Steven Stofferahn

For the Journal & Courier

I would like to thank Dave Bangert for a passing reference in his Journal & Courier column Aug. 17, which made it more widely known that Mitch Daniels will soon be teaching a Purdue University honors course on World War I for official college credit. That came as quite a surprise.

I am sure the students enrolled in Daniels’ seminar on the history and legacies of the war are excited at the prospect of sitting down once a week with the president of the university.

But I would encourage them to ask themselves and their instructor some key questions: What actually qualifies Daniels to teach this class? Does he hold advanced degrees in modern European history or politics? Is he a published author in the field? Does he keep up with all relevant scholarship in English, French and German? How will one know whether what he has to say is original, insightful or even accurate? Do such qualifications no longer matter at a university, just as they no longer do when certifying K-12 teachers?

Or, in the economic terms Daniels prefers, how can students be assured of getting their money’s worth for that hour, aside from being able to say that the president knows their names?

Certainly a well-read person can speak intelligently on a topic of interest, but it takes a scholar to speak authoritatively. Accredited universities are in the business of ensuring that credentials (such as the degrees students earn at Purdue) actually mean something.

The point of an honors course — or any college course — is to connect students with an acknowledged expert in a productive learning environment. In staffing a class such as this, the university had several top-notch historians and political scientists well versed in the field to choose from. Daniels was not among them.

So when he suggested to the honors college that he might like to take a turn at WWI, he should have been politely but firmly redirected to a topic for which he might claim genuine bona fides, such as electoral politics. But it is difficult to speak truth to power. As a result, this dubious decision-making process ought to concern us all, since it makes a person wonder whether arbitrary caprice now trumps common sense at Purdue.

Intent on shaking up higher education, Mitch Daniels often claims to have only the students’ best interests at heart. But at a university where the president appointed the trustees and wrote his own contract, and where making the boss look good is apparently the administration’s top priority, precious few remain in the position to call him out when he makes a poor decision.

In this case, one would think that the faculty — particularly those on the honors roster — would exercise their collective responsibility to ensure the value of the curriculum, but they remain frustratingly silent. We should all hope that the students, at least, will ask Daniels some hard questions the first day of class.

Stofferahn, a Purdue graduate who lives in West Lafayette, is an associate professor of history at Indiana State University.