{"id":34,"date":"2018-10-03T10:00:40","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T10:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/?p=34"},"modified":"2018-11-06T16:42:48","modified_gmt":"2018-11-06T16:42:48","slug":"professor-without-portfolio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/2018\/10\/03\/professor-without-portfolio\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Without Portfolio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of my life has been spent in universities and colleges\u2014and for a moment just short of retirement, in a seminary. I have often wondered what I was doing in such places. Was I there to learn? To teach? To supervise? Perhaps to worship?<\/p>\n

The truth is that I have come to regard such places as fundamentally unmanageable, increasingly difficult to teach in, all but impossible to worship either God or mammon in, and\u2014worst of all\u2014inimical to learning. All this makes mysterious my lifetime association with the academy.<\/p>\n

In writing this \u201cchapter\u201d and the next, I have been trying to solve this mystery for my children, my friends and my self. I\u2019ve had some success in the pages just ahead, as I hope you agree\u2014but the investigation remains \u201copen\u201d.<\/p>\n

Professor Without Portfolio is a seven part essay. What follows below is the introduction. If this blog post is your starting point, the links below will take you to the reminder of the essay.<\/p>\n

Part One: Introduction to Professor Without Portfolio<\/a><\/p>\n

Part Two: The Future Lost–and Found: 1953-1962<\/a><\/p>\n

Part Three: From Journalism and Politics to Political Philosophy: 1957-1969<\/a><\/p>\n

Part Four: Marriage as Antidote to a Life Too Public<\/a><\/p>\n

Part Five: From Politics to Political Philosophy: 1966-1980<\/a><\/p>\n

Part Six: Developing a Self to Contend with the World<\/a><\/p>\n

Part Seven: Seeking Asylum in the World: 1980-1993<\/a><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

I entered upon graduate academic life as a young father without prospects\u2014other than the meagre Teaching Fellowship offered me by the University of Hawaii\u2019s Department of Political Science. I had just graduated with a Bachelor\u2019s degree from that department, and gratefully accepted the fellowship to bring to bare adequacy the income I was receiving then from a miscellany of dead-end jobs. I came to the academy for a license, not for learning\u2014but I have come since to embrace the axiom that that the only reason to be anywhere freely for any length of time is to learn.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Bill Frame as a young father and graduate student in Hawaii.<\/p><\/div>\n

And when I first came into the academy, I did learn! I found folk there who had learned the fine art of close reading, and others who practiced the matching art of disciplined deliberation. The most joyous incidents in my life have been discoveries that have exploded into view like a Ruffed Grouse from an Ohio thicket as I went hunting through the pages of a great book with the help of careful conversation in classroom, office or living room.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The stage for these joyous incidents had not yet been set when the Registrar of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu looked up in the spring of 1962 from his audit of my mottled 6-year transcript of general and professional courses and announced that I had, in fact, earned a Bachelor\u2019s degree in Political Science and Chinese Studies. The mottled record began (and was quickly interrupted) at Westminster College, New Wilmington, PA, resumed at the Ohio State University, and culminated in the degree at Hawaii (and the fellowship)\u2014by which point I was husband, father, and, among other things, Night Manager of a big service station between the Ala Moana shopping center in Honolulu and Waikiki Beach. Although it came two years late by the standards of the day, the degree was at least weak evidence that the academy was the right place for me. I took the money and stayed on; I got back on the horse that had thrown but not trampled me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The decision was vindicated almost immediately. In my first graduate course, I was \u201casked\u201d to summarize Charles McIlwain\u2019s Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern<\/span> by a quiet, young professor of American Politics who, fortunately, thought the origins of the agreement at Philadelphia in 1787 lay, as did Montesquieu (of the whole of English law and culture!), \u00a0in the shadows of the Saxon forests. I spent a frantic week reading and re-reading McIlwain\u2019s little book, and delivered myself of what the prof declared as \u201cmastery\u201d of the argument that the jurisprudential fundamentals of constitutionalism took form in English, even European, feudalism. Ever since that experience, I have longed to repeat it\u2014to emerge from the close reading of a rewarding book with a little new light in at least one eye that allows me to see such connections as, in this case, between feudalism and Federalism (or, in the case of books written in restrictive and censoring cultures, to find the secret of construction that reveals the author\u2019s true teaching). And though I continue to undertake long, slow close readings, I have emerged from every one of them so far with new understanding. Thus have I come to believe that recognizing generative connections between superficially disparate eras, people, events (and generic contrasts in superficially similar phenomena) are collateral gifts of the open minded, the constantly curious, and the frequently surprised.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I was so thrilled by the McIlwain achievement that I immediately presumed that I had somehow earned the gifts with which I accomplished it–that I merited them individually. This arrogance (quite momentary, as it turned out) reflected my extensive but failed effort to reverse my father\u2019s disappointment in me, and to overcome the self doubt that it had largely engendered. The sudden burst of arrogance was a great, albeit tarnished gift; it allowed me to confront for the first time and begin the defeat of my deepest-dwelling demon\u2014the failure of my father\u2019s tests of me and of his own fatherhood. He died in my 15th<\/sup> year, and I never won from him as much praise for all the assignments that I fulfilled as the amount of disappointment he expressed in my failing even one of them. From the moment that I found the discipline and discovered the ability to comprehend an argument the size and complexity of McIlwain\u2019s book, I stopped trying to satisfy him and began trying to understand how he and I had gotten into such an unholy tangle. It took a long time, but eventually \u201cwe\u201d straightened it out\u2014in the broad hall of careful recollection, attentive observation, and my own eventual realization that forgiveness both is and yearns for love. That realization welled up only after I was well into my career in the academy. It transformed my ambition from reversing my father\u2019s disappointment of me into finding and following a moral code that I could defend before him as well as the best of my teachers. That transformed ambition has supplied drive enough for a lifetime\u2014a demiurge altogether as challenging as quarreling with \u201cthe child inside\u201d but far more satisfying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of my life has been spent in universities and colleges\u2014and for a moment just short of retirement, in a seminary. I have often wondered what I was doing in such places. Was I there to learn? To teach? To supervise? Perhaps to worship? The truth is that I have come to regard such places […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":268,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[8,9,11,10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/268"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/frame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}