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October 2011 | Vol. X No. 2 One Civilized Reader Is Worth a Thousand Boneheads Jian Leng, the editor of The Figure in the Carpet, decided to ture not just Jim’s calm and discretion, but also, in his tenure as reprint this piece I wrote for the campaign to raise money for the the director of African and Afro-American Studies, his toughness Table of Contents Jim McLeod Scholarship. I recall that when I ran into Jim shortly and his shrewd ability to assess accurately difficult situations after this was published in 2009 he told me, with a wry grin, I and to evaluate keenly the nature of the resources he had at hand was the best PR agent a person could have. I laughed too, but, as and how to use them. Jim had a bit of the Christian saint in him Page 1-2: What I Learned a writer, my hope was that the sharp honesty of my short mem- but he had also more than a bit of the quickness of Joseph among oir of Jim was the guarantee of its truth about a man I deeply the Egyptians. Jim was a fine balance of the pragmatist and the from Jim McLeod by Gerald admired. My intention was to work against all possibilities of PR moralist. My story about Jim is the tale of how an older, wiser Early puffery. Jim deserved something far more than being merely flat- and more capable man took a young apprentice under his wing tered or praised, which means that to the degree and showed him how to survive and even prosper in the formida- that a person can comprehend his colleague, Jim deserved to be bly competitive professional world of the academy and its uneasy Page 3: First Center for the illuminated as one might wish to shed light on a mystery. So, in intersection with racial politics. It is a story about leadership. Humanities Graduate Stu- my effort to describe my relationship with Jim, I wanted to cap- dent Fellows Annoucement What I Learned from Jim McLeod Page 4-5: The Great New As many of you may know, there real contribution to the world. In other is a campaign afoot to raise money words, the scholarship will germinate Hype by Rosalind Early in support of a scholarship named more Jim McLeods, which, doubt- for Jim McLeod, our dean of the less, is very good for our campus and undergraduate college of Arts and is unquestionably great for the world, Page 6-7: The Discursive Sciences. Provost Ed Macias and which can never suffer from having Self by Linda Nicholson I are serving as Executive Vice too many people who possess integri- Chairs of the Campus Committee, a ty, loyalty, steadfastness, intelligence, Page 7-10: Children, Poetry rather fanciful and bureaucratically and a courtly sense of the proprieties. grand way of saying that we are re- Jim, being a Morehouse College and Slavery by Rosalind sponsible for outreach to the faculty Ealry man and having all the natural in- on the Danforth campus. Students stincts and fine training of the breed, will be selected as McLeod Scholars, is something of an old-fashioned according to John Berg of Admis- Page 11-13: October Events Southern gentleman, which means he sions, on the basis of academic has the good sense and finer feeling Calendar achievement, commitment to serv- not to say anything inappropriate or, ing others, leadership potential, and worse still, useless and time-wasting. publishing scholar, he has more than character. They will “demonstrate the For instance, I have never heard Jim Page 14: Announcements compensated for that fact by enabling qualities that Jim values.” These, of McLeod utter a single self-promoting so many others, both students and course, are the qualities that we value word in my 27 years at Washington in Jim himself, including academic faculty, to produce good, great, and achievement. Although Jim is not a smart scholarship that has made a (Jian Leng’s column will return next month.) 1 editor's notes continued University. Nor have I ever heard him in 27 years doing here, and Jim knew that. He assured me depreciate in any way the worth of anyone. In a that I belonged here. I studied Jim closely dur- place as competitive and ego-driven as a college ing those years, admiring the ease with which he campus, designed so by professional necessity, circulated in the world of Washington University where criticism and carping are forms of energy and wanting very much to learn how he did it so and dubious delight, Jim’s genteel demeanor is a that I could do it too. I wanted his patience, his refreshing vision for all of us about how we might tact, his Hemingway-esque grace under pressure. behave if only we could. A scholarship declar- I did not get these gifts, of course, but Jim gave ing Jim McLeod as a role model for us all! Now, me something to aim for. that’s a slogan we can all get behind, Democrats, Jim helped me tremendously when I became Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives, the left- director of the program, for I had no idea how handed, the right-handed, and the great swath of to lead anything, and I constantly asked him for the ambidextrous. advice. The turbulence that accompanied my It is no secret that Jim is seriously ill. All of our ascendancy—for being insufficiently politically thoughts and prayers are with him and his family. pure—would have been far worse without Jim. We all hope that this scholarship would be an ex- He did everything he could to de-politicize the cellent morale-booster for our dean of the college program, and I marveled at how well he was able and get him back on his feet all the sooner. But, to transcend ethnic and campus politics. He even more selfishly, it is a good morale-booster for all offered to fire all the people who could be fired of us, his friends, his colleagues, his professional who were making the most noise before I as- community. Jim is in the hands of the finest doc- sumed the directorship. (Would that I had taken tors in the world, so there is nothing we can do Jim McLeod, Risa Zwerling, and students in 2008 Dance him up on that offer to the extent that I should on that score. Yet we all feel an urge to do some- Marathon, a charity fundraiser have!) Jim’s gimlet eye was never clouded by sen- thing, restless as we are with excess sympathy, ing at the time either dropping my appointment timent. He did what he did for me because, in his to show Jim we are thinking of him and missing in the program or leaving Washington University calm evaluation, my future was more important him all the days he has been away. So, this cam- entirely; as the hot new kid on the block I had to Washington University than that of many other paign is a good way to keep ourselves busy in the some offer letters in my pocket. people around me. He did not do what he did vineyard, doing the Lord’s work. (Non-believers merely because he thought highly of me (although Jim McLeod single-handedly saved the African can substitute a suitable secular word for Lord.) I was deeply humbled, sometimes tormented by and African American Studies Program. He re- It would be something that Jim would want us a sense of unworthiness, that he did) but because organized it administratively and made the front to do—not honoring him, which I am sure he he thought so highly of Washington University. office run better. He was largely responsible for is properly bemused and embarrassed by—but He did not want me to feel flattered, in the end; creating the Black Alumni Council, which has helping to improve our school and helping our he wanted me to be responsible, to my students, become an important instrument of outreach students by raising scholarship money. my colleagues, to the institution. to African American alumni. He built up stu- Needless to say, it is my hope that all of you on dent interest in the program. In fact, Jim was I would never have become director of AFAS the Danforth campus support this effort by pledg- extremely popular with students. He gave the or anything else had not Jim McLeod taught me ing generously, for it is hard for me to imagine program some stability and the sense of a future. and, even more importantly, inspired me to be that any single one of us is not directly or indi- I liked Jim because he gave me anything I asked a leader and had he not given my career some rectly indebted to Jim McLeod. for (what faculty member wouldn’t like a direc- guidance at a crucial time. When I see him, he Here is my brief story: Shortly after I was ten- tor like that!). Jim praised me all the time, told sometimes jokes about how he gets praised by a ured in 1988, Jim McLeod became director of the me how important I was not only to the program few elderly folk who mistake him for me. It is a African and African American Studies Program but to Washington University itself. In fact, he bit of an inside joke, but I often wish a few people (AFAS), a position he held for five years. The pro- treated me a great deal as if I were a prince and would mistake me for him.

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