Word: rudenstineã
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...task, Summers has made a fine start. It is not that he is a far better speaker than Rudenstine; Summers, alas, still sounds more like the Treasury Secretary that he was than the University president he has become. But the content of his speeches marks a sharp departure from Rudenstine??s cautious truisms...
...perhaps even unopened. Listening to Rudenstine speak publicly was always a painful experience; with his oddly halting delivery, he often seemed like he was desperately fighting off a speech impediment. But one always held out a faint hope that the words themselves were packed with meaning, obscured by Rudenstine??s colorless manner of speech but there nonetheless and only waiting for a diligent critic, a Boswell to Rudenstine??s Samuel Johnson, to reveal the depths of our president’s wisdom...
Alas, in reading over through the neatly printed sentences and paragraphs, one realizes the truth: for Neil Rudenstine??s speeches, as for Gertrude Stein’s Oakland, there is no there there. Our former president speaks in platitudes; he borrows other men’s insights to fill the spaces in his speeches where insight and originality ought to find a home. “All of us recognize that we are now actors in a drama that has become global in nature,” he tells one audience; another is informed that...
...searches in vain, too, for moral seriousness—for originality of thought—for a willingness to tackle controversies of any stripe. Rudenstine??s notion of taking a controversial stand seems to be supporting the idea of “diversity” in higher education by defending affirmative action. His idea of originality and moral seriousness seems to be quoting literary voices, drawing upon authors whose ability to communicate dwarfs his own, and using them to banal and platitudinous ends...
...after leafing through the 377 pages—printed, we are informed, on “Mohawk Superfine Paper”—one can only conclude that what was suspected sitting through Rudenstine??s brain-aching addresses was actually the truth. Pointing Our Thoughts will teach future generations only that in 10 eminently forgettable years, Neil Rudenstine used the bully pulpit bequeathed by Eliot, Conant and Pusey only when it came time to pass the collection plate. This, in turn, meant that from the perspective of the undergraduate population, which knew him only as a stooped...