The life and death of Doug Hoekstra
[Bill Clinton's] formal powers are intact, but his informal powers - the ability to establish the policy agenda and to set a moral tone - are seriously compromised as he fights allegations that he had a sexual relationship with a White House intern and urged her to lie about it.
"It may be one of the most surreal State of the Union addresses we have ever seen," says Doug Hoekstra, a political analyst at Michigan State University.
-- Linda Feldmann and Skip Thurman, "Statecraft From Under a Cloud", Christian Science Monitor 27 January 1998.
Doug Hoekstra taught the last course of his life in horrible pain. He could not walk up the stairs to Case Hall's second-floor seminar room. Instead, he took the elevator up to the third floor and shuffled his way down a flight of stairs, grimacing. No doubt he envied my freedom to buy a cup of coffee in Barista Cafe below and dash up the stairs ahead of him, but he hardly mentioned his own pain during class. Small hurts never bothered him.
Dr. Hoekstra's faculty bio on the James Madison College web site, http://www.jmc.msu.edu/faculty/show.asp?id=12, reads: "He is currently working on changing models of the presidency and the practices of presidential statesmanship, as well as on the relationships between presidential beliefs and actions." The relationships between beliefs and actions - among Presidents of the United States and the humblest students - inspired Dr. Hoekstra's teaching. For 36 consecutive academic years, from fall 1969 to spring 2006, he taught that belief without action was valueless.
Dr. Hoekstra's creed made him a stranger and outsider in an academic world that valued pure intention more highly than what was done. But when this academic disease infected the world of politics, when two presidents of immaculate pure intention, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, lapsed, one into sexual immorality, the other into a bloody mess of a war, Dr. Hoekstra talked!
He talked to the Christian Science Monitor and other national publications, but he also talked with his students. I was one of those students. I took three of his courses: a MC 201 discussion section, MC 374 on the American presidency, and MC 492, a PTCD senior seminar about war, elections, and democracy.
He spoke to me in a finely balanced blend of praise and criticism, doling out either according to my actions. On one of my MC 201 essays, which earned a 3.7, he wrote: "As usual, [you] write with some grace. See marginalia on where you need to say more." During a March rough patch when I tried to justify a late paper, he cut off my blather in mid-sentence. I paraphrase him: "Jason, I have seen what you have done in the past, but good students hand in their work on time." It struck me like a dagger and changed my behavior. I finished all my assignments in all my classes on time from that moment forward. It was much like what my Dad would have said to me.
The last time I met Dr. Hoekstra was the day before graduation. I was about to enter the Case Hall cafeteria for lunch when Dr. Hoekstra, casually dressed in Bermuda shirt and khaki shorts on that warm day, entered the building. I greeted him, asked if he had read and graded one of my papers (he had), and wished him a safe surgery. He stepped into a south-side elevator and said something to the effect of "Thank you - you never know how these things will turn out". The elevator doors shut, separating us for the rest of my earthly life.
"It may be one of the most surreal State of the Union addresses we have ever seen," says Doug Hoekstra, a political analyst at Michigan State University.
-- Linda Feldmann and Skip Thurman, "Statecraft From Under a Cloud", Christian Science Monitor 27 January 1998.
Doug Hoekstra taught the last course of his life in horrible pain. He could not walk up the stairs to Case Hall's second-floor seminar room. Instead, he took the elevator up to the third floor and shuffled his way down a flight of stairs, grimacing. No doubt he envied my freedom to buy a cup of coffee in Barista Cafe below and dash up the stairs ahead of him, but he hardly mentioned his own pain during class. Small hurts never bothered him.
Dr. Hoekstra's faculty bio on the James Madison College web site, http://www.jmc.msu.edu/faculty/show.asp?id=12, reads: "He is currently working on changing models of the presidency and the practices of presidential statesmanship, as well as on the relationships between presidential beliefs and actions." The relationships between beliefs and actions - among Presidents of the United States and the humblest students - inspired Dr. Hoekstra's teaching. For 36 consecutive academic years, from fall 1969 to spring 2006, he taught that belief without action was valueless.
Dr. Hoekstra's creed made him a stranger and outsider in an academic world that valued pure intention more highly than what was done. But when this academic disease infected the world of politics, when two presidents of immaculate pure intention, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, lapsed, one into sexual immorality, the other into a bloody mess of a war, Dr. Hoekstra talked!
He talked to the Christian Science Monitor and other national publications, but he also talked with his students. I was one of those students. I took three of his courses: a MC 201 discussion section, MC 374 on the American presidency, and MC 492, a PTCD senior seminar about war, elections, and democracy.
He spoke to me in a finely balanced blend of praise and criticism, doling out either according to my actions. On one of my MC 201 essays, which earned a 3.7, he wrote: "As usual, [you] write with some grace. See marginalia on where you need to say more." During a March rough patch when I tried to justify a late paper, he cut off my blather in mid-sentence. I paraphrase him: "Jason, I have seen what you have done in the past, but good students hand in their work on time." It struck me like a dagger and changed my behavior. I finished all my assignments in all my classes on time from that moment forward. It was much like what my Dad would have said to me.
The last time I met Dr. Hoekstra was the day before graduation. I was about to enter the Case Hall cafeteria for lunch when Dr. Hoekstra, casually dressed in Bermuda shirt and khaki shorts on that warm day, entered the building. I greeted him, asked if he had read and graded one of my papers (he had), and wished him a safe surgery. He stepped into a south-side elevator and said something to the effect of "Thank you - you never know how these things will turn out". The elevator doors shut, separating us for the rest of my earthly life.
posted by Jason at 9:04 PM
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