Story and Photos by Taylor Schefstrom
In December 2009, University of Oregon political science professor Ken DeBevoise was informed that his position at the UO was being phased out. Reasons for this action have remained somewhat foggy even amid powerful protest from countless current students, parents, and alumni. In the wake of the announcement students formed the Keep Ken Coalition, a group dedicated to re-securing DeBevoise’s job. Ethos spoke with both DeBevoise and Coalition member David Delmar about why DeBevoise’s presence on campus is important to the UO.
Taylor Schefstrom: What do you currently teach at the University of Oregon? Why is it important?
Ken DeBevoise: For the last couple of years I have been exclusively teaching courses on the Middle East because that’s obviously a hot spot and because no one else at the UO is doing it. I think it’s basic to be able to understand places and issues one’s country is involved in.
TS: Has the announcement that you may have to leave campus changed the way you approach your time at the UO?
KD: Not at all. Could happen I guess, but I’ll believe that I’m no longer teaching when I see it.
TS: All over the world former students of yours have rallied in support of you keeping your position. What are your thoughts on that?
KD: My thoughts are that I’m the luckiest person I know about. You can’t imagine.
TS: Given the chance would you teach for free?
KD: Of course. Why not? Hopefully, my students won’t let me do it since I do have to eat and so on, but my hero in this regard has always been the great baseball player, Willie Mays. He used to say that if necessary, he would pay them to let him play. Same here.
TS: What first led you to teaching?
KD: My first clue was that I noticed during my third year in law school that I was literally losing sleep because each night I would lie in bed working out how I could be doing a better job of teaching than my professors were doing. Then I got accepted into the Peace Corps to teach at a college in Thailand. During training I knew instantly that this was one thing (maybe the only thing) I could do well. Then I got to Thailand and I found that I loved doing it and was willing and eager to spend any amount of hours outside of class working at being effective.
TS: Describe your teaching philosophy.
KD: It’s more a philosophy of learning than of teaching. I don’t believe that I can actually teach anyone anything significant. Learning is generated by the learner from the various inputs that he or she experiences in daily life, which can include the classroom. I can facilitate that, but it is a process internal to the learner rather than an external one. Real learning is not done effectively by means of a lecturer sending out arrows of “knowledge” that somehow transfer it to a listener. Learning from the inside is very hard work. Thus I believe in getting students to work really hard. There’s no magic to it, nor is there a short cut. The key, of course, is to create courses as well as the classroom atmosphere that will help energize the learner so that he or she will see it as a challenge to be met eagerly.
Further, I am not particularly interested in whether a student learns a lot about any particular subject. If someone becomes an expert on Afghanistan or whatever substance, that’s great. But my main concern is that through the process of studying that stuff, the student will develop and internalize certain traits and habits that are necessary for success in life – things like work ethic, dependability, prioritization skills, pride in the quality of one’s work, refusal to tolerate anything less than doing one’s best, and the ability to do the best work possible on a consistent and sustained basis. It’s a very old-school approach.
TS: Do you think your personal undergraduate education had any part in the evolution of this philosophy?
KD: Not much, except for providing me with models that I wanted to reject and figure out what would be better.
[I did learn] an important lesson that I didn’t realize I had learned until years later. I had one favorite professor – David Potter – who was the top expert in the world on the American Civil War era. He was a wonderful lecturer and a very nice, gracious man to boot. It was my junior year and […] I was in one of this professor’s great lectures and it suddenly came to me that no matter how hard I tried or worked, I could never possibly be as good as he was. Being 20 years old I figured I’d better drop the college professor idea and try to come up with something else.
Years later I realized that I had been absolutely right in that, no, I could never do what Potter did as well as he could but guess, what – I can do a number of things in teaching that he couldn’t do. Good lesson to learn. Everyone’s different and everyone has some special talent, ability, or gift. The trick, of course, lies in discovering what it is.
TS: Is undergraduate education important? Why or why not?
KD: Sure it is, especially because it is the last formal education most people get. It also comes at the perfect time of life for learning. Brains are mostly developed by then, maturity is coming fast, health is good, enthusiasm runs high, and minds are still wide open. It is the perfect time, in a congenial setting, to begin to find out who you are and what skills and personal attributes will be necessary for success in life. Again, I think that kind of thing is way more important than any of the specific course material.
TS: What do you want students to get out of the courses you teach?
KD: Those traits, habits, and basic skills that I have mentioned earlier. And of course, I want it to be a positive all-around experience and one that will spark a life-long rage to learn. And as important as anything, actually, is the friends they make in these classes.
TS: Does it happen?
KD: It varies, of course, but I’m sure that it happens more often than it would if I did not teach this way. In any case, you’d have to ask the students themselves.
On August 28, 2010, the Keep Ken Coalition announced Professor DeBevoise will be retained at the UO during the 2010-2011 school year.
