How to Cite These Archived Letters
Dear Colleague Archive 1992
| Date of Letter | Topic Summary | ID |
|---|---|---|
| 1992-January-01 | "Social science depends on people always saying yes; morality, by contrast, depends on people being able to say, occasionally, no." | 116 |
| 1992-January-15 | On Islamic fundamentalism: "The predominant feeling of the fundamentalists and chauvinists is one of injured pride and resentment, all the greater if they s ee glory in their past. This "glorious past" is often exaggerated or can even be fictitious." | 117 |
| 1992-February-01 | What a UW campus with all women adminstrators might be like. | 118 |
| 1992-February-15 | "Disgusted with living in recession-ridden 1992? Care to be an aristocrat in 1518?" | 119 |
| 1992-March-01 | "How can a people believe that pride resides in possessing cultural products and values that no one else will wish to have or imitate? And why should imitation...be considered an insult rather than a compliment?" | 120 |
| 1992-March-15 | On anti-intellectualism: "A world champion in boxing can say, 'I am the greatest,' and no one takes offense. A Nobel laureate in physics cannot say, 'I am the greatest,' without arousing intense unease." | 121 |
| 1992-April-01 | "Diversity, like cosmopolitanism, has two meanings, one geographical, the other personal." | 122 |
| 1992-April-15 | Regarding culture shock, after reading a story by Haruki Murakami, "Sleep" | 123 |
| 1992-May-01 | "The University is a community. But it would lose its purpose--its reason for being--if it forgets that it is, first of all, an intellectual community. It is not a social utopia." | 124 |
| 1992-May-15 | On honor and unselfishness. | 125 |
| 1992-September-01 | Why being out-of-date is valuable: "Ever since I turned sixty, I've been getting requests to write forewords and afterwords, dust-jacket endorsements, make opening or closing remarks at conferences..." | 126 |
| 1992-September-15 | Shakespeare: "There are times when we feel we are a divided society, nation-scale and at the scale of the university, and long for a common language that can, at least occasionally, unite us. It's comforting to know that the problem, however exacerbated now, is not exactly new for it had confronted other peoples, other times." | 127 |
| 1992-October-01 | On power in naming and the joint Antarctic mapping expedition of the US 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone on a British research vessel Farnella | 128 |
| 1992-October-15 | "Is it important for a historical novel to be accurate--truthful--in its background information?" | 129 |
| 1992-November-01 | "The British have done some awful things to their colonies, including the West Indies under their control. They did, however, introduce a rigorous system of education on some of the islands..." | 130 |
| 1992-November-15 | The Austro-Hungarians in the 19th century: "Liberalism, which attacked the army and the old aristocracy as corrupt and feudal, succeeded only in unleashing the passions of ethnicity, anti-Semitism, and the fanatical claims of socialism." | 131 |
| 1992-December-01 | "Hubris is an ever-present temptation in the public sphere; its transcendental thrust always seems to lead to excess. Fortunately, the public sphere is about to be swallowed up by the domestic one." | 132 |
| 1992-December-15 | Regarding William James, Charles Darwin, and Homer: oppotunities for learning by not being critical. | 133 |
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