Wes' Prestige as recognized by oher colleges

TheRightatWes
Mon, 06 Apr 2009 02:06:31 +0000

While I also have to agree with Flyingpig, I think it is necessary to make some level of peace here because otherwise we will devolve to a flame war and, despite my overtly inflammatory behavior on-campus, I don’t think it’s a good idea if we start that just yet with the prefrosh.

MrPimpateer, I don’t know what your concentrations are in Government and History (funnily enough, both of those are also my two majors), but if your point is that not all concentrations are created equal, then you have a very solid point. Comparative Government is seriously impoverished at Wesleyan, and International Relations, while it benefits from people like Giulio Gallarotti (who has serious academic connections) and Douglas Foyle, is not as good as it would be at a larger school like Tufts. I grant you that. However, if someone wants to do Political Theory or American Government, this school is ideal. Teachers in both departments are absolutely phenomenal - in fact, I have done a one-on-one tutorial with John Finn for the purpose of fulfilling my American Government concentration and I think it would be much harder to have a similar experience at a larger school. Wesleyan rewards specialization, and early specialization, much more highly than other schools, and my generally positive attitude toward Wesleyan’s social sciences may come from the fact that I have barely set foot in any 200 level courses relative to the number of research seminars I take every semester, which are frankly the most engaging courses in any department.

Where History is concerned, Intellectual History is, in my admittedly biased opinion, Wesleyan’s most amazingly awesome concentration in any department. Yes, it involves an inevitable encounter with Cecilia Miller, but that is actually nothing at all to complain about. Miller was Isaiah Berlin’s last personal PhD student at Oxford, and she knows her stuff. She also actually challenges her students (in fact, she’s the first teacher I’ve felt challenged under). If you want an education, that’s exactly what you should be looking for. Much as I don’t like his ideology, I also have to point out, as per Madjoy’s comment about sociology, that Charles Lemert is one of the most respected figures in his field. The Econ Major is admittedly a little math-heavy, but with Professors like Skillman, Adelstein and Rodriguez (one of Hugo Chavez’s personal economic advisors), this isn’t necessarily a problem.

Also, Wesleyan’s social sciences are almost unique in how balanced they are and how open to intellectual diversity they are. For instance, even though Professor Finn is a raging liberal Larry Tribe fan, I was able to write paper after paper extolling the virtues of originalism in my tutorial with him, and he gave me still good grades and perceptive comments on all of them. And even he himself is not orthodox, as he teaches his students that Roe v. Wade is the worst case ever written, despite his liberal stance on abortion. That’s a phenomenon you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. In fact, the very fact that a right-wing reactionary like me can become a favorite of social science professors just as easily as a left-wing liberal is true testament to how amazingly open-minded Wesleyan’s faculty is, at least in most of the social sciences. I will be talking to President Roth about this tomorrow, in fact, and given that I am one of Wesleyan’s most active political figures, I think my credibility is not in question. Are my experiences representative? It depends who you’re talking about. But they are hardly unique, or impossible to attain. Students who come to Wesleyan expecting Professors to seek them out and coddle them will be disappointed - Students who actually know how to break the ice will be rewarded beyond their wildest dreams. It’s that simple.