"A Faculty Member Celebrates"

So, the end of a school year. I love these gatherings that mark the end of an academic year. I can speak for my colleagues in saying that we enjoy this part of our job–we take pleasure in seeing our students excel. We enjoy recognizing this college's honors students because we know that the tasks we put before you are difficult and that the work you do is taxing. To complete a term with marks that place you on the dean's list is hard work. To complete honors courses is hard work. To complete a degree with honors is hard work. It is hard work–and your professors are demanding taskmasters. Sometimes, as one of my former honors students said of me, we can be downright mean. We know this about ourselves. We know that the work you do is difficult, to the point of overwhelming. But that is why, after you have bested all the challenges we set before you, we are happy to be here to applaud our best students.

I enjoy these celebrations each spring, but they are also, to me, bittersweet. My students and I have met together week after week in classrooms, we have visited in my office, we have crossed paths and chatted in the library and in the hallways, and now . . . now we part company. In the last year, and in the last four years, I have had many wonderful, enjoyable, and difficult conversations with students here in this room. We've talked about the things that professors and students routinely talk about: paper assignments and research projects. We've talked about favorite books and authors; I've pulled down books from my shelves and said, “Here. You should read this,” and you've sent me links to articles and web sites and said, “Here. You should read this.” We've talked about plans for graduate school and plans for careers. I've talked with students about how we might come to moral stands on wars of the past and wars of the present. I've had students tell me about their plans for marriage, and I have had students, young men and young women, ask me about the decisions that my wife and I have made regarding work and family. I've talked with students about how I understand my responsibilities as a Christian who teaches history and writes history. We've talked about Chinese calligraphy and going to church, about the legacies of communism and life in residence halls, about fellowships for graduate study and the phenomenon of Facebook. I've even had a student, one student, who admitted to me that he has a man-crush–on Henry Kissinger.

A word of explanation is probably necessary here. A man-crush, as defined by a journalist, is “the completely non-sexual feelings when one male finds another dude to be so cool that Guy No. 1 wants to spend as much time as possible with Guy No. 2.” As my students and colleagues will attest, I've been pondering man-crushes for the last few months now, ever since a conversation with my pastor in which we both admitted to having a man-crush on Matt Damon. In my thinking, I've come to the realization that the definition I quoted above can also be applied to Woman-Crushes (so the crush of Woman No. 1 on Woman No. 2) and, moreover, I think it can be applied to the crushes that many of us have on someone of the opposite sex, someone, typically a celebrity, whom we find so compelling and attractive that we'd just like to hang out. For example, I will confide my crush fantasy. I'm in my office in the History Department. The phone rings.

“Hello.”

It's a woman who speaks with a sultry Australian accent.

“Yes. Yes, that's me. Really? Well, certainly. Yes, that would be delightful. I'd love to. Ok, bye-bye.”

That was Cate Blanchett, the actress. She's just read one of my academic articles on Czech history and she wants to discuss it with me, over coffee. That's it. Nothing unseemly, nothing lurid. Just a pleasant conversation with Cate Blanchett about history and books and Australian politics and raising children (and I'll probably ask her it what it was like to act in a movie with Matt Damon). In one of my courses this semester, I charged my students to survey their friends on their man-crushes and woman-crushes and crush-crushes. The project came out of our discussions in my course on European women's history on changing ideals of the good man and the good woman. The survey responses showed interesting patterns, and my students made what I found to be very insightful observations on the characteristics that men and women are drawn to and, in turn, what that says about our deeply-held notions of masculinity and femininity.

But what of all this talk of man-crushes and woman-crushes? Well, I have a confession to make, to my students here tonight: I admit that I have had crushes on you. Yes, a few of you might be thinking, “Aww, that's sweet.” But most of you are probably thinking, “Ewww, that's sick!” But please bear with me in my confession. Think back to when you were 11 or 12 years old, the age when you were most susceptible to innocent crushes. What were the symptoms? In the innocent crushes of your childhood, didn't you have something of an admiration for your crushee; that person did things that you couldn't do, and had qualities you didn't possess. Didn't you feel a lifting of your spirits when you were in that person's company or when that person sought you out in the classroom or the lunchroom or the playground. I acknowledge those same feelings for my students–and perhaps some of my colleagues would admit the same with their own students. My students, my crushees, are smart people: they like to think, they like to learn, and they do it well. My students, my crushees, are delightful, engaging people: they brighten my classes, they lift my spirits when they visit my office or invite me to coffee or even send me a random greeting. My crushees are young; they are concerned and committed. In them I invest my hopes–and my cheers–because I see that they will go far, and they will do great things.