Dear Graham,

Talking across the Curriculum about Liberal
Education (the business we’re in) is a radically
different conversation than talking within a
discipline (physics talk, anthropology talk,
engmajor talk…): sub-ordinate to the whole
collegiate enterprise, don’t you agree?

A horse of another color: a conversation on a
different hierarchal level— like meta-linguistics
is to linguistics, say. Or meta-physics to physics.
Like the “philosophy” in our PhDegrees is to
whatever-it-is we studied in grad school: all of
us philosophers here regardless of our “majors.”

Our mutual love of Sophia!

We could turn that up and say—that’s our common
language, not be deterred in our universalism by the
specialization of Physics Photos of the Week or Kahl’s
quantum savvy, or your culture of fine art, plays,
sculpture and demonstration of both representational
& non-representational genius etc.

E Pluribus Unum.

And talking about administrative & infra-structural
considerations: house-keeping (eco-logical, economical)
concerns—faculty-body issues, assessment & accreditation
across curriculum & staff, instrumental and utilitarian
applications, load, contract and contact hours, calendar
considerations (released time for student research
presentations, & for examination week: how many
weeks constitute a semester…): that’s still another kind
of conversation and not just a matter of degree. .

3 kinds of talk, right there:

liberal education
III.meta-disciplinary (the whole & holy)
II.disciplinary (diversity: difference)
I. housekeeping (the eco-system)
bottom-line common sense

Sort of like:


Can’t really have the top-of-the-pyramid conversation
going on it seems until the bottom-line issues are
satisfied, secured, nailed down. Our Fundamental
Concerns tend to hegemonize the whole deal.

Just differentiating here for the sake of argument.
Anyone can improve my terms and images. Easy
to collapse, conflate, & confuse the conversation.

I can’t talk-the-talk of the disciplines & am intimidated
by diverse expertise my abysmal ignorance & forget we’ve
got a common tongue over all we could be turning up
—putting in play. Could call it The Liberal Art Conversation,
as opposed to the liberal arts.

Always a matter of coming to shared terms again and again.
Rolling our own holy smokes, I say. Unless we just use/abuse
the ones already on the shelf: shrink-wrapped, packaged and
delivered. Old Gold.

xxxooo, Sam