THEQuad
rOOMMATES
e realities of the modern election cycle are that we spend almost two years selecting a president with a well-developed agenda, but then, less than two years after the inauguration, the midterm election cripples that same president’s ability to advance that agenda.”
Drawing that Cole has always had hanging over his bed. Figured he’d continue the tradition at Duke.
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“Mellow.”
IN THE NEWS
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“Intense.”
Through jam sessions with Cole and some Bell Tower hallmates, Austin has added improvisation to go with his classsical violn training. “To have a violin that’s harmonizing and more in the background is something I’ve never been taught how to do.” —Austin
— from an op-ed written by Jay Sullivan, a Sanford junior, and David Schanzer, associate professor of public policy at Sanford and director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, published in The New York Times. The piece, calling for the eradication of midterm elections, drew 865 comments before the commenting was closed.
BOOkBAG
A map hangs over Austin’s bunk. He has close friends sign by their hometown or country. “I think over time it will really grow in its importance and what it represents.”
ENG 190: The University, and Why It Matters
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THE GIST: Among the syllabus topics: “University Charters and Strategic Plans,” “Post-Enlightenment Models of Higher Learning,” “The Debate Over the ‘Elective System,’ ” “Higher Education and Forming a Democratic Citizenry After World War i.” Other sections travel a philosophical avenue, as with “Learning as a Journey Toward the good: Plato,” “The Liberal Arts and the Ultimate End of Learning,” and “The Emergence of a Scientific Culture.” The course ends with an assessment of higher education today—for example, “PreProfessionalism and the Shrinking Scope of Higher Learning” and “After Virtue: Secularism and Hyper-Pluralism in Higher Education.”
www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
ASSIGNMENT lIST: Students will start the course reading some of the earliest charters of American universities, the very earliest being Harvard’s charter (1646). They’ll engage with the work of a wide range of thinkers, including Plato, Erasmus, Cardinal Newman, John Locke, Max Weber, ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Dewey. They’ll also read from more recent observers of academe, such as Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind), Derek Bok (Our Underachieving Colleges), and William Deresiewicz (Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite.)
THE TWIST: Both members of the teaching team have an affiliation with Duke’s divinity school—perhaps appropriate, given the fact that historically, universities were closely tied to religious systems. in his recent work, reinhard Hütter has turned to theological anthropology—the human being created in the image of god—and to the closely related topics of nature and grace, divine and human freedom, faith and reason, theology and metaphysics. He has a special interest in the theology and philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Pfau’s interests include topics in eighteenthand nineteenth-century literature, philosophy, and intellectual history. He has published on such creative personalities as rousseau, kant, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, goethe, Beethoven, Thomas Mann, and Walter Benjamin.
Cole plays the same acoustic guitar his father used in college. He’s been singing in organized groups since he was eight and currently splits his time between The Pitchforks, Duke Chorale, and Hoof ‘n’ Horn. In the case he keeps handwritten lyrics to his father’s original songs.
123 “A quirk that I really appreciate is whenever he’s stressed, he cleans. And not just his side, the entire room.” —Cole
Austin “I dress like this every day.”
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THE CATAlyST: Thomas Pfau, a professor of English and german, and reinhard Hütter, a professor in the divinity school, proposed this new course “to enable our Duke undergraduates to develop an understanding of the university and how, at various points in time, its purposes and ends have been diversely articulated.” They hope to have students “confront the question, not answered in the negative until a few decades ago, as to whether university education should also include the formation of students’ moral and spiritual persona.” Students will consider, then, what it means to have the modern university treat knowledge as “a marketable commodity”; they’ll also chart the genesis of “the peculiar disciplinary landscape as it characterizes most universities today.”
“It’s a good distraction.” —Austin
Austin first met Cole at Blue Devil Days, but not before encountering Cole’s twin brother, Emery. Cole, on why he didn’t room with his twin: “eighteen years is plenty.”
Meet Cole Jenson and Austin Wu, a reserved sci-fi fan and a gregarious socializer, a chowhound and a neat freak, two freshmen with a shared love of music. To listen to Cole and Austin’s jam session, visit dukemagazine.duke.edu. Interview by Tim Lerow | Photography by Les Todd