I'm Not Even Hungry

...and The Sour

If this is the case, then undergraduates in the 21st century are in a lot of trouble. Because, despite his undeniably massive accomplishments, Sachs does not teach undergraduates in the strictest sense of the word. In fact, he doesn’t teach undergraduates in any sense of the word, unless one takes teach to mean “give occasional lectures open to the Columbia community which undergraduates may attend if they find out about them in time.” Since coming to Columbia, Sachs hasn’t taught one course available to a broad array of undergraduates. The lectures, like most of Sachs’s work, are compelling, informative, and insightful. At one of these speeches last year, the student who introduced him claimed that after listening to Sachs, he had a Road-to-Damascus experience, except about global interconnectivity, not Jesus. But it’s an experience he could have had by picking up Sachs’s latest book, available at major bookstores across the United States.
Many Columbia professors say that one of the great joys of their job comes from knowing that they are shaping the future leaders of the world. Jeffrey Sachs can shape the leaders of today. In light of that, his actions are understandable, maybe even praiseworthy. Every second he spends explaining supply and demand to a blockheaded student in his lecture is a second he could have spent lobbying for aid to help the 1 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day and don’t know where their next meal will come from. If that’s the case, however, then maybe he shouldn’t be “teaching” at Columbia at all.
Sachs certainly isn’t the only mega-star professor to claim residency at Columbia without ever coming into contact with undergraduates – Brain Green and Simon Schama, I’m looking in your directions. But, in a particularly vivid way, his work raises fundamental questions about what Columbia – even, the academy in general – is and should be. Sachs is probably the most famous person associated with Columbia today. He raises awareness of the University through his actions on behalf of one of the most praiseworthy causes in the modern world. Yet for all that, with the money Columbia has lavished on him, several professors could have been hired who could have made a major difference in undergraduates lives. The cost-benefit analysis is far from precise – but it is clearly not wholly on the side of Columbia students.
Jeffrey Sachs really has done many, many good things in his life. It’s too bad that teaching undergraduates at Columbia hasn’t been one of them.

posted by Tim @ 10:04 PM