The primary role of a professor is to instill in students a passion and capacity for independent thought. To do so, I strive to frame classroom lectures, debates and discussions in ways that make students feel invested in the dilemmas that rouse both academic and public discourse. By communicating my own enthusiasm towards relevant material, I try to spark a curiosity that bridges academic questions into their own lives. In large settings, this means communicating ideas at a lecture pace that is at once engaging and challenging. In smaller ones, it means participating with an eye to drawing out different perspectives and cultural experiences in conversation, challenging the course material with a diversity of insight. Teaching may also mean bringing my own research questions into the classroom, soliciting direction from new explorers as someone ‘just up the path’.
Along with the means for critically questioning the world around them, I want to impart to students a set of intellectual habits. I want them to develop the analytical means for engaging in good judgment, so that they can recognize faulty assumptions while drawing truthful distinctions in their work and lives. Sound thinking occurs against a backdrop of rich historical context, skepticism towards ideological pronouncements, and an overall commitment to intellectual rigor. It falls to the educator to cultivate these surroundings, patiently explaining the theories and professional norms that motivate modern academic life.
Ultimately, the formation of a student is the formation of a citizen. If pedagogical decisions have political import, then it has never been more important for students to come away with a capacity for self-transformative learning. In an environment where the specialization and commercialization of higher education increasingly threatens basic inquiry, economic utility must not be allowed to supplant self-knowledge—as the defining feature of the classroom, and the defining feature of scholarship conducted by students and faculty alike. Over and above pat answers, my teaching reflects such commitments through its focus on timely, critically-situated problems that affect both scholarly pursuits and society on the whole.