Professor life is really not that bad after all

If reaction by various "bloggers" is any indication, David Brooks' recent New York Times column on the "lonely campus voices" of campus conservatives has caused quite a stir. Varying amounts of introspection, denunciation, gloating and refutation have been among the many responses to Brooks' claim that conservatives form a discrete, insular and persecuted minority on college campuses. Princeton's own Professor Robert George lamented in the column that he was disposed to discourage conservative undergraduates from pursuing advanced graduate degrees since they could expect opposition at all stages in their academic careers.

My own reaction to the column was somewhat atypical: I was more taken by the fact that Professor George apparently has numerous students making inquiries about graduate school than I was intrigued by the claims of a liberal hegemony on campus.

When I first arrived at Princeton seven years ago, I developed an imaginary speech that I planned to give to the numerous students whom I thought might flood my office at about this time of year, asking me for advice on which graduate programs to which to apply, which professors with whom they should study, what subjects they might consider for an eventual dissertation, and the inevitable request for a letter of recommendation. In my imaginary speech, I would discourage them — not on ideological grounds — but because life as a graduate student is almost exactly like Hobbes' state of nature: nasty, poor, brutish, but long. Life gets only slightly better as an assistant professor, but that's only if you can actually get a job, a blessing that occurs with staggering infrequency in academia. At the conclusion of my imaginary speech, I would tell the student, "If you still think you can't do anything else but study for a Ph.D., then you should do it. Just go in with your eyes wide open."

I have had to deliver a version of this talk exactly once in seven years (by the way, she did go on to graduate school and I'm assured is doing very well). I was reminded of this fact recently during a lecture tour I made to several small liberal arts colleges in Georgia. These colleges don't appear near the top of U.S. News' national rankings, although they rank well according to the more limited criteria of regional liberal arts colleges. At the lectures I gave, the auditoriums were mostly filled with undergraduates – a rather striking contrast to most public lectures at Princeton in which undergraduates are often in sparse attendance.

Afterward I was invited to spend some time informally with the students, and at each of these occasions quite a few expressed their keen interest in pursuing a doctorate (if possible, they intimated, at Princeton). It had been so long since I'd even had to think of my little speech that I was altogether blindsided and began to answer their questions as if I thought pursuing a Ph.D. were a good idea.

Flying back from Atlanta, I had the opportunity to reflect on this anomalous experience — roughly a dozen students who expressed eagerness to become college professors within a 48-hour period. Students at these colleges spend a great deal more time with their professors than I suspect is the case at Princeton. Apparently, familiarity does not breed contempt in this case, but rather admiration and emulation. Students see first hand that the life of a professor is pretty darn nice: one is paid to read, to think, to write, to talk about ideas. There are summers off, the spring (and sometimes fall) breaks, the winter recesses.

Some professors become stars both on and off their own campuses, sometimes even meriting a school of thought in their name (Foucauldians, Straussians, Rawlsians, etc.). And then there are the ideas, the inexorable and magnetic attraction toward the big questions, the short hours spent in conversation, debate, colloquy. What's not to like? I began to think that the existence of a healthy number of students desiring to enter the professoriate might be something of a barometer for the vibrancy of faculty-student interaction.

It was for these kinds of students that I'd developed my imaginary speech, ones likely to be blinded by all the apparent charms of the professoriate. Perhaps at Princeton we need to make those charms a little more evident, and I'm delighted at the recent efforts by students and the administration to promote such activities as "take your professor to lunch." I want to encourage students to invite your professors to lunch, dinner, coffee, drinks at the Annex, this and any week.

Don't be intimidated: Remember, many of us were awkward studious types in school (i.e., nerds) who would be deeply flattered at the idea anyone would ask us out anywhere. I look forward to a day when I'll have to use my imaginary speech as often as I should have last week, but in the meantime, I intend to accept all these lunch invitations and encourage the belief — one not too distant from reality — that a professor's life is really one of magic, mystery and majesty.

Patrick Deneen is a professor of politics.