Focusing on "Conversations
in American Democracy," Jesse's research drew him to
archives at Yale, the American Philosophical Society, Swarthmore,
Fisk University, and Southern Illinois University to study
the correspondence and papers of Walter Lippmann, Franz Boas,
Jane Addams, Robert Park, and John Dewey. Jesse's program
explored the ways in which the Pragmatists' political philosophies
are shaped by their epistemological theories - how their ideas
about societal dynamics depend on their understandings of
how people think. After completing his master's degree, Jesse
plans to pursue a Ph.D. in American Studies.
If I could do it all again, I'd keep a diary. I'd want a record
of just where my program started and what I was thinking when
it changed direction. I wish I remembered, exactly, which itch
I was trying to scratch - what it was in me that started me
investigating, ruminating, pondering - trying to figure out
what was going on outside and inside myself.
Life was going along fine. I wasn't unhappy. I was making a
decent living working in a law firm, and my golf handicap was
coming down. But it wasn't enough.
I remember one moment in particular: I'd just finished reading
Taylor Branch on the civil rights movement, his account of John
Lewis and the Freedom Riders. And I found myself wondering:
If I'd been 21 in 1961, would I have had the courage to get
on one of those buses?
I spend all day with smart people - even brilliant people. But
they're lawyers, and their business is to care about ideas that
they can use as tools, ideas that can make money for their clients
and themselves. I wanted to find a place in a community of people
who love to play with ideas-who aren't interested in making
the kind of arguments that law offices are full of, who're looking
to explore ideas for their own sake. I'm not interested anymore
in convincing people that I'm right. I'm looking to push the
conversation as far as it can go.
When I checked out the MALS program, I felt that I'd found an
environment where ideas are capable of having important consequences.
I had these fundamental questions, and I thought: here's a place
that can help me learn how to answer them. Working with faculty
like Joanna Zangrando has helped me realize that an education
has to be something more than collecting nuggets of fact - more
even than tying those facts together, or even putting them into
practice. A real education gives you a way to better understand
your own experience. My program has moved sideways a great deal,
between history and philosophy and political theory, but it
has also taken me up and down, from looking hard at essays and
letters and biographies to looking deeply into myself.
My education has changed what I mean by the words I use; it's
made them richer, more textured. I take less for granted; I
don't glide past things like I used to. I was a thoughtful person
before I started the program, but now I read things and connect
with them in a totally different way. I ask myself: What would
Dewey say about the position the writer is taking in this editorial?
What would William James think about the argument that the Attorney
General is making? I used to think that reading meant taking
in as much as I could. Now it feels more like taking a walk
with somebody, and having a conversation as you go. I want ideas
to take me somewhere-to open me up. I'm no longer looking for
somebody to tell me the way the world is. Now I feel like I
can figure it out myself.
Creative Thought Matters.
Master of Arts Program
Skidmore College ·
815 North Broadway · Saratoga Springs, NY · 12866 mals@skidmore.edu · 518-580-5480
