Issues in PhilosophyWhy Graduate Schools Don’t Have Reunions

Why Graduate Schools Don’t Have Reunions

Several weeks ago I accompanied my wife to the 50th reunion of her medical school class at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, founded in 1850 and now consolidated into the Drexel University College of Medicine. That class was honored at this year’s commencement ceremony, and about 15 of the original 58 graduates attended.

During the proceedings I recalled that 2016 marked 50 years since I received my doctoral degree from the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University. No one will be surprised to learn that a reunion from my era has never occurred. In fact, I have not heard of such an event at any graduate school. Why?

Whereas my wife was a member of a class that entered medical school and became a unit, working through shared rigors and graduating in step, my contemporaries did not progress together. All of us proceeded at our own pace and developed different projects, while accommodating ourselves to the styles of the particular faculty with whom we interacted. Finally, as we struggled to complete our dissertations, most other students remained unaware of our headway. Those who finished did so at different times, while some became permanently stalled. In any case, few had a sense of belonging to a group.

As we in academia pursue our careers, merely attending graduate school together rarely creates a bond. Instead, we build relationships through departmental affiliations or related research areas. Indeed, we are often unaware of where or under what circumstances any individual, however renowned, earned the doctorate.

For example, are you familiar with Harry Frankfurt’s path to his degree? The story is found in his 2010 John Dewey Lecture (reprinted in Portraits of American Philosophy). He recalls that after receiving a BA from Johns Hopkins University in 1949, he enrolled as a graduate student at Cornell University but left after only two years. What happened? Here is his account:

In my second year at Cornell, Professor Max Black chose me to be his assistant in his graduate Introduction to Symbolic Logic course, and I also assisted Professor Gregory Vlastos in his course on the History of Political Philosophy. However, my work as a student was evidently not very successful. Indeed, although I had not been aware that my performance as a student had actually been less than satisfactory, I was informed near the end of the year that my fellowship would not be renewed. This made it financially impossible for me to return to Cornell. Accordingly, I went back to Johns Hopkins and continued my doctoral work there. After a bit more coursework—including seminars on Plato, on ethics, and on Whitehead—I wrote a doctoral dissertation entitled “The Essential Objectivity of What is Known” and was awarded the PhD (with distinction) in 1954.

Almost everyone who attends graduate school could tell a personal story that, like Frankfurt’s, includes mistreatment and setbacks. While those in my wife’s class enjoyed reminiscing, former doctoral students have little desire to recall battling through the thickets of their education. They are merely grateful the experience ended.

In sum, I don’t expect an invitation to a graduate school reunion. Were such an event to occur, however, attendance would no doubt be sparse and conversation caustic.

Photo(via Wikimedia Commons): Harry Frankfurt, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Princeton University, addresses the annual meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 12, 2017.

Steven M. Cahn

Steven M. Cahn is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The most recent books he has authored are Religion Within Reason (Columbia University Press, 2017); Teaching Philosophy: A Guide (Routledge, 2018); Inside Academia: Professors, Politics, and Policies (Rutgers University Press, 2019); The Road Traveled and Other Essays (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2019); Philosophical Adventures (Broadview Press, 2019); A Philosopher’s Journey: Essays from Six Decades (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2020), and Navigating Academic Life (Routledge, 2021).

2 COMMENTS

  1. Law is a constant struggle among peers and Professors. There are group dynamics and as a class (those of us that graduated) there is some bonding and respect amongst one another but I don’t expect reunion invitations; we do expect solicitations for donations 🤪💰🤑🤯😤

  2. Thank you for your post, Professor Cahn. As luck would have it, I recently got an emailed invitation to the 45th reunion of my medical school class. And, like your wife, I value the opportunity to meet with my former classmates immensely, even though I’ve taken a different path through life than most of them. We were the class that entered med school after a college experience spanning the last four years of the 60s, and I like to think that all of us embodied some of that idealism, going into medicine for all the right reasons–“making money” was NOT at the top of the list, at least not when we started. We did indeed “work through shared rigors,” and the mutual support we gave one another was an important part of getting through the training.

    I went on to complete the M.D. and a residency, but by the early 80s I had discovered what was happening to Life on Earth, and was ready for another go at academia, this time to answer for myself the question, why are we humans being so destructive of nonhuman life? in hopes of trying to do something about it. A zoology major as an undergraduate, I was fortunate to be able to take courses in wildlife ecology and conservation biology on my way to the philosophy PhD, with a focus on environmental ethics, later broadened to environmental philosophy. And it was true that there was none of the group-feeling of med school in my graduate class. It wasn’t that we lacked camaraderie if we happened to come together, but that happened rarely outside of classes; as you say, we mostly proceeded at our own pace, working on different projects.

    I suspect, however, that the grad students in my conservation biology classes tended to have a little more sense of being part of a group, especially if they went through field courses together; a shared sense of purpose can do that, and when I reflect on these issues it does leave me wondering–what purpose is being pursued today by the typical philosophy student (or professor, for that matter)? It seems unfortunate that, for some, the role of a philosopher appears to have become defined as duking it out on a kind of conceptual battleground–not only does it not make for warm relationships with others, it’s not clear to me that it advances the “love of wisdom” much either.

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