By Tom Plate
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. ― It isn't easy these days to find silver linings in the ominous and swirling global-warning economic clouds overhead.
But if history tells us anything, there must be a few in there somewhere. So perhaps a little imagination is in order to skirt the current oppressive mood of constant unending gloom.
Imagine that we earthlings began to take the long view of life, like the Chinese philosopher, or the composer of symphonies, or the writer of great novels. Nothing of any great value or even significance takes place in a short period of time; it is only by taking the long view that meaning and achievement is accomplished.
These thoughts arose in the context of a surprising development in the field of higher education in the United States. Dartmouth College, one of the finest small liberal arts schools in the world, announced the acquisition of a new college president.
Its choice is notable on a number of accounts. The first is that the appointee is abandoning his position at Harvard University as a famous medical school official and researcher.
Most people would imagine that the average hotshot would career hop from a small college like Dartmouth to a giant like Harvard ― not the other way around.
The second point of note is that the recent appointee is Asian-American, and becomes the first of his ethnicity to head such a prominent Ivy League institution.
This has to be major news across the Pacific, if nowhere else. To generalize greatly, no one values higher education more than Asia and Asians, and I would bet that more Koreans, say, have heard of Dartmouth than people in, for example, Tennessee.
I have met some Koreans, in fact, who'd be tempted to commit a high crime to get their child into an American school as good as Dartmouth ― and I note this with admiration!
Dr. Jim Yong Kim, a physician and an anthropologist who received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard, was born in South Korea but immigrated to the United States at an early age.
He received his bachelors degree from Brown University, another top-notch, world-class university ― but a relatively large one. And then he went onto Harvard, which is gigantic in every sense of the word, where he rose to chairman of the Department of Global and Social Health at Harvard Medical School.
Despite this stratospheric resume, there was always something odd about Dr. Kim. The main thing: He not only loved to teach students, but he actually preferred to teach mainly undergraduate students. This is most unusual among top academics.
Let me try to explain. For many high-flying professors, teaching undergrads is often viewed as beneath one's station: as a chore, if not a hardship ― an impediment to ``real scholarship and learning.''
And it is not only de-prioritized in the culture of the professor, but often in the institutions of administration, which reward and promote faculty on the basis of scholarly papers published, awards received, and eminent recognitions earned.
At large universities, from great but large public institutions like the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where I was privileged to teach undergraduates (and only undergrads) for 14 years, to the great but large private universities like Harvard, the college undergraduate student is at the bottom of the totem pole.
I've known professors to practically scamper in the other direction when they see one coming, keep their office hours to the absolute minimum and maneuver like Donald Trump to keep from having to teach an undergrad course.
At small liberal arts colleges, by contrast, the undergrads are the kings and queens of the campus. At my own undergraduate alma mater, Amherst College, in leafy (and oft-frozen) western Massachusetts, faculty would not be hired and certainly would not be promoted unless teaching-ability was very high on the list of prominent and demonstrable skills.
Teaching ability ― and especially avidity ― is primo at schools across America like Williams, Swarthmore, Kenyon and Occidental ― it's not an option but an essential.
At Santa Monica College here in Southern California (perhaps the best two-year junior college in the country, many say), President Chui L. Tsang personally ― personally! ― interviews each teaching candidate recommended to be hired by the faculty in an effort to identify and reject poorly motivated teachers. This is great.
Technical and practical education will always have its rightful place ― and in a terrible economy will seem more urgent than ever. But the smart cultures and decision-makers will always understand, even in the worst of times, the value of expanding minds and horizons.
Authorities in Singapore, a place sometimes viewed by outsiders as one big cheerless science and math lab, have been talking to Pomona College, the superb, lively liberal arts college east of Los Angeles, about helping them set up a Pomona analogue in their own Asian country. How very smart.
In comments to the news media upon his appointment, Dr. Kim spoke of the huge opportunity at Dartmouth to ``train an army of leaders to engage with the problems of the world, who will believe the possibilities are limitless, that there's nothing they can't do.''
There's something about his dramatic decision to leave Harvard ― and about Dartmouth's decision to grab him ― that's absolutely inspiring. Folks of the world: Think long-term about America ― not just about today's Dow Jones Average ― and you come away with a much sunnier, much more hopeful feeling.
Tom Plate, a UCLA professor for 14 years, is a syndicated columnist and veteran American journalist now working on a book on Asia. He can be reached at platecolumn@gmail.com.