This past February, the College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln extended an invitation to William Ayers (Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago) to speak at its annual student research conference — an event which, this year, corresponds with the 100th anniversary of the College. Ayers was thought a good choice by the faculty committee charged with selecting a speaker. He is an internationally known scholar — the author of 17 books and more than 100 articles in his field — and an authority on urban educational reform. His talk was to be about qualitative research methods in education.

A week or so ago, that offer was rescinded. The official explanation is that Ayers's visit represented an unacceptable security risk for the University. The risk, however, was not posed by Ayers himself, but by the thousands of Nebraskans (I infer that number from the number of emails the University received) who were incensed by the decision of the College. Over the course of the last week, I have read impassioned denouncements of the University written by citizens of Nebraska, alumni, and prominent donors. The governor of the state has called the faculty's decision an embarrassment. Even those entrusted with the administration of the University — the President and the Chair of the Board of Regents — have criticized the choice of Bill Ayers as a speaker. One Regent has condemned my colleagues in Education for their arrogance. The University's threat assessment committee was able to cite evidence that some were moved to such anger over this invitation, that they appeared to be contemplating violent acts against people attending the symposium and Ayers himself.

I find all of this deeply troubling. Like many, I am inclined to use the term "academic freedom" as an alias for my frustration and outrage over what has just occurred. But in reality, I feel that something deeper and more vital has been attacked and denigrated by these events. This deeper thing is the idea of the university itself — an idea to which I have literally devoted my life. As a citizen, I can easily withstand the will of the majority being contrary to my own. I might even be able to carry on as a scholar and an intellectual without exposure to Bill Ayers's ideas. But as a professor at the University, I cannot do my work — which, I would like to argue, is also the people's work — without the social contract that allows universities to exist. If the people of Nebraska, their Governor, and the University's own administrators do not believe in that contract, then I believe we run the risk of having a university only in name.

Bill Ayers provides an apt occasion for talking about this contract and about the consequent notion of a university. So let me stipulate a few things about Bill Ayers for the sake of argument. Let me first assume that Bill Ayers purposefully advocated and participated in direct, violent action against the United States in order to protest the Vietnam War. Let me further suppose him to be — as many have charged — wholly unrepentant toward these acts. We will, for the sake of this discussion, assume only that he is not now a violent criminal or a fugitive from the law.

The question is this: Should the faculty of the College of Education — or, for that matter, any faculty at any reputable institution of higher learning — be permitted to invite such a person to speak?

I believe that the answer to this question must be "yes." I further believe that this answer is basic to the definition of a university, explanatory of the university's role in society, and essential for the health of a civilized society. I believe that answering "no" to this question introduces intolerable restrictions on the intellectual life of a nation (this one, or any other), and that it has dangerous consequences for democracy and freedom.

These are bold claims. I hope they will also be understood as being, at least in intention, patriotic claims. But in order to make any claim at all, am I not obligated to defend Bill Ayers?

In fact, I am not. Neither is the College of Education, the Deans, the President, the Chancellor, or the Regents. And this is because the proper discernment of Bill Ayers's ideas is the very reason we bring him into a university environment with the request that he share and elaborate his viewpoints to a wider community of scholars.

One possible objection seems obvious: Are not Bill Ayers's ideas manifest? And are they not manifestly evil? And if they are, what possible choice do we have but to accuse the UNL faculty of endorsing those ideas? This has been the substance of most of the attacks leveled against the University. We are accused of "having an agenda" and of forcing that agenda on others. And not just others! We are accused of forcing our (liberal, socialist, anarchist, anti-American) views on students, who, being innocent and impressionable children, are left virtually defenseless and without recourse toward more balanced and even-handed forms of instruction.

Yet this approach to the question of Bill Ayers is quite obviously an example of the very thing that we are being told we must not do. The opposite of the scholar who "has an agenda," after all, is the scholar who is presumably neutral, dispassionate, and willing to hear both sides. A truly dispassionate scholar would have to invite Bill Ayers to speak — even if the result of that engagement was condemnation. So on its face, the notion that the veracity or usefulness of certain ideas are already a settled matter in advance of any investigation betrays an "agenda" of its own — a belief that universities actually should not be neutral and dispassionate, but should instead support the predetermined beliefs of the society that supports it.

But then what of Bill Ayers himself? He is surely not at all dispassionate. He has an agenda, makes no apologies for it, and is happy not only to argue his positions in open debate, but to use his position as a teacher to convince his students that he is right. If we condemn, in the foregoing bit of sophistry, the partisans of neutrality for their own secret agenda, are we not compelled to condemn Bill Ayers himself for the same thing? He might be a professor, but he's surely as prejudicial in his views as any one of those who condemn his agenda.

I believe I have just set forth — in three paragraphs — the paradox of the university. On the one hand, it proclaims itself, as Thomas Jefferson once said, "not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." On the other hand, it harbors people who, having followed truth "wherever it may lead," will proclaim quite loudly that they have found it. The university is therefore at once both open-minded and doctrinaire, neutral and biased, relativistic and dogmatic.

I wouldn't have it any other way, and I think the people's money is well spent by supporting such institutions. Because this is how we, as a society, honor what Jefferson called "the illimitable freedom of the human mind." It is also how we produce informed, responsible citizens and advance human knowledge.

To understand the educational role of the university, we need to dispense with the notion that universities are sites of unified belief and opinion. I suppose I could rest that claim on my own experience, but one's own intuitions about the behavior of human beings will probably suffice to make it plain. A student making their way through the University will have to deal with Bill Ayers's attempt to convince them of his views, but they will also have to deal with those who disagree completely with Bill Ayers (because in academia, there is nothing to be gained, professionally speaking, from thinking like someone else). They will have to contend with those who think that persuasion is always inappropriate in a university environment, and with those who think it is the only coherent rationale for teaching. Such dizzying oppositions are, moreover, not confined to courses on political matters; they are, rather, constitutive of higher education in any subject. In one class, Shakespeare is portrayed as an Elizabethan radical. In another, it is demonstrated that he was an obsequious toady of the Queen. A third eschews all politics so that Shakespeare's language can be discussed and illuminated. In some classes (in my classes), all three ideas get aired. Or rather, one is put forth until I get the sense that my students might be starting to agree. Then I forcefully argue the opposite. This is sometimes called the "Socratic method." Most teachers (including Bill Ayers) understand it to be the oldest trick in the book.

The goal of this trick is not to convince students that one idea is right and the other wrong, but to get them to distrust — with all their being — knee-jerk opinions, empty bromides, hasty conclusions, and unreflected assumptions. Or rather, it is to convince students that one idea is right and the other wrong — because that is the only real and genuine way to bring about intellectual maturity. As individual scholars, we have our own agendas. As members of a corporate institution, we distrust agendas with all our might. We are literally both. We are trying to create students — and by extension, citizens — who are literally both. We want them to listen to both sides, but have strong, heart-felt (and informed) opinions. We want them to be open to the truth wherever it may lead, but we also want them to speak the truth (especially to power). In this project, the ability of the individual student to accept or reject an idea is presupposed. We do not regard them as children, but as adults capable of mature judgment.

As a research institution, universities try to produce ideas that are of benefit to society. If they are successful in doing that (and here, I am thinking of everything from educational policy to nanotechnology), it is because they are utterly ruthless in the way they vet ideas. I think there is a perception that Bill Ayers's visit would be a kind of love-in in which the choir is subjected to preaching and preconceived notions are affirmed. If so, I believe it would be an unusual — if not a unique — moment in the history of the modern academy. In fact, Bill Ayers's ideas on "qualitative methodologies" (to say nothing of his ideas on armed political action) would be subjected to what would be regarded in most circumstances (in the public square or on television, for example) as withering critique. Ayers himself would be surprised if that didn't occur, and those in attendance would consider the symposium a great success if it did. It is another instance in which the paradox of the university manifests itself. We want people like Bill Ayers to have strong opinions. We also want to criticize those strong opinions. The truth that emerges from such collisions is the only kind of truth universities know how to make, and it has led to advances in every area of human inquiry and need. If there is a solution to the problems that confront us as a society — in matters ranging from bone cancer, to Middle East policy, to the nature of human love — that solution will in all likelihood first emerge in a laboratory or a seminar room where academics are doing what they do best: fighting and arguing over who's right.

We now turn to a question that naturally emerges from consideration of the nature of universities: Who decides who gets a hearing in this forum I have described? Who gets to speak?

It won't do to say, "trained academics" or "those with Ph.Ds." Academia is not composed entirely of such people, does not confine its invitations exclusively to itself, and would be considerably impoverished if it were to do so. What it does demand, however, is that the people inviting and the people being invited both agree to the principle that truth and neutrality are not contradictory concepts. They must agree to be at once humble and audacious. They must be as quick to admit error as they are zealous of their own opinions. This is the distinguishing feature of a faculty.

They got that way not by taking certain courses or acquiring certain degrees, but by having been mentored into a community that is utterly intolerant toward people who believe in some lesser version of truth and neutrality. There are those at the university who believe that Ayers's actions as a member of the Weather Underground were gravely immoral. There are also those who believe that it is not only permissible to take up arms against an oppressive regime, but an obligation of a free people (they cite the founders of this country as an example). Such people very often occupy the same department. Their disagreement might be deep and even personal. But all faculty members are resolutely committed to the idea that a question like this deserves careful examination and scrutiny. They want a forum in which to examine words like "immoral" and "oppressive." They would renounce their own positions in the debate before they would renounce their belief that such forums are necessary and vital for the continuation of civilized society. These people decide.

Such a system places great demands on a society. For while they may benefit in obvious ways from the fruits of a university (rendered in the form of an educated populace and through the donation of useful ideas), they have to tolerate what might at first seem offensive to freedom. They have to allow these professors to make decisions about who they need to listen to, whom they accept into their fold, what they talk about, and what they say to their students. They need to do this without interference from government and the public square (where the paradox of the academy cannot usefully exist in a permanent state). Even the interference of administrators damages the integrity of the system. Because without freedom from interference, both the education of students and academic research suffer.

One might suppose that the case of donors is different, and it is. But we must be clear about what a donor does when they withhold funds. They are not refusing to support the actions of the faculty, or its politics, or its decisions. They are refusing to fund the idea of the university. We do not take the generosity of those who contribute their own wealth to the maintenance of this idea for granted; we are humbled by it and grateful for it. But we do insist that people giving money to universities know what it is they're supporting. In a sense, we ask them to support the paradox. If you are a donor, you won't like everything we do. We don't like everything we do. We believe in something greater. We hope that you do as well.

Reasonable people can disagree about Bill Ayers. People can also disagree about Bill Ayers's having a place in our university forums. But people cannot condemn the right of the faculty to make such decisions and still be supporting the idea of a university — this, or any other. I call upon the citizens of Nebraska to support what Governor Heineman recently called (in his rejection of the decision to bring Ayers to campus) "the people's university" by supporting the ideals upon which the modern university was founded. As an employee of this University — one honored and privileged to be counted among those who decide on matters of education and debate at this institution — I call upon all administrators loudly and forcefully to support the idea of a university and the academic freedom without which it literally cannot exist. Finally, I call upon the Board of Regents to recognize their role as those, first among citizens, who commit themselves to supporting the project of university research and education against all challenge from without, even when — especially when — the will of the people moves against the ideals that make us a university.

Stephen Ramsay
Lincoln, Nebraska
October 26th, 2008

My father has been an amateur woodworker for nearly forty years, and this Christmas I had a chance to see what anyone would have to consider his masterpiece: a secretary built in solid mahogany using mostly hand tools.

It's a stunning work to which these photographs do meager justice. The hand carved ball-and-claw feet support a "bombe chest" with curves so dramatic that they seem an impossible outcome for the material from which they were formed. The doors above swing open, like an old watch case, to reveal a warren of little drawers, a writing desk, and a pair of slim shelves for candles. I cannot imagine what letter would be of such importance that it would require the use of such a dais, except perhaps a letter of gratitude to the saplings of the tree that gave its life for something so grand and beautiful.

It is a cruel fact of my genetic makeup that I have no talent for such things (my brother, a couple of years younger than me, pursues the construction of guitars with an ease I find almost insulting). I am occasionally filled with the desire to pursue my father's avocation, but I find, upon careful examination, that it is not the bombe chest that I desire so much as Sunday afternoons in a quiet workshop. I remember the smell of wood shavings from my childhood the way others remember the smell of baking bread, and the simplicity of the questions and answers that attend the activity. "What are you building?" I'd ask. "A chair," he'd say. Never in my life as a scholar have I been able to answer a question about what I was doing so briefly and with such certainty.

In the end, though, it's the tools that fill me with envy. Woodworking tools are perhaps the only thing more beautiful than a meticulously crafted piece of furniture. Even their names fill me with pleasure: rabbet plane, coping saw, mortise gauge, firmer chisel, oilstone. They are heavy, solid, sharp, durable, and greet you like a firm handshake when you hold them. Like hunting dogs and violins, they long to fulfill their purpose. My father tells a story of how, as a young child, he gave me a cross-cutting saw and a huge block of wood. I sawed away with fury for a long while, and when the piece was finally cut I burst into tears. Whether those were tears of joy or sorrow I cannot recall, but even today I see the logic of that response.

Years later, as a student in college, I fell in with a crowd of oil painters, and the sweet smell of turpentine was added to my list of madeleines. They also had tools, and I envied the materiality of art making as I envied the haptic pleasures of the workshop. Gesso, stretcher bars, oil paint, brushes, wax medium. I am even less able to make art than furniture, but the physicality of art fascinates me to this day. As a young prose writer, I was beginning to understand the importance of erasure. But how I longed to undertake that activity with the same bodily exertion they used when they scraped the paint off a canvas with a spatula and wiped their considered thoughts on the pant leg of their jeans.

I had no real idea of the physicality of my medium until graduate school when, in a class that looked at "books as physical objects," I was able to handle 400-year-old codices that possessed nearly all of the qualities of my father's secretary. Books of the hand press period needed to be pressed, sewn, bound, and cut, and there were tools for doing all of these things. As with woodworking tools, these ones had magnificent names: piercing awl, bone folder, composing stick, chase, galley, foolscap. Once, I had a chance to pull the bar of a wooden hand press. My body thrilled to it just as it did when, again in childhood, I would bring an axe down upon a log I was splitting for the woodstove in our basement. "Let the tool do the work," my father used to say. And what work it is when the kinetic energy of arms and shoulders presses ink into paper like a hot brand.

I do not wish this to be taken for nostalgia. I do not long for the days of quill pens and hand presses. The tools of my trade are digital, and I cannot see a single argument for why it should be otherwise. At the same time, I do not understand why these new tools cannot have the solidity and craftsmanship of the old.

Computers are marvelous devices, but a laptop is to a wooden hand press as a disposable razor is to a Lie-Nielsen block plane. I adore the the MacBook Pro I'm using to write this essay, but I adore it solely for what it allows me to do. There is no pleasure in its keys, its buttons, its adapters, or its hinge, all of which seem fragile and temporary. Apple has rightfully won awards for its sleek, innovative designs, but no one would think to give a craftsmanship award to the manufacturers who stamp them out like cans for holding tuna.

One might argue that sophisticated equipment must be delicate by nature, but no one who has held a camera made by Leica or Rollei could think such a thing. In fact, these cameras are the closest thing I know to the high quality hand tools of the page. It is impossible not to feel pleasure when hitting the shutter release on a Leica and hearing the clockwork miracles within. A Rolleiflex is as solid, as unlikely, and as perfectly proportioned as a bombe chest. No one doubts that they will work a century from now. Whenever I hit the power button on a laptop, I wonder if I'm pressing it too hard.

I will never own a Rollei or a Leica. Only a professional would dare spend that kind of money on a tool, and only a professional would demand this level of perfection. I understand this, because as a professional writer and programmer, I spend three or four times what ordinary people spend on their computers. For my money, I get ungodly levels of speed, panoramic monitors, and more storage than I know what do with, but I do not get anything fit to stand in the same room as a Leica. The parts of my computers break like everyone else's. None of them could stand a three inch drop. They will be sent to the landfill without a hint of farewell.

People complained when they discovered that the battery for the new iPhone is soldered in — aghast at the thought that Apple was merely trying to create eventual enthusiasm for iPhone 2.0. It didn't occur to anyone that the iPhone might fall apart in your hand before the battery wears out. Those who complain about the present flimsiness of electronic media devices are offered "ruggedized" tools, but there is no point of comparison between "ruggedization" and craftsmanship. The former tries to compensate for what is, at heart, chintzy and ephemeral; the latter aims to avoid the need for such compromises in the first place.

I said before that there was no nostalgia in my longing for high quality tools, but perhaps there is. Next to my high-performance desktop machine — the case of which, after a year, is already beginning to discolor — there's a notebook and a pencil for which I together paid nearly fifty dollars. The former is a beautifully made Moleskine notebook with a sewn binding and solid boards. The latter is a perfectly crafted lead holder with a clutch as firm and eternal as the clutch on a Lambourghini. I did not hesitate at the price of either, and would gladly pay more. I am, after all, a craftsman.

(Continued from part 1)

Serious Cooking

The minute you open one of the more serious technique books (like Pepin or Escoffier), you'll be stunned to find that some of these books tend to assume that you're either training to be a professional chef or you're independently wealthy and can devote all the time in the world to cooking. Glazing creme brulee with a blow torch? Carving flowers out of potatoes? Spending ten hours making demi-glaze out of beef and veal bones? Clarifying butter? Making mayonnaise? It's at this point that you probably head out to the book store for another cookbook — this time, "20 Minute Meals" or some such — because honestly, this is all over your head and you're not planning to cook a state dinner for fifty any time soon. In fact, you may conclude that any dish involving these techniques is probably too complex for anything but a serious dinner party.

Some day, you may throw such a party. But for now, you want to think about making some of these highly labor intensive things not for eating but for learning. No one — including the cookbook writers — has time to put together a serious five-course meal for the family after work (and before someone's piano lesson) on Tuesday night. But if you are serious about cooking, you may want to think about devoting a Saturday afternoon to making a souffle or some canapes for whoever happens to be around (everyone will love it if it works, and there's no shame in ordering a pizza if it doesn't). Go ahead and follow Pepin's instructions for carving frogs out of cucumber halves (you won't believe what that will do for your knife handling skills). Spend a couple of hours making hollandaise (a grand exercise in sauce making). Buy a couple of trout fish whole, fillet them yourself, and turn them into quenelles. You still want to heed the advice about focusing on techniques, but the recipes in the technique books tend to pair the recipes with the individual techniques. It's a very good idea.

What you will find is that the principles behind these grand projects will start filtering into the twenty-minute meals (which are much easier to make, now that you know how to chop, fry, roast, etc.). Having properly trussed a chicken, and having discovering the difference it makes, may inspire you to do it all the time. With some practice, you'll be doing it in fifteen seconds flat on a Friday night. Once you've learned how to make a true pan sauce, you may find that it's just too easy (and too good) to pass up for those pork chops you picked up on the way home from work. And so it goes.

Know Your Material

Most people's taste in food is conditioned by what they ate growing up, and in many cases, that experience leads to an appalling provincialism. Many people can walk around an ordinary grocery store and find vegetables or cuts of meat that they've never heard of, and since they've never heard of them, they conclude that they are somehow inedible (odd that they're in a grocery store!), require some kind of unusual preparation, or are only eaten by the poor.

This, of course, is nonsense. Sometimes you're seeing the staples of another cuisine that someone else is being brought up on. Sometimes you're seeing things that your mother just didn't know about. Sometimes you're seeing outright delicacies that some local group of gourmands insists upon. Whatever the reason, it pays to go find out what it is and how to cook it. A good food encyclopedia is, for this reason, a good thing to have in your cookbook collection.

Have you ever seen that chart showing the different cuts of meat? Take a good look some time. It's also good to know all about the different types of chili peppers, all the different types of mushrooms, all the varieties of fish and foul, and on and on and on. That might sound like work, but in a way, knowledge of these matters flows naturally from technique. There's a reason you don't make pot roast from fillet mignon, and that reason really has to do with both the nature of the material and the nature of the technique. You will find yourself knowing (and caring) about such differences in part because you understand the virtues and limitations of the various methods.

[As an aside, I'd like to mention just one particular example of this that I see all the time. Before I figured out how to cook, I would thoughtlessly buy the best cut of meat I could find, no matter what I was making. So, for example, I would (like most people) buy 90/10 sirloin to grill burgers. Because after all, it's better. It's more expensive, so it must be better. But when I read up on the matter, I discovered that this was quite wrong. 80/20 chuck is what you want for grilled burgers, because you actually want the fat. And we won't even mention the amazing habit people have of squeezing the juice out of hamburgers with a spatula while they're cooking (or flipping them endlessly). I thankfully never developed that habit, but much of what I was doing was dead wrong, and it was producing substandard hamburgers. But then, I thought, "Surely there isn't 'technique' involved with grilling burgers?" There is. Quite a bit, in fact, since it's not really that far from cooking steaks, and everyone has ideas about the proper way to do that. Most of which, by the way, are also wrong.]

Eating out is also a good time to be adventurous. Certainly, if you're in the presence of a great chef, order up some classic that you have tried to make (or would like to make). Otherwise, go for something unusual. Most people say they love to eat, but in general, people are very parochial when it comes to food and stick to a narrow group of known entities. A cook goes for the octopus. Ask a great cook if they've ever tried bison, or ostrich eggs, or alligator, and they'll either yes or "I'm dying to try it."

Today, I offer some meditations on cooking. It's an essay I wrote a few months ago to amuse myself and organize my thoughts, which I re-discovered a few moments ago on my hard drive. I'm undoubtedly not qualified to offer opinions on this matter, but really, what's the point of having a blog if you can't hold forth from time to time . . .

When my wife became became pregnant with our first child, I had all the usual anxieties. I worried about money, about being a good father, and about passing on all my personality quirks to another member of the human race. But I also worried about being useful. It's hard to stand by while your wife is going through all the difficulties of a pregnancy and do nothing. I wanted to contribute something to the overall project that wasn't just my unwavering love and support. Given that we were both in graduate school at the time and on a fairly tight budget, the solution seemed obvious. I was going to become the cook.

My wife and I weren't bad eaters, and neither of us were completely incompetent in the kitchen, but we opted for take out with a fair amount of regularity, and when we did cook, it tended to be graduate school fare: cheap and uncomplicated. I wouldn't have described myself as a cook, at any rate. I was just someone who had a basic understanding of how to keep from starving while getting a Ph.D.

The decision to have children suddenly made me view that as woefully inadequate. My own mother had spent a lot of time in the kitchen while raising three children, which meant roasted meats, carefully prepared vegetables, soups and sauces, and homemade bread. Even I understood that little kids — and pregnant mothers — couldn't thrive on pizza and Ramen noodles. So, by learning to cook, I would be taking over a critical household duty and also providing my young family with good food.

It's been about seven years since I made that decision, and while I have much to learn, no one would be able to deny me the title. I'm a cook. And most nights, I'm a pretty good one. What follows is my brief list of things I wish someone had told me when I started out.

Learn the craft

Everyone loves to describe cooking as an art (e.g. Mastering the Art of French Cooking), but that term is misleading, because it implies that cooking is some sort of mysterious, possibly innate talent that some people have and others don't. I wouldn't want to deny that there's such a thing as talent in cooking, but cooking is mostly a matter of craft, and that's an important distinction.

Cooking — like woodworking, bookbinding, sewing, metalworking, and glass blowing — are all difficult crafts to master, but the pattern of mastery is very different from that of oil painting, sculpture, or architectural design. The "practical arts" require mastery of a broad set of individual techniques. It is instructive to recall that every one of these trades developed the notion of apprenticeship, and every master can recall the frustrations of starting out. "I came to study woodworking, and that guy had me sharpening chisels for a year!" "The master tailor wouldn't even let me take in a hem when I started!" And in cooking, "I spent ages chopping carrots before I was allowed to approach the stove." It might sound like hazing, but you'll rarely hear someone say that they regret the experience, and in fact, most of them are sure to subject their underlings to the same treatment.

There is great wisdom in all of this for one learning to cook. We identify a great cook as someone who "makes their own crust" or "can make a souffle" or "made duck l'orange for that dinner party," and we assume that the trick to becoming a great cook is learning to make these things. So, we head out to the bookstore to buy yet another cookbook.

But if you've had a great meal at the hand of a great cook (and it doesn't matter whether it was in a restaurant or in someone's home), what you're witnessing is the end result of someone who has painstakingly learned — through many hours of study and practice — the basic techniques of cooking. He or she might "know how to make bechamel sauce," but what they really know how to do is build any sauce, and that's because they've practiced making sauces with their attention focused where it belongs: on the techniques. If you've ever had the experience of following a recipe exactly only to have it fail, you've come in to contact with this principle. You did what it said, but you don't actually understand what happens when you add flour to butter, or whisk some cream, or reduce a liquid, or heat meat.

So the first thing one has to do when learning to cook is stop thinking in terms of particular dishes, and start thinking in terms of particular techniques. This doesn't mean that one stops using recipes, but it does mean that your choice of recipes should be viewed as an opportunity to study a particular technique. The goal is to learn to roast, deglaze, fry, reduce, saute, slice, boil, braise, steam, julienne, debone, carve, season, fold, whip, cut, and chop. A complicated recipe that involves half a dozen of these techniques (and there are dozens more) is not a good beginner recipe, but that doesn't mean that you are confined only to simple things. A very fancy dish that mainly involves frying might be just the thing, and some simple things are transcendental when cooked properly.

Realize that there is no matter too small in this world of technique. Next time you're watching some TV chef (only a few of whom teach technique), notice the way they chop and cut vegetables. They do it swiftly, accurately, adroitly, and without thinking. This is because someone spent an unbelievable amount of time explaining how to hold a knife, how to angle it for different jobs, how to guide the blade, how to avoid injuring oneself, and the proper technique for dealing with dozens and dozens of meats and vegetables. And then they practiced that over and over every day for years.

"Yes," you say, "but I'm not apprenticing as a professional chef! I'm just trying to put food on the table! I don't have time!" But if you cook every day (and surely you're going to, if the goal is to learn to cook) you will have daily opportunities to practice. The trick is to know what it is that you're practicing and why. You might be tempted to say, "I don't know how to make French Onion Soup, but I know how to chop onions and put things in a pot." But if you're a beginner, you don't know how to do either; or rather, you don't know how to do the former because (contrary to what you may think) you don't know how to do the latter. And the latter — the chopping, the roux making, the simmering — is the important part.

So, before you pick up that cookbook that focuses on the cuisine of the Eastern Mediterranean, go buy one of the less thrilling titles on technique. There are far fewer of those, but there are plenty out there and most of them constitute the hidden classics of professional cooking. Among the books that focus on technique, James Peterson's Essentials of Cooking, Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques, and Madeline Kaman's The Making of a Cook are fairly standard. I own all three (and all three are excellent), but there are many others.

What should you cook? French cuisine is a good place to start, since it is one of the world's greatest food traditions, has dominated cooking in the West for centuries, and has produced the broadest variety of meditations on technique. But every great cuisine has its own set of techniques (and its own distinct pleasures both for the cook and the guest). If you want to try Indian, Chinese, or Italian, the advice is the same: figure out the fundamental techniques and master them.

(part 2)

When I arrived at the University of Virginia in 1992 — to begin a doctorate in English — I had no thought of doing anything with computers. The theory explosion of the 80s hadn't fully ebbed, and the academy was busy kneading what it had learned from continental philosophy into the "new historicism." I was there, of course, to become a literary theorist.

But I was a strange theorist. My heroes weren't Derrida and Foucault, but the Anglo-American language philosophers — in particular, Wittgenstein whom I still regard as the greatest modern philosopher. I had dreams of reforming hermeneutical theory, not with the bitter skepticism of European post-structuralism, but with the down-to-earth good sense of those who had wisely ignored Saussure's conundrums.

But what to do with such a weirdo? Imagine my surprise when I was assigned Richard Rorty — easily the most famous living American philosopher — as my advisor!

Rorty had ascended to the position of Chair of the Humanities at UVA, which, he explained to me at our first meeting, meant that he had no meetings to go to. "I'm afraid I know nothing of the technical details involved with getting a graduate degree," he said, taking a draw on his pipe, "so we'll have to confine ourselves to the loftier goals of your education."

I took Rorty's class in critical theory, of course, as we all did in one way or another. I admired his entirely unflappable manner (the most stinging attack from a student was usually met with a shrug and a smile followed by a more or less brilliant response). Rorty's signature move in a lecture was to confess that he "didn't understand" an essay by Cixous or Jameson (I've tried to cultivate that same honesty with my students, though unlike Rorty, my lack of understanding is usually quite real). I especially loved his willingness to throw down the intellectual gauntlet. One of my most frequent experiences in grad school involved sitting in a seminar with the world's leading authority on a subject and having that person "lead discussion" among a bunch of grad students who (understandably) didn't know a blessed thing about it. Rorty told us on the first day that he was there to urge a particular viewpoint on us, that he would be marshaling various texts in his defense, and that we should fight back. We did. It was education at its best.

I suspect few of Rorty's students were converted to American Pragmatism, but anyone who went through the English Ph.D. program at UVA during the years he was there, and took the "theory course" from Rorty, came away with certain ideas that I think tend to distinguish us as a group. Most of us came to graduate school wanting to separate the wheat from the chaff. We wanted to say that authorial intention was wrongheaded, that Foucault was right and Fish wrong (or vice versa), that there were good and bad theories of gender — and that there was a way to be "current" in your thinking about contemporary critical theory. Rorty knew that this is what we were trying to do, and didn't disapprove, but his real beef was with the idea that any one of them should act as a normative principle for interpretation. Authorial intention is a useful thing in some instances (I remember him saying, to everyone's dismay, "One hopes that there are always people around trying to reconstruct the content of an author's consciousness"). And so is Derridean skepticism. It's also okay to think that one gender critic is better than another, so long as we are clear about what "better" means.

We were taking a theory class from a great expert on the subject, who, to our astonishment, seemed to be telling us to go back and get on with the business of interpreting literature (with whatever tools make the most sense). Even the most hard-core "theory heads" seemed to soften after making their way through the Rorty boot camp. It was okay to pursue high falutin' theories of gender construction; it was also okay to devote your life to the textual recension of Piers Plowman. Nothing like a properly ramified episteme.

Richard Rorty leaves behind a vast corpus of books and essays that are among the finest philosophical works of the twentieth century. He also leaves behind a generation of scholars who are far less tedious and doctrinaire than they might have been had they not passed, however briefly, under his powerful influence. It's sad to think that he won't be around to keep it real for the next generation.