A 21st-Century Chautauqua
What is a chautauqua? Originally, the term referred to a 19th-century program that brought educational speakers and performers together for families vacationing on the shores of Lake Chautauqua in upstate New York.1 Quickly, it became synonymous with any open public forum for the discussion of cultural and scientific issues of the day.
The 21st-century Chautauqua at MSU is beginning with a two-year program of campus dialogues in the three residential colleges (James Madison, Lyman Briggs, and the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities) co-sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities to build a culture of individual, social, and institutional responsibility.2
Why campus dialogues on responsibility? The great virtue of American colleges and universities is the value they place on academic freedom: the freedom to explore and discover new knowledge and to debate conventional wisdom. This is not merely an intercollegiate sport; academic freedom is absolutely necessary if we are to address the problems and challenges of our times. As trite as it may sound, there is no disputing the fact that without these spaces for free inquiry and open discussion, we would not have the human resources – the next generation of scientists and poets of every stripe – that we need to meet challenges as different as global warming, malaria, and child abuse and neglect.
We also know, however, that for a college or university to function productively, our commitment to academic freedom must be matched by an equally strong sense of personal, social, and institutional responsibility. Rights and responsibilities are opposite sides of the same coin. One cannot effectively enjoy freedom of inquiry in the laboratory, the classroom, the gallery, or the field without a set of agreed-upon community standards. For these standards to be accepted, all the members of the community must feel and take responsibility for them. In the RCAH, for example, who will decide what can and cannot be performed in public? What can and cannot be published on a blog on the College web site? What can and cannot be hung on our gallery walls or installed in an outdoor space?
There is no reason to expect unanimous agreement on issues such as these. There is also no reason to wait until a disagreement escalates into an acrimonious exchange, or worse. The skills we need to discuss these difficult questions can be honed before things come to an irreconcilable head. By organizing campus dialogues among students, faculty, and staff who feel strongly about such issues, we make it more likely that we can hold difficult conversations about them.
21st-century Chautauqua student and faculty facilitators will be working with student groups and organizations to move gradually and naturally to this level of dialogue in which the subject of personal and social responsibility can be achieved. In the RCAH this means actually creating the student organization and governance system that we believe will provide the best institutional structure for campus dialogues.
Another dimension of the 21st-century Chautauqua, building on what we learn from the campus dialogue project, is to create a range of curricular and co-curricular projects that will institutionalize some of the ideas agreed upon in the local dialogues. These projects may include new service-learning, field experience, internship, and civic engagement courses; new study abroad and more local study away programs with a service-learning or civic engagement component; and new trans-college courses on professional and civic responsibility.
Finally, we will be assessing just what we are gaining from this project. What new structures have we created? How well have they worked? How have they changed our attitudes about responsibility, and how have they affected our ability to act responsibly?