Radical Teaching in Turbulent Times Martin Dubermans Princeton Seminars 1966 1970 Robert L Hampel Full Chapter PDF

Radical Teaching in Turbulent Times:
Martin Dubermans Princeton Seminars,

1966-1970 Robert L. Hampel
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/radical-teaching-in-turbulent-times-martin-dubermans
-princeton-seminars-1966-1970-robert-l-hampel/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
Central Banking in Turbulent Times Tuomas Valimaki
https://ebookmass.com/product/central-banking-in-turbulent-times-
tuomas-valimaki/
The Radical Demand in Løgstrup's Ethics Robert Stern
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-radical-demand-in-logstrups-
ethics-robert-stern/
Discourses of Identity. Language Learning, Teaching,

and Reclamation Perspectives in Japan Martin Mielick
https://ebookmass.com/product/discourses-of-identity-language-
learning-teaching-and-reclamation-perspectives-in-japan-martin-
mielick/
The Imperfectionists: Strategic Mindsets for Uncertain

Times Robert Mclean
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-imperfectionists-strategic-
mindsets-for-uncertain-times-robert-mclean/
The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs Third Edition
(Princeton Field Guides, 69) Paul
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-princeton-field-guide-to-
dinosaurs-third-edition-princeton-field-guides-69-paul/
Discourses of Identity: Language Learning, Teaching,

and Reclamation Perspectives in Japan 1st Edition
Martin Mielick
https://ebookmass.com/product/discourses-of-identity-language-
learning-teaching-and-reclamation-perspectives-in-japan-1st-
edition-martin-mielick/
Our Sexuality 14th Edition Robert L. Crooks
https://ebookmass.com/product/our-sexuality-14th-edition-robert-
l-crooks/
Buried Histories: The Anticommunist Massacres of

1965–1966 in Indonesia John Roosa
https://ebookmass.com/product/buried-histories-the-anticommunist-
massacres-of-1965-1966-in-indonesia-john-roosa/
Teaching with Comics: Empirical, Analytical, and

Professional Experiences Robert Aman
https://ebookmass.com/product/teaching-with-comics-empirical-
analytical-and-professional-experiences-robert-aman/
HISTORICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION
Radical Teaching in
Turbulent Times
Martin Duberman’s Princeton Seminars,
1966–1970
By Robert L. Hampel
Historical Studies in Education
Series Editors
William J. Reese, Department of Educational Policy Studies, University
of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
John L. Rury, Education, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA
This series features new scholarship on the historical development of
education, defined broadly, in the United States and elsewhere. Interdis-
ciplinary in orientation and comprehensive in scope, it spans methodolog-
ical boundaries and interpretive traditions. Imaginative and thoughtful
history can contribute to the global conversation about educational
change. Inspired history lends itself to continued hope for reform, and
to realizing the potential for progress in all educational experiences.
More information about this series at

https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14870
Robert L. Hampel
Radical Teaching
in Turbulent Times
Martin Duberman’s Princeton Seminars,
1966–1970
Robert L. Hampel
University of Delaware
Newark, DE, USA
Historical Studies in Education

ISBN 978-3-030-77058-7 ISBN 978-3-030-77059-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77059-4
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
Cover credit: Andrew Cribb/Alamy Stock Photo
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
A great many more or less radical people are beginning to surface…it is
very important that these teachers keep the kind of notes about their work
that you kept about yours, both for their benefit and for the possible benefit
of others who may read them.
John Holt to Martin Duberman, March 29, 1968
Series Editors’ Preface
The 1960s are often seen today as a time of radical innovation and large
scale social change. To people at the time, however, it also seemed rather
chaotic and confusing. Historical transformations, it seems, are rarely
experienced as neatly or smoothly as they are frequently portrayed in
retrospect. The changes in university education during this time are a
good example of this, as students and faculty members across the country
grappled with new ideas about teaching and learning. And campuses were
under pressure. New groups of students appeared, radical scholarship
flourished, and national protest movements that focused on civil rights
and the Vietnam War fueled a rising tide of activism. But how exactly did
these events impact the daily work of instruction and students’ intellectual
growth?
Historian Robert Hampel offers a window into this fraught time,
focusing on the experiences of Professor Martin Duberman and his
students. Duberman has been a prodigious scholar, writing many
biographical studies along with more general works, and an activist and
leader in the LGBT movement. But during the latter 1960s he was
teaching at Princeton University and struggling to make his classes more
meaningful and productive for the students. Skeptical of the traditional
lecture style of teaching that prevailed at most elite institutions, he strived
to help students find their own voices and interests by shifting respon-
sibility for the class onto their shoulders. This turned out to be more
difficult than imagined, at least partly because many students—along with
vii
viii SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE
his faculty colleagues—were hardly prepared for it. Those that did accept
the challenge, however, stood to benefit enormously.
Radical Teaching in Turbulent Times is not a traditional narrative
account of these events, but it illuminates the process by which Duberman
approached his teaching. It includes samples of his published and unpub-
lished writing on the topic, including very personal reflections. We hear
the voices of many Princeton students and faculty. There is a sampling of
Duberman’s foray into the history of higher education in his monumental
study of Black Mountain College in North Carolina, an institution that
embodied many of his convictions. And Hampel offers his own observa-
tions along the way, guiding readers through this considerable range of
materials, documenting Duberman’s attempts to make education more
personally fulfilling and liberating for teacher and student alike. In the
end, Professor Hampel provides us with a meditation on history educa-
tion, as well as the history of education, using contemporaneous texts to
reveal the many uncertainties and insights that Duberman’s experience
has to offer. In this manner his book proposes a vision of what education
may yet become when its puzzles and challenges are tackled forthrightly.
William J. Reese
John L. Rury
Acknowledgments and Dedication
Telephone calls and emails from Martin Duberman’s former students and
colleagues included thirteen alumni of History 308—Roger Arrington,
Bob Barber, Ed Berenson, Gordon Chang, Alice Kelikian, Jim Lieber, Bob
McGahey, Stephen Olson, Rick Ostrow, Roland Spears, Jimmy Tarlau,
Dean Tjosvold, and Bruce Wasser. For graduate seminars at Princeton, I
contacted Gunther Brandt, Peyton McCrary, Howard Segal, John Stagg,
and Don Whaley. I heard many stories from faculty in the Depart-
ment of History: Frank Brodhead, George Forgie, Michael Frisch, James
Henretta, Nancy Malkiel, James McPherson, Gary Nash, Jerrold Seigel,
and Peter Winn. Three of Martin’s former colleagues—James Banner,
David Gerber, and Virginia Yans-McLaughlin—were especially helpful.
The Princeton University archivists and the New York Public Library
staff deserve five stars in every category, including responsiveness during
a pandemic.
My colleague Eugene Matusov did more than write Chapter 12—he
convinced me to undertake this project. The book would be incomplete
without Peter Janney, Martin’s former student and devoted friend who
in Chapter 4 recalls his years at Princeton and his semester in History
308. I am glad I found political theorist Bill Caspary, who at the end of
an interview mentioned his unpublished autobiography, now the core of
Chapter 8.
I owe the most to Marty Duberman. He shared material from his files,
answered endless questions, reviewed an early draft, and asked me to stop
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND DEDICATION
calling him Martin. I suppose I could have created this book without
him, but it would have been less fun and more flawed. It is a pleasure
and a privilege to dedicate Radical Teaching to the remarkable Marty
Duberman.
Praise for Radical Teaching in
Turbulent Times
“A wave of innovation swept over higher education in the 1960s,

when radicals imagined classrooms that were dynamic, democratic, and
governed by individual freedom rather than institutional edicts. Nobody
has captured that moment better than Robert Hampel. Combining rich
primary sources with Hampel’s own reflections as a scholar and teacher,
this book is a bold innovation in its own right. It’s an eloquent reminder
of how difficult it is to take risks in the classroom, and of what we risk
when we are too afraid to try.”
—Professor Jonathan Zimmerman, University of Pennsylvania, USA, and
author of The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America
xi
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Part I Duberman in the Late 1960s

2 Martin Duberman, “An Experiment in Education” 9
Martin Duberman
3 Martin Duberman, “On Misunderstanding Student
Rebels” (1968) 33
Martin Duberman
Part II Other Voices

4 50 Years Later: History 308 Revisited 45
Peter Janney
5 Martin and Peter Discuss the Fall, 1969 Seminars 59
Martin Duberman and Peter Janney
6 Princeton Undergraduates Defend and Criticize
Innovation 87
7 On the Edge of the Platform: Tinkering with the 1971
Lecture Class 105
8 The Search for Allies: Bill Caspary, Martin Duberman,
and John Holt 119
xiii
xiv CONTENTS
9 Robert Hampel, “Four Perspectives on Radical

Change” 137
Robert L. Hampel
Part III After Princeton

10 Self and Community: Martin Duberman, Black
Mountain (1972) 163
11 Honesty, Power, and Desire in Martin Duberman,
“Last Class” (1981) 181
Part IV Radical Teaching in the 21st Century

12 Eugene Matusov, “Teachers as Benevolent Dictators” 207
Eugene Matusov
13 Recommended Reading 227
Appendix: Two Gems from the Vault 231

Index 235
List of Figures
Fig. 5.1 Martin Duberman in 1960 83

Fig. 5.2 Research trip to Black Mountain College, Summer 1967 83
Fig. 5.3 Duberman in his New York City apartment, late 1960s 84
Fig. 5.4 Pensive and Intense, 1971 85
Fig. 5.5 A new apartment, a new university, a new research agenda
in 1972. Source The 1960, 1971, and 1972 photographs
are in Box 116, Duberman Papers, New York Public
Library. The 1967 and late 1960s photographs are
in Box 96 in the same collection 86
Fig. A.1 A self-propelling seminar 232
Fig. A.2 The last Princeton lecture 233
xv
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
The mid- to late 1960s were lively years in American higher educa-
tion. Protests against the Vietnam War jolted many campuses. Minorities
fought racism, women condemned sexism, and an outspoken champion
of drugs, Timothy Leary, told the young to turn on, tune in, and drop
out rather than conform. Another popular slogan, don’t trust anyone over
30, was one sign of the gap between complacent adults and a restless
younger generation with its own music, clothes, slang, and irreverent
heroes like Abbie Hoffman, author of Steal This Book. Adding to the
ferment of the time was the blunt reassertion of traditional values. For
many conservatives, college students on the political left scorned patri-
otism and self-discipline. “Hippies know every four letter word except
W O R K,” Alabama Governor George Wallace told cheering crowds,
promising them that if anti-war protesters lay in front of his limousine, it
would be the last car they ever saw.
The way professors taught began to change—modestly, slowly,
cautiously—a bit more informality, slightly higher grades, and small
modifications prompted by the rise of student course evaluations. In
contrast, several dozen new colleges sought far-reaching changes, as did
small voluntary programs in established colleges. On their own, a few
trailblazers transformed teaching and learning in their classrooms.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
R. L. Hampel, Radical Teaching in Turbulent Times,
Historical Studies in Education,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77059-4_1
2 R. L. HAMPEL
One of those pioneers was Martin Duberman, a prolific historian who

discovered creative teaching when he was 36. With the best academic
credentials (Yale, B.A. summa cum laude, in 1952; Harvard Ph.D. in
1957), a prize-winning first book, an excellent second book, an anthology
on the abolitionists, and a successful off-Broadway stage play, he became a
full professor at Princeton University in 1967. The previous fall he taught
a course on the history of American radicalism, the perfect topic for his
debut as a radically egalitarian instructor.
What distinguished this undergraduate seminar? Duberman minimized
the power of the professor by dropping papers, tests, grades, manda-
tory attendance, and the syllabus. Readings in History 308 were optional
and students chose the topics to discuss. Without any requirements,
class discussions might improve because the game called Pleasing the
Professor no longer mattered. Duberman longed for the candor and
interpersonal awareness central to group therapy, a powerful influence
in his own life. “The chief purpose of the experiment, as I saw it, was
to seek new ways of establishing the kind of emotional climate of trust
and honesty (so absent in most seminars) which would in turn make
possible an authentic exchange of ideas.”1 Students spoke with Marty, not
Professor Duberman, who thought traditional college classrooms encour-
aged bad habits: excessive deference, grade-grubbing, and what he called
the spectator syndrome—watching rather than participating.
In place of more description, here are five snapshots from the Fall 1970
seminars2 :
September 29, 1970: Afternoon session began with an unbroken

silence that lasted a full five minutes. Tough on a lot of us, but useful.
The meaning of the silence was finally discussed, what it represented
in terms of the day’s topic, “the counter culture,” what it revealed
about their attitudes toward me and the course.
October 6, 1970: Sitting in a circle on the floor, strangely familiar
smell suddenly in the air; I hear “Marty,” turn my head to the right,
and there it is—a big fat joint being passed to me. My initial reac-
tion was no. But I did take a few hits so as not to seem a reflex
spoil-sport. But as the joints kept going around and around, I got
increasingly unhappy. Told them I’d rather, from now on, that they
smoked before the seminar if they felt they wanted to. Anyone could
walk through the door, including a proctor, and we could be busted.
1 INTRODUCTION 3
October 23,1970: A nice thing happened in the evening session

[held on the football field under a full moon]. A new woman joined
the group. Late in the session she confessed she had only just figured
out who the professor was—she decided it was two other people
before settling on me!
November 5, 1970: I’m not too happy with my own behavior. I let
the group head into a full scale encounter session without trying to
brake it. Not that I could have, given their independence and lack of
deference—and absorption in the encounter. Still, I’m not comfort-
able with this kind of total conversion of an academic enterprise
into a therapeutic one, and probably do have a peculiar respon-
sibility to resist that development—even though that would mean
asserting a special point of privilege and power which could threaten
the egalitarian climate now operative. It’s a dilemma.
December 1, 1970: The afternoon seminar decided to break into
sub-groups which, supposedly, would better represent the diversity
of interests within the whole. But the only interest that emerged was
to go up to one of the guy’s rooms to listen to The Firesign Theater
records. Seven or eight of us did that for an hour (the records are
funny) … we stuck it out for another hour of jokes and pleasantries,
and then disbanded. I’m determined, this time around, to carry un-
structure to its logical extreme. If no one wants to do anything, if no
topic is of common interest, then we’ll do nothing. That awareness
of dis-interest, of nothingness is probably a more valuable “lesson”
for the group than any I could concoct.
In those reflections and many others, Duberman analyzed how his

students used freedom. Without constraints, what would they learn? Were
they too stifled by their previous schooling to welcome liberation? Did
they resent a professor who refused to tell them what to do? Duberman
also returned again and again to a second issue: what were the bene-
fits and risks of self-expression? When everyone is encouraged to share
their feelings, does the frankness help or hinder the analysis of American
radicalism?
Duberman explored those questions in his own writing. A chapter in
one of his four autobiographies analyzed the seminar, as did a Daedalus
article and several pages in a history of Black Mountain College. As a
result, descriptions of three of his five 1966–1970 seminars are in print.3
4 R. L. HAMPEL
What is left to say about the classrooms of a celebrated historian who

often made his own life the subject of his articles and books?
Archival research, online searches, and email queries yielded stacks of
new material. The folders in the Duberman Papers (New York Public
Library) are very thorough. Martin made copies of his outgoing corre-
spondence, saved the letters he received, and kept unpublished plays. He
paid for verbatim transcripts of tape-recorded conversations with Peter
Janney, the Princeton student who wrote his senior thesis on the Fall
1969 seminar. Faculty, administrative, and departmental collections in the
Princeton University archives shed light on the institutional context of
History 308. Interviews with 30 former students and colleagues provided
valuable details, and Duberman’s sharp memory added more.
From that abundance, this anthology offers three perspectives on
innovative teaching. From Duberman’s published and unpublished reflec-
tions, readers will see recurring ups and downs, great satisfaction and
deep disappointment, as the seminars evolved. Part of that rollercoaster
stemmed from Duberman’s theatrical side—he was a playwright keenly
attentive to the drama in everyday life. Part of it also came from his
stamina. Throughout his life, he devoted many years to difficult projects,
energized rather than defeated by frustration. Psychotherapy will cure my
homosexuality (1958—1971). I will put my own experiences in the next
book (1967—1972). I am tempted to leave academia for the theater (early
1960s—mid 1970s). Administrative work might be tolerable for the sake of
supporting gay and lesbian scholarship (1986–1996). To spend four years
on the challenges of unstructured education was in keeping with his char-
acteristic perseverance. But he always found the quest worthwhile as he
swam against the current, seeking a form of education out of style at most
times in American history—what we know cannot be separated from who
we are. Duberman’s story suggests a new standard for educational reform:
the caliber of the struggle is as important as the results. To stretch and
grow in the face of uncertainty can be as valuable as adopting someone
else’s successful techniques.
Readers will also hear from former Princeton students. Their commit-
ment to egalitarian education varied. For some, History 308 was the high
point of their Princeton years. The course was a “profoundly beneficial
influence,” one student recalled.4 Among the skeptics, some sat quietly,
others stopped attending, and many asserted their own view of good
education at odds with Duberman’s opinions: the professor as groovy
role model (but you don’t know my imperfections, he might have said), the
1 INTRODUCTION 5
professor as famous authority (please interact with me, not my reputation),

and the historian as a source of tactical advice for campus protests (look,
the late 1960s are unprecedented). The variety of perspectives is a reminder
of the diversity within and tensions among the ranks of those interested
in unconventional education.
The third vantage point is from an historian of education. In my
chapter, I look at change over time (comparing the 1966 and 1969 semi-
nars), context (Princeton’s receptivity to innovation), and counterfactuals
(what if the seminar students had been hand-picked?). I compare my
own instructional innovations with History 308, highlighting how Martin
and I retained traditional practices within our experimental ventures. The
take-away is the need to probe and question: Radical for whom? Radical
compared to what? Radical in every dimension?
A skeptic might dismiss History 308 as a fluke. Few professors at any
time, even in the late 1960s, welcomed what Duberman sought. Why
bother studying an unusual type of teaching? It helps us see the options
we often assume are impossible. No grades? No assigned readings? Surely
chaos would ensue, with most of us driven by the fear that classes will
fall apart unless we are in charge. For readers at odds with Duberman’s
approach, this book might prompt them to take stock of why they avoid
his preferences. For readers in accord with Duberman, the details of his
experience might help them fine-tune their creative pedagogy.
In a study of innovation, this book tries to innovate. The combination
of primary sources, previously published material, and scholarly analysis is
unusual. As a result, this anthology reveals how historians work in order
to understand a life. We take fragments and cautiously make sense of what
we found, knowing that stories can be told in many ways. To understand
a college professor, in this case, one perspective is not enough. Biography
should be panoramic. As a friend put it, “at times you take a right hand
turn at the topic of college teaching and run into the distance.” Whether
close-up or from a distance, I want to keep the focus on innovative
teaching in the late 1960s. Yet I am also teaching history now—showing
the evidence often concealed in monographs—as I write about teaching
history many years ago.
6 R. L. HAMPEL
Notes
1. Martin Duberman, “An Experiment in Education” in The Uncompleted Past
(New York: Random House, 1969), 294.
2. Martin shared his 1970 and 1971 diary entries on education.
3. Martin Duberman, Cures: A Gay Man’s Odyssey (New York: Dutton, 1991),
142–151; MD, “An Experiment in Education” in The Uncompleted Past
(New York: Random House, 1969), 259–294; MD, Black Mountain: An
Exploration in Community (New York: Dutton, 1972), 268–274.
4. Telephone conversation with Bruce Wasser, April 30, 2020.
PART I
Duberman in the Late 1960s

CHAPTER 2
Martin Duberman, “An Experiment

in Education”
Martin Duberman
This Daedalus article began as a report to the Princeton committee that

allowed Duberman to omit grades in History 308. The essay is a close
description of what happened in the two sections of American Radicalism
in the fall of 1966. Without required readings, tests, papers, or manda-
tory attendance, Princeton undergraduates could not rely on Duberman to
structure the course. He refused to run the discussions or tell anyone what to
do. For education to spark self-discovery and individual growth, the professor
had to stay on the side. He could facilitate, but not dominate, the group.
How people related to one another was crucial. In his view of education,
the emotions felt in a group profoundly influence the conversation, limiting
or liberating what is said. Feeling and thinking develop together, with the
paramount goals of self-discovery and personal growth encompassing both
heart and head.
The freedom evoked many reactions—engagement, docility, resentment,
guilt at not working harder—with each group reflecting on its own strengths
and weaknesses throughout the semester. Old habits were hard to change,
Daedalus, v97, n1, Winter 1968, 318–341.

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77059-4_2
10 M. DUBERMAN
and Duberman wondered if college was too late to foster curiosity and self-
determination. In subsequent seminars, the same mixture of doubt and faith
in the students and in his approach reappeared. But he knew for sure he
could not return to traditional seminars, and he never did.
I have been an educator for ten years, but I have really been interested
in education only for the past year or so. After tenure three years ago, it
became possible for me (this was not conscious: I see it only in retrospect)
to concern myself solely with how I evaluated the success of my teaching
and not how the senior members of my department did.
My experience with teaching bears out the central point that I will be
trying to make about learning: only when the necessity to please others is
removed can the main job of self-evaluation begin. Most young teachers,
like most students, are afraid much of the time they are in class, and fear
guarantees that energy will go into defensive strategies rather than creative
explorations.
Various threads besides the “release” which tenure gave me helped to
produce my new concern with teaching and learning. Perhaps the original
germ had been planted in 1962 when some students suggested that I read
A. S. Neill’s Summerhill. I was moved by Neill’s candor and exhilarated by
his demonstration that children flourish when they are allowed freedom.
After discovering Neill, I read Paul Goodman, Edgar Z. Friedenberg,
and, most significantly and most recently, John Holt—in other words,
the “romantics” of educational theory, as they have been dubbed by their
critics. I had also, within the past two years, read a great deal about
Anarchism, in line with a play I was then writing on Emma Goldman.
I strongly identified with Anarchism’s anti-authoritarian basis; it was the
closest I had come to feeling at home in a philosophical tradition. (I’m
aware that this effort—that all such efforts—at charting “influences” is a
little foolish. For all I know, the true cause of my developing interest in
unstructured education may have been familial—an unresolved authority
problem?—or even metabolic.)
But to continue the exercise: my experience in group therapy must
also be taken into account. I cannot fully demonstrate why, but I feel
that membership in a therapy group for the past three years may have
been the most profound of the influences prompting me to re-evaluate
my role as an educator. In the therapy group, I became aware of how
many levels of the person can be “educated” simultaneously when a group
is functioning well—that is, when an atmosphere of mutual trust and
forbearance prevails. The willingness to suspend judgment of one another
2 MARTIN DUBERMAN, “AN EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION” 11
in the name of understanding, the tolerance of mistakes, the opportu-

nity to reveal and examine one’s inner self without fear of penalty—all
encourage growth.
My experience in therapy made me impatient with other group enter-
prises that were narrowly functional—like a university seminar that merely
engaged in the transmission of factual information. I knew that much
more than information could be exchanged when a permissive, non-
judgmental atmosphere prevailed. Indeed, little important information
can be transmitted if an emotional transaction is not simultaneously in
process, for an individual will not expose his deepest assumptions nor be
able to perceive those of another if their relationship is purely intellectual.
(I continue to use outmoded, dualistic terminology like intellectual and
emotional because more accurate vocabulary is not yet available.)
Much of what I have outlined thus far became clear to me belatedly. At
the time I petitioned the Course of Study Committee for permission to
drop grades, I knew only that my dissatisfaction with traditional methods
of teaching had accumulated to the point of irritability. I wanted some-
thing more and different from my classroom experience. I felt that most
students did also. For years, I had heard graduating seniors speak unhap-
pily of their education and express bewilderment at how eager, curious
freshmen had been turned, four years later, into prototypes of articulate
emptiness. (“I still don’t know who the hell I am”; “I still don’t know
what I want to do with my life”; “I don’t even know if such questions
matter to me any more.”).
The job of self-discovery is never, of course, complete; it is hardly
surprising that 21 year olds do not fully know “who the hell they are.”
But the point is that they have not begun to know. In many cases, four
years of college do not initiate or further, but dampen or destroy efforts
at self-exploration. This may not be the intent, but it is nonetheless the
result of the tactics employed by those who administer and teach in a
university. They make certain that the student’s energies are directed at
fulfilling tasks set by them rather than by himself; they encourage him to
define his worth in terms of his success in winning their approval: high
grades, good letters of recommendation, departmental honors, prizes. He
is taught to regard these tangible signs of election as the only important
evidence of achievement and as the indispensable precondition, almost
the guarantee, of a satisfying life. What he is not taught is that orientation
toward gaining the approval of others carries high costs: the acceptance
12 M. DUBERMAN
of disguise as a necessity of life; the unconscious determination to manip-

ulate others in the way one has been manipulated; the conviction that
productivity is more important than character and “success” superior to
satisfaction; the loss of curiosity, of a willingness to ask questions, of the
capacity to take risks.
The removal of grades is a necessary but hardly sufficient means for
reversing this disastrous orientation. Grading is but one way in which
we turn potentially creative individuals into data-processing machines,
adapting them to their society but alienating them from themselves. More
than grades must go. The entire superstructure of authoritarian control
in our schools must give way if we are to enable people to assume respon-
sibility for and to take pleasure in their own lives. We cannot expect
aliveness and involvement when we are busy inculcating docility and
compliance.
In this regard, the false distinctions that separate student from teacher
must be broken down. What do we think titles like “professor,” “sir,”
or “mister” achieve? Perhaps the illusion of respect, but certainly not its
reality. Those qualities which are worth admiring in a given person—
perception, experience, honesty, empathy, openness—will be admired
regardless of title, and no title can create admiration when such quali-
ties are absent. But a title can—and often does—establish a pattern of
formality that prevents free exchange and the common pursuit by student
and teacher of understanding. Titles also provide the professor with a
subtle means of discipline and a false sense of self-importance, neither of
which is conducive to humanness or communication.
Then, there is the matter of “requirements.” John Holt has written a
brilliant critique of the notion that certain bits and pieces of knowledge
are “essential,” that adults know which these are and at what point and
in what ways they can best be fed to the young. It seems to Holt, and
to me, that this is dangerous nonsense. Should everyone read Crime and
Punishment? Understand ego psychology? Study Greek civilization? Learn
about quasar theory? All of these? None of these?
The individual young have their own interests and timetables, and if
these are stifled by the teacher’s imposed demands, the result may be a
certain number of facts (temporarily) absorbed, but at the cost of knowl-
edge becoming irrelevant and curiosity being destroyed. Schools, as Holt
puts it, should be places where students “learn what they most want to
know, instead of what we think they ought to know.” In any given situa-
tion, it is far less important to convey the particular body of information
that the professor happens to care about than to seek the information
that the student cares about. It is far more valuable for the student to
let a course on, say, the American Revolution wander into a discussion
of the “utility of violence” than to insist on the day’s set topic of the
British Navigation Acts; the latter will stick for about as long as it takes
the student to walk out the door, while the former could provide grist for
a personal re-evaluation of lasting significance. Moreover, if knowledge is
made relevant to the student’s current needs, it is henceforth viewed as
a desirable commodity. A student who is allowed to ask questions that
matter to him soon learns the habit of self-generating inquiry.
Finally, there is the matter of leadership. A crucial distinction must
be made between authority and authoritarianism. The former represents
accumulated experience, knowledge, and insight. The latter represents
their counterfeits: age masquerading as maturity, information as under-
standing, technique as originality. Authoritarianism is forced to demand
the respect that authority draws naturally to itself. The former, like all
demands, is likely to meet with hostility; the latter, like all authenticity,
with emulation. Our universities—our schools at every level—are rife with
authoritarianism, all but devoid of authority.
In any given seminar, the teacher, expounding on the subject of his
choice, almost always knows more facts than anyone else. He is also older
and has had more professional training. These are the raw materials—
information, experience, discipline—out of which authority can come, but
they do not guarantee authority. If information has not been digested and
personalized, if years have added grayness rather than growth, if training
has submerged the person in the specialist, then the potential authority
turns into a mere authoritarian. And it is the rare authoritarian who,
when given power—when put, say, in charge of adolescents—can resist
the satisfaction of reducing them to his level. So it is that one generation,
desperate lest its own achievement be exceeded, corrupts the next—all
the while protesting benevolence. Fathers are not known to encourage
patricide—and few youths grow to manhood.
But let us look at the authority, rather than the authoritarian. Even
the genuine authority—no one realizes this better than he—is limited
in perspective. The ideal Professor Jones, a master of both Shakespeare
and himself, knows that he can be surprised. He knows that Joe Smith,
freshman from Dubuque, has some special experience than can illuminate
a word or passage from Hamlet: Joe may be oblivious to generations of
14 M. DUBERMAN
scholarship, but he knows something about sons. And he will tell it—
if the climate is right, if Professor Jones had made it clear that no one
has a corner on truth, that competence is never across the board, and
that therefore leadership (in a classroom discussion, in life) should shift
as areas of competence shift. If he can convey that much to Joe Smith,
Professor Jones will have given him the one encouragement essential to
true education: ultimately each man can, must, become his own authority.
This is the one path to adulthood—and democracy.
I suppose some will feel that I have put the cart before the horse.
Theory is supposed to follow fact, not vice versa. The arrangement of
this report is, however, true to my experience. Previous to the experi-
ment in “History 308: American Radicalism,” I did have decided views
on education—otherwise I would never have conceived the experiment.
This is not to say that the seminar merely confirmed my earlier views. On
the contrary, it did not neatly bear out my theories, nor was it a wholly
satisfying experience, either for myself or for my students. Nevertheless, it
was a qualified confirmation, and given the context in which the experi-
ment took place, with all that meant by way of obstacles and inexperience,
even a qualified success seems to me significant. My evaluation can best
be tested, however, by a detailed look at what took place in the seminar.
I limited the enrollment in History 308 to twenty-four students so
that I could break the group into two sections of twelve, thereby making
a seminar format feasible. At the first meeting, however, we met as one
group, so that I could explain the content of the course and its “experi-
mental” features. (Most of the students already knew my intentions from
having talked with me earlier.)
The course was to be structured, I said, by the overall topic “American
Radicalism,” but the specific topic for any given week could and should
vary in response to what they, as a group, felt would be most logical and
useful. The two groups, I added, could go in entirely different directions.
One, for example, might feel the need to discuss the Radical Right in
detail, the other might choose to omit the Radical Right altogether. What
was important, I felt, was that each group develop, as a group, its own
personality and direction. There would, of course, be individual variations
in interest and need, and the group should not be so determined in its
collective purpose as to prevent these individual requirements from being
met.
I hoped to accomplish both purposes—group identity and individual
variety—through “open-ended” reading lists. I had prepared in advance,
I told them in that first session, about a dozen topics which I felt could
concern us during the term: the Abolitionists, the Wobblies, the Socialists,
the Populists, and so forth. None of these topics was mandatory; after
each session we would discuss, as a group, what we wanted to do the
following week. I expected each group to reject some of my suggested
topics, to deal with others only in passing, and to suggest alternative
topics of its own. In order to preserve individual preferences, I would
make no assignment on any given subject, but would prepare lengthy
reading lists, describe each book in detail and encourage the student to
choose that aspect or approach to a given topic which most appealed to
him and to read those books which related to it.
On some topics, one book might be so outstanding—like David Shan-
non’s volume on American Socialism—that I would strongly recommend
that everyone read it, but not because I felt a common reading list was
necessary to produce discussion, nor because I was trying to sneak in
a requirement under the guise of a recommendation. Nothing, I made
clear in that first session, was required: neither reading, not attendance,
nor “performance.” If, throughout the term, some students chose to do
only a minimum of work or none at all, there would be no reprisals, since
the course would not have grades, exams, or papers. (In this regard, I
added that if anyone wished to write down anything at any point, I and
no doubt others would be glad to read it—and this happened several
times during the term.)
During the first meeting we also decided on the membership of the
two groups. I had hoped for a fairly even division, and a tally of pref-
erences showed an exact split of twelve and twelve. Although this was
accidental, the membership of each seminar was less random than might
appear. Friends tended to sign up for the same seminar, with the result
that the two groups differed significantly from each other.
Everyone in the evening seminar, it turned out, was a senior, whereas
the afternoon group included four juniors and one sophomore. This was
significant because, as all the undergraduates agreed when we discussed
these matters at the end of the term, seniors are more “deadened,” more
cynical and disinterested, than those who have not yet “been through the
system.” The undergraduates also pointed out that fewer members of the
afternoon group had previously known one another or been friendly. This
they considered a decided advantage. It was easier, they felt, to discuss
the “big questions,” to generalize and speculate, in front of comparative
strangers.
16 M. DUBERMAN
The students also pointed to the different pattern between the two
groups in terms of “eating club” affiliations [Princeton’s version of
fraternities]. The afternoon seminar included more Woodrow Wilson
members and more “independents”; moreover, only two of its members
belonged to “big five” clubs, whereas almost all of the evening group did.
Members of the “big five,” the students agreed, emphasized “keeping
cool,” remaining detached, “above it all,” presenting only the superficial
aspects of self. In a seminar, such values would manifest themselves as
an unwillingness to allow emotion to enter into discussion, to expose
one’s deeply held values, and to engage another person in any full
confrontation of opinion and belief. The “big five” personality was further
described as involving a distrust of anything “different,” “strange,” “off-
beat,” a tendency to value and to adhere to that which is traditional and
respectable. I should stress that those members of the seminar who were
themselves in the “big five” clubs fully agreed with this diagnosis.
Finally, the undergraduates came to believe, and I concur, that the
afternoon group was simply lucky in its “chemistry”—a factor beyond
prediction and not susceptible to close analysis. By “chemistry,” they
meant that the members of the group took to one another early and
well. Mutual respect and trust were established among people of widely
different viewpoints; this made it possible to expose feelings and to
engage in debate without excessive fear of “being made a fool of.”
Following the organization meeting, the first full session of both
groups was devoted to the “New Left.” I had suggested, and the
suggestion had been adopted, that we begin our study of American Radi-
calism with the contemporary scene and then go back in time to study
other radical movements, such as the Abolitionists, the Socialists, or the
Wobblies—though the actual choice of topic would depend on group
decision each week.
The afternoon group took off in a blaze, without even a brief period
of awkwardness or hesitation. Indeed, the rapid-fire exchanges, the
passionate interruptions, and debates worried me a little. The pace and
tone seemed to smack of hysteria. People were not listening carefully
to one another; they were briefly silent in order to prepare their next
broadside, rather than to digest what someone else was saying.
Though the general feeling was that things were going swimmingly,
I was not alone in having doubts. After the second session, a student
named Paul handed me a typewritten statement he had prepared.1 (I had
encouraged the students from the beginning to let me know—in what-

ever form they wished—their opinions on how things were going, and
especially if they felt any discontent.) Paul, who up to that point had
not said a word in seminar, was decidedly discontented. He found the
seminar “anarchic more than democratic,” merely “a series of chain reac-
tions.” This especially bothered him “on a personal basis” because he felt
unable to participate in discussions if he could do so only by fighting for
the opportunity: “I refuse to out-shout or vie with someone who begins
to speak at the same time I do. To participate in the seminar requires of
me a combativeness, a competitiveness, and a disregard for others which
I do not want to cultivate in myself.”
I agreed with Paul, but thought he was exaggerating, and doing so
in order to avoid his own share of responsibility. I knew Paul well: his
statement represented his ideal of himself more than his actual self. He
had, in fact, a pronounced combative streak of his own, but preferred to
deny it. He was frightened by his aggression, and it was this, more than
the group climate, which prevented him from participating.
Still, he had made a legitimate point, and the point needed airing.
An opportunity presented itself at the next session. We had spent the
meeting, our third, on the Abolitionists. I had played a more active role
which, by the end of the session, left me uneasy, so I asked whether the
group thought the meeting had been too structured in comparison with
the earlier sessions, and my role too prominent. The reactions were varied.
The more we talked, the more I began to see that the source of uneasi-
ness, mine and theirs, was that leadership had shifted into new hands. I
had earlier outlined this as one of our chief aims, yet when it did happen,
a number of us were made uncomfortable.
Toward the end of the session, one member suggested that some
mechanism be established for allowing people to make points without
having to interrupt or to concentrate their attention on finding an
opening into which they could jump. In the discussion which followed,
we agreed that we did not always listen carefully to one another and
that it was not always possible to speak without interrupting. We also
agreed, however, that there seemed no way to correct these occasional
defects without re-introducing, through some such device as hand-raising,
a formality which we felt was less desirable still. The student who had
brought the matter up, when pressed, had no suggestion as to how
we might improve communication. The general feeling was that on the
whole the group functioned unusually well, that perfect communication
18 M. DUBERMAN
was impossible and the expectation of it unrealistic, and that additional

devices for trying to achieve it would defeat the spontaneity and ease
of the sessions. Better, we concluded, to leave it to each individual to
assume increased responsibility for talking only when and as long as he
had something to say and for listening closely when someone was talking.
In my view, this discussion had good effect. By the next (fourth)
session, the hysteria had notably abated, members were listening to one
another more attentively, and the group had begun to function as a
group—that is, to work together toward understanding, each for himself,
the material. The “shakedown” period for the afternoon seminar was over
and its prospects seemed promising.
The evening group had quite a different history. Its first session, on the
New Left, was not so lively as the afternoon one had been, but I thought
that was all to the good. Some restraint was natural during the phase
of getting to know one another and was to be preferred to the hyperac-
tivity of the afternoon group. In the following three weeks, unfortunately,
the restraint grew and the liveliness diminished. Later, when the term was
over, some of the students wrote (on a voluntary basis) retrospective eval-
uations in which they offered explanations for the failure of the evening
group to catch fire. (Significantly, only four members from the evening
group turned in evaluations whereas eight from the afternoon group did.)
The explanations offered by these four students stressed the hampering
effect of a chronological approach, the minimal interest of some members
of the seminar in its subject matter and experimental format, and the
initial uneasiness at the lack of faculty emphasis—an uneasiness, they
agreed, which later gave way to appreciation as they came to question
their previous definitions of what was “useful” knowledge. These expla-
nations are, to my mind, peripheral at best. Much more important in
understanding the failure of the evening session, I believe, is the collec-
tive personality of the group. In this regard, I have already discussed the
“cool” presentation of self stressed by the “big five” mentality. Another
attribute, which I have not yet touched upon, may, in fact, be the most
crucial of all—passivity.
I became aware of this problem only gradually, as various comments
and bits of behavior began to add up to a coherent pattern. One student,
for example, early tipped me off with his complaint about “the domi-
nating nature” of certain members of the evening group. There were
many times, he said, “when one person or another would try to add
something to a discussion and either be unable or cut short.” He then
added, and I think significantly: “These people, including myself, were

not forceful enough to interject their ideas until they were no longer
pertinent.”
Another bit of evidence came from Norm, a student I knew from
previous courses to be uncommonly docile and dependent; he had insisted
on “guidance” at every step, but when I tried to guide rather than to
direct him, to help him find his way rather than to insist that he follow
mine, he had always become uneasy. On the way home from the third
session, Norm told me that he was “confused.” He did not know “what
was going on,” “what was expected of him.” I tried to suggest that
nothing was expected of him, that the point of dropping grades and exams
was to encourage him to meet his own expectations rather than someone
else’s. The conversation then went something like this:
Could you at least assign readings?

Why would that be valuable?
Because then I’d know what to read.
But you do know. I suggest a number of books each week, and I tell you
what each book is like. You then read those that tie in with your interests.
But I don’t have any special interests.
We talked in this vein for some time. I tried to encourage Norm to rely
more on himself. I told him I knew this was difficult when for eighteen
years or so he had been trained to rely on everyone but himself, but that
he had to start at some point. Either that, or he would spend his life in
dependency, doing what others told him was important, but never finding
out what was important for him. He seemed to agree, or said he did, but
in fact he never came alive in the seminar. He remained for the rest of the
term on the periphery, a nonparticipant, the least affected student (at least
consciously) in the group. Yet, as his talk with me indicated, initially he
was shaken up by the experience of self-regulation. Apparently, the chal-
lenge proved too frightening. His passivity represents, in extreme form,
what I take to have been the central problem of the evening seminar, a
problem which finally came to focus during the fourth session.
We had, by then, shifted our meeting place. At first, we had met in my
office, but that had proved to be too cramped. We then moved to a larger
room down the hall, but this proved to be too “diffuse.” Still hoping that
a shift in scene might produce a shift in attitude, we started to meet in
one of the student’s living rooms, which was spacious and comfortable.
20 M. DUBERMAN
In an additional, rather desperate effort to get things going, I agreed to

the suggestion that in anyone wanted beer, he could bring it. I prob-
ably should not have agreed. Instead of contributing to informality and
helping to loosen us up, the beer seemed to underscore the prevailing atti-
tude of unseriousness. Instead of encouraging responsible commitment
to the discussions, it seemed to confirm their view that learning was an
irrelevant game.
The subject under discussion at the fourth session was Pragmatism.
A student had suggested the topic at the end of the previous meeting,
as a natural follow-up to our discussion of the Abolitionists’ “abso-
lutist” approach to social change. Few of the others seemed enthused
at the suggestion, but there was still less enthusiasm for discussing
Populism, partly because that was the topic on which the afternoon
group had settled. By this time, as I gathered from occasional comments
made during the seminars, a certain amount of ill-feeling had developed
between the two sections: the evening section referred to the members
of the afternoon one as “wild-eyed fanatics,” the latter referred to the
former as “proto-fascists.”
Earlier in the term I had suggested, it might be a good idea to invite
outside guests who had special interest or expertise in the day’s topic,
and at almost every session, some guest did attend—dates, other under-
graduates, and once a group of four or five dropouts from Harlem who
were spending the day at Princeton under the sponsorship of the Urban
League. I invited Mrs. Green, an expert on Dewey and James, to the
fourth session because I myself felt inadequate to discuss Pragmatism,
and I deduced that no one else in the seminar had much knowledge of
the topic or much incentive to gain it. In retrospect, I think the invitation
reflected my own inability to “let things happen.” I had not the time nor
the interest myself to bone up on Pragmatism, and I feared a leaderless
and lethargic session. I could have tolerated this had the seminar been
going well, but I hadn’t the guts to sit through another lifeless meeting.
Perhaps if I had, we all would have learned more from it, if only the
knowledge of our inadequacies.
It became clear early in the evening that no one had done much
reading on Pragmatism. For 45 minutes, the group struggled with the
topic, but our ineptness, our inability to utilize the talents of Mrs. Green,
became increasingly embarrassing. When someone, in passing, mentioned
the New Left, the group shifted to that topic with a rush of relief.
There then followed an unusually animated discussion of Princeton’s SDS
chapter and why it had not drawn support on campus. During the discus-
sion, the passive orientation of most members of the group was clearly
exposed.
A view much expressed was that those who joined SDS did so for the
simple reason that they were not members of the “in” group on campus.
Not only were their motives highly suspect, it was said, but their personal
style was distasteful: they dressed like “weirdos,” they “smelled bad,” they
were “dirty.” How about the position on current issues? I asked. Was SDS
right in its diagnosis? Did it point to real ills in our society? There were
general agreement that it did. Then why, I asked, did they not join SDS?
Was it really because the personal style of its members put them off, or
were they using that as a convenient excuse for not becoming active in
behalf of their own beliefs?
Mrs. Green joined the discussion at this point. She said that the refusal
to take responsibility for one’s own life—or, as a subdivision of that, to
assume direction for one’s own education—was probably the single most
characteristic trait of Princeton (perhaps of all American) undergraduates.
Her remarks cut deep. A few admitted the indictment, painfully. More
protested it, though not with much conviction. Later, with leisure to
digest Mrs. Green’s remarks and to confront them in privacy, others came
to admit their validity.
Three weeks later, the issue of passivity was again brought up, this
time by one of the members of the seminar. Hank had been one of two
students in the evening group who had persistently tried to establish active
discussion. Discouraged at the meager results and hearing of the success
of the afternoon section, he decided to sit in on one of its meetings to
see if a different climate did, in fact, prevail, and if so, why. He brought
up his feelings that same evening.
In a quiet way, without trying to provoke guilt, he reported that he
had attended the afternoon session, had been amazed at the intensity and
intelligence of the discussion, and had wondered, “Why we don’t swing
the way they do.” His tone and attitude were free enough of hostility and
of accusation against individuals that no one felt especially threatened, and
a discussion followed which, I felt, was frank and searching.
As Hank saw it, the basic failure had to do with their refusal to accept
responsibility, for themselves as individuals and also for the group. They
preferred to continue in the traditional mold, to hope that someone else
would, as always, “do it for them,” and to encourage me, especially, to be
22 M. DUBERMAN
that doer. In short, they preferred dependency to active exertion in their

own behalf.
At this point, I spoke up. I agreed, I said, with Hank’s diagnosis,
and moreover, it had set me to thinking about the utility of the kind
of experiment we had been attempting. Perhaps, I said, it was too late
by age 18 to begin encouraging people to exercise control over their
own lives, to discover and respond to the pressures within rather than to
directions from without. Their pre-Princeton experience in authoritarian
homes and schools may have established the habit of docility so firmly
that subsequent encouragement to self-regulation could do little—other
than confuse. Perhaps the real surprise, I said, was not that the evening
section had trouble functioning in a permissive climate, but that the after-
noon group had not had trouble. Perhaps the chief puzzle to be solved
was not why most Princetonians do not know what to do with freedom,
but why a few do.
I said, too, that despite all this I thought we had to be careful in
our definitions and estimates of what made a “successful” seminar. I, for
one, did not feel that mere noise or vociferousness was proof that some-
thing was happening. Activity, when manic, was itself a form of passivity,
though disguised to look like its opposite. “Busyness,” like “boredom,”
could serve as a device for avoiding self-confrontation. Passivity was best
measured not by how often a student spoke, but by what he said. The
passive person surrendered direction of his life, and this could be accom-
plished in varied, even directly opposite ways—by being inarticulate or by
being overarticulate. The active person was present in his own life and
concentrated his energies on engaging, not avoiding, himself.
In drawing this definition, I had, curiously, Hank himself in mind
(though I never said so). Hank’s eagerness to talk, his discomfort at
silence, and his determination to make the seminar “work” had chiefly
represented, I felt, the desire to please me. Though his tactics and
personal style were different from those of the majority, Hank was only
slightly less passive than those he labeled as such. As if to confirm my
estimate, Hank broke into the discussion to say that he had been eager to
do a “conscientious job” mostly because I had “stuck my neck out” for
them in arranging the seminar on an ungraded basis, and he felt that in
return he had an obligation to me to make the seminar a success.
I replied, in what I hope was a fairly gentle tone, that he didn’t owe me
a thing. I had set up the seminar on an experimental basis, I said, chiefly
for my own sake. My discontent with authoritarian education and its
negative results had accumulated to the point where in order to maintain

my interest—to justify my existence—I had to try a new approach.
As the discussion proceeded, only two students tried to shift respon-
sibility for their apathy from themselves to the group as a whole.
One insisted that his unresponsiveness had been due solely to intellec-
tual discontent. He had become distrustful of the “tenuous analogies”
constantly being drawn in seminar between what he took to be wholly
dissimilar protest movements; he felt we were straining to make the past
relevant to the present. (Even if he had invented his argument to avoid
personal responsibility, and I think he had, that did not mean the argu-
ment was necessarily false; indeed, it led us into a side discussion of “the
utility of history,” which ended in a whole session devoted to that topic.)
The second student protested that a few verbal types had monopolized
discussions, leaving no opportunity for others to participate. In reply, one
of the “verbalizers” said that he had talked only to fill gaping silences
and would have welcomed interruption at any time; the fact that it rarely
came was, he said, not his fault but theirs. I think he was right—not in
having talked to fill a void, but in pointing out that anyone really wanting
an opportunity to speak could have made one.
These two exceptions aside, the seminar members agreed that “pas-
sivity” did correctly describe the dominant mood, and that responsibility
for ending that mood rested with each individual. One student closed the
discussion by pointing out—I thought eloquently—that if we could truly
accept, each for himself, the diagnosis of passivity, the seminar could then
be accounted a large success, though little had been read or remembered,
though the discussions had been banal and the interchanges superficial.
The seminar would have been successful because it would have provided
new self-awareness for each member. If we had the courage to realize, he
said, that when offered the opportunity of self-regulation, we had been
unequal to it, that when given freedom we had either not wished or not
been able to utilize it, then we would recognize to what an alarming
degree we had already become automatons. To achieve that kind of
insight was to fulfill the chief aim of education.
As a result of this self-examination, the remaining meetings of the
evening section seemed to me more fruitful; there was wider participa-
tion and the discussions were better informed, more centered on matters
of substance, and more lucid in content. After the final meeting, one
student commented, “too bad this wasn’t the first instead of the last.”
Another claimed (though I do not agree) that “in a less dynamic way”
24 M. DUBERMAN
the members of the evening group ultimately “got as much” out of their
seminar experience as the afternoon group had.
The afternoon section, while maintaining consistently high levels
of participation and enthusiasm, developed frictions of its own. They
centered around Sherm, who at one point in almost every meeting tried
to reintroduce, under various guises, some form of authoritarian struc-
ture. Each of his suggestions was greeted with loud opposition, some
derision, and considerable impatience.
Someone pointed out to him that his chief, almost sole, criterion for a
useful discussion was efficiency, and that he measured efficiency, in turn,
by how much factual information was amassed and how closely the group
stuck to the stated topic. These criteria, it was said, were shallow. As it
was impossible to “cover” most of the topics we discussed, the group
should focus on those aspects which most interested it, since only these
would be retained anyway. Moreover, when the group did wander off
into a discussion of some peripheral matter which had come up—taking
drugs, say—the lack of immediate relevance to the topic at hand was
more than compensated for by its broader relevance to the lives of those
involved. The seminar should hold one and only one pursuit sacrosanct:
self-knowledge through group interaction. “Rituals of legitimacy,” as one
student put it, should not take precedence over the unorthodox and
the unexpected, especially since the latter could often produce authentic
experience.
Sherm took those reprimands in good spirit; indeed, he largely ignored
them, tenaciously returning every week or two to his pet schemes. Nor
was he intimidated by the outcry against him; not only did he continue
to participate actively in the seminar, but in fact helped to initiate what
we came to call our “lab work.”
In about the fourth week, Sherm and a few others suggested that since
the seminar was studying radicalism and was itself a radical experiment in
education, it followed that its members should take the lead in “radical-
izing” its own community, namely Princeton University. Aside from the
inherent value of the undertaking, it would, secondarily, enable seminar
members to discover empirically the problems characteristic of all radical
movements.
I made it clear from the outset that if a movement for change at
Princeton were to develop, it would have to be their movement. I would
be glad to participate in strategy sessions, but, as in the seminar itself, I did
not intend to play, either openly or covertly, the role of Gray Eminence.
It was agreed that those interested in the “Princeton movement” would

get together at 10:15 once a week, after the close of the evening seminar.
These sessions went on, irregularly, throughout the term, with atten-
dance varying a good bit. In the beginning, fifteen of the twenty-four
seminar members attended, ten of whom were from the afternoon group.
Only one member of the evening group, Hank, showed up with any regu-
larity. I attended almost all of the meetings, occasionally contributing a
comment or question, but more often simply sitting and listening. As the
term proceeded and as pressure from other course work mounted, attri-
tion set in. At some meetings, only six or seven students showed up, and
now and then a meeting would be called off entirely “because of midterm
exams” or the like.
In the first few meetings, an effort was made to thrash out what a
university ideally should be and to what degree Princeton met those
specifications. A voluntary committee of four drew up a “Statement of
Principles,” and after innumerable delays and false starts, it presented
a draft statement to the full group, where suggestions were made and
new drafts subsequently drawn. Two such statements were eventually
mimeographed, but by then exams and papers had descended, and still
further inroads were made in attendance. I know that one “Statement
of Principles” was circulated privately to various student leaders, faculty,
and administrators, but beyond this the movement brought no concrete
results.
That nothing more materialized can be laid, I believe, not only to the
competing demands of course work and campus activities, but also to
the division of views on tactics and theory among the seminar members
and to their feeling, assumed from the first, that any sizable campus-wide
interest in behalf of change was unlikely. Yet the sessions themselves,
which probed often with sophistication into basic aspects of university
structure and educational theory, proved of considerable value to those
who attended—certainly to me. Members of the movement did gain
insight into the kinds of obstacles that often defeated radicals in the past,
into the nature of the Princeton community, and, perhaps most impor-
tant, into their own inability to resist the pressures of conformity and
routine, to place their concern (often deep) about public malfunctions
above their fear of personal reprisals.
At the final meeting of the term, the two sections again met as one
to evaluate the seminar experience. The view expressed in that meeting,
in combination with material by those who turned in written evaluations,
make up the topical summary which follows.
26 M. DUBERMAN
Grades and Exams

There was no dissent from the view that the elimination of grades and
tests had been liberating. One student expressed appreciation for being
“treated as if we wanted to learn,” for the recognition that it was
possible to discover and nurture internal incentives in place of external
ones—a substitution especially welcome because the latter encouraged
not curiosity and satisfaction, but merely competition and showmanship.
Another student expressed relief, apparently shared by all, that the “stul-
tifying effect” of exams had been removed. For once, he said, “students
were not required to tailor thoughts to those useless three-hour blitzes
and were allowed to let their thinking run free.”
The only regret expressed was that grades and tests could not be elim-
inated from all courses. So long as those devices remained operative in
the rest of the university, so long as “professorial retribution” continued
to hang over them in other courses, they could never take full advantage
of the liberating potential of a single unstructured seminar. One student
put the matter this way: “When one is taking three other subjects, two of
them departmentals, which are all-important to grad-school admission,
which in turn will supposedly determine much of one’s future life, the
tendency is to put off the ungraded work, as we all did.”
It is often said that grades are necessary “training for life,” for the
competition that defines and measures all aspects of adulthood. While one
may agree that competition is omnipresent, one can question its desir-
ability and necessity. To the extent that we know anything about human
nature, and we don’t know much, there is little reason to believe that the
competitive drive is an instinctual and therefore inevitable component of
behavior (witness the human product of the kibbutzim in Israel). Compe-
tition continues to be the hallmark of our society because we continue to
train our youth to act competitively, to measure their worth in terms of
how successfully they dominate others rather than themselves.
The grading system also trains young Americans to be more adept at
judging others than at understanding them, and at judging, moreover, on
the basis of limited and largely unattractive qualities: how well an indi-
vidual “performs” in public; how readily he assimilates established values;
how responsive he is to pressure situations; how adept he is at memo-
rizing and verbalizing; how mechanically he can provide “right” answers;
how obediently he can avoid “wrong” questions.
I do not doubt that tests and grades prepare the student for the Amer-
ican lifestyle. The question is whether we approve of that style and wish
to perpetuate it.
Readings
When the coercive power of the grading system is eliminated, can we rely
on any alternative stimulus to motivate students to learn?
Quite a few seminar members felt that “natural curiosity” was a suffi-
cient motivating force for learning, but a number of rebuttals were and
can be made to this assumption. First of all, even if “natural curiosity” is
innate, it can be argued that the deadening procedures of pre-Princeton
schooling will have bred this quality out of many undergraduates. Those
whose curiosity has at least partially survived are then subjected to, and
often defeated by, the rituals of the Princeton system.
Moreover, there is reason to doubt, as Bernard Z. Friedlander has
recently argued, whether “natural curiosity,” “hunger for learning,” or
“joy in knowledge” can be relied upon as a sufficient incentive for
academic learning. Friedlander points out that young children are chiefly
curious about matters that relate to sexuality and that such curiosity is not
automatically transferable, as the child grows older, to scholastic topics.
Indeed, if curiosity about sex is not satisfied—and in our society it is more
usually disapproved and suppressed—the child’s interest in asking ques-
tions may be permanently destroyed. Having been given no answers or
false answers to questions of pressing urgency, he is not likely to raise
questions about matters of less potent interest.
All of which raises the pessimistic possibility that curriculum reform
on the college level may be an enterprise of marginal value. By age 18,
it could be said, it is too late to salvage curiosity. One could answer
that those who arrive as freshmen at college, especially at a “prestige”
college, can be assumed to be those whose early craving for information
was satisfied and encouraged. The answer is not, however, very persua-
sive. The arrival of freshman Joe Brown at Princeton’s portals means
only that he had distinguished himself in a secondary school, and that he
has performed better in meeting its requirements than most of his class-
mates. Since those requirements are usually geared to satisfying the needs
of teachers rather than students, Joe Brown’s high grades may directly
reflect, in inverse ratio, the slow strangulation of his own curiosity.
28 M. DUBERMAN
At discouraging moments during the seminar, one thought kept

occurring to me: anyone interested in education should teach on the
primary-school level, where there is still some chance of it mattering.
At other moments, however, I preferred this more sanguine syllogism:
the curiosity of many students arriving at Princeton has already been
destroyed; it is too late in any significant degree either to harm them
or to help them. Nevertheless, some freshmen are still eager and alive,
and it matters very much whether they are subjected to destructive disci-
pline or encouraged to seek, without fear or retribution, honest answers
to honest questions. The experience of History 308 provides evidence to
confirm both the discouraging thought and the sanguine syllogism.
With a single exception, the students admitted that they did less
reading and studying in the seminar than they did in courses with
assignments and grades. The confessional chorus was loud and long—
lamentations of mea culpa generously interspersed with recriminations
against a “system” that “feeds our worst impulses.” A few students in
their extremity were reduced to suggesting as a remedy the very coer-
cions against which they otherwise protested. “I think,” wrote one, “that
it may have been worthwhile if I had been expected to present a paper
or perhaps an oral presentation…this would have forced me to do read-
ings in areas where I was lax…to gather my thought about radicalism in
general.” Yet in another part of his written evaluation, this same student
expressed the opinion that my method of indicating the subject matter
and value of each book on a list of suggested titles was preferable to the
usual system of assigning a common set of readings. The conflict in this
student’s feelings accurately represents, I believe, the blurred reactions of
the majority. They were excited by freedom and yet, because they failed
by their own (perhaps excessively demanding) standards fully to grasp its
opportunities, repelled by it.
Discussions
The strengths and weaknesses of our seminar discussions were best
perceived by members of the afternoon group, perhaps because they were
convinced of the overall value of the discussions and so felt less inhibited
about articulating its incidental deficiencies. The chief complaint centered
on what was called “formlessness” or “lack of direction.” Only a minority
viewed this as a deficiency, and no two people who did shared the same
reasons for thinking it so. The most extreme statement came from a
student who claimed to be “basically happy” with his seminar experience,

but felt that he could have got still more out of it had the sessions been
tightly organized. He suggested—and this, I feel, is yet another example
of an endemic unwillingness or inability to exercise individual responsi-
bility—that since “it would have been very difficult for any of us to impose
this kind of discipline successfully,” the solution was for me to impose it
on them. He did not suggest how I could do this without inhibiting spon-
taneity and destroying “the relationship of complete equality between
professor and student” that he himself felt had “contributed so much
to making our discussions worthwhile.”
This position, shared by others, was sharply rebutted by the majority.
They agreed that discussion frequently became generalized, unknowl-
edgeable, and discursive, that the “bullshit quotient” was often high, and
that “a snarling five-man cacophony” often replaced thoughtful dialogue.
But such “dysfunctions” are to be expected, they said, are perhaps even
necessary bi-products of an alive atmosphere. Talk, by its very nature, is
spasmodic, discursive, repetitive, and even at times incoherent. To try to
trim it into neat, orderly packages is to drain it of life.
The important point they were making, it seems to me, is that human
exchange is fullest when it operates on a variety of levels, including the
emotional, the irrational, and the fantastic. Unfortunately, most educa-
tional situations concentrate on only one level of human interaction—the
rational. In doing so, they try to make people into what they are not—
thinking machines—and end by turning the average seminar into an
exercise rather than an experience.
The chief function of a university should not be, as is currently
assumed, the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge, but rather
the encouragement of individual growth. Factual information can aid in
that growth, but to do so it must be made relevant to the individual’s
needs; it must pose some problem, extend some challenge, and answer
some longing, if it is to be incorporated rather than merely appended.
There is no one way to make knowledge relevant. Any seminar
is composed of a variety of individuals with disparate lifestyles and
contrasting perspectives. Moreover, the needs of a seminar group as a
whole do not remain constant. A seminar’s structure must, therefore,
remain flexible enough to allow individual variety in the approach and
solution of problems. Some discipline is necessary to a coherent discus-
sion, but it should be imposed not from above, but by the individual on
30 M. DUBERMAN
himself when he senses that the group’s collective need demands a shift
in attitude and approach.
The central point is that a seminar must involve more than intellec-
tual exchange. Opinions and values are most likely to be revealed when
the atmosphere encourages rather than suppresses emotional interaction.
Opinions, never shaped solely by reasoning, are always influenced by
personal relationships and encounters, themselves freighted with emotion,
and thus are more likely to be exposed and examined in an environment
that contains an emotional dimension. We want students to “re-examine
their beliefs”; that, we like to say, is the whole point of education. Since
those beliefs were first formed in a multidimensional setting, they cannot
be successfully challenged in a setting that is one-dimensional.
This was, I think, the main reason why so many of the students in
History 308 came away from the seminar feeling, as one put it, that “no
course I have ever had in this university has challenged and changed my
attitudes and views as much as this ‘bull session.’” The term bull session is
instructive; it was used by a number of the students to connote the sense
of a discussion among friends, one more free of formality and constraint
than most, one in which more of the person gets exposed and involved
than it does in a seminar discussion narrowly confined to a selected topic
or issue. To my mind, the frequent use of the term bull session to describe
our meetings is testimony to their success.
Perhaps someone might object that I had confused the purpose of a
university seminar with that of a group-therapy session, and that my func-
tion as a professor was not to treat personalities, but to develop minds.
I would answer such an accusation in part by denying it and in part
by embracing it. I would deny that the seminar was chiefly designed
to encourage members to reveal pathology, and that our purpose in
coming together was “medicinal.” Yet neuroses were revealed, and some-
thing which could be called “therapy” did take place. In the process of
actively engaging one another, the students exposed personality traits of
all kinds. To the extent that a given individual became aware of what he
had revealed about himself and chose to ponder it (I do not mean openly,
in seminar, but privately, with himself), some personality changes could
have ensued. Henry Anderson has said, “any experience that is human-
izing might be called psychotherapeutic.” If History 308 did partake
of psychotherapy, I would, therefore, not only welcome the news, but
consider it the best possible vindication of the seminar—for I do not know
what “education” is if not self-examination and change.
This does not necessarily mean that I believe education and therapy
should henceforth become interchangeable processes (I am not sure that
I believe the opposite, either). I do feel that the simple dualism which
pretends that education is concerned solely with “informing the mind”
and therapy with “understanding the emotions” falsifies our everyday
experience. No one actually functions on the basis of such neat cate-
gories; our emotions always color our intellectual views, and our minds
are continually “ordering” our emotional responses.
It would be grotesque and dangerous for a professor of history to claim
the insight and skill needed to conduct group-therapy sessions, just as it
would be foolish for a psychiatrist to conduct a seminar on Plato for his
patients. But this is not to say that a university seminar does not influence
the emotions of its members. We need to recognize that when a seminar
is functioning well, the emotions of its members are engaged, and, once
engaged, will be transmuted.
Intellectual development does not, cannot, take place in vacuo. Indeed,
it can be argued that intellectual development is predicated on the simul-
taneous development of the emotions. By intellectual development, I
do not mean the amassing of facts (we all know walking encyclopedias
who are emotional infants), but rather what William Kessen, professor of
psychology at Yale, has called the individual’s “delight in the solution of
problems, pursuit of the orderly, joy in his own active inquiry, the relief
and excitement of setting his own goals.” For that kind of intellectual
development, one needs emotional growth as well. The two are inextri-
cably linked, and it is because we have tried to separate them—have tried
to exclude emotion from the classroom—that we have turned out many
more pedants and parrots than human beings.
Note
1. All the names in this account are fictitious.
CHAPTER 3
Martin Duberman, “On Misunderstanding

Student Rebels” (1968)
Martin Duberman
For years Duberman had defended activists from accusations of irra-

tionality. For instance, he edited a well-respected anthology on the abolition-
ists that dispelled their reputation as cranks and misfits.1 On the Princeton
campus, he told a new civil rights group that many students assumed that
activists who fought racial injustice in 1963 must be neurotic. In his opinion,
just as many “so-called neurotics [are] working out their problems on the
football field.” 2
When The Atlantic Monthly early in 1968 printed a speech by former
diplomat George Kennan, Duberman sent an indignant letter to the editor.
He called Kennan’s criticisms of campus radicals “appalling” thanks to
“gross misrepresentation” and “slander.” Outspoken college students on the
far left deserved praise, not blame. Their overarching goal was admirable—
“there can and should be less suffering in the world.” 3 When a student
told him how he admired his willingness to jeopardize his job to oppose
Kennan, Duberman said tenure protected him, especially at Princeton,
Published in The Atlantic Monthly, November 1968.

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77059-4_3
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
“You don't imagine that she was on the beach that night, do you,
Clinton? Armadale found out that her shoes were No. 4—half a size,
at least, too big for the prints we haven't identified yet. Besides, she's
quite a good height—as tall as Mrs. Fleetwood; and, you remember,
the steps were much shorter than Mrs. Fleetwood's. The person who
made these prints must have been much smaller than the Laurent-
Desrousseaux woman. Have you found some more prints that you
didn't tell us about?”
“All in good time, squire,” Sir Clinton answered. “Take things as
they come.”
He sipped his coffee as though to show that he did not propose
to be drawn. But Wendover was not to be put off.
“You couldn't have got a No. 4 shoe into these prints.”
“No.”
“And, from what I've seen of her feet, her shoes are a perfect fit.”
“I've noticed you admiring them—quite justifiably, squire.”
“Well, she couldn't wear a 3½ shoe.”
“No. That's admitted. She hasn't such a thing in her possession;
I'm sure of that. Give it up, squire. The fishing's very poor in this
district. I'm not going to tell you anything just now.”
Wendover recognised that he could not hope to extract any
further information from the chief constable, and he consoled himself
with the thought that a couple of hours at most would see this part of
the mystery cleared up. After breakfast he went into the lounge, and
passed the time in smoking and reviewing the state of affairs. He
became so engrossed in this exercise that it was almost with a start
that he realised the time had come to take out the car and pick up
Armadale.
As he and the inspector drove slowly back from the village, they
saw the figures of Sir Clinton and Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux
sauntering across the sands just below high-tide mark; and in a few
moments the car came level with the walkers. Sir Clinton waved his
arm, and Wendover and Armadale got out and walked down the
beach.
“This is Inspector Armadale, Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux,” the
chief constable said, as they came up. “He wants to ask you some
questions about Friday night, when you were at that rock over there.”
He pointed to Neptune's seat as he spoke. Mme. Laurent-
Desrousseaux seemed completely taken by surprise. For a moment
or two she stood glancing uneasily from one to another; and her
eyes showed something more than a tinge of fear.
“I am much surprised, Sir Clinton,” she said at last, her accent
coming out more markedly than usual in her nervous voice. “I had
supposed that you were friendly to me; and now it appears that,
without making a seeming of it, you have been leading me into what
you call an English police-trap, isn't it? That is not good of you.”
Armadale had picked up his cue from Sir Clinton's words.
“I'm afraid I must ask you to answer my questions, ma'am,” he
said, with a certain politeness. Obviously he was by no means sure
of his ground.
Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux eyed him in silence for some
moments.
“What is it that you desire to know?” she demanded finally.
Before Armadale could formulate a question, Sir Clinton
intervened.
“I think, madame, that it will make things easier for us all if I tell
you that the inspector is preparing a case against someone else. He
needs your deposition to support his charge. That is the whole truth,
so far as he is concerned. You need not have any fears, provided
that you tell us all that you know about Friday night.”
Wendover noticed the double meaning which might be attached
to Sir Clinton's words; but he could not feel sure whether the chief
constable wished to deceive or merely to reassure his witness. Mme.
Laurent-Desrousseaux's face cleared slightly as she grasped the
meaning of Sir Clinton's speech.
“If such is the case,” she said cautiously, “I might recall to myself
some of the things which happened.”
Armadale seemed a trifle suspicious at this guarded offer, but he
proceeded to put some questions.
“You knew this man Staveley, ma'am?”
“Nicholas Staveley? Yes, I knew him; I had known him for a long
time.”
Sir Clinton interposed again.
“Perhaps you would prefer to tell us what you know of him in your
own words, madame. It would be easier for us if you would do so.”
Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux nodded her agreement. She
seemed to have conquered her nervousness.
“It was during the war, messieurs, in 1915. I was Odette Pascal
then, a young girl, an honest girl—what you English call straight, isn't
it? It was later that I became Aline Laurent-Desrousseaux, you
understand? I encountered this Nicholas Staveley in Paris, where I
was employed in a Government office. He was very charming, very
caressing; he knew how to make himself loved.”
She made a gesture, half cynical, half regretful, and paused for a
moment before she continued in a harder tone:
“It did not last long, that honeymoon. I discovered his character,
so different from that which I had believed it. He abandoned me, and
I was very rejoiced to let him go; but he had taught me things, and
forced me to work for him while he had me. When we separated
ourselves, in fact, I was no longer the gentle, honest little girl that I
had been. All that was finished, you understand?”
Wendover saw that the inspector was taking notes in shorthand.
Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux paused for a time to allow Armadale to
catch up.
“The rest is without importance. I became Aline Laurent-
Desrousseaux, and I had not any need of Nicholas Staveley. During
a long time I had no need of him; but from time to time I heard speak
of him, for I had many friends, and some of them could tell a little;
and always he was the same. Then is come the report that he was
killed at the Front.”
She paused again, with her eye on the inspector's pencil.
“The time passed,” she resumed, “and I desired only to forget
him. I believed him well dead, you understand? And then, from one
of my friends, I learned that he had been seen again after the war. I
disinterested myself from the affair; I had no desire to see him. But
suddenly it became of importance to me to satisfy myself about him.
It is much complicated, and has nothing to do with him—I pass on.
But it was most necessary that I should see him and get him to
consent to some arrangements, or an affair of mine would be
embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed,” Armadale repeated, to show that he was ready to
continue.
“I have consulted my friends,” Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux
pursued. “Some among them have been able to help me, and I have
discovered where he was living in London. It was most necessary for
me to speak with him. Thus I came over to England, to London. But
he is no longer there; he is gone to Lynden Sands, one says. So I
procure his address—at Flatt's cottage—and I come myself to
Lynden Sands Hotel.”
Armadale's involuntary upward glance from his note-book
betrayed the increase in his interest at this point.
“I arrive here; and at once I write him a letter saying I go to Flatt's
cottage to see him on Friday night. There is no response, but I go to
Flatt's cottage as I had planned. When I knocked at the door,
Staveley appeared.”
“What time on Friday night was that?” Armadale interposed.
“In my letter I had fixed a rendezvous at half-past nine. I was
exact—on time, you say, isn't it? But it seemed that this Staveley
could not see me alone there; others were in the cottage. Then he
said that he would meet me later—at half-past ten—at some great
rock beside the sea, the rock one calls Neptune's Seat.”
“So you came away, and he went back into the cottager”
Armadale demanded.
Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux assented with a slight bow.
“I came away,” she continued. “To pass the time, I walked on the
road, and perhaps I walked too far. It was late—after the hour of the
rendezvous—when I arrived opposite the rock, this Neptune's Seat. I
went down on to the sands and attained to the rock. Staveley was
there, very angry because I was ten minutes late. He was much
enraged, it appears, because he had a second rendezvous at that
place in a few minutes. He would not listen to me at all at the
moment. I saw that it was no time for negotiating with him, he was so
much in anger and so anxious to deliver himself of me. I fixed
another rendezvous for the following day, and I left him.”
“What time did you leave him on the rock?” Armadale interjected.
“Let us see.” Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux halted for a moment to
consider. “I passed some minutes with him on the rock—let us put
ten minutes at the least.”
“That would mean you left the rock very shortly before eleven
o'clock, then?”
Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux agreed with a gesture.
“I went away from the rock by the same road as I had come,” she
went on. “I was much agitated, you understand? It was a great
disappointment that I had attained to no arrangement at that
moment, I had hoped for something better, isn't it? And that Staveley
had been very little obliging—unkind, isn't it? It was very desolating.
“As I was crossing the sands, a great automobile appeared on
the road, coming from the hotel. It stopped whilst I was waiting for it
to pass; and the chauffeur extinguished its projectors. Then a
woman descended from the automobile, and walked down on to the
sands towards the rock.”
Wendover could read on Armadale's face an expression of
triumph. The inspector was clearly overjoyed at getting some direct
evidence to support his case against Cressida; and Wendover had to
admit, with considerable disquietude, that Mme. Laurent-
Desrousseaux's narrative bore out Armadale's hypothesis very
neatly.
“When I again regarded the automobile, the chauffeur also had
vanished. He was not on the road. Perhaps he also had gone down
to the rivage.”
“Shore,” Sir Clinton interjected, seeing Armadale's obvious
perplexity at the word.
“I was standing there for some minutes,” Mme. Laurent-
Desrousseaux continued. “Against one like that Staveley one must
utilise all weapons, isn't it?—even espionage. I had a presentiment
that something might eventuate. Staveley and a woman, you
understand? I was hoping that something, anything, might arrive to
give me an advantage over him.
“I have forgotten to say that the sky was obscured by great
clouds. It was a little difficult to see clearly. On the rock they
discussed and discussed, but I could hear nothing; and in the end I
grew tired of attending.”
“How long did you stand there?” Armadale asked.
“It would be difficult to say, but perhaps it was about a quarter-
hour. I was quite tired of attending, and I walked—quite slowly—
along the road away from the hotel. I avoided the automobile, you
understand? I desired no embarrassments. It was not my affair—isn't
it?—to discover the identity of this woman. All that I desired was an
arm against Staveley. There was nothing else at all.
“A little after, I returned; it seemed to me longer, perhaps, than it
really was; and I was believing that they must be gone, those two.
Then, all at once, I heard the report of a firearm down at the rock
——”
“A single shot?” Sir Clinton questioned. “Un seul coup de feu?”
“One only,” Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux answered definitely. “I
hastened back along the road in the direction of the automobile. I
had the idea of an accident in my head, you understand? It was very
sombre; great clouds were passing on the moon. I could see with
difficulty the woman's figure hasten up from the rock towards the
automobile; and almost at once the chauffeur rejoined her. When
they were getting into the automobile I was quite close; I could hear
them speak, although it was too dark to see them except most dimly.
The woman spoke first, very agitated.”
Her three listeners were intent on her next words. Armadale
looked up, his pencil poised to take down her report. Wendover felt a
catch in his breath as he waited for the next sentences which would
either make or break the inspector's case.
“She said,” Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux continued, “She said
these very words, for they were stamped on my memory since they
meant so much to me: ‘I've shot him, Stanley.’ And the chauffeur
demanded: ‘Have you killed him?’ And you can understand,
messieurs, that I listened with all my ears. The woman responded: ‘I
think so. He fell at once and lay quite still. What's to be done?’ And
to that the chauffeur made the reply: ‘Get you away at once.’ And he
made some movement as if to put the motor in march. But the
woman stopped him and demanded: ‘Aren't you going down to look
at him—see if anything can be done?’ And to that the chauffeur
made the response in anger: ‘It's damn well likely, isn't it?’ Just like
that. And he pursued: ‘Not till I've seen you in safety, anyhow. I'm not
running any risks.’ ”
Wendover felt that his last shred of hope had been torn away.
This reported conversation might have been concerted between
Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux and Armadale beforehand, so neatly
did it fit into its place in the inspector's case. He glanced up at Sir
Clinton's face, and saw there only the quiet satisfaction of a man
who fits a fresh piece of a jig-saw puzzle into position.
“Then,” Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux continued, “the chauffeur
set his motor in march and reversed the automobile. I stepped aside
off the road for fear that they should see me; but they went off
towards the hotel without illuminating the projectors.”
She stopped, evidently thinking that she had told all that was of
importance. Armadale suggested that she should continue her tale.
“Figure to yourselves my position,” she went on. “Staveley was
lying dead on the rock. The automobile had gone. I was left alone. If
one came along the road and encountered me, there would be
suspicion; and one would have said that I had good reason to hate
Staveley. I could see nothing but embarrassments before me. And
the chauffeur had suggested that he might return later on. What
more easy, if he found me there, than to throw suspicion on me to
discredit me? Or to incriminate me, even? In thinking of these things,
I lost my head. My sole idea was to get away without being seen. I
went furtively along the road, in trembling lest the automobile should
return. No one met me; and I regained the gardens of the hotel
without being encountered. As I was passing one of the alleys, I
noticed standing there the great automobile, with its lights
extinguished. I passed into the hotel without misfortune.”
“What time did you get back to the hotel, madame?” Armadale
asked, as she halted again.
“Ah! I am able to tell you that, Monsieur l'Inspecteur, and exactly.
I noted the hour mechanically on the clock in the hall. It was midnight
less five minutes when I arrived.”
“It's a twenty to twenty-five minute walk,” Armadale commented.
“That means you must have left the beach somewhere round about
half-past eleven. Now, one more question, madame. Did you
recognise the voices of the man and the woman?”
Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux hesitated before replying.
“I should not wish to say,” she answered at last unwillingly.
A frown crossed Armadale's features at the reply, and, seeing it,
she turned to Sir Clinton, as though to appeal to him.
“The automobile has already been identified, madame,” the chief
constable said, answering her unspoken inquiry. “You can do no one
any harm by telling us the truth.”
His words seemed to remove her disinclination.
“In this case, I reveal nothing which you ignore? Then I say that it
was the voice of the young Madame Fleetwood which I have heard
in the night.”
Armadale bestowed a glance on Wendover, as much as to say
that his case was lock-fast. Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux, now that
she had got her narrative off her mind, seemed to be puzzled by
something. She turned to Sir Clinton.
“I am embarrassed to know how you came to discover that I was
at the rock on that night. May I ask?”
Sir Clinton smiled, and with a wave of his hand he indicated the
trail of footmarks across the sands which they had made in their
walk.
“Ah, I comprehend! I had forgotten the imprints which I must have
left when I went down to the rock. It was dark, you understand?—
and naturally I did not perceive that I was leaving traces. So that was
it, Sir Clinton?”
Armadale was obviously puzzled. He turned to Mme. Laurent-
Desrousseaux.
“What size of shoe do you wear, madame?”
She glanced at her neatly shod feet.
“These shoes I have bought in London a few days ago. The
pointure—the size, you call it, isn't it?—was No. 4.”
Armadale shrugged his shoulders, as though to express his
disbelief.
“Measure these prints on the sand here, inspector,” Sir Clinton
suggested.
Armadale drew out his tape-measure and took the dimensions of
the footmarks left by Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux.
“And the length of step also, inspector,” Sir Clinton suggested.
“They correspond with the tracks down to the rock, true enough,”
the inspector admitted, when he completed his task. “But only a 3½
shoe could have made them.”
Sir Clinton laughed, though not sneeringly.
“Would you lend me one of your shoes for a moment, madame?”
he asked. “You can lean on me while it's off, so as not to put your
foot on the wet sand.”
Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux slipped off her right shoe and held it
out.
“Now, inspector, there's absolutely no deception. Look at the
number stamped on it. A four, isn't it?”
Armadale examined the shoe, and nodded affirmatively.
“Now take the shoe and press it gently on the sand alongside a
right-foot print of Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux—that one there will
do. See that you get it square on the sand and make a good
impression.”
The inspector knelt down and did as he was told. As he lifted the
shoe again, Wendover saw a look of astonishment on his face.
“Why, they don't correspond!” he exclaimed. “The one I've made
just now is bigger than the other.”
“Of course,” the chief constable agreed. “Now do you see that a
No. 4 shoe can make an impression smaller than itself if you happen
to be walking in sand or mud? While you were hunting for people
with 3½ shoes, I was turning my attention to No. 4's. There aren't so
many in the hotel, as you know. And it so happened that I began with
Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux. She was good enough to go for a walk
with me; and by counting her steps I gauged the length of her pace.
It corresponded to the distance on the tracks.”
Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux was examining Sir Clinton with
obvious admiration, not wholly unmixed with a certain uneasiness.
“You seem to be very adroit, Sir Clinton,” she observed. “But what
is this about the length of my pace?”
“The inspector is accustomed to our English girls, madame, who
have a free-swinging walk and therefore a fairly long step. From the
length of the steps on the sand he inferred that they had been made
by someone who was not very tall—rather under the average height.
He forgot that some of you Parisians have a different gait—more
restrained, more finished, shall we say?”
“Ah, now I see!” Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux exclaimed, not at
all unsusceptible to the turn of Sir Clinton's phrase. “You mean the
difference between the cab-horse and the stepper?”
“Exactly,” Sir Clinton agreed with an impassive face.
Armadale was still puzzling over the two footprints. Mme.
Laurent-Desrousseaux, evidently wearying of standing with one foot
off the ground, recovered her shoe from him and slipped it on again.
Sir Clinton took pity on his subordinate.
“Here's the explanation, inspector. When you walk in sand, you
put down your heel first. But as the sand's soft, your heel goes
forward and downward as you plant your foot. Then, as your body
moves on, your foot begins to turn in the sand; and when you've
come to the end of your step, your toe also is driven downwards; but
instead of going forward, like your heel, it slips backward. The result
is that in the impression the heel is too far forward, whilst the toe is in
the rear of the true position—and that means an impression shorter
than the normal. On the sand, your foot really pivots on the sole
under the instep, instead of on heel and toe, as it does on hard
ground. If you look at these impressions, you'll find quite a heap of
sand under the point where the instep was; whilst the heel and toe
are deeply marked owing to each of them pivoting on the centre of
the shoe. See it?”
The inspector knelt down, and Wendover followed his example.
They had no difficulty in seeing Sir Clinton's point.
“Of course,” the chief constable went on, “in the case of a
woman's shoe, the thing is even more exaggerated owing to the
height of the heel and the sharpness of the toe. Haven't you noticed,
in tracks on the sand, how neat any woman's prints always look?
You never seem to find the impression of a clumsy foot, simply
because the impression is so much smaller than the real foot. Clear
enough, isn't it?”
“You are most ingenious, Sir Clinton,” Mme. Laurent-
Desrousseaux commented. “I am very glad indeed that I have not
you against me.”
Sir Clinton turned the point.
“The inspector will bring you a copy of the evidence you have so
kindly given us, madame, and you will do us the favour to sign it. It is
a mere formality, that; but we may need you as a witness in the
case, you understand?”
Rather ungraciously, Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux agreed. It was
evident that she had hoped to escape giving evidence in court.
“I do not desire to offer testimony against the young Madame
Fleetwood if it could be averted,” she said frankly. “She was good to
me once or twice; very gentle, very kind—not like the others in the
hotel.”
The inspector shrugged his shoulders, as though the matter were
out of his hands; but he made no reply.
“You will, of course, say nothing about this to anyone, madame,”
Sir Clinton warned her, as they walked across the sands to the car.
At the hotel, Sir Clinton was met by a message from Cargill
asking him to go up to his room. Wendover accompanied him, and
when they had inquired about his wound and been reassured by a
good report from the doctor which Cargill was able to repeat, the
Australian plunged into the matter which he wished to lay before the
chief constable.
“It's that thing I told you about before,” he explained. “This is how
it happened. I was so sore last night that I forgot all about it.”
He felt under his pillow, and drew out a crumpled envelope.
“I was in the writing-room one day lately, and Mme. Laurent-
Desrousseaux—that French high-stepper—was writing something at
one of the tables. She made a muddle of her addressing of the thing,
and flung a spoiled envelope into the waste-paper basket beside her.
Then she addressed another envelope, sealed up her letter, and
went out.
“I happened to have some jottings to make; and, as her waste-
paper basket was just at my elbow, I leaned over and fished out the
old envelope, to save myself the bother of getting out of my chair for
a piece of paper. I scribbled down the notes I wanted to make, put
the envelope in my pocket, and left it there. It wasn't for a while after
that—yesterday—that I needed the jottings I'd made. I fished the
envelope out, and was reading my notes, when suddenly my eye
was caught by the spoiled address on the envelope.” He handed the
paper across to Sir Clinton, who read:
Monsieur Nicholas Staveley,
Flatt's Cotage,
Lynden Sands.
“You see, she'd spelt ‘cottage’ with one ‘t,’ ” Cargill pointed out
unnecessarily. “That's what made her throw away the envelope, I
expect.”
Sir Clinton took the envelope and examined it carefully.
“That's extremely interesting,” he said. “I suppose I may keep
this? Then would you mind initialling it, just in case we need it for
reference later on?”
He handed Cargill a pencil, and the Australian scribbled his
initials on one corner of the envelope. The chief constable chatted
for a few minutes on indifferent matters, and then retired, followed by
Wendover.
“Why didn't you tell him he was a day after the fair?” Wendover
demanded, as they went down the stairs. “The only value that
envelope has now is that it further confirms Mme. Laurent-
Desrousseaux's evidence. And yet you treated it as if it were really of
importance.”
“I hate to discourage enthusiasm, squire,” Sir Clinton answered.
“Remember that we owe the second cartridge-case to Cargill's
industry. If I had damped him over the envelope, he might feel
disinclined to give us any more assistance; and one never knows
what may turn up yet. Besides, why spoil his pleasure for him? He
thought he was doing splendidly.”
As they reached the first floor, they saw Paul Fordingbridge
coming along the corridor towards the stairs.
“Here's someone who can perhaps give us more valuable
information,” Sir Clinton added in a low tone.
He stopped Paul Fordingbridge at the head of the stairs.
“By the way, Mr. Fordingbridge,” he asked, glancing round to see
that there was no one within earshot, “there's just one point I'd like
you to clear up for me, if you don't mind.”
Paul Fordingbridge stared at him with an emotionless face.
“Very glad to do anything for you,” he said, without betraying
anything in his tone.
“It's nothing much,” Sir Clinton assured him. “All I want is to be
clear about this Foxhills estate and its trimmings. Your nephew owns
it at present?”
“If I have a surviving nephew, certainly. I can offer no opinion on
that point, you understand.”
“Naturally,” Sir Clinton acquiesced. “Now, suppose your nephew's
death were proved, who are the next heirs? That's what I'd like you
to tell me, if you don't mind. I could get it hunted up at Somerset
House, but if you'll save me the trouble it will be a help.”
“Failing my nephew, it would go to my niece, Mrs. Fleetwood.”
“And if anything happened to her?”
“It falls to me in that case.”
“And if you weren't there to take it by then?”
“My sister would get it.”
“There's no one else? Young Fleetwood, for instance, couldn't
step in front of you owing to his having married your niece?”
“No,” Paul Fordingbridge answered at once. “The will took
account of seven lives, and I suppose that was sufficient in the
ordinary way. My sister, if she gets it, can leave it to anyone she
chooses.”
Sir Clinton seemed thoughtful. It was only after a slight pause
that he took up a fresh line of questions.
“Can you tell me anything about the present management of the
thing? You have a power of attorney, I believe; but I suppose you
leave matters very much in the hands of lawyers?”
Paul Fordingbridge shook his head.
“I'm afraid I'm no great believer in lawyers. One's better to look
after things oneself. I'm not a busy man, and it's an occupation for
me. Everything goes through my hands.”
“Must be rather a business,” Sir Clinton criticised. “But I suppose
you do as I would myself—get a firm of auditors to keep your books
for you.”
Paul Fordingbridge seemed slightly nettled at the suggestion.
“No. Do you suppose I can't draw up a balance-sheet once a
year? I'm not quite incompetent.”
It was evident that Sir Clinton's suggestion had touched him in
his vanity, for his tone showed more than a trace of pique. The chief
constable hastened to smooth matters over.
“I envy you, Mr. Fordingbridge. I never had much of a head for
figures myself, and I shouldn't care to have that kind of work thrust
on my hands.”
“Oh, I manage very well,” Paul Fordingbridge answered coldly. “Is
there anything else you'd like to know?”
Sir Clinton reflected for a moment before replying.
“I think that's everything. Oh, there's one other matter which you
may know about, perhaps. When does Mrs. Fleetwood expect her
lawyer to turn up?”
“This afternoon,” Paul Fordingbridge intimated. “But I understand
that they wish to consult him before seeing you again. I believe
they'll make an appointment with Inspector Armadale for to-morrow.”
Sir Clinton's eyebrows lifted slightly at the news of this further
delay; but he made no audible comment. Paul Fordingbridge, with a
stiff bow, left them and went on his way downstairs. Sir Clinton
gazed after him.
“I'd hate to carry an automatic in my jacket pocket continuously,”
he remarked softly. “Look how his pocket's pulled all out of shape by
the thing. Very untidy.”
With a gesture he stopped the comment that rose to Wendover's
lips, and then followed Fordingbridge downstairs. Wendover led the
way out into the garden, where he selected a quiet spot.
“There's one thing that struck me about Mme. Laurent-
Desrousseaux's evidence,” he said, as they sat down, “and that is: It
may be all lies together.”
Sir Clinton pulled out his case and lit a cigarette before
answering.
“You think so? It's not impossible, of course.”
“Well, look at it squarely,” Wendover pursued. “We know nothing
about the woman. For all we can tell, she may be an accomplished
liar. By her own showing, she had some good reason for wanting
Staveley out of the way.”
“It wouldn't be difficult to make a guess at it,” Sir Clinton
interjected. “I didn't want to go beyond our brief this morning, or I'd
have asked her about that. But I was very anxious not to rouse her
suspicions, and the matter really didn't bear directly on the case, so I
let it pass.”
“Well, let's assume that her yarn is mostly lies, and see where
that takes us,” Wendover went on. “We know she was at the cottage
all right; we've got the footprint to establish that. We know she was
on the rock, too, for her footprints were on the sands, and she
doesn't contest the fact of her presence either. These are the two
undeniable facts.”
“Euclidian, squire. But it leaves the story a bit bare, doesn't it? Go
on; clothe the dry bones with flesh, if you can.”
Wendover refused to be nettled. He was struggling, not too
hopefully, to shift the responsibility of the murder from the shoulders
of Cressida to those of another person; and he was willing to catch
at almost any straw.
“How would this fit, then?” he demanded. “Suppose that Mme.
Laurent-Desrousseaux herself was the murderess. She makes her
appointment with Staveley at the cottage as she told us; and she
goes there, just as she said she did. She meets Staveley, and he
refuses to see her. Now assume that he blurts out the tale of his
appointment at 11 p.m. at Neptune's Seat with Mrs. Fleetwood, and
makes no appointment at all with Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux for
that evening. That part of her tale would be a lie, of course.”
Sir Clinton flicked the ash from his cigarette on to the seat beside
him, and seemed engrossed in brushing it away.
“She goes to the shore near 11 p.m.,” Wendover continued, “not
to meet Staveley, as she told us, but to eavesdrop on the two of
them, as she confessed she did in her tale. She waits until Mrs.
Fleetwood goes away; and then she sees her chance. She goes
down to the rock herself then and she shoots Staveley with her own
hand for her own purposes. She leaves the body on the rock and
returns, as her footmarks show, to the road, and so to the hotel.
What's wrong with that?”
“Nothing whatever, squire, except that it omits the most damning
facts on which the inspector's depending. It leaves out, for instance,
the pistol that he found in Mrs. Fleetwood's golf-blazer.”
Wendover's face showed that his mind was hard at work.
“One can't deny that, I suppose,” he admitted. “But she might
quite well have let off her pistol to frighten Staveley. That would
account for——”
He broke off, thought hard for a moment or two, then his face
cleared.
“There were two cartridge-cases: one at the rock and one at the
groyne. If Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux killed Staveley, then the
cartridge-case on the rock belongs to her pistol; and any other shot
fired by the Fleetwoods—at the groyne. That means that Stanley
Fleetwood, behind the groyne, fired a shot to scare Staveley. Then,
when the Fleetwoods had gone, Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux went
down and shot him on the rock. That accounts for everything,
doesn't it?”
Sir Clinton shook his head.
“Just think what happens when you fire an automatic. The ejector
mechanism jerks the empty case out to your right, well clear of your
shoulder, and lands it a yard or two behind you. It's a pretty big
impulse that the cartridge-case gets. Usually the thing hops along
the ground, if I remember rightly. You can take it from me that a shot
fired from where Fleetwood crouched wouldn't land the cartridge-
case at the point where Cargill showed us he'd picked it up.”
Wendover reflected for a while.
“Well, who did it, then?” he demanded. “If the shot had been fired
on the rock, the cartridge-case couldn't have skipped that distance,
including a jump over the groyne. And there were no other footmarks
on that far side of the groyne except Fleetwood's.”
Again he paused, thinking hard.
“You said there was a flaw in the inspector's case. Is this it, by
any chance?”
Looking up, he saw the figure of Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux
crossing the lawn not far from them.
“That's very opportune,” he said, glancing after her. “Any
objection to my asking your witness a couple of questions, Clinton?”
“None whatever.”
“Then come along.”
Wendover managed matters so that it appeared as though they
had encountered Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux by a mere accident;
and it was only after they had talked for a few minutes on indifferent
matters that he thought it safe to ask his questions.
“You must have got drenched before you reached the hotel on
Friday night, madame, surely? I hope there have been no ill-effects?”
“Yes, indeed!” Mme Laurent-Desrousseaux answered readily. “It
was a real rain of storm—how do you say that in English?”
“Thunderstorm; heavy shower,” Sir Clinton suggested.
“Yes? Une pluie battante. I was all wetted.”
“When did the rain start, do you remember?” Wendover asked
indifferently.
Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux showed no hesitation whatever.
“It was after the automobile had started to return to the hotel—a
few minutes only after that.”
“You must have got soaked to the skin yourself,” Wendover
commiserated her. “That reminds me, had Staveley his coat on—his
overcoat, I mean—or was he carrying it over his arm when you met
him at the rock?”
Again the Frenchwoman answered without pausing to consider.
“He carried it on his arm. Of that I am most certain.” Wendover,
having nothing else to ask, steered the talk into other channels; and
in a short time they left Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux to her own
affairs. When they were out of earshot, Sir Clinton glanced at
Wendover.
“Was that your own brains, squire, or a tip from the classic?
You're getting on, whichever it was. Armadale will be vexed. But
kindly keep this to yourself. The last thing I want is to have any
information spread round.”
Chapter XII.
The Fordingbridge Mystery
“Tuesday, isn't it?” Sir Clinton said, as he came in to breakfast
and found Wendover already at the table. “The day when the
Fleetwoods propose to put their cards on the table at last. Have you
got up your part as devil's advocate, squire?”
Wendover seemed in high spirits.
“Armadale's going to make a fool of himself,” he said, hardly
taking the trouble to conceal his pleasure in the thought. “As you told
him, he's left a hole as big as a house in that precious case of his.”
“So you've seen it at last, have you? Now, look here, squire.
Armadale's not a bad fellow. He's only doing what he conceives to
be his duty, remember; and he's been wonderfully good at it, too, if
you'd only give him decent credit for what he's done. Just remember
how smart he was on that first morning, when he routed out any
amount of evidence in almost less than no time. I'm not going to
have him sacrificed on the Fleetwood altar, understand. There's to
be no springing of surprises on him while he's examining these
people, and making him look a fool in their presence. You can tell
him your idea beforehand if you like.”
“Why should I tell him beforehand? It's no affair of mine to keep
him from making an ass of himself if he chooses to do so.”
Sir Clinton knitted his brows. Evidently he was put out by
Wendover's persistence.
“Here's the point,” he explained. “I can't be expected to stand
aside while you try to make the police ridiculous. I'll admit that
Armadale hasn't been tactful with you; and perhaps you're entitled to
score off him if you can. If you do your scoring in private, between
ourselves, I've nothing to say; but if you're bent on a public splash—
why, then, I shall simply enlighten the inspector myself and spike
your gun. That will save him from appearing a fool in public. And
that's that. Now what do you propose to do?”
“I hadn't looked at it in that way,” Wendover admitted frankly.
“You're quite right, of course. I'll tell you what. You can give him a
hint beforehand to be cautious; and I'll show him the flaw afterwards,
if he hasn't spotted it himself by that time.”
“That's all right, then,” Sir Clinton answered. “It's a dangerous
game, making the police look silly. And the inspector's too good a
man to hold up to ridicule. He makes mistakes, as we all do; but he
does some pretty good work between them.”
Wendover reflected that he might have expected something of
this sort, for Sir Clinton never let a subordinate down. By tacit
consent they dropped the subject.
Half-way through breakfast they were interrupted by a page-boy
with a message.
“Sir Clinton Driffield? Miss Fordingbridge's compliments, sir, and
she'd like to see you as soon as possible. She's in her private sitting-
room upstairs—No. 28, sir.”
When the boy had retired, Sir Clinton made a wry face.
“Really, this Fordingbridge family ought to pay a special police
rate. They give more trouble than most of the rest of the population
of the district lumped together. You'd better come up with me. Hurry
up with your breakfast, in case it happens to be anything important.”
Wendover obviously was not much enamoured of the prospect
opened up by the chief constable's suggestion.
“She does talk,” he said with foreboding, as though he dreaded
the coming interview.
They found Miss Fordingbridge waiting for them when they went
upstairs, and she broke out immediately with her story.
“Oh, Sir Clinton, I'm so worried about my brother. He went out
last night and he hasn't come back, and I don't really know what to
think of it. What could he be doing out at night in a place like Lynden
Sands, where there's nothing to do and where he hasn't any reason
for staying away? And if he meant to stay away, he could have left a
message for me or said something before he went off, quite easily;
for I saw him just a few minutes before he left the hotel. What do you
think about it? And as if we hadn't trouble enough already, with that
inspector of yours prowling round and suspecting everyone! If he
hasn't more to do than spy on my niece, I hope you'll set him to find
my brother at once, instead of wasting his time.”
She halted, more for lack of breath than shortage of things to say;
and Sir Clinton seized the chance to ask her for some more definite
details.
“You want to know when he went out last night?” Miss
Fordingbridge demanded. “Well, it must have been late—after
eleven, at any rate, for I go to bed at eleven always, and he said
good night to me just before I left this room. And if he had meant to
stay away, he would have told me, I'm sure; for he usually does tell
me when he's going to be out late. And he said nothing whatever,
except that he was going out and that he meant to take a walk up
towards the Blowhole. And I thought he was just going for a breath of
fresh air before going to bed; and now it turns out that he never
came back again. And nobody in the hotel has heard anything about
him, for I asked the manager.”
“Possibly he'll put in an appearance shortly,” Sir Clinton
suggested soothingly.
“Oh, of course, if the police are incompetent, there's no more to
be said,” Miss Fordingbridge retorted tartly. “But I thought it was part
of their business to find missing people.”
“Well, we'll look into it, if you wish,” Sir Clinton said, as she
seemed obviously much distressed by the state of things. “But really,
Miss Fordingbridge, I think you're taking the matter too seriously.
Quite possibly Mr. Fordingbridge went for a longer walk than he
intended, and got benighted or something; sprained his ankle,
perhaps, and couldn't get home again. Most probably he'll turn up
safe and sound in due course. In the meantime, we'll do what we
can.”
But when they had left the room, Wendover noticed that his
friend's face was not so cheerful.
“Do you notice, squire,” the chief constable pointed out as they
went downstairs, “that everything we've been worried with in this
neighbourhood seems to be connected with this confounded
Fordingbridge lot? Peter Hay—caretaker to the Fordingbridges;
Staveley—married one of the family; and now old Fordingbridge

Radical Teaching in Turbulent Times Martin Dubermans Princeton Seminars 1966 1970 Robert L Hampel Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Radical Teaching in Turbulent Times Martin Dubermans Princeton Seminars 1966 1970 Robert L Hampel Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Radical Teaching in Turbulent Times:

Martin Dubermans Princeton Seminars,

Central Banking in Turbulent Times Tuomas Valimaki

The Radical Demand in Løgstrup's Ethics Robert Stern

Discourses of Identity. Language Learning, Teaching,

The Imperfectionists: Strategic Mindsets for Uncertain

Discourses of Identity: Language Learning, Teaching,

Our Sexuality 14th Edition Robert L. Crooks

Buried Histories: The Anticommunist Massacres of

Teaching with Comics: Empirical, Analytical, and

More information about this series at

Historical Studies in Education

Cover credit: Andrew Cribb/Alamy Stock Photo

“A wave of innovation swept over higher education in the 1960s,

Part I Duberman in the Late 1960s

Part II Other Voices

9 Robert Hampel, “Four Perspectives on Radical

Part III After Princeton

Part IV Radical Teaching in the 21st Century

Appendix: Two Gems from the Vault 231

Fig. 5.1 Martin Duberman in 1960 83

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

One of those pioneers was Martin Duberman, a prolific historian who

September 29, 1970: Afternoon session began with an unbroken

October 23,1970: A nice thing happened in the evening session

In those reflections and many others, Duberman analyzed how his

What is left to say about the classrooms of a celebrated historian who

professor as famous authority (please interact with me, not my reputation),

Duberman in the Late 1960s

Martin Duberman, “An Experiment

This Daedalus article began as a report to the Princeton committee that

Daedalus, v97, n1, Winter 1968, 318–341.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 9

in the name of understanding, the tolerance of mistakes, the opportu-

of disguise as a necessity of life; the unconscious determination to manip-

encouraged the students from the beginning to let me know—in what-

was impossible and the expectation of it unrealistic, and that additional

added, and I think significantly: “These people, including myself, were

Could you at least assign readings?

In an additional, rather desperate effort to get things going, I agreed to

that doer. In short, they preferred dependency to active exertion in their

negative results had accumulated to the point where in order to maintain

It was agreed that those interested in the “Princeton movement” would

Grades and Exams

At discouraging moments during the seminar, one thought kept

student who claimed to be “basically happy” with his seminar experience,

Martin Duberman, “On Misunderstanding

For years Duberman had defended activists from accusations of irra-

Published in The Atlantic Monthly, November 1968.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 33

You might also like