M: How do you think
new technology has affected learning?
O’Brien: I think it has affected it a lot. Students now get a lot of
their information from the Internet. Unfortunately,
a lot of them try to get their papers from the Internet and we have to bag
them
on that.
M: You mean cheating?
O’Brien: Yes, there’s been a lot of plagiarism. For example, in
MMW and even now in Revelle, we have to run all the papers through a program
that checks for plagiarism.
M: What happens to anyone who’s caught?
O’Brien: They get an “F” for the course and it goes on their
record permanently. It’s a hard slam.
M: You wrote in a Revelle commencement address that one of the
risks of the decline of the humanities, arts and social sciences
is a less educated public.
But isn’t it just a differently educated public?
O’Brien: A public that is not educated in
the humanities, arts and social sciences is a narrowly educated
public and a less humanely educated public.
You cannot govern a society with knowledge only of technology. How can one
govern without an idea or sense of justice, without a sense of what society
is? Without thinking of what the ends of politics are?
Science is rarely an end in itself. It
is more often a means. The question is how are you going to apply science?
Science can give us medicine or
it can give us poison gas. It can improve our lives or bring us to the brink
of nuclear annihilation. A public educated only in science is not only less
educated, but dangerously less educated.
M: Do you think the teaching of the humanities is in decline?
 O’Brien: I don’t think the role of the humanities is very clear
in the contemporary university. The humanities have been at a loss to justify
their presence and utility within public institutions, and this is a shame.
But this doesn’t mean they’re worthless. Humanistic study has great
value, especially in a democracy. If you have a populace that’s trained
only to think technologically, you have a populace that’s very easy to
manipulate. And you have a very, very dangerous situation in a democracy.
M: I’ve been told that you like the quote from the 19th century writer
John Ruskin, that we need to train new students “into the perfect exercise
and kingly continence of their bodies and souls.” That sounds very spiritual.
Do you believe there is a spiritual content to your teaching?
O’Brien: There is a spiritual dimension to education. What Ruskin said,
was said in a similar manner by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, when he
said that happiness, what he called “eudaimonia” in Greek, or a
good state of the spirit or “daimon” depended on the exercise of
our intellectual and moral virtues. Education is certainly concerned with this.
We train people to think as well as they can and to make decisions, including
ethical decisions, as best they can. Education has a social end and my justification
of humanities within a democratic society has to do with this. But it also
has a more personal one as well. I want my students to live the most full lives
they can. I want them to think about what they want out of life. I don’t
want them to wake up one morning when they’re 30 or 40 and think, what
the hell have I done? I don’t believe the old Platonic maxim that an
unexamined life is not worth living. In fact, my cats give me a fine example
that that is not true. But I do believe that a thoughtful, compassionate life
is something for which one educates oneself. If I can help young people in
this direction, great. If you want to call this spiritual, OK.
M: Something I’ve heard from students is that you say you are as happy
teaching writers you don’t like as you are with the ones you admire.
Is that true?
 O’Brien: When I first taught Humanities Five, there were a few authors
that I really had to teach. One of these was the poet T.S. Eliot. His writing
is brilliant and extremely experimental, but personally I have always hated
him because he is such a reactionary. So I had to think how I was going to
teach him. Students expect that you are going to do most of your reading in
a great books class on your knees, and they don’t expect that you’re
going to take an author and rip him apart. In the end, I used him to teach
the structure of cultural reaction. And it’s very interesting to see
how a cultural reactionary thinks. Because there’s always plenty of cultural
reactionaries around and you can’t find a better one anywhere than T.S.
Eliot. I really don’t believe in objectivity or neutrality or presenting
all sides of an argument. I present my side of an argument and I present it
strongly. The kids know that and the kids are able to disagree and that’s
the deal.
M: You teach Marx. What is relevant in Marx’s teachings when almost all
communist societies have disappeared?
O’Brien: You must excuse me if I find your question a little bit provincially
American for two reasons. First it’s a Cold War question. It ties Marx’s
fortunes to that of the Soviet Bloc. Second, all of Europe, East and West,
has long recognized the importance of Marx as a thinker, and his works have
always been taught in the universities.
But in America, somehow, to admit the truth of anything Marx wrote means you’re
a raving communist. It’s quite silly really, and with the Cold War over,
I find that at least students are a lot more relaxed about reading his work.
And Marx is still relevant because of his history and criticism of capitalism.
He was fascinated with capitalism—its past, its present and its future.
For us Americans, Marx can remind us that capitalism is not a timeless phenomenon.
It has an origin and it has passed through various stages. He can also remind
us that it is not perfect. It has its downsides. Mind you, I’m not saying
he was always right or that one should read him uncritically. It’s just
that in a world, and especially a country dominated by capitalism, it is a
very good thing to open yourself to thinking about capitalism’s often
troubled history and its very real problems. They are not things that are given
a fair hearing in our media.
M: Where does your middle name, Arctander, come from?
O’Brien: It’s my mother’s maiden name. It comes from the
sixteenth century. Some crazy ancestor from Norway moved to Denmark and named
himself Arctander. It’s related to Arcturos, the North Star, the North
Bear. So it sort of means “the clan of the bear,” “the people
of the bear.” And the name’s made it intact all the way from that
time. We have this whole wacky family coat of arms and stuff with it.
M: Do you enjoy teaching?
O’Brien: I just love to teach. If it’s true that something can
be in the blood, teaching’s in mine. Both of my parents were teachers.
They actually ran a small private high school in the Bronx. And my grandparents
were involved in teaching as well. Two of my three siblings are also teaching.
So I guess it’s a family trait. It’s tremendously exciting to be
teaching a really wonderful idea that has traveled hundreds or even thousands
of years through human minds and see it light up in a student’s eyes.
It’s an incredible privilege and joy, and a rarity in life to be able
to make a difference in anyone else’s life. If I can help these excellent
young people think better, read better, speak better, or write better, I’m
quite satisfied.
The interview was conducted by @UCSD editor Raymond Hardie.
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