdlab.usys.ethz.
ch/people/person-detail.html?persid=79110

Xiaoming Sun MD, MS, is Professor in the School of Humanities and Social
Sciences at Nanjing Youdian University, China. He is also Director of the Institute
of Population and Health at Nanjing Youdian University. His teaching, research and
practice are focused on population health and evaluating the quality of services of
family planning and reproductive health in China.

Lee Wallace is a Design and Policy Officer with the Australian Government. She
has been working in the field of sustainability since 1994 in a variety of federal
government agencies and roles, in diverse areas including forestry, marine moor-
ings, natural resource management, tourism, sustainable housing and energy effi-
ciency. Recently, she has conducted research focusing on how innovation disrupts
systems and community responses, and on using tools, such as Human-Centred
Design, to engage communities in the co-design of solutions.
Contributors xxvii

Xiaodong Wang MD, is Deputy Director of Changzhou Health and Family Planning
Commission, China. His practice is focused on population development, reproduc-
tive health and family planning management in Changzhou city.

Juliet Willetts leads research to influence policy and practice in international devel-
opment. For more than a decade she has led transdisciplinary research projects in
this context, addressing the human right to water and sanitation and making contri-
butions to gender equality, sustainability, civil society’s role in development, and
innovation in monitoring and evaluation approaches. She has supervised transdisci-
plinary doctoral researchers since 2002 and has contributed to intellectual leader-
ship of the transdisciplinary higher degree research programme at the Institute for
Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney over many years. Juliet
serves as academic Co-Chair of the Research for Development Impact Network and
is a founding member of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Reference Group, a
policy reference group. She has received an international research award and mul-
tiple University of Technology Sydney awards for research excellence, human
rights and social justice, and was a finalist in the 2014 National Australia Bank’s
Women’s Leadership awards.

Zhanhong Zong PHD, MPH, is Associate Professor of the School of Economics at

Nanjing Youdian University, China. She is also a researcher at the Institute of
Population and Health at Nanjing Youdian University. Her teaching, research and
practice are focused on population statistics and young migrants’ living and health
status in China.
List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 The general design process (Roschuni 2012).

(Reproduced by permission of Celeste Nicole Roschuni)............... 34
Fig. 4.1 The impact of reinforcing versus balancing feedback
loops in collaboration, in regards to addressing
the root causes of wicked problems................................................. 43
Fig. 7.1 Defining integrative approaches to teaching
and learning..................................................................................... 88
Fig. 7.2 University of Technology Sydney (UTS) plans
for implementing disciplinary, interdisciplinary
and transdisciplinary programmes................................................... 91
Fig. 7.3 Word cloud: Create an interdisciplinary community
and culture....................................................................................... 92
Fig. 7.4 Word cloud: Interactively engage with industry
and external stakeholders................................................................ 93
Fig. 7.5 Word cloud: Understand external market dynamics....................... 94
Fig. 7.6 Word cloud: Operationalize and overcome transition
tensions early................................................................................... 95
Fig. 7.7 Word cloud: Plan for successful governance.................................. 96
Fig. 7.8 Word cloud: Design courses for innovation
and flexibility................................................................................... 97
Fig. 7.9 Word cloud: Ensure quality, rigour and relevance.......................... 98
Fig. 9.1 Overview of the scope of the Wealth from Waste
Living Lab (WfWLL)...................................................................... 127
Fig. 10.1 Nested communities of practice at the Institute
for Sustainable Futures (ISF)........................................................... 134
Fig. 10.2 Working together on a framework for assessing
theories of change............................................................................ 141
Fig. 10.3 Representing our common ground
with coloured yarn........................................................................... 147

xxix
xxx List of Figures

Fig. 11.1 Ever on the move: field trip buses as a prime example
of adaptive sociomaterial assemblages for collective
learning. (Photo by Craig Ashhurst 2011)....................................... 162
Fig. 14.1 Nancy McDinny: Markirra—Global Frackdown protest
poster image Borroloola, (2014)...................................................... 216
Fig. 15.1 The Changzhou Wellness House Logo selected by factory
workers (“Jian Khang” means “health”)..................................... 232
Fig. 15.2 Changzhou factory workers meet in their Wellness House
and use the Wellness Guide to plan discussions
with workers.................................................................................... 233
Fig. 16.1 Black nectar, LED and fibre optic panorama, Bundanon
SiteWorks, 2014. (Image: Sam James, Courtesy
of Bundanon Trust).......................................................................... 247
Fig. 16.2 Black nectar, fibre optic lit form, Bundanon SiteWorks, 2014.
(Image: Heidrun Lohr, Courtesy of Bundanon Trust)..................... 248
Fig. 16.3 Keith Armstrong, Over many horizons, UTS Art, Sydney, 2016.
(Image: Denis Beaubois)................................................................. 250
Fig. 16.4 Over many horizons, UTS Art, Sydney, 2016. (Image: David
Lawrey, courtesy of UTS Art)......................................................... 251
Fig. 17.1 (a and b) Map of urban heat islands in a typical Sydney
suburb showing their co-­location with major roads (left)
and an exposed suburban bus stop (right)........................................ 259
Fig. 17.2 (a and b) Preliminary design thinking workshops
were conducted with local bus shelter users
and employed techniques such as synthetic personas
to elicit community perspectives on current
service provision.............................................................................. 266
Fig. 17.3 The winning CAPS design submitted by MM Creative.................. 269
List of Tables

Table 2.1 Glossary of key terms for learning in transdisciplinary

collaborations................................................................................ 12
Table 4.1 A selection of supporting theoretical orientations
of strong transdisciplinarity.......................................................... 40
Table 4.2 The defining beliefs of the Cartesian-Newtonian
paradigm mapped to six meaning systems.................................... 42
Table 4.3 Vignettes from theorists who argue the Cartesian-
Newtonian paradigm is a driver of wicked complexities.............. 48
Table 4.4 Examples of visions for alternative mythic structures:
paradigmatic stretching and/or restructuring................................ 50
Table 10.1 Mapping strategies to activities implemented to build
and enrich our community of scholars.......................................... 137
Table 12.1 Competence fields analyzed in reference
to learning domains....................................................................... 171
Table 12.2 List of TdLab courses.................................................................... 173
Table 12.3 Learning objectives for each course corresponding
to competence fields...................................................................... 174
Table 12.4 Summary of relationship between competence fields
and learning domains.................................................................... 178
Table 12.5 Linkage between TdLab competence fields
and transdisciplinary design principles......................................... 180
Table 17.1 Description of the activities included in each stage
of the CAPS project and their anticipated timing......................... 264
Table 17.2 A series of insights from bus shelter users elicited
through the four CAPS Plan workshops that informed
the broadening of the competition judging criteria....................... 267
Table 18.1 Ways of thinking: open and closed
(Brown and Harris 2014).............................................................. 281
Table 19.1 Aristotelian ways of knowing, after Eikeland
(2008, p. 348)................................................................................ 294

xxxi
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
from the influence of his patronage; that is to say, to the whole body
of American citizens.
The electors are not independent; they have no superior
intelligence; they are not left to their own judgment in the choice of a
President; they are not above the control of the people; on the
contrary, every elector is pledged, before he is chosen, to give his vote
according to the will of those who choose him.
He is nothing but an agent, tied down to the execution of a precise
trust. Every reason which induced the convention to institute
electors has failed. They are no longer of any use, and may be
dangerous to the liberties of the people. They are not useful, because
they have no power over their own vote, and because the people can
vote for a President as easily as they can vote for an elector. They are
dangerous to the liberties of the people, because, in the first place,
they introduce extraneous considerations into the election of
President; and in the second place, they may sell the vote which is
intrusted to their keeping. They introduce extraneous considerations,
by bringing their own character and their own exertions into the
presidential canvass. Every one sees this. Candidates for electors are
now selected, not for the reasons mentioned in the Federalist, but for
their devotion to a particular party, for their manners, and their
talent at electioneering. The elector may betray the liberties of the
people, by selling his vote. The operation is easy, because he votes by
ballot; detection is impossible, because he does not sign his vote; the
restraint is nothing but his own conscience, for there is no legal
punishment for this breach of trust. If a swindler defrauds you out of
a few dollars of property or money, he is whipped and pilloried, and
rendered infamous in the eye of the law; but, if an elector should
defraud 40,000 people of their vote, there is no remedy but to abuse
him in newspapers, where the best men in the country may be
abused, as Benedict Arnold or Judas Iscariot.
Every reason for instituting electors has failed, and every
consideration of prudence requires them to be discontinued. They
are nothing but agents, in a case which requires no agent; and no
prudent man would, or ought, to employ an agent to take care of his
money, his property, or his liberty, when he is equally capable to take
care of them himself.
 But, if the plan of the constitution had not failed—if we were now
deriving from electors all the advantages expected from their
institution—I, for one, would still be in favor of getting rid of them.
I should esteem the incorruptibility of the people, their
disinterested desire to get the best man for President, to be more
than a counterpoise to all the advantages which might be derived
from the superior intelligence of a more enlightened, but smaller,
and therefore, more corruptible body. I should be opposed to the
intervention of electors, because the double process of electing a man
to elect a man, would paralyze the spirit of the people, and destroy
the life of the election itself. Doubtless this machinery was
introduced into our constitution for the purpose of softening the
action of the democratic element; but it also softens the interest of
the people in the result of the election itself. It places them at too
great a distance from their first servant. It interposes a body of men
between the people and the object of their choice, and gives a false
direction to the gratitude of the President elected. He feels himself
indebted to the electors who collected the votes of the people, and
not to the people, who gave their votes to the electors.
It enables a few men to govern many, and, in time, it will transfer
the whole power of the election into the hands of a few, leaving to the
people the humble occupation of confirming what has been done by
superior authority.

IN MEMORIAM.

Hon. James G. Blaine’s Oration on President Garfield.

THE GRAND MORAL OF HIS CAREER.

An Elaborate, Polished and Scholarly Tribute by an Accomplished

Orator, in the Hall of the House of Representatives, on Monday,
Feb. 27, 1882.
At ten o’clock the doors of the House of Representatives were
opened to holders of tickets for the memorial services, and in less
than half an hour the galleries were filled, a large majority of the
spectators being ladies, mostly in black. There were no signs of
mourning in the hall, even the full-length portrait of the late
President, James Abram Garfield, painted by E. F. Andrews, of
Washington, being undraped. The three front rows of desks had been
replaced by chairs to accommodate the invited guests, and the
Marine Band was stationed in the lobby, back of the Speaker’s desk.
Among the distinguished guests first to arrive were George
Bancroft, W. W. Corcoran, Cyrus Field and Admiral Worden, who
took seats directly in front of the clerk’s desk. Among the guests who
occupied seats upon the floor were General Schenck, Governor Hoyt,
of Pennsylvania; Foster, of Ohio; Porter, of Indiana; Hamilton, of
Maryland, and Bigelow, of Connecticut, and Adjutant-General
Harmine, of Connecticut.
At 11.30 Generals Sherman, Sheridan, Hancock, Howard and
Meigs, and Admirals Ammen and Rodgers entered at the north door
of the chamber and were assigned seats to the left of the Speaker’s
desk, and a few moments later the members of the Diplomatic Corps,
in full regalia, were ushered in, headed by the Hawaiian Minister, as
dean of the Corps. The Supreme Court of the District, headed by
Marshal Henry, arrived next. Mrs. Blaine occupied a front seat in the
gallery reserved for friends of the President. At twelve o’clock the
House was called to order by Speaker Keifer, and prayer was offered
by the Chaplain. The Speaker then announced that the House was
assembled and ready to perform its part in the memorial services,
and the resolutions to that effect were read by Clerk McPherson. At
12.10 the Senate was announced, and that body, headed by its
officers, entered and took their assigned seats. The Chief Justice and
Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, in their robes of office,
came next, and were followed by President Arthur and his Cabinet.
The President took the front seat on the right of the Presiding
Officer’s chair, next to that occupied by Cyrus W. Field.
Senator Sherman and Representative McKinley (Ohio) occupied
seats at the desk on the right and left of the orator of the day. Mr.
West, the British Minister, was the only member of the Diplomatic
Corps who did not wear the court uniform.
A delegation of gentlemen from the Society of the Army of the
Cumberland acted as ushers at the main entrance to the Rotunda
and in the various corridors leading to the galleries.
 At 12.30 the orator of the day was announced, and after a short
prayer by the Chaplain of the House, F. D. Power, president Davis
said: “This day is dedicated by Congress for memorial services of the
late President of the United States, James A. Garfield. I present to
you the Hon. James G. Blaine, who has been fitly chosen as the
orator for this historical occasion.”
Mr. Blaine then rose, and standing at the clerk’s desk, immediately
in front of the two presiding officers, proceeded, with impressiveness
of manner and clearness of tone, to deliver his eulogy from
manuscript, as follows:
 Mr. Blaine’s Oration.

Mr. President: For the second time in this generation the great
departments of the Government of the United States are assembled
in the Hall of Representatives to do honor to the memory of a
murdered President. Lincoln fell at the close of a mighty struggle in
which the passions of men had been deeply stirred. The tragical
termination of his great life added but another to the lengthened
succession of horrors which had marked so many lintels with the
blood of the first born. Garfield was slain in a day of peace, when
brother had been reconciled to brother, and when anger and hate
had been banished from the land. “Whoever shall hereafter draw the
portrait of murder, if he will show it as it has been exhibited where
such example was last to have been looked for, let him not give it the
grim visage of Moloch, the brow knitted by revenge, the face black
with settled hate. Let him draw, rather, a decorous smooth-faced,
bloodless demon; not so much an example of human nature in its
depravity and in its paroxysms of crime, as an infernal being, a fiend
in the ordinary display and development of his character.”

GARFIELD’S ANCESTORS.

From the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth till the uprising

against Charles First, about twenty thousand emigrants came from
old England to New England. As they came in pursuit of intellectual
freedom and ecclesiastical independence rather than for worldly
honor and profit, the emigration naturally ceased when the contest
for religious liberty began in earnest at home. The man who struck
his most effective blow for freedom of conscience by sailing for the
colonies in 1620 would have been accounted a deserter to leave after
1640. The opportunity had then come on the soil of England for that
great contest which established the authority of Parliament, gave
religious freedom to the people, sent Charles to the block, and
committed to the hands of Oliver Cromwell the Supreme Executive
authority of England. The English emigration was never renewed,
and from these twenty thousand men with a small emigration from
Scotland and from France are descended the vast numbers who have
New England blood in their veins.
In 1685 the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis XIV.
scattered to other countries four hundred thousand Protestants, who
were among the most intelligent and enterprising of French subjects
—merchants of capital, skilled manufacturers, and handicraftsmen
superior at the time to all others in Europe. A considerable number
of these Huguenot French came to America; a few landed in New
England and became honorably prominent in its history. Their
names have in large part become anglicised, or have disappeared, but
their blood is traceable in many of the most reputable families, and
their fame is perpetuated in honorable memorials and useful
institutions.
From these two sources, the English-Puritan and the French-
Huguenot, came the late President—his father, Abram Garfield,
being descended from the one, and his mother, Eliza Ballou, from the
other.
It was good stock on both sides—none better, none braver, none
truer. There was in it an inheritance of courage, of manliness, of
imperishable love of liberty, of undying adherence to principle.
Garfield was proud of his blood; and, with as much satisfaction as if
he were a British nobleman reading his stately ancestral record in
Burke’s Peerage, he spoke of himself as ninth in descent from those
who would not endure the oppression of the Stuarts, and seventh in
descent from the brave French Protestants who refused to submit to
tyranny even from the Grand Monarque.
General Garfield delighted to dwell on these traits, and during his
only visit to England, he busied himself in discovering every trace of
his forefathers in parish registries and on ancient army rolls. Sitting
with a friend in the gallery of the House of Commons one night after
a long day’s labor in this field of research, he said with evident
elation that in every war in which for three centuries patriots of
English blood had struck sturdy blows for constitutional government
and human liberty, his family had been represented. They were at
Marston Moor, at Naseby and at Preston; they were at Bunker Hill,
at Saratoga, and at Monmouth, and in his own person had battled for
the same great cause in the war which preserved the Union of the
States.
Losing his father before he was two years old, the early life of
Garfield was one of privation, but its poverty has been made
indelicately and unjustly prominent. Thousands of readers have
imagined him as the ragged, starving child, whose reality too often
greets the eye in the squalid sections of our large cities. General
Garfield’s infancy and youth had none of their destitution, none of
their pitiful features appealing to the tender heart and to the open
hand of charity. He was a poor boy in the same sense in which Henry
Clay was a poor boy; in which Andrew Jackson was a poor boy; in
which Daniel Webster was a poor boy; in the sense in which a large
majority of the eminent men of America in all generations have been
poor boys. Before a great multitude of men, in a public speech, Mr.
Webster bore this testimony:

HIS EARLY DAYS.

“It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin, but my elder brothers and
sisters were born in a log cabin raised amid the snow drifts of New Hampshire, at a
period so early that when the smoke rose first from its rude chimney and curled
over the frozen hills there was no similar evidence of a white man’s habitation
between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada. Its remains still exist. I
make to it an annual visit. I carry my children to it to teach them the hardships
endured by the generations which have gone before them. I love to dwell on the
tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early affections and the touching
narratives and incidents which mingle with all I know of this primitive family
abode.”
With the requisite change of scene the same words would aptly
portray the early days of Garfield. The poverty of the frontier, where
all are engaged in a common struggle and where a common
sympathy and hearty co-operation lighten the burdens of each, is a
very different poverty, different in kind, different in influence and
effect from that conscious and humiliating indigence which is every
day forced to contrast itself with neighboring wealth on which it feels
a sense of grinding dependence. The poverty of the frontier is indeed
no poverty. It is but the beginning of wealth, and has the boundless
possibilities of the future always opening before it. No man ever grew
up in the agricultural regions of the West, where a house-raising, or
even a corn-husking, is a matter of common interest and helpfulness,
with any other feeling than that of broad-minded, generous
independence. This honorable independence marked the youth of
Garfield as it marks the youth of millions of the best blood and brain
now training for the future citizenship and future government of the
republic. Garfield was born heir to land, to the title of freeholder
which has been the patent and passport of self-respect with the
Anglo-Saxon race ever since Hengist and Horsa landed on the shores
of England. His adventure on the canal—an alternative between that
and the deck of a Lake Erie schooner—was a farmer boy’s device for
earning money, just as the New England lad begins a possibly great
career by sailing before the mast on a coasting vessel or on a
merchantman bound to the farther India or to the China Seas.
No manly man feels anything of shame in looking back to early
struggles with adverse circumstances, and no man feels a worthier
pride than when he has conquered the obstacles to his progress. But
no one of noble mould desires to be looked upon as having occupied
a menial position, as having been repressed by a feeling of inferiority,
or as having suffered the evils of poverty until relief was found at the
hand of charity. General Garfield’s youth presented no hardships
which family love and family energy did not overcome, subjected him
to no privations which he did not cheerfully accept, and left no
memories save those which were recalled with delight, and
transmitted with profit and with pride.
Garfield’s early opportunities for securing an education were
extremely limited, and yet were sufficient to develop in him an
intense desire to learn. He could read at three years of age, and each
winter he had the advantage of the district school. He read all the
books to be found within the circle of his acquaintance; some of them
he got by heart. While yet in childhood he was a constant student of
the Bible, and became familiar with its literature. The dignity and
earnestness of his speech in his maturer life gave evidence of this
early training. At eighteen years of age he was able to teach school,
and thenceforward his ambition was to obtain a college education.
To this end he bent all his efforts, working in the harvest field, at the
carpenter’s bench, and, in the winter season, teaching the common
schools of the neighborhood. While thus laboriously occupied he
found time to prosecute his studies and was so successful that at
twenty-two years of age he was able to enter the junior class at
Williams College, then under the presidency of the venerable and
honored Mark Hopkins, who, in the fullness of his powers, survives
the eminent pupil to whom he was of inestimable service.
The history of Garfield’s life to this period presents no novel
features. He had undoubtedly shown perseverance, self-reliance,
self-sacrifice, and ambition—qualities which, be it said for the honor
of our country, are everywhere to be found among the young men of
America. But from his graduation at Williams onward, to the hour of
his tragical death, Garfield’s career was eminent and exceptional.
Slowly working through his educational period, receiving his
diploma when twenty-four years of age, he seemed at one bound to
spring into conspicuous and brilliant success. Within six years he
was successively president of a college, State Senator of Ohio, Major
General of the Army of the United States and Representative-elect to
the National Congress. A combination of honors so varied, so
elevated, within a period so brief and to a man so young, is without
precedent or parallel in the history of the country.

IN THE ARMY.

Garfield’s army life was begun with no other military knowledge

than such as he had hastily gained from books in the few months
preceding his march to the field. Stepping from civil life to the head
of a regiment, the first order he received when ready to cross the
Ohio was to assume command of a brigade, and to operate as an
independent force in Eastern Kentucky. His immediate duty was to
check the advance of Humphrey Marshall, who was marching down
the Big Sandy with the intention of occupying in connection with
other Confederate forces the entire territory of Kentucky, and of
precipitating the State into secession. This was at the close of the
year 1861. Seldom, if ever, has a young college professor been thrown
into a more embarrassing and discouraging position. He knew just
enough of military science, as he expressed it himself, to measure the
extent of his ignorance, and with a handful of men he was marching,
in rough winter weather, into a strange country, among a hostile
population to confront a largely superior force under the command
of a distinguished graduate of West Point, who had seen active and
important service in two preceding wars.
The result of the campaign is matter of history. The skill, the
endurance, the extraordinary energy shown by Garfield, the courage
imparted to his men, raw and untried as himself, the measures he
adopted to increase his force and to create in the enemy’s mind
exaggerated estimates of his numbers, bore perfect fruit in the
routing of Marshall, the capture of his camp, the dispersion of his
force, and the emancipation of an important territory from the
control of the rebellion. Coming at the close of a long series of
disasters to the Union arms, Garfield’s victory had an unusual and
extraneous importance, and in the popular judgment elevated the
young commander to the rank of a military hero. With less than two
thousand men in his entire command, with a mobilized force of only
eleven hundred, without cannon, he had met an army of five
thousand and defeated them—driving Marshall’s forces successively
from two strongholds of their own selection, fortified with abundant
artillery. Major-General Buell, commanding the Department of the
Ohio, an experienced and able soldier of the regular army, published
an order of thanks and congratulation on the brilliant result of the
Big Sandy campaign which would have turned the head of a less cool
and sensible man than Garfield. Buell declared that his services had
called into action the highest qualities of a soldier, and President
Lincoln supplemented these words of praise by the more substantial
reward of a brigadier-general’s commission, to bear date from the
day of his decisive victory over Marshall.
The subsequent military career of Garfield fully sustained its
brilliant beginning. With his new commission he was assigned to the
command of a brigade in the Army of the Ohio, and took part in the
second and decisive day’s fight in the great battle of Shiloh. The
remainder of the year 1862 was not especially eventful to Garfield, as
it was not to the armies with which he was serving. His practical
sense was called into exercise in completing the task, assigned him
by General Buell, of reconstructing bridges and re-establishing lines
of railway communication for the army. His occupation in this useful
but not brilliant field was varied by service on courts-martial of
importance, in which department of duty he won a valuable
reputation, attracting the notice and securing the approval of the
able and eminent Judge-Advocate-General of the Army. That of itself
was a warrant to honorable fame; for among the great men who in
those trying days gave themselves, with entire devotion, to the
service of their country, one who brought to that service the ripest
learning, the most fervid eloquence, the most varied attainments,
who labored with modesty and shunned applause, who in the day of
triumph sat reserved and silent and grateful—as Francis Deak in the
hour of Hungary’s deliverance—was Joseph Holt, of Kentucky, who
in his honorable retirement enjoys the respect and veneration of all
who love the Union of the States.
Early in 1863 Garfield was assigned to the highly important and
responsible post of chief of staff to General Rosecrans, then at the
head of the Army of the Cumberland. Perhaps in a great military
campaign no subordinate officer requires sounder judgment and
quicker knowledge of men than the chief of staff to the commanding
general. An indiscreet man in such a position can sow more discord,
breed more jealousy and disseminate more strife than any other
officer in the entire organization. When General Garfield assumed
his new duties he found various troubles already well developed and
seriously affecting the value and efficiency of the Army of
Cumberland. The energy, the impartiality and the tact with which he
sought to allay these dissensions, and to discharge the duties of his
new and trying position, will always remain one of the most striking
proofs of his great versatility. His military duties closed on the
memorable field of Chickamauga, a field which however disastrous
to the Union arms gave to him the occasion of winning imperishable
laurels. The very rare distinction was accorded him of great
promotion for his bravery on a field that was lost. President Lincoln
appointed him a Major-General in the Army of the United States for
gallant and meritorious conduct in the battle of Chickamauga.
The Army of the Cumberland was reorganized under the command
of General Thomas, who promptly offered Garfield one of its
divisions. He was extremely desirous to accept the position, but was
embarrassed by the fact that he had, a year before, been elected to
Congress, and the time when he must take his seat was drawing near.
He preferred to remain in the military service, and had within his
own breast the largest confidence of success in the wider field which
his new rank opened to him. Balancing the arguments on the one
side and the other, anxious to determine what was for the best,
desirous above all things to do his patriotic duty, he was decisively
influenced by the advice of President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton,
both of whom assured him that he could at that time, be of especial
value in the House of Representatives. He resigned his commission
of Major-General on the 5th day of December, 1863, and took his
seat in the House of Representatives on the 7th. He had served two
years and four months in the army, and had just completed his
thirty-second year.

IN CONGRESS.

The Thirty-eighth Congress is pre-eminently entitled in history to

the designation of the War Congress. It was elected while the war
was flagrant, and every member was chosen upon the issues involved
in the continuance of the struggle. The Thirty-seventh Congress had,
indeed, legislated to a large extent on war measures but it was
chosen before any one believed that secession of the States would be
actually attempted. The magnitude of the work which fell upon its
successor was unprecedented, both in respect to the vast sums of
money raised for the support of the Army and Navy, and of the new
and extraordinary powers of legislation which it was forced to
exercise. Only twenty-four States were represented, and one hundred
and eighty-two members were upon its roll. Among these were many
distinguished party leaders on both sides, veterans in the public
service, with established reputations for ability, and with that skill
which comes only from parliamentary experience. Into this
assemblage of men Garfield entered without special preparation, and
it might almost be said unexpectedly. The question of taking
command of a division of troops under General Thomas, or taking
his seat in Congress was kept open till the last moment so late,
indeed, that the resignation of his military commission and his
appearance in the House were almost contemporaneous. He wore
the uniform of a Major-General of the United States Army on
Saturday, and on Monday in civilian’s dress, he answered to the roll
call as a Representative in Congress from the State of Ohio.
 He was especially fortunate in the constituency which elected him.
Descended almost entirely from New England stock, the men of the
Ashtabula district were intensely radical on all questions relating to
human rights. Well educated, thrifty, thoroughly intelligent in
affairs, acutely discerning of character, not quick to bestow
confidence, and slow to withdraw it, they were at once the most
helpful and most exacting of supporters. Their tenacious trust in men
in whom they have once confided is illustrated by the unparalleled
fact that Elisha Whittlesey, Joshua R. Giddings, and James A.
Garfield represented the district for fifty-four years.
There is no test of a man’s ability in any department of public life
more severe than service in the House of Representatives; there is no
place where so little deference is paid to reputation previously
acquired or to eminence won outside; no place where so little
consideration is shown for the feelings or failures of beginners. What
a man gains in the House he gains by sheer force of his own
character, and if he loses and falls back he must expect no mercy and
will receive no sympathy. It is a field in which the survival of the
strongest is the recognized rule and where no pretense can deceive
and no glamour can mislead. The real man is discovered, his worth is
impartially weighed, his rank is irreversibly decreed.
With possibly a single exception Garfield was the youngest
member in the House when he entered, and was but seven years
from his college graduation. But he had not been in his seat sixty
days before his ability was recognized and his place conceded. He
stepped to the front with the confidence of one who belonged there.
The House was crowded with strong men of both parties; nineteen of
them have since been transferred to the Senate, and many of them
have served with distinction in the gubernatorial chairs of their
respective States, and on foreign missions of great consequence; but
among them all none grew so rapidly none so firmly as Garfield. As is
said by Trevelyan of his parliamentary hero, Garfield succeeded
“because all the world in concert could not have kept him in the
background, and because when once in the front he played his part
with a prompt intrepidity and a commanding ease that were but the
outward symptoms of the immense reserves of energy, on which it
was in his power to draw.” Indeed the apparently reserved force
which Garfield possessed was one of his great characteristics. He
never did so well but that it seemed he could easily have done better.
He never expended so much strength but that he seemed to be
holding additional power at call. This is one of the happiest and
rarest distinctions of an effective debater, and often counts for as
much in persuading an assembly as the eloquent and elaborate
argument.
The great measure of Garfield’s fame was filled by his service in
the House of Representatives. His military life, illustrated by
honorable performance, and rich in promise, was, as he himself felt,
prematurely terminated, and necessarily incomplete. Speculation as
to what he might have done in a field, where the great prizes are so
few, cannot be profitable. It is sufficient to say that as a soldier he did
his duty bravely; he did it intelligently; he won an enviable fame, and
he retired from the service without blot or breath against him. As a
lawyer, though admirably equipped for the profession, he can
scarcely be said to have entered on its practice. The few efforts he
made at the bar were distinguished by the same high order of talent
which he exhibited on every field where he was put to the test, and if
a man may be accepted as a competent judge of his own capacities
and adaptations, the law was the profession to which Garfield should
have devoted himself. But fate ordained otherwise, and his
reputation in history will rest largely upon his service in the House of
Representatives. That service was exceptionally long. He was nine
times consecutively chosen to the House, an honor enjoyed by not
more than six other Representatives of the more than five thousand
who have been elected from the organization of the government to
this hour.

ORATOR AND DEBATER.

As a parliamentary orator, as a debater on an issue squarely

joined, where the position had been chosen and the ground laid out,
Garfield must be assigned a very high rank. More, perhaps, than any
man with whom he was associated in public life, he gave careful and
systematic study to public questions, and he came to every
discussion in which he took part with elaborate and complete
preparation. He was a steady and indefatigable worker. Those that
imagine that talent or genius can supply the place or achieve the
results of labor will find no encouragement in Garfield’s life. In
preliminary work he was apt, rapid and skillful. He possessed in a
high degree the power of readily absorbing ideas and facts, and, like
Dr. Johnson, had the art of getting from a book all that was of value
in it by a reading apparently so quick and cursory that it seemed like
a mere glance at the table of contents. He was a pre-eminently fair
and candid man in debate, took no petty advantage, stooped to no
unworthy methods, avoided personal allusions, rarely appealed to
prejudice, did not seek to inflame passion. He had a quicker eye for
the strong point of his adversary than for his weak point, and on his
own side he so marshaled his weighty arguments as to make his
hearers forget any possible lack in the complete strength of his
position. He had a habit of stating his opponent’s side with such
amplitude of fairness and such liberality of concession that his
followers often complained that he was giving his cases away. But
never in his prolonged participation in the proceedings of the House
did he give his case away, or fail in the judgment of competent and
impartial listeners to gain the mastery.
These characteristics, which marked Garfield as a great debater,
did not, however, make him a great parliamentary leader. A
parliamentary leader, as that term is understood wherever free
representative government exists, is necessarily and very strictly the
organ of his party. An ardent American defined the instinctive
warmth of patriotism when he offered the toast, “Our country always
right, but right or wrong, our country.” The parliamentary leader
who has a body of followers that will do and dare and die for the
cause, is one who believes his party always right, but right or wrong,
is for his party. No more important or exacting duty devolves upon
him than the selection of the field and the time for contest. He must
know not merely how to strike, but where to strike and when to
strike. He often skillfully avoids the strength of his opponent’s
position and scatters confusion in his ranks by attacking an exposed
point when really the righteousness of the cause and the strength of
logical intrenchment are against him. He conquers often both against
the right and the heavy battalions; as when young Chas. Fox, in the
days of his Toryism, carried the House of Commons against justice,
against its immemorial rights, against his own convictions, if, indeed,
at that period Fox had convictions, and, in the interest of a corrupt
administration, in obedience to a tyrannical sovereign, drove Wilkes
from the seat to which the electors of Middlesex had chosen him and
installed Luttrell in defiance, not merely of law, but of public
decency. For an achievement of that kind Garfield was disqualified—
disqualified by the texture of his mind, by the honesty of his heart, by
his conscience, and by every instinct and aspiration of his nature.
The three most distinguished parliamentary leaders hitherto
developed in this country are Mr. Clay, Mr. Douglas and Mr.
Thaddeus Stevens. Each was a man of consummate ability, of great
earnestness, of intense personality, differing widely each from the
others, and yet with a signal trait in common—the power to
command. In the give and take of daily discussion, in the art of
controlling and consolidating reluctant and refractory followers; in
the skill to overcome all forms of opposition, and to meet with
competency and courage the varying phases of unlooked-for assault
or unsuspected defection, it would be difficult to rank with these a
fourth name in all our Congressional history. But of these Mr. Clay
was the greatest. It would, perhaps, be impossible to find in the
parliamentary annals of the world a parallel to Mr. Clay, in 1841,
when at sixty-four years of age he took the control of the Whig party
from the President who had received their suffrages, against the
power of Webster in the Cabinet, against the eloquence of Choate in
the Senate, against the Herculean efforts of Caleb Cushing and Henry
A. Wise in the House. In unshared leadership, in the pride and
plenitude of power he hurled against John Tyler with deepest scorn
the mass of that conquering column which had swept over the land
in 1840, and drove his administration to seek shelter behind the lines
of his political foes. Mr. Douglas achieved a victory scarcely less
wonderful when, in 1854, against the secret desires of a strong
administration, against the wise counsel of the older chiefs, against
the conservative instincts and even the moral sense of the country,
he forced a reluctant Congress into a repeal of the Missouri
compromise. Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, in his contests from 1865 to
1868, actually advanced his parliamentary leadership until Congress
tied the hands of the President and governed the country by its own
will, leaving only perfunctory duties to be discharged by the
Executive. With two hundred millions of patronage in his hands at
the opening of the contest, aided by the active force of Steward in the
Cabinet and the moral power of Chase on the Bench, Andrew
Johnson could not command the support of one-third in either
House against the Parliamentary uprising of which Thaddeus
Stevens was the animating spirit and the unquestioned leader.
From these three great men Garfield differed radically, differed in
the quality of his mind, in temperament, in the form and phase of
ambition. He could not do what they did, but he could do what they
could not, and in the breadth of his Congressional work he left that
which will longer exert a potential influence among men, and which,
measured by the severe test of posthumous criticism, will secure a
more enduring and more enviable fame.

GARFIELD’S INDUSTRY.

Those unfamiliar with Garfield’s industry and ignorant of the

details of his work may, in some degree, measure them by the annals
of Congress. No one of the generation of public men to which he
belonged has contributed so much that will be valuable for future
reference. His speeches are numerous, many of them brilliant, all of
them well studied, carefully phrased and exhaustive of the subject
under consideration. Collected from the scattered pages of ninety
royal octavo volumes of Congressional Record they would present an
invaluable compendium of the political history of the most important
era through which the national government has ever passed. When
the history of this period shall be impartially written, when war
legislation, measures of reconstruction, protection of human rights,
amendments to the constitution, maintenance of public credit, steps
toward specie resumption, true theories of revenue may be reviewed,
unsurrounded by prejudice and disconnected from partisanism, the
speeches of Garfield will be estimated at their true value, and will be
found to comprise a vast magazine of fact and argument, of clear
analysis and sound conclusion. Indeed, if no other authority were
accessible, his speeches in the House of Representatives from
December 1863, to June, 1880, would give a well connected history
and complete defence of the important legislation of the seventeen
eventful years that constitute his Parliamentary life. Far beyond that,
his speeches would be found to forecast many great measures, yet to
be completed—measures which he knew were beyond the public
opinion of the hour, but which he confidently believed would secure
popular approval within the period of his own lifetime, and by the
aid of his own efforts.
Differing, as Garfield does, from the brilliant parliamentary
leaders, it is not easy to find his counterpart anywhere in the record
of American public life. He perhaps more nearly resembles Mr.
Seward in his supreme faith in the all-conquering power of a
principle. He had the love of learning, and the patient industry of
investigation, to which John Quincy Adams owes his prominence
and his Presidency. He had some of those ponderous elements of
mind which distinguished Mr. Webster, and which indeed, in all our
public life, have left the great Massachusetts Senator without an
intellectual peer.
In English parliamentary history, as in our own, the leaders in the
House of Commons present points of essential difference from
Garfield. But some of his methods recall the best features in the
strong, independent course of Sir Robert Peel, and striking
resemblances are discernible in that most promising of modern
conservatives, who died too early for his country and his fame, the
Lord George Bentinck. He had all of Burke’s love for the sublime and
the beautiful, with, possibly, something of his superabundance, and
in his faith and his magnanimity, in his power of statement, in his
subtle analysis, in his faultless logic, in his love of literature, in his
wealth and world of illustration, one is reminded of that great
English statesman of to-day, who, confronted with obstacles that
would daunt any but the dauntless, reviled by those whom he would
relieve as bitterly as by those whose supposed rights he is forced to
invade, still labors with serene courage for the amelioration of
Ireland, and for the honor of the English name.

NOMINATION TO THE PRESIDENCY.

Garfield’s nomination to the Presidency, while not predicted or

anticipated, was not a surprise to the country. His prominence in
Congress, his solid qualities, his wide reputation, strengthened by his
then recent election as Senator from Ohio, kept him in the public eye
as a man occupying the very highest rank among those entitled to be
called statesmen. It was not mere chance that brought him this high
honor. “We must,” says Mr. Emerson, “reckon success a
constitutional trait. If Eric is in robust health, and has slept well and
is at the top of his condition, and thirty years old at his departure
from Greenland, he will steer west and his ships will reach New
Foundland. But take Eric out and put in a stronger and bolder man
and the ships will sail six hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred
miles farther and reach Labrador and New England. There is no
chance in results.”
As a candidate, Garfield steadily grew in popular favor. He was
met with a storm of detraction at the very hour of his nomination,
and it continued with increasing volume and momentum until the
close of his victorious campaign:
No might nor greatness in mortality
Can censure ’scape; back-wounding calumny
The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?

Under it all he was calm, and strong, and confident; never lost his
self-possession, did no unwise act, spoke no hasty or ill-considered
word. Indeed nothing in his whole life is more remarkable or more
creditable than his bearing through those five full months of
vituperation—a prolonged agony of trial to a sensitive man, a
constant and cruel draft upon the powers of moral endurance. The
great mass of these unjust imputations passed unnoticed, and, with
the general debris of the campaign, fell into oblivion. But in a few
instances the iron entered his soul and he died with the injury
unforgotten if not unforgiven.
One aspect of Garfield’s candidacy was unprecedented. Never
before in the history of partisan contests in this country had a
successful Presidential candidate spoken freely on passing events
and current issues. To attempt anything of the kind seemed novel,
rash, and even desperate. The older class of voters recalled the
unfortunate Alabama letter, in which Mr. Clay was supposed to have
signed his political death-warrant. They remembered also the hot-
tempered effusion by which General Scott lost a large share of his
popularity before his nomination, and the unfortunate speeches
which rapidly consumed the remainder. The younger voters had seen
Mr. Greeley in a series of vigorous and original addresses, preparing
the pathway for his own defeat. Unmindful of these warnings,
unheeding the advice of friends, Garfield spoke to large crowds as he
journeyed to and from New York in August, to a great multitude in
that city, to delegations and deputations of every kind that called at
Mentor during the summer and autumn. With innumerable critics,
watchful and eager to catch a phrase that might be turned into odium
or ridicule, or a sentence that might be distorted to his own or his
party’s injury, Garfield did not trip or halt in any one of his seventy
speeches. This seems all the more remarkable when it is remembered
that he did not write what he said, and yet spoke with such logical
consecutiveness of thought and such admirable precision of phrase
as to defy the accident of misreport and the malignity of
misrepresentation.

AS PRESIDENT.

In the beginning of his Presidential life Garfield’s experience did

not yield him pleasure or satisfaction. The duties that engross so
large a portion of the President’s time were distasteful to him, and
were unfavorably contrasted with his legislative work. “I have been
dealing all these years with ideas,” he impatiently exclaimed one day,
“and here I am dealing only with persons. I have been heretofore
treating of the fundamental principles of government, and here I am
considering all day whether A or B shall be appointed to this or that
office.” He was earnestly seeking some practical way of correcting the
evils arising from the distribution of overgrown and unwieldy
patronage—evils always appreciated and often discussed by him, but
whose magnitude had been more deeply impressed upon his mind
since his accession to the Presidency. Had he lived, a comprehensive
improvement in the mode of appointment and in the tenure of office
would have been proposed by him, and with the aid of Congress no
doubt perfected.
But, while many of the Executive duties were not grateful to him,
he was assiduous and conscientious in their discharge. From the very
outset he exhibited administrative talent of a high order. He grasped
the helm of office with the hand of a master. In this respect, indeed,
he constantly surprised many who were most intimately associated
with him in the government, and especially those who had feared