How to Cite These Archived Letters
Dear Colleague Archive 1988
| Date of Letter | Topic Summary | ID |
|---|---|---|
| 1988-January-01 | "Like the West Indian writer V.S. Naipaul I am haunted by the world's instability." |
44 |
| 1988-January-15 | Santayana's regalia, "Has ritual declined in our modern age?" | 45 |
| 1988-February-01 | "If one is deeply serious about an idea, one hesitates to expose it to uncomprehending and cynical eyes. That idea is almost a part of one's innermost being." | 46 |
| 1988-February-15 | "[Giovanni Batista] Vico leads me to think of our own university. It is magnificent, but doesn't it suffer from "barbarism of reflection"? Are we not locked in our own disciplinary worlds, unable to speak to each other?" | 47 |
| 1988-March-01 | On experiences at a a conference on "The Construction of Time" at Stanford University. | 48 |
| 1988-March-15 | "I saw 'The Last Emperor' last week, with ambivalent feelings...it overlapped with my own life." | 49 |
| 1988-April-01 | Thoughts after Don Meinig's lecture on "Counterfactual American Historical Geography." | 50 |
| 1988-April-15 | At the univeristy of today, "The capacity to wonder and to admire is eroded, except perhaps in the field of pure mathematics." | 51 |
| 1988-May-01 | "I am inspired here by an old-fashioned transcendental notion of truth, the search for which commands one's allegiance even at the risk of one's own life. Nowadays, truth is widely viewed as an invention--a nice story." | 52 |
| 1988-May-15 | "Focus and diversity are both intellectual virtues. Nevertheless, a subtle difference exists..." | 53 |
| 1988-September-01 | "Patriotism, traditionally, is tribalism writ large...American patriotism in its most original guise is really a sort of a cosmopolitanism writ small..." | 54 |
| 1988-September-15 | "What is the "scholar absolute" like as a colleague, husband, wife? What is a great university like with many such scholars?" | 55 |
| 1988-October-01 | "Disrespect has an important role to play in our moral-intellectual well-being. But so does respect." | 56 |
| 1988-October-15 | "I have often found aesthetic pleasure in the quite ordinary, unselfconscious movements of street life. Street is theater." | 57 |
| 1988-November-01 | On criticism received of the October 15 letter: "If sweat is more real than grace, then we can never enjoy the ballet, since it is built on sweat and aching muscles..." | 58 |
| 1988-November-15 | About immigration: "[C]an heterogeneity and a truly democratic liberal system coexist and even flourish?" | 59 |
| 1988-December-01 | After a flight from Taipei: "...it is only when we travel that we realize greed's virulent power..." | 60 |
| 1988-December-15 | Explanation of a letter regarding of the establishment of an Asian American Studies Program on campus. | 61 |
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