| Jackson focuses on getting students to think critically BY MIKE UNGER
Photo by Jeff Watts |
If Patrick Thaddeus Jackson could have four words engraved above the doorway of his new office in Leonard Hall, the phrase “teaching is letting learn” would greet all visitors. Originally written by German philosopher Martin Heidegger, Jackson keeps the mantra in the back of his mind every time he enters a classroom filled with wide-eyed School of International Service undergraduates. To Jackson, teaching—not research—is his ultimate mission. “One of the things about the academic life is that you have to be both a teacher and a scholar,” he says. “I like my research; I think it’s interesting, but if research were my primary focus then I would want to be in some kind of consultant think tanky kind of place where you didn’t have to deal with students. I’m certainly a scholar, but it’s not the central thing. I think it’s decidedly secondary. The important thing is to teach, and the research is part of that. Writing things that provoke discussions, pushing particular ideas so people have things to bounce off of.” It was Jackson’s dedication toward students that brought him to AU. Attracted by the school’s emphasis on instruction and the opportunity to teach a course on his beloved science fiction (as it relates to world politics), Jackson moved to Washington in 2000 from his adopted hometown of New York, where he earned a PhD from Columbia University and developed an intense passion for the Yankees. Since arriving on campus, he has earned a reputation as one of SIS’s most passionate, unique, and tech-savvy professors. “The idea of teaching, as I understand it, is to produce a space where learning can happen,” he says. “It’s not about me sharing the ‘benefits of my great wisdom’ with a group of students who then copy down slavishly everything that I say and then regurgitate back to me on the final exam. I’m much more interested in giving them the opportunity to stretch out and explore things. “A typical class from me is, reading has been assigned, I walk into the room, I kind of shrug and I say ‘so?’ When I go into a discussion I have absolutely no idea where it’s going to go. I have no concern for covering the material, whatever that means. I don’t have anything in mind that I want students to get out of it. [But] something always does. We’re dealing with questions like what causes war. You know what, if I knew that I would be collecting my Nobel Peace Prize right about now. Humans have been wrestling with this for millennia, and we still don’t know. I think it’s much more interesting to say, ‘You know, there are people who have been thinking about these questions for a long time. Here’s one of them, Machiavelli, and we’re going to read The Prince, and we’re going to talk about it, and by engaging in a dialogue with each other and with Machiavelli, maybe we can deepen our understanding or broaden our horizons.’ It’s not about me telling you what I know.” A keen interest in international relations, particularly as related to issues of identity, always has been present in Jackson. When he went off to college at Michigan State University to major in the subject as an undergraduate, his family began to dramatically expand. Jackson now is the oldest of 25, or maybe 27, children. At this point, his parents have adopted so many kids from Russia, Romania, Korea, Texas, and other places that he’s lost count. Jackson and his wife, Holly, have two children of their own, five-year-old Quinn and two-year-old Chloe. If it wasn’t for the size of the family, which includes two cats and a dog, Jackson might have followed in the footsteps of his SIS colleague John Richardson and moved into a residence hall. Instead, as a new member of the Resident Faculty Program, he relocated his office to one. “When people are in class they’re sort of institutionally programmed to be looking for the expectation of the instructor so they can figure out how to get a good grade,” he says. “You drop into my office, and you’re just here for a chat, there’s not that same kind of pressure. “One of the things I’m going to start doing is having lunches in TDR. Crossing the forbidden boundary. You want to have informal discussions with people, you get them in the off hours, you get them where they eat. My capacity to be the shaper of that kind of environment, to be that kind of resource to bounce things off of depends on me being available. Having an office in the dorm makes me more approachable.” Despite his focused commitment to teaching, Jackson’s scholarship continues to thrive. In June he will publish Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West, an examination of post–World War II Germany and concepts of Western civilization. Next on his plate is another book, one on superhighways. “We wouldn’t have a car culture if it weren’t for superhighways,” he says. “The whole idea of being able to drive a car depends on the existence of a certain set of infrastructures. Material infrastructures, certainly, but also conceptual. Think about the metaphors we use. Someone who’s in control is in the driver’s seat. There’s something significant about that. What I want to try to do is pull it together and look at the way the construction of superhighways has this effect of producing us as the kinds of modern subjects that we are.” |
