[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 38 (Wednesday, April 6, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3273-S3274]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                RETIREMENT OF PROFESSOR ALAN WERTHEIMER

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Vermont is a State filled with 
extraordinary people who lead extraordinary lives. We take great pride 
that despite our modest geographical size, Vermont produces people 
whose voices, commitment and accomplishments transcend our borders and 
leave a lasting impact on the world in which we live.
  Later this spring, one such Vermonter will be moving on to a new 
chapter in his life. Professor Alan Wertheimer, the John G. McCullough 
Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, will be 
retiring after over 35 years of teaching.
  Professor Wertheimer is a distinguished scholar, having authored a 
number of highly acclaimed books. He has taught thousands of students 
over the years, including many members of my staff. He has been active 
in the affairs of the university and the community. His wife Susan and 
their children have been by his side every step of the way.
  The role of scholars in shaping our society has been debated for 
thousands of years. Professor Wertheimer leaves in his wake a whole 
generation of students who he helped grapple with some of the most 
difficult and complex political and philosophical questions of our 
time, in a relevant, provocative and memorable style.
  We in Vermont owe an enormous debt to Professor Wertheimer. He chose 
to grace our State university with his presence for his entire academic 
career. Thousands of Vermonters and students from all over the country 
and the world have had their lives enhanced by his dedication and 
scholarship.
  I ask unanimous consent that a recent article in the Vermont 
Quarterly about Professor Wertheimer be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 What Does Professor Wertheimer Think?

                            (By Kevin Foley)

       Bright as they are, try as they will UVM's first class of 
     Honors College students can't always figure that one out, but 
     they just might learn to define and defend their own thoughts 
     in the process. Inside the Honors Ethics Seminar, where a 
     college's debut is sparked by a venerable professor's swan 
     song.
       Alan Wertheimer's method is the question, and right now, as 
     a high-wattage October sun pours in and illuminates the 
     buttery walls of his Allen House honors college seminar room, 
     the question is this: ``Is Alan Wertheimer tall?''
       Well, no, not in modern-day America. But in the 18th 
     century? Among the diminutive Bayaka, a Central African pygmy 
     tribe? Among political theorists, where Wertheimer cuts a 
     large figure because of decades of work illuminating crucial 
     concepts in ethics and law like coercion? Who is to say? 
     Perhaps Wertheimer, who goes about five-seven in his teaching 
     clogs, really is tall.
       But there's no time for that now. The professor has moved 
     on to another proposition, another question.
       Wertheimer, who is the John G. McCullough Professor of 
     Political Science to his colleagues and ``Big Al'' to his 
     honors students (offering another data point on the 
     contingency of height), is ending his 37-year career at the 
     University with a beginning: Along with philosopher Don Loeb, 
     Wertheimer, who is retiring at the end of this academic year, 
     developed a two-semester course in ethics that all 90 
     students enrolled in the new Honors College are taking. (See 
     ``Your Honor,'' below.) The idea is to provide these talented 
     first-year students, a diverse group of future environmental 
     engineers, doctors, English teachers, and software 
     developers, a shared intellectual experience that cuts across 
     every academic discipline and profession.
       But the universal applicability of ethics--we all, after 
     all, have strong notions of right and wrong, fair and unfair, 
     whether to hand back the overpriced grocery store's 
     miscounted change or keep it--is also a potential trap, at 
     least if you've got a group of 15 very young, very bright, 
     and very vocal students. Loeb puts it this way: ``When you 
     teach particle physics, nobody tries to come in with equally 
     valid opinions on whether mesons have mass.'' Ethics is 
     different: whether or not protestors should mass inspires 
     more passionate opinions than the properties of sub-atomic 
     matter.
       But in the Honors College, emoting is not thinking. Opinion 
     is not analysis. Instructors need to spark a lively 
     discussion (generally an easy task with this crowd, even when 
     the subject is Plato's Crito), but also to manage it, keeping 
     the conversation aligned with the readings, and helping 
     members of the class interrogate their classmates' ideas, and 
     their own. Voicing your thoughts is great; defending them 
     well is something else entirely. Something better. And 
     putting logic into opinions is where Wertheimer's teaching 
     excels.
       The professor proffers another statement to the class, ``It 
     is not wrong to download music even if it violates the law.'' 
     The students are supposed to reply true, false, or don't 
     know, but once again, a statement quickly morphs into an 
     interrogatory and the discussion surges. Passions rise--was 
     that a telltale flash of porcelain iPod earbuds in the 
     messenger bag across the table?--as the first-years come to a 
     somewhat sheepish consensus: when it comes to illegally 
     downloading music, fine, true, cool. Wertheimer winces. It is 
     early in the semester, after all. (Or was that a smile?) The 
     seminar soon rumbles on to categorizing a statement about the 
     existence of God. The group opinion here, just barely, is 
     ``don't know.''
       Questions, questions, questions. But few answers from 
     Wertheimer: none today, in fact. At a different time, in the 
     more relaxed confines of his corner office on the top floor 
     of Old Mill, the professor sits under a Chicago Art Institute 
     poster depicting a bright horseracing scene, and explains 
     why.
       ``The job is not to answer the question,'' he says. ``It's 
     to get them to think about it more rigorously.''


                            AN ORDERLY MIND

       The method is the question: Reading Consent to Sexual 
     Intercourse, Wertheimer's most recent book and a tome far 
     less racy than its title might imply, illustrates the power 
     of carefully chosen, interlocking queries. With a 
     characteristic intellectual flip, Wertheimer's discussion is 
     not so much about the obvious ``when does no mean no?''--
     that's morally clear, he thinks, or should be--but when does 
     yes really mean yes.
       Think about that: when does yes really mean yes? It can 
     make your skull vibrate, even before the professor launches 
     into nearly 300 pages of tricky cases and complicated 
     theories. Can a retarded person truly consent to sex? A 
     coerced one? Someone deceived, egregiously or subtly? Someone 
     drunk? And those scenarios are only the beginning.
       Wertheimer doesn't present a grand theory, an overarching 
     vision, a huge program for social change. That's not his 
     style. Instead, he offers a lot of thorough discussion of 
     complicated cases, and some focused theories for hashing 
     through them. This is not to say that the book lacks moral 
     vision, however. Wertheimer's philosophical peregrinations 
     leave him convinced that sexual deception, a matter largely 
     ignored by the law, needs to be taken more seriously. Why 
     should the law say so much about commercial deceits, when 
     dollars are at stake, and so little about sexual lies, which 
     cost so much emotionally?
       Lawyers like to say that ``hard cases make bad law,'' and 
     they well may, but Wertheimer's gifts for sustained, precise 
     and dispassionate analysis at least makes them into 
     compelling theories. The books that Wertheimer built his 
     intellectual reputation with, Coercion and Exploitation, take 
     similarly knotty philosophical areas and methodically think 
     through them in ways that are useful to political theorists, 
     philosophers, and lawyers. More than useful: One reviewer 
     said of Exploitation that ``no one interested in the topic 
     will be able to ignore this classic work.'' Wertheimer's 
     scholarly appeal, says his colleague Robert Pepperman Taylor, 
     a fellow political science professor and dean of the Honors 
     College, comes down to the clarity and rigor of his approach.
       ``These are issues which people tend to wax rhetorical 
     about, but Al brings his extremely clear analytical mind to 
     bear on problems that can raise a lot of heat, a lot of 
     passion, a lot of rhetoric,'' Taylor says. ``He insists that 
     we speak clearly about these things and understand them 
     clearly.''
       Wertheimer's career, unlike his writing and thinking, 
     hasn't always taken the clearest and most logical path from 
     point A to B. The professor, in fact, attributes many of his 
     professional breakthroughs to good fortune; a fellowship at 
     Princeton led to his first book, a semester spent teaching 
     law at the University of San Diego contributed to his latest 
     book. Now, after stepping down from his full-time duties at 
     UVM, Wertheimer will spend a year at the National Institutes 
     of Health, working on issues of coercion and consent in 
     medical research.
       ``Things happen,'' he says. ``Truth be told, that's the 
     story of a lot of my career--anybody's career--things happen. 
     Each opportunity led to new opportunities. I suppose it's 
     true that the rich get richer; and, while I'm not exactly 
     rich, I have gotten intellectually richer.''


                           SHARING THE WEALTH

       In casual conversation, Wertheimer is genial and amusing, 
     fairly soft-spoken, prone to answer questions after one of 
     the stretches of contemplation that make him a formidable 
     bridge player. In the classroom, he's loud and kinetic (``I 
     think he shocks the kids a little,'' a colleague says, 
     ``because he is passionate--very passionate--about things 
     that maybe they never know anyone cared about'') as he 
     explores and tests his students' logic.
       ``To make a class of the kind I teach go well, you need at 
     least four or five articulate, bright students,'' Wertheimer 
     explains. ``One or two isn't enough: You need a critical 
     mass. If you have that, you get the others going.''
       In the honors seminar, Wertheimer has his requisite fluent 
     five and then some, and while the discussions are lively, the 
     conversation isn't always totally satisfying for

[[Page S3274]]

     the students. As the class spent a fall semester wrestling 
     with abortion, inheritance, Plato, and the war in Iraq, their 
     frequent tendency was to try to gauge what Big Al, the 
     compact seer in the front of the room, thought. But after 
     nearly 40 years of undergraduate teaching, Wertheimer is wily 
     about concealing his personal views behind a Socratic screen 
     when it suits his pedagogical purposes.
       First-year honors student Kevin Ohashi, an electric-haired 
     computer jock who spent his last two years of high school in 
     Kathmandu, says that sphinx-like quality drove some of his 
     classmates nuts. ``Professor Wertheimer loves to play the 
     devil's advocate,'' Ohashi says. ``In class he would take the 
     side that most people weren't on and propose a hypothetical 
     situation that started tilting things his way, and then he 
     might switch again. I thought it was great.''
       Ohashi says that the result of all those hours of 
     discussion, at least for him, wasn't a messenger bag full of 
     new ideas or a changed sense of moral purpose. Instead, in 
     conversations with friends from the honors floor and 
     elsewhere, he has over time found himself defending his old 
     ideas with more confidence and care. Ohashi's experience 
     echoes a theme common in letters from Wertheimer's former 
     students: They often say things like ``I never knew what 
     it meant to think through a problem before.''


                        INTELLECTUAL ATMOSPHERE

       The professor got involved with creating the inaugural 
     honors seminar (hardly a relaxed way to spend one's last year 
     before retirement) because his experiences on the UVM faculty 
     and as a UVM parent left him convinced that the campus needed 
     a more intellectual culture.
       If we're successful, we'll have created an intellectual 
     environment,'' he says. ``We toyed with the idea of having 
     some variation in content between sections of the first-year 
     seminars, but we dropped that, precisely so that people can 
     engage in a common experience.''
       Honors students live together, study together, and play 
     together. But the honors experience operates in quieter, more 
     personal ways as well. Rahul Mudannayake, a first-year pre-
     med honors student from Sri Lanka, says that some of the 
     class readings and discussions have haunted him, especially a 
     particular essay by the famous Princeton philosopher Peter 
     Singer. In the essay, ``Rich and Poor,'' Singer outlines the 
     vast discrepancies between wealth and poverty in the world, 
     and insists that the wealthy have an obligation to assist. 
     (Singer also visited campus to speak and meet with students 
     in the class.) After the end of the fall semester, 
     Mudannayake went home to Sri Lanka, just before the tsunami 
     struck and devastated the country's coastal areas. The 
     student did what he could, helping to ferry food and medicine 
     to affected regions in the days after the tragedy, but the 
     calamity made the ethical arguments he heard in the seminar, 
     especially Singer's, immediate.
       ``The class has stayed with me in my life,'' Mudannayake 
     says. ``Spending a $1.50 here on a bottle of soda is 
     difficult, considering what I read, what I saw in Sri Lanka. 
     The way I spend my money now is totally different, and 
     Wertheimer and Singer are part of that.''
       And here is where Al Wertheimer's questions finally end 
     with an answer: A student thinking through the issues and 
     making a personal choice, arrived at with rigor.


                               SIDEBAR 1

     Your Honor
       Students at the University's newest college live and learn 
     together and, proponents of the program say, their debates, 
     excitement and activities will enrich the entire academic 
     atmosphere of campus.
       It works like this: The campus-wide Honors College accepts 
     about 100 of the most gifted first-year students enrolling at 
     the University, regardless of major, and throws them together 
     for a intense program of social events, a two-semester in-
     depth seminar class (for now, the ethics course developed by 
     Wertheimer and Loeb), special lectures from big-name 
     intellectuals and, in most cases, living on an all-honors 
     floor at Harris/Millis.
       By 2007, as successive classes enroll, the program will 
     grow to encompass about 700 students (sophomores can apply 
     for admission; college organizers wanted to give students who 
     don't catch fire academically until they reach UVM a chance 
     to participate in the program, which includes perks like 
     priority class scheduling), supporting and extending existing 
     college-level honors programs. Down the line, honors students 
     will live in the new $60 million University Heights Student 
     Residential Learning Complex, creating a Harvard or Oxford-
     style ``residential college.''


                               SIDEBAR 2

     A Teacher's Tribute
       On April 15, a daylong symposium in Old Mill will celebrate 
     Alan Wertheimer's intellectual life in a manner befitting the 
     man. Instead of gold watches and encomiums, judges, 
     politicians and scholars will gather for a program on ethics 
     in public life. The event will feature former Vermont Gov. 
     Madeleine Kunin; Vermont Supreme Court Associate Justice John 
     Dooley; and Harvard University's Arthur Applebaum, Dennis 
     Thompson, and Nancy Rosenbaum. The discussion will range from 
     Iraq to judicial activism and gay relationships to 
     presidential campaign ethics. All events are free and open to 
     the public; and, of course, Professor Wertheimer will be 
     there doing what he does, asking questions, listening 
     closely, weighing arguments, thoughtfully negotiating the 
     tricky philosophical waters of politics and life.

                          ____________________