By Menachem Wecker
Kristen Van Nest, a senior at the Elliott School of International Affairs, first saw the listing for IAFF (international affairs) 190 while trolling through GW’s course catalog. When she saw the course synopsis -- “The course has no description and it never will” -- she was intrigued.
Ms. Van Nest took both semesters of Obscure and Difficult Readings in International Affairs last year, and after taking a break in the fall 2009 semester, when she studied in Paris, she plans to take it again in the spring.
One of the major draws of the course, students say, is the professor, David Alan Grier, associate professor of international science and technology policy and international affairs and associate dean of academic programs at the Elliott School.
“Grier is one of GW’s hidden treasures,” says Keri Kae Almstead, B.A. ’08, who took the course. “I am sure that many professors get to know their students, yet it has been my experience that Dean Grier is interested in fostering his students to live up to their potential -- often unseen even to themselves.”
“The class is like no other I have ever taken,” says Dana Wright, who just finished his third semester of the course. “It is an informal setting with a dean in the Elliott School where students have ample opportunity to take the conversation in the direction of their choosing. We often tap Dean Grier’s vast knowledge of the history and inner-workings of the University. His insights have really helped me appreciate the uniqueness of GW as an institution.”
Each week Dr. Grier assigns a reading -- anyone from John F. Kennedy to William Shakespeare and Winston Churchill -- and when the class of about 10 convenes, Dr. Grier encourages discussions that center on close readings of the texts.
When students say the setting of the course, which they often compare to the 1989 Robin Williams film Dead Poets Society, is relaxed, they are not kidding. There is a pile of candy on the table, and some of the students lean back and put their feet up. “One of the requirements of the course is fat and sugar,” Dr. Grier told GW Today staff at a recent class.
The course also conforms to GW’s editorial style and uses courtesy titles. Hearing rumors that Dr. Grier only addressed undergraduate students by their given names if they earned it, GW Today asked Dr. Grier for confirmation. “Misinformed,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I don’t call undergrads by first names ever. It changes only when they graduate. And then they don’t know what to do.”
This naming policy developed over two decades of teaching. “I found that as teacher, I had the power to assign identities, and I found that some students reacted better when you treated them more formally,” Dr. Grier says. “I once taught a class in discrete math in which every student got a different title that represented the different elements of knowledge that we were learning. ‘Mr. Chu, keeper of the algebraic properties.’ ‘Ms. Greenberg, assessor of proofs.’ In that case, it was an effort to make everyone feel connected to a difficult and abstract topic that they believed to have little to do with their career.”
Students are also actively involved in determining the class agenda. Several weeks ago, when the class met, Dr. Grier asked the students if they would rather discuss John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address as planned, or instead examine President Barack Obama’s speech responding to the shooting at Fort Hood. “What is your preference?” a student asked Dr. Grier. “I’m here to serve,” he responded. But the student knew better than to settle. “You do have a preference,” he insisted. Sure enough, Dr. Grier recommended the JFK address. Before the discussion began, students alternated reading parts of the address.
Dead Poets Society, candy and soda aside, the conversation was substantive. Dr. Grier and the students addressed the larger history surrounding the presidential address: the arms race, the Cold War, the space gap, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam. President Kennedy’s Catholic faith and Charles de Gaulle also surfaced in the conversation.
Asked what his favorite lessons have been, Mr. Wright mentioned a class in which students received a set of letters written back and forth between a prominent figure in American history and his wife. Dr. Grier had crossed out the names and tasked the students with identifying the authors. (Dr. Grier asked that GW Today not reveal the man’s name, since he still uses the lesson in his teaching.)
“We read carefully for historical context, paying special attention to references as they contained clues about the identity of the authors,” says Mr. Wright. “Through the exercise, I not only learned the importance of this man’s role in the run-up to World War II but also the intimate details of his personal life, which he did not manage so well.”
Another session Mr. Wright particularly enjoyed was reading Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address side-by-side with a version of the same speech Dr. Grier had re-written. Dr. Grier’s letter did not alter the content of the speech, but he changed the tone to make it much less effective. “Through a comparison of the two, we deciphered exactly what it was that made Lincoln’s rhetoric soar,” Mr. Wright says.
But true to the Dead Poets Society, the best lessons are sometimes unplanned.
“Beyond our examination of texts, some of the most memorable things come when we get sidetracked,” Mr. Wright says. Those memorable things include: the commercialization of Christmas, that L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, studied at GW for two years and that there is a secret duplicate White House located in West Virginia (the Cold War Congressional bunker at Greenbriar, Dr. Grier explained).
The most memorable thing Ms. Van Nest learned was to “read between the lines.”
“There is so much more being said than what you get on the first read through,” she says. “Everyone is opinionated. Furthermore, the course has helped my personal writing ability. Dean Grier has helped me to better frame my ideas and focus on the key point I want to make.”
“The weekly candy is also a plus,” she says.
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