(No. 2)

Some "Whys" Behind the "Hows" of University Teaching and Research by Robert F. Cook Professor of French University of Virginia

Introductory Remarks

It is a great pleasure and an honor for me to address representatives of an agency to which the American public owes so much--and also to speak to a group of fellow teachers about a favorite topic. I hope to give some useful suggestions about parts of the academic enterprise that are not always presented in much detail. The perspective I have to offer is that of someone who has dedicated over thirty years to an academic discipline.

As I thought about the essentials of my line of work in preparation for these remarks, I realized there are quite a few things Federal law enforcement and higher education have in common. The most obvious is that images of us reach the public mostly through the media rather than through the kind of everyday contact that would make our duties and our operations familiar. The thing I know best about the FBI is what Agent Dana Scully's ID looks like. Many people get their impressions of higher education from Flubber or The Nutty Professor. It is all too easy to jump to conclusions about how your Bureau, or my Faculty, do their jobs, or even about what their jobs are. I will be trying today to get a little beyond the myth--that's a teacher's job, after all--and to underscore other things besides mythology that college teachers and law enforcement faculty have in common.

Though I will be referring to some of the differences, I want to insist here on what is shared. So in a sense I will not be telling you anything new, only sketching what is meant to be a more precise picture of the parts of the teaching-research process--as seen by a long-time practitioner. Like nearly anything we don't know well, the process can be taken as arbitrary, and it is usually presented that way. Yet what university research faculty do not only makes sense, it hangs together: its parts are related to each other; there are no arcane rites performed only for their own sakes. That may take some explaining.