On July 1, 2026, I moved to emeritus status after teaching at Cornell for 58 years. The values I treasure, including the educational values which shaped my teaching, are under existential threat every day from the Trump administration.
For Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, the role of colleges is to ”advance American security interests, deliver academic programs that meet urgent work force needs, and contribute materially to the nation’s prosperity.”
Reflecting the current administration, McMahon’s objectives do not speak to the development of individuals but to the macrocosmic needs of the state. Authoritarian governments focus on the needs and desires of the state, while regarding universities as possible sites of annoying dissent. Such governments worry that clusters of students and professors are undermining their goals of complete control over every aspect of life.
In contrast, for me each student matters not as part of a national purpose but as an individual whose curiosity, knowledge, skill set and confidence will sustain her or him after graduation. Our job as college professors and senior administrators is to create a space for possibility and opportunity to flourish so that each of our students can fulfill her or his potential in terms of learning and personal development. The college experience includes students learning from others when participating in extracurricular activities — sports, theatre, musical groups, journalism — and when making lifetime friendships.
While striving for merit-oriented admission, we also know that we have a plethora of able candidates and that diversity on campus enables all of us to learn from others whose life experiences are different from our own.
Passionate about my subjects — modern literature and Holocaust studies — and dedicated to teaching, I felt honored and privileged to contribute to the education and development of undergraduates who, as they grow and evolve, become part of the coming generations of leadership in virtually every field.
Our current students have two relatively new issues with which to deal in the coming years. They need to harness artificial intelligence, which is rapidly transforming the day-to-day world we live in in ways that most of us can only guess. At the same time, they will need to take part in restoring trust in our now very shaky democracy.
Our educational mission is more difficult when the country is under daily threat from an authoritarian government which carries on a war on the Constitution, the courts and the press. Nor should we ignore the war on science including on climate change and proven health practices such as necessary vaccines for infants.
We need to challenge our students to write lucidly, read powerfully, speak articulately, think critically and rigorously, as well as organize evidence to make an argument. The role of colleges is to unlock each student’s intellectual potential but also to make students aware of the responsibilities of citizenship and community. These include belief in truth and fairness as cornerstones of human decency and respect for others. If we as professors can contribute to these goals, we are doing our students and the world a service.
Each of our students should leave with the necessary skills to either enter the job market or to earn advanced degrees but also with an appreciation of the value of the humanities and the arts. We need to encourage our students to take courses and have conversations that will help them understand and appreciate different cultures and ways of living. Our seminars are opportunities to teach students how to muster evidence to support their positions and to listen carefully to what others are saying.
Listening to multiple perspectives is part of preparing our students to participate in democracy. This means allowing campus groups to sponsor lecturers who have views that may be different from ours, including the Cornell visits of Hasan Piker on the left and Ben Shapiro on the right. But we do need to monitor the privilege of free expression when it crosses the borderline that separates civil discourse from racism and hate speech.
What makes effective teaching that speaks to the above goals? In my classes of up to 30 students, I stressed what I call APP: Attendance, Preparation and Participation. In larger classes, for a few weeks each term I split students up into seminar size groups. We need to strive to create an atmosphere where students feel that what we are doing in our class meetings matters to them.
Good classes are those in which students commit to the material and the professor. Great classes — the ones students remember for decades —are those in which students also commit to each other. This can happen in classes of 30 or less, but even to a lesser extent in larger classes. When we reach that goal, we have transformed our classes into what I call a community of inquiry.
Recent generations have been fortunate to have lived in a country where each of us counts rather than under an authoritarian regime where lives are shaped to meet government goals.
As C. P. Cavafy stresses in his poem “Ithaka,” the quality of each student’s education as part of her or his individual life journey is what matters more than the destination.
“Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.”
Daniel R. Schwarz was the Frederic J. Whiton Professor of English and is a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, where he was a faculty member for 58 years before becoming an emeritus on July 1, 2026. He can be contacted at drs6@cornell.edu.
