Betsy Cannon Smith (00:00:09):
Good evening and welcome. Thank you for joining us tonight. I'm Betsy Cannon Smith class of 1984, chief advancement officer at the college tonight. I have the distinct pleasure and I've actually had the pleasure over the last 30 minutes or so to be chatting with Austin Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College and associate dean of faculty. 46 years ago, Professor Sarat joined the faculty at Amherst College and in the ensuing five decades, close to 8,000 students -- yes, you heard that right, some of you are out there -- 8,000 students partook of at least one course from Professor Sarat. Some of you on the phone with us took multiple courses and some are looking forward to your first course with him this year. Now the good news for those of you who've experienced a Sarat class is he can't call on you tonight.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:01:01):
This setup doesn't allow it, but believe me, he wants to, he's been looking at the list and saying who he'd call on if he could, among the memorable course titles, and some of you will remember these: Murder; Secrets and Lies; America's Death Penalty; the Social Organization of Law; The Meaning of Catastrophe, and this summer Disaster, Catastrophe and Democracy, something he'll tell us a little bit more about in the hour to come. Professor Sarat holds six degrees, two from Providence College, his undergraduate and an honorary degree, an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, an honorary degree from Amherst College, and a J.D. From Yale University Law School, which he undertook while teaching full time at Amherst. The record of his publications, if I read it will take the entire hour, is an extraordinary year by year account of a curious mind at work. To have taken a Sarat class is to have experienced the intensity of the academics with the passion of a teacher who cares as much about the experience of the classroom, the partnership in that classroom, and the exchange of ideas as he does about the topic.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:02:19):
We'll hear more tonight about how he translates that in-person classroom experience to a virtual experience. Something he's already had a little experience with and is preparing to do for the fall outside of the classroom. Professor Sarat does the important work of innovating when he sees a need on the campus, of collaborating with colleagues. He is one of the college's top cheerleaders, supporters, and just a person who will always stand beside his colleagues and his students. He'll throw an occasional song and dance in if you're lucky seeing him walking across the campus or down the hall, and in fact, was singing just before we came on the air tonight. Tonight, he'll share what it's been like to teach through the pandemic, to work in ways we've never worked at Amherst College and to prepare for the fall where approximately half of the students will be here in Amherst on the campus and the other half will be scattered across the globe. Tonight, Austin and I are on opposite sides of the campus in our respective homes, both in Amherst, but doing what we'll do through the coming year through these screens. So we hope you enjoy the conversation tonight. I encourage you to ask questions. There's a button on the screen where you can submit those and I'll remind you that this is being recorded. Let me turn it now to my friend and colleague Austin Sarat, and ask Austin, Austin, are you looking forward to the fall?
Austin Sarat (00:03:44):
So first of all, thank you very much for the introduction. That was, that was incredibly, incredibly kind, good judgments. I guess I should stop now because that introduction was such a real setup. Betsy, are you looking forward to the fall?
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:04:04):
Am I looking forward to the fall? I am because we have students coming back and I am really looking forward to seeing how our faculty present the students with the courses that they've selected and work together with students who are in places all over the world.
Austin Sarat (00:04:21):
So, I'm really quite excited about the fall and really ready to go. I feel like a kind of bullpen pitcher waiting to be called into the game. I'm really excited about the semester because over the last 10 days or so, I've been connecting with students in various ways. My advisees, students from the summer bridge program, and a really special group of students who are going to be taking my first-year seminar and the opportunity to talk with Amherst students, to hear about what their interests are and to hear about what they're looking forward to. I find incredibly bracing and incredibly exciting today. I talked to one of my advisees, her name is Dania, and I asked her, as I often ask my students, not what they want to do after college, but who they want to be while they're here.
Austin Sarat (00:05:18):
And what were her dreams about her college education? I said, I want to hear about your, I want to hear about your dreams and what Dania has said, she said, you know, Professor Sarat, I'm really interested in the sciences and I really want to take a lot of STEM courses. And I said, Dania, that doesn't sound like a dream. That sounds like a plan. And she said, well, the dream that's associated with that plan is that I will end up using my skills and science to improve the community in which I live. Now, over the weekend, I talked to another student, who's going to be in my first-year seminar. And I asked the very same question. I said, what is it that you're thinking about with your college education? What is your dream? And he said a very familiar thing. He said he's looking forward to making lifelong friends.
Austin Sarat (00:06:12):
And I then asked him, well, is there anything else? Is there anything related to your learning experience in the classroom? And he said, well, he said, the thing that I'm really looking forward to is learning to be a better listener. And a third student that I talked to over the weekend, and again, what I'm doing is I'm connecting via zoom, with each student in my first-year seminar, individually, to get to know them, to introduce myself. I have to say they're enormously poised. They seem not at all nervous about talking to me. And the truth of the matter is I would be a little nervous about talking to me, but they don't seem to be at all. But this student, again, when I asked, like, what is your dream for your college education? This student said that they were most looking forward to being on campus in difficult times.
Austin Sarat (00:07:14):
And I was just blown away by that. So I'm blown away by a student who thinks about her STEM education in terms of what it is that she can do for her community. I'm blown away by a student whose dream about his college education is learning to be a better listener. I mean, that is completely, that is completely fabulous. And I'm blown away by a student who's excited about coming to a campus in difficult times. You see, I've always believed about Amherst and I believe it more now than I have ever believed it, that Amherst gets it right in the way in which it treats students. It respects them and it trusts them. And this upcoming semester, more than any in my time at Amherst, we're going to see the way in which our students reward that trust and the way in which they earn that respect. So I can't wait for the semester to start. I'm ready to go. I've sent the students their first assignment and have been thrilled, have been thrilled to connect with them.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:08:34):
So, Austin, I want to hear about when we transitioned in March, but I want to ask you first, you asked the students and I think this is something you asked most of the students you work with about what their dreams are and what their hopes are, so I'd like to know what your dreams were when you came to Amherst in 1974 and what your dreams were as a professor and how those have played out. And what, how this time has affirmed those or changed those.
Austin Sarat (00:09:04):
So, my dream, Betsy, was to come to a place that would allow me to grow intellectually. That would want me to grow intellectually. My dream was to come to a place where I would be challenged by my students to be the best teacher and the best thinker I could be. My dream was to come to a place in which the disciplines that we taught didn't matter as much as the subjects that we were trying to elucidate. And I found that dream at Amherst. It's not always been an easy place for me to be. Amherst standards are very high, and they're very high across the board and they're high for our students. And they're high for a wonderful staff and they're high for our faculty. But I found that dream here, and the dream that you've asked me to elucidate is as powerful today as it was when I arrived. 46 years down and I want 46 more to go. The Amherst classroom is paradise. In my paradise students don't get A's, but it's still a paradise because I think I am doing what Amherst wants to do for all of its students. I'm holding my students to high standards and I'm surrounding them with care because that's what Amherst promises. We will hold our students to very high standards and we will care for them and care about them as human beings. And it's a pleasure 46 years in to still be able to do that work.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:10:53):
Thank you. So let's talk a little bit about March. Let's talk about that day when the decision was made and you went from thinking, you could walk from your house to your classrooms, see your students, do a little dance, do a little entertaining and be face to face. And then overnight we went remote. Tell us a little bit about that.
Austin Sarat (00:11:15):
So it was obviously nothing that anyone had prepared for and Amherst made the right decision then to send students away from the campus to protect the health, their health and safety, and the health and safety of the community. And Amherst is making the right decision in the fall to bring back students onto the campus. And we have a really great, a great plan to do that, but the spring was really a test for me and I think all members of the faculty. We say what we want to do with our students is we want to teach them to be resilient, flexible, creative, and persistent. And the spring was a test about whether I would be resilient, flexible, creative, and persistent, and frankly, I didn't wish for the challenge, but I'm glad I had the challenge. I think I'm a much better teacher today by virtue of what I learned last spring.
Austin Sarat (00:12:22):
I think I'm a much better teacher today by virtue of what I had to do to remain connected to my students last spring. Now, again, let's just remember that last spring I was teaching two relatively small classes. I was teaching a class called Murder as an intensive writing class, a class in which students write for every class. They get responses. We workshop their writing and they meet with me individually. And I was teaching what we call a research tutorial called America's Death Penalty in which a small group of students was working with me to become collaborators with me on a research project. So those were the classes I was teaching and zoom worked for me. It's very possible in zoom to point to someone and say, Betsy, I have a question for you. And then to say Charlie, what do you think about Betsy's response?
Austin Sarat (00:13:19):
But you had to do certain things to prepare. And I did certain things to prepare. I connected again with every student individually over the spring break to check in with them to find out how they were doing. I sent them a zoom protocol. I sent them, here are some rules for being on zoom. For example, I said, it'd probably be better not to appear on zoom in your pajamas, or if you have a nasty sign on the wall about how much you dislike Professor Sarat, it would probably be a good time to take that sign down. I reminded them that one of the real problems of zoom is that people stare blankly into the camera. They don't acknowledge each other. They don't nod and smile and say, you know, hallelujah and amen to what people say in a classroom.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:14:08):
Amen.
Austin Sarat (00:14:08):
Way to go, Betsy. What a zoom classroom lacks is it lacks the so to speak energy of the crowd, it lacks the chemistry of the connection.
Austin Sarat (00:14:19):
So had to work to try to make that chemistry work. I would break up the students, even in these small seminars, into so-called breakout groups and send them off to talk with each other about a problem that I gave them. And I assign them to groups and gave them group projects which they would do over every weekend. And part of the group project had a social component to it. I would ask them to choose a film or to choose a music video that best exemplified what we were going to read and talk about in the next week. But it wasn't all roses. So it's very clear that zoom learning is very different because of the lack of the energy of the crowd. Zoom teaching takes more energy from me. And it was just, that's harder, an hour and 20 minutes on zoom is a long time. Students face challenges.
Austin Sarat (00:15:21):
What do they face? They face the challenge of distraction. So you have to say to students, don't look at your cell phones, don't check your email. They face the challenge of loneliness, of being alone. They face the challenge of dare I say of infantilization. They go from being on a college campus where they were independent to being back for many of them, not for all, but for many of them being back in their families' homes, and frankly, we were all scared. The world felt like it was just coming undone. What I think my students appreciated was they appreciated a visible commitment to them and their success. When it had to be a little bit more flexible and understanding in terms of the learning challenges and when I had to help students. So I hope some of our listeners who are interested in what it's like to be a student in a zoom class will ask for some advice, cause I got lots of advice for them, but again, I provided some scaffolding.
Austin Sarat (00:16:37):
I urged them to do studying over zoom, to arrange at eight o'clock at night, with four or five of their friends, just to turn on the zoom and to study together just the way they would have done in frost library. So that was kind of the spring experience. I have to say that I felt that my students needed me more than ever. And I have to confess I needed them more than ever. One of the students said at the end of the semester, in our last class, how much she had appreciated what she called the touch of the normal world that our class represented. And that sense we're holding onto something that gave us a touch of what was, for us, for the students and for me, the things that sustain us in the normal world. That was a big part of the spring experience.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:17:43):
Austin, you said that you have a lot of advice for students who want to learn how to be successful or engage
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:17:50):
this way. What advice did the students offer to you about your teaching that may have either informed this spring or will influence how you go forward in the fall?
Austin Sarat (00:18:02):
Sure. The advice they gave me was to keep on doing what I was doing. One of the students rather irreverently referred to my method as what she called the Saratic Method. And she said the Saratic Method keeps students on their toes in zoom, just the way it does in the classroom. She said the only difference, she said, in her experience of the classroom was that, and I love this phrase, she said we didn't get to breathe the same air that you breathe. Now, I didn't know whether that was a relief because they weren't breathing the same air. The other thing that students wanted, I believe, is they wanted faculty to be visible in the commitment to their success. They wanted faculty to reach out to them. They wanted faculty to connect with them. They wanted faculty to realize there's a difference between being in a classroom, on a college campus, where everybody is in it together and being home alone, studying and confronting those moments of doubt. Like, I can't understand this reading. It must be, it must be me. It can't be anything else. So the effort to connect with students to stay in touch with them, send them emails, just checking in. How are you doing? Those are things that I think we all do when we're teaching on campus, but we all really need to do when we're teaching, when we're teaching virtually,
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:19:39):
Can you talk a little bit about the summer both about your own preparations and I think you snuck into those preparations by taking on teaching a special summer course, but then also talk a little bit about what the faculty as a whole, what the faculty have engaged in, in terms of getting ready for the fall.
Austin Sarat (00:20:00):
So I'm proud of a lot about Amherst. I don't think I've ever been prouder of the institution in terms of what I've seen over the last six months. And that goes for the staff, that goes for the people who continued to go on campus to make sure that the campus would be running for the 150 or so students who were there, that went for people in the admissions office that had to kind of reinvent an admissions process, that went for people in advancement who made sure to keep connected to our constituencies, our families, the parents of Amherst and our alums. But I also have to say I'm really especially proud of the faculty. More than 90% of the faculty have spent the summer retooling their courses for the online world, meeting weekly, to hear about tricks and best practices in online teaching, and to talk with each other, to become communities of, communities of learners.
Austin Sarat (00:21:11):
We talk with each other about what we were going to do, what we thought would work, and what we thought would not work. And that work will conclude in the next, that that kind of intensive preparation over the summer will conclude in the next couple of weeks or just in time for the beginning of the semester. The faculty of Amherst, I think more than ever understand that the primary role of the teacher in an Amherst classroom is not to be the judge of the students, but it is to facilitate their success, to push them beyond capacities that they don't know that they have. You see the life of an Amherst classroom is the life of becoming, not of being. We imagine and see what our students can become. And we ask them to reach for that thing. And what faculty have done over the summer is to learn some new techniques to keep our classroom this place of becoming. Some of our colleagues
Austin Sarat (00:22:28):
and I'm going to mention some names, have, I guess, to use the title of a song from Hamilton, just blown me away. Chris Durr in chemistry and Marc Edwards in biology and the wonderful work they did this summer in what they call the summer incubator project for rising sophomores who want to work in STEM. My good colleague, David Hansen who's pedagogy has I think, been reinvented to meet every student where they are. My colleague, Adam Sitze, whose dedication to getting it right, making sure that students understand that getting it right is the first commitment of an intellectual, these are faculty who spent the summer taking those commitments and learning how to make them work in a virtual world. And if I may, could I tell you a little bit about my disaster course?
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:23:35):
Absolutely. Please do. And before you do, I think this relates to a question that J.J. Gertler has just sent in, which is, has the pandemic given you issues that can be used in classes or inspired topics for new classes? And I'm thinking maybe that your summer class had something to do with that.
Austin Sarat (00:23:52):
I love J.J. J.J., that was a great question. That was in fact, my summer class. So a few years ago with my good colleague, Lawrence Douglas, we taught a class called the meaning of catastrophe. Having taught it for several years. And again, I have to acknowledge something. I hate the end of the semester. I miss the life of the classroom. Some of my colleagues, they find relief when the classes are over and they can turn to their research. What I find is I find loneliness. I miss my students and this year I knew I was gonna miss them more than ever in our isolation and in our fear and in our uncertainty. So I reached out to students that I've had in a variety of classes. And I said I have this idea. Here's my idea. I want to teach a class with the happy title, Disaster, Catastrophe, and Democracy.
Austin Sarat (00:24:53):
And it's not for credit. You're not going to get any credit for it. I'm not going to get any credit for it, but we'll meet twice a week, just like a regular Amherst class. I'm going to send you a syllabus that is going to be every bit an Amherst syllabus filled with complicated readings, and we're going to meet twice a week and we're going to have a zoom class on Disaster, Catastrophe, and Democracy. My class began with the following question, Betsy, I wonder whether you might help me answer this question. I started my zoom class this summer, Disaster, Catastrophe, and Democracy as I do most of my classes. I come into the room or I entered the zoom and I say, I have a problem. And then I turned to a student, in this case, Betsy, and I said, Betsy, here's my problem. I want you to imagine, God forbid, heaven forbid that the bridge connecting Hadley to Northampton over the Connecticut River, that that bridge collapses. It collapses all of a sudden, there's no one on the bridge. And for two weeks the army corps of engineers and someone else builds a kind of pontoon bridge over the Connecticut. So people can get to Northampton. Why they would want to go to Northampton I don't know, but here's my question. Would you regard that bridge collapse as a catastrophe?
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:26:26):
Oh, disaster, catastrophe. Would I regard it as a catastrophe? I think I regard it as an inconvenience, but not a catastrophe if there were not if the bad outcomes were delays and things being put up, you're gonna come right back at me with something that tells me it really is much more of a catastrophe that I realize. So this is my payback for not taking a class with Austin Sarat, I'll let you all know.
Austin Sarat (00:26:54):
So, Betsy, I want you to answer the questions that I ask you. So here's the next question. If there was someone on the bridge when the bridge collapsed and that person was killed, would you regard it as more than an inconvenience?
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:27:11):
Yes, absolutely.
Austin Sarat (00:27:14):
Why? Why would you regard it as something more than an inconvenience?
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:27:19):
Because a person's lost their life due to this.
Austin Sarat (00:27:24):
Good. And would that loss of life qualify for you, would it make the event a catastrophe?
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:27:31):
Yes.
Austin Sarat (00:27:33):
The loss of a single life.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:27:37):
I think the loss of a single life is catastrophic to the people who have, for whom that person is part of their lives.
Austin Sarat (00:27:45):
The question I asked, that's not the question I asked you. I'd like you to answer the question I asked. I didn't ask you, I didn't ask you whether or not it would be catastrophic to that person.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:27:58):
Okay. So that would probably be a disaster because catastrophe seems to have a much larger impact.
Austin Sarat (00:28:08):
Good, fabulous. Suppose the person who was killed was the only person that knew how to make a vaccine for COVID and they're killed and with them goes the vaccine and the possibility of having a vaccine for COVID. Now, the purpose of my asking you these questions is just to really, in a sense, exemplify what can be done over zoom. So that kind of back and forth in which I asked students to begin to develop a conception of what the catastrophic involves. And I insist that they listen and answer the question that I ask them. Are you remembering what I started with the student whose dream is to come to Amherst and become a better listener? Well, part of our job in the Amherst classroom is to show that we listened to students. If a student says, Oh, X group is oppressed, we might say, well, that's interesting, but are you sure it's oppression as opposed to disadvantage?
Austin Sarat (00:29:16):
And we might then ask them, well, let's play out the distinction between disadvantage and oppression. So my class on Disaster, Catastrophe, and Democracy, went away. My class in the spring. When we did zoom classrooms, we met twice a week. I would zoom with them individually. I assigned them to zoom, to zoom groups. And we did what again what we would do in any Amherst classroom. An Amherst classroom is a chance to take students -- are you ready for this --on a journey from the familiar to the strange. So we start with an example, like a bridge collapse, and students think, well, they really understand that they get that. And then what we want to do is we want to complicate their understanding. And we say to them, look, you're really not going to be able to answer this question until you've read Hobbes and Rousseau and Voltaire on the Lisbon earthquake and Primo Levi on the Holocaust.
Austin Sarat (00:30:17):
And when you read legal cases, like the Korematsu case about Japanese internment or the steel seizure case about presidential emergency powers. And that's what we did in that class. And it started on the 22nd of May and we extended it for a week. The students didn't want it to end. We extended it for a week. And I must say in the course of this class, I did something that I almost never do. So I'm the kind of teacher that mostly doesn't like visitors in my classroom. I don't mean, I don't mean alums or new students. They can come, but I don't bring speakers into my classroom because the work of my classroom is the work of dialogue and listening. But I thought I want to reward these students. I've got nothing to give them. So, and this is another thing that is remarkable about Amherst,
Austin Sarat (00:31:15):
I decided what I wanted to do was I wanted to invite some prominent public figures to come to my class and to participate in a question and answer with my students. And we had Kevin McAleenan in, a fabulous Amherst graduate who was acting secretary of Homeland security under President Trump. We had Juliette Kayyem, who was in the Department of Homeland security under President Obama. We had Senator Chris Coons. We had Congressman Jamie Raskin. We had former mayor Rahm Emanuel, and we had mayor Pete Buttigieg. Now my students thought, Oh my God, you know all these famous people. And of course, I didn't want to tell him, and I shouldn't say this, but of course, I didn't know those people. I reached out to Amherst alums and asked alums whether they would be, they would spend some time making it possible for this group of 16 Amherst students, to whom those alums had no particular connection, to meet with Rahm Emanuel and Jamie Raskin and mayor Pete and the alums did what they always do, which is, they stepped up.
Austin Sarat (00:32:39):
So I found the class to be remarkable. Remember what I started with Amherst does it, right? It trusts and respects its students. And my respect for students, 16 students for no credit, there were no exams, they came to class well-prepared. They were well prepared for my questions. They made me work really hard to get it right, to use that phrase. And I loved, I absolutely loved working with them. After finishing that class I taught a comparable class for high school teachers. I assembled 16 high school teachers from around the country, and we did a month on Disaster, Catastrophe, and Democracy, and my July teaching ended with two weeks of working with some of the most remarkably interesting, most talented students. And those are students that participate in our summer bridge program. I taught a class called Justice and Power in our summer bridge program.
Austin Sarat (00:33:52):
And in each of those occasions, I did what I described earlier. You guys got to connect. We got to, you gotta study in zoom, in zoom sessions, we gotta do breakout. You gotta do breakout rooms and I would meet with them. I would meet with them individually. So I'm, as Barack Obama would say, fired up and ready to go in large part because of the work that I did with students over the summer and having taken the training course, this wonderful training course, that was made available to faculty.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:34:34):
Have you been able to continue your research or was really the development of that course more a part of your research?
Austin Sarat (00:34:41):
So you, you asked me about my dream about Amherst, and part of my dream when I came was that I would be in a place in which teaching and research would not be seen as in opposition and Amherst has been that place for me. Yes. I've continued my research. I'm doing a project with four Amherst undergraduates called the fate of lethal injection, which is looking at what's happened to lethal injection as a technique for execution in the United States. Over the last decade, I've worked with a student, oh this extraordinary student whose name is Ryan on a project called The Death Penalty in Crisis. And we're looking at what's happened to the death penalty in times of crisis in the United States, in pandemics and recessions, and in a World War. I sent off a book to the press called Law's Infamy, and I've done something that I felt called to do
Austin Sarat (00:35:58):
and that is I've spent a fair amount of time writing for a public audience, writing opinion pieces published in places like the Guardian or Slate or a site called The Conversation or a site called The Bulwark which I really quite love because it has a broad audience writing about the fate of American democracy, the crisis of American democracy. I published a piece today called Memorializing Miscarriages of Justice, in which I reflected a little bit about what it means to write in dangerous times. What is it that the vocation of being a writer speaking in dangerous times, what is that about? So I found the teaching, as I have always found it, to be energizing for my scholarship, and I have loved and continue to love working with Amherst students on significant research projects.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:37:06):
You talk about these opinion pieces, Austin, was there a moment or an event, perhaps a disaster or a catastrophe, that inspired you to take that turn and really start doing a lot more of that public writing, writing for the broader public?
Austin Sarat (00:37:24):
So I think that intellectuals and academics have an obligation to try to repair the world. I think that we discharge that obligation largely in our classrooms by equipping students to think well, by equipping students to listen carefully, by prodding our students to imagine a better world, but I felt if you will, the call of repairing the world and it's what I do, I write. So yeah, that's kind of what I have done. What really got me started on this public writing was reading a variety of studies about how it is that Americans have begun to disinvest in democracy. So in response to a national survey, people who were born in the 1930s, that it means people who are now well into their eighties when they were asked, do you believe it is essential to live in a democracy, about 75% of them,
Austin Sarat (00:38:38):
this survey was done in 2015, about 75% of those people who were born in the 1930s, said that it was essential to live in a democracy. People born in the 1980s, that is, say people now coming up on their 40th birthday, same survey, just broken out by birth cohort, 25%, 25% said it was essential to live in a democracy. And reading that study, I thought I've got to say something. And I wrote a piece and it was published. It was published in The Guardian and it got a good response. And frankly, that fueled my sense of, I wanted to use what I know to help inform public debate. And again, I have to confess, this is a situation of some tension for me because I've worked very hard, very hard so students don't know what I think in the classroom. I don't tell them this is what I think about this subject, or this is what I think about that subject.
Austin Sarat (00:39:46):
For example, Betsy, I wouldn't have answered the question for you about whether the bridge collapse was a catastrophe or not. I might've asked you to think about whether or not there, a better description might be a tragedy, even with the death. And I might ask you to think about the distinction between a tragedy and a catastrophe, but I wouldn't say what I thought. But in my public writing, of course, I do say what I think, and I have to say writing for a public audience, I'm sure is a kind of surprise to many of my teachers, my own teachers. When I was in high school, I remember taking a civics class and I didn't do very well in that class. And my teacher, I remember saying to me that she didn't think I had much of an aptitude for the subject of civics or politics. 46 years later, I guess revenge is best served cold.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:40:47):
Well, let's shift to the faculty now. There's a lot of talk of how this remote world and what it's like for the students to be on the other side of their computers and interacting with all of their professors in this way. But we have a great question about how has the virtualization affected relationships on the faculty and is there a threat to that really critical cross-pollination that happens on the campus when faculty from different disciplines work together?
Austin Sarat (00:41:16):
That's terrific, that is [inaudible]thread is not the word I would use. So again, I want to come back and just let's talk reality. The last, you know, the last six months had been months of fear, months of disorientation, months of loneliness and months of internal struggle for lots of people on our faculty, on our staff and in our community, things that we used to take for granted that were easy now are less easy, but what faculty have done to keep connection is they've created virtual reading groups. So there was a reading group presided over again by one of our wonderful and really most inspiring teachers, Jyl Gentzler on Middlemarch, and faculty got together and they had a zoom reading group. I created a reading group with the alluring title Lawish. So we have a lawish reading group for people who are interested in lawish subjects.
Austin Sarat (00:42:26):
We have a reading group that I participated in on free speech on campus. So I think the connection cross-discipline, I think the ability to use that phrase to cross-pollinate will continue. Faculty again in their loneliness, they crave companionship and the zoom has provided it. And I have to say, again this is a story about one of the students I talked to, I was apologizing to this student who's going to be in my first-year seminar about this is going to be an online class. And I said, you know, I'm 72 years old. And I'm in a so-called at-risk group. And as much as I'd like to be on campus, I'm not going to be on campus. And this student, who's nothing short of a gem
Austin Sarat (00:43:26):
and a mensch, said to me, don't worry, Professor Sarat, I'm getting goosebumps when I retell the story, don't worry, Professor Sarat, we, meaning the students, will find a way to welcome you back to the campus. And I thought, Oh my God, Oh my God, they are going to find a way to welcome me back to the campus. So connections will continue. Some of them will be virtual and my students will welcome me back to the campus. I did say to him, maybe we could meet on the football field and you could stand in one end zone and I'll stand in the next.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:44:07):
So I'm being overwhelmed by questions from people who are saying, can alumni sit in, can parents sit in? Can people join these virtual classes that are happening, yours and other faculty members, the actual classes.
Austin Sarat (00:44:24):
The classroom space is sacred. (Absolutely.) What makes a class work, and it's going to be harder to create it, but if we're going to succeed in creating it in the virtual world, what makes a class work is the chemistry of the classroom, the students' love for the subject and their desire to be together talking about the subject. Learning, this is terrible, this sounds like something from the inside of a Snapple cap, learning, I say, is a team sport. So I love alums, not equally. There's some I love more than others. I love parents. But I think, no, I think not in the actual classes. I hope that the advancement office will ask me to teach a class for parents and alumni. By the way, I have a class I'd love to teach. It's called Disaster, Catastrophe, and Democracy.
Austin Sarat (00:45:32):
I'd love to teach that class for alums and parents so long as they do the work. And I think you see, we will be better teachers, better teachers for what we do virtually. We will be better teachers because we'll learn new things. You know the best thing I did this summer was I took a class about teaching online, online. So I experienced what it's like to be a student sitting in my, you know, living room alone, not having anybody nod or smile when I say something, which I thought was particularly insightful, but they just kept staring straight ahead. And I felt the, I experienced that disconnection of that moment. So I think we're all gonna end up being better teachers, more inventive, more creative, more resilient, more responsive to our students. And we're going to bring some new tricks back into the classroom when we're all back on campus together. And I'd like to try out some of those tricks with alums and parents in the online world. So I guess the only thing I could say is bring it on.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:46:53):
Oh, I think those are some marching orders there. And from the response we're getting, I absolutely think the alumni and parents will benefit from the work that the faculty have done this summer because it does give us new opportunities.
Austin Sarat (00:47:07):
It absolutely looks, it absolutely does. And let's tell the truth. The students are so excited to come back to the campus. They are so excited to come back to the campus. They're proud of what they're being asked to do. They understand they're being asked and there's some people who think they can't do it. They're 16, they're 18, they're 19, whatever it is, they cannot do it. Well, I have no doubt that Amherst students are gonna make mistakes, but remember Amherst gets it right with its students. It respects them and it trusts them. So it's going to be thrilling to have them. It's going to be thrilling to have them back. It's going to be thrilling for me to be able to teach zoom. And I hope to have office hours on campus and meet them at the football field. And I would love it if some alums have wanted to do an online class with me especially those alums, that got, let's say A grades in my classes
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:48:19):
I think one of the wonderful things about our back to school plan for this year is that over the course of the year, all the students will have the chance, the opportunity to be here either first or second semester. A few questions that I've received have been along the lines of how will you and other faculty members work to unite the remote and the in-person students who might, who will be, not might be, who will certainly be sharing a classroom, a space, an online space. How will those students who right now are remote and who'll be here next semester and vice versa, how will that experience feel? What will we do to make them feel equally part of this grand adventure?
Austin Sarat (00:49:04):
Well, that's, you know, that's going to be, that's a work in progress, but again, I'm going to just going to [inaudible]for one first-year seminar faculty member, I've already started that work. So I broke my first-year seminar up into three groups. They're called how's this for fancy titles, group A, group B, and group C. And I assigned one student to be the captain of group A and the captain of group B and the captain of group C. Those students, those groups are mixing up. Some of the students, most of my students are going to be on campus, but a few are not, those groups are mixing up the on-campus and the virtual learners. They're meeting this week to begin to get to know each other, to talk about their hometowns and where they are, where they came from.
Austin Sarat (00:49:48):
I've asked them to do what again I asked my students in the spring to do, to come to those meetings with examples of things in popular culture that best represent a secrecy and deception. So they will be equally integrated into all of the work that the seminar does. And I wanted to say something else. So I've done for the last several years what I call a first-year seminar team project. And that is, I've worked with the chief student affairs officer, the director of the Loeb Center for Career Exploration and Planning, and the Director of the Counseling Center in a team. And we meet with my first-year seminar students every other week in the evening. So it's not for the work of the seminar. And what we do in those team meetings is we talk about what it's like to be a student, what it's like to be a college student.
Austin Sarat (00:50:52):
We asked students to think about their sense of belonging. Do they feel they belong at Amherst? What are they worried about in terms of do they belong here? And by the way, that's a question that one wants to ask alums to remember what it was like when they first came to the campus, did they feel that they belonged? We asked students to talk about how they're going to balance their curricular extracurricular and social life. This year we're going to ask students to talk about what it's like to be learning remotely, because even students who are on campus, a large number of their classes, or some number of their classes are going to be remote as well. And the student affairs office also is very aware of the need to program for students who are learning virtually.
Austin Sarat (00:51:46):
So I think the campus is geared up to make sure that the 700 or 800 students Amherst students who are learning virtually remain well integrated into the campus and we're going to do it in the social programming that we do. I know that the athletic coaches are reaching out to athletes who are not going to return to campus to make sure they are part of the team. And I know faculty members are also going to be reaching out to those students to make sure that they feel that they are authentically Amherst students.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:52:26):
Austin, how about a couple of comments about the differences between the smaller seminar-type classes you're teaching and the larger classes and how you think that these same comfortable and engaging conversations can happen in those classes?
Austin Sarat (00:52:41):
So it matters a lot if you can see everybody on one zoom screen, if you have to go to a second zoom screen, it's a little bit of a different experience. What we've learned over the summer, of course, is there ways of dealing with that. So we've learned for example, that there's this thing called zoom fatigue so that what we want to do is we want to use zoom time wisely. That means larger classes are going to do a lot of things asynchronously. We've learned for example, again, you're going to say Austin, this you had to learn? That less is more? That shorter videos work better than longer videos? We've learned the virtue of discussion groups. So even larger classes. I'll give you an example, again, one of our really spectacular colleagues is a colleague named Jonathan Obert.
Austin Sarat (00:53:30):
He teaches a class called American Government, that class regularly enrolls 50, 60, 70 students. So what we're doing this year is that class will meet in a variety of formats. It'll meet in a lecture format in which Professor Obert meet with students synchronously, but also use asynchronous material to deliver lectures. And then there will be seven separate sections of that class taught by professor Obert and other members of the political science department. And those will be discussion-oriented, those will be discussion-oriented classes. And some of the, again, the most inventive, inspiring examples of online teaching have come from colleagues in the STEM fields with larger classes. They've found ways to do virtual labs. They found ways to get students as close as possible to the in-person experience of what it's like to learn a lab science. So we've been well equipped. We've worked with a company called 2U, which is one of the best providers of online education. Everybody who's teaching a class, I believe, with 35 students or above has worked with 2U all to learn techniques for making a larger classes work in the way that Amherst classes always work. And that is to produce a kind of intense, engaged, and hopefully inspiring learning experience.
Betsy Cannon Smith (00:55:05):
All right. And how about this. Can you imagine when we're back on campus whenever that is, and you're in the classroom, what kinds of things will you, do you imagine taking with you from this that you could actually carry over into changes and things we're doing? I mean, the January course, I think, for example, the fact that we're offering a course in January. Say a little bit about both that, the January course offering, and how you might be influenced by something you're doing now and think, huh, that'll be part of what I do even back in the classroom.
Austin Sarat (00:55:38):
So I've heard, I'll start with the latter. I've already mentioned some things that I will do when I'm back in the classroom that I didn't typically do. So I didn't typically assign students to study groups like you should, you should actually study together. I expected that they either would, or they would not. My plan is to do that. And I didn't get students. I didn't gather students, get students to get together outside of the classroom before the classroom even started to get to know each other. I think I will do that. I've fallen in love. Isn't this really terrible, it's a terrible thing to confess that I have fallen in love with zoom, but I kind of have fallen in love with zoom (You do look kind of happy.)
Austin Sarat (00:56:22):
One of the features I love in zoom is breakout rooms. So you can push a button and the student, it's like an episode of StarTrek, right. I beam the students up into an alternative reality, these breakout rooms, and then I can drop in on the breakout rooms and listen to the students grapple with the kinds of problems that I ask them to grapple with. How can an idea of political democracy coexist with the realist, skeptical, even cynical view of human nature that animates Hobbes's Leviathan. So I'll probably use more breakout groups even in small classes then I have used in the past. The January term, again, I think it's a wonderful thing that the college is doing. We've reduced the standard course load from four to three and allow students to take a fourth course if you will, in January.
Austin Sarat (00:57:31):
And those classes again are going to be entirely online and there'll be very intensive. There'll be very intensive classes. And by the way, I should say that all students are only now required to take three courses. Many of our students are going to take the full four-course load that they would otherwise have taken. What matters more than it ever has mattered is the quality of advising that students get. And again, we have a wonderful program called the intensive advising program that pairs a couple of students, this year, it'll be three students with a faculty member, and that faculty member meets with them every two weeks. So advising at Amherst is no longer just about course registration and that kind of advising, which we began to develop before we went into the virtual world.
Austin Sarat (00:58:29):
I think we've seen how effective it is in the virtual world, and we're going to continue it and hopefully expand it when we get back on campus. And like my students I have to say this, I cannot wait to be back on campus. I'm suffering a little bit of heartbreak. One of my favorite Amherst events is move-in day. So for the last several years, Amherst's organized this absolutely wonderful move-in day, where when students arrive, they come to the quad and they're greeted by students and staff and faculty who are there to swarm the cars and help them move into their rooms. And I've loved doing that. I love schlepping the bags of students up into their dorm rooms and seeing the excitement as students greet their roommates. Well, we're not doing that this year.
Austin Sarat (00:59:30):
And I'll miss it, but I look forward to doing it. I look forward to doing it next year. Last year when I did it, it seemed that every student I moved in was on the fourth floor. And I think I said towards the end of my shift, I was exhausted from schlepping everything to the fourth floor. And I think I asked one of the student affairs people, like, was it just me? I mean, it was the luck of the draw. And she said, well, you want to be like in the first shift and we do it like some airlines, you know, by floor four, three, two, one. So she said next year, come back closer to the noon and we'll get you some first-floor assignments. So next year I'm looking to go back for move-in day about noon and get the first floor assignments.
Betsy Cannon Smith (01:00:13):
Well, there you go. I think you're signing up early enough. Well, Austin, this has been a real treat. You've given everyone who's on with us tonight, their own little sense of orientation. So no balloons, no swarming faculty, no fancy t-shirts, but I think you did the best we absolutely could. And this is an exciting semester we're heading into. It's so wonderful to have people like you and all of your colleagues who've spent so, so many hours making this possible for this to happen, starting August 24th on this campus. We appreciate you. I appreciate you. So a lot of fun to talk with you. Thank you.
Austin Sarat (01:00:48):
Wait, wait, wait. One more thing. So I want people to realize, people who are listening that what we are doing is more important than ever. The world needs the talent, the creativity, and dare I say the irreverence of our students. The educational mission of the liberal arts is more important than it has ever been. And I feel that in my bones. Wait till students arrive. This college is so well run, so well managed. So thoughtful in what it has done. When students arrive, they're going to come to a campus which is excited to have them, and students who are learning virtually, they're also going to be connecting to classes where faculty are excited to work with them. So we need people's excitement. We need their commitment. We need their belief that what we are doing is more important than, it's more important than ever. And I want to thank you, Betsy, and thanks to people who were listening and thank your colleagues behind the scenes who arranged this, the miraculous Austin Huot, who runs Conferences and Special Events. Thank you for making it happen and good to see you and stay safe.
Betsy Cannon Smith (01:02:20):
Thank you, Austin. And on that note, we will be having another one of these wonderful conversations. So mark your calendars. We'll send you details, but September 10, 12:15 eastern time for a conversation between ' class of "07 who's co-anchor of Early Start, you can catch her at 5:00 AM on CNN, and the James J. Gross Field Professor and Chair of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social, Lawrence Douglas for a conversation on his book, Will He Go?: Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. So please join us for that. We'll be having a series of these throughout the year and look forward to seeing more. Austin, goodnight. Thank you. Goodnight everyone. Thank you for being with us.