The overall aim of the seminar on “The Philosophical Roots of the Bill of Rights” was to gain a better understanding of the basic presuppositions and implications of our Constitutional commitments as expressed in the Bill of Rights, especially as viewed from the perspective of the original debates and compromises that led finally to the enactment of the Bill of Rights. That original perspective was, of course, riven by considerable controversy, above all between the Federalists who supported, and the Anti-Federalists who opposed, the ratification of the original Constitution. The latter were the primary instigators of the movement for a Bill of Rights amending the proposed Constitution, but at the end of the day it was the Federalist outlook, articulated above all by Congressman James Madison, that most fully determined the actual character of the rights that were given Constitutional recognition. Still, this very fact, that an eventual compromise was reached which was at least as satisfying to most leading Federalists as it was to the leading Anti-Federalists who had originally insisted on the amendments—points to the very large measure of agreement on fundamental principles that underlay the debates between Federalists and Anti-Federalists.

This agreement on basic moral and political principles becomes most apparent when one contrasts the republicanism of the Americans, the republicanism rooted in a commitment to individual rights, with earlier and alternative forms of republican political theory. This contrast was the theme of the first seminar. I asked the participants to read Plutarch's life of Lycurgus, not only because Plutarch is an author, and this particular short biography is a text, well-known to the American Founders, but even more because the life of Lycurgus contains a vivid and concrete statement of the classical republican ideal that brings out some of the most alien features of that ideal.

Virtually half of today's professors will retire in the coming decade (Bowen and Sosa, 1989). This creates both an urgent need and a great opportunity for American colleges and universities to recruit a new generation of educators. Most of the future faculty are in graduate school today. How can this cohort best be prepared today to become effective classroom teachers?

Many universities now have teaching assistant training programs and others are establishing them. Most TA training programs, however, are prompted by short-term concerns about the quality of instruction given undergraduate students today rather than by long-term concerns about the quality of the professoriate tomorrow (Sell, 1987). Since TAs in doctoral granting institutions do a large share of the teaching of undergraduates, short-term concerns are important. Nevertheless, TA training can and should be designed to serve both short- and long-term goals. The TA training program that seeks to achieve long-term goals must deliberately plan its program so that important skills associated with the professor, but not commonly associated with the TA, are taught. Two of these important skills are employed before the first class: course planning and syllabus writing.

Course planning, an activity that occurs before the first class (Stark et al., 1989), improves the course significantly for both teacher and student by clarifying goals and determining ways of achieving them. The syllabus explains the course plan (as well as other information) to the student and, hence, communicates information crucial to the success in the course.

Are these good or bad times for liberalism? On the domestic front, after eight years of the Reagan administration and a presidential campaign in which liberalism became “the L-word,” they seem to be bad times indeed. The same can be said of Margaret Thatcher's Britain. But elsewhere, especially in the Communist world, events and regimes seem to be moving in a liberal direction. China after Tiananmen Square presents a notable exception, of course, but the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are generally moving towards market economies and a greater concern for individual rights and liberties—two of the hallmarks of liberal societies.

Hence the question: Are these good or bad times for liberalism? To answer, we shall need a broader perspective than a survey of contemporary developments can provide. We shall need to look back, that is, to see what liberalism was in order to understand what it has become. Only then can we assess its current condition and prospects—and appreciate how politics in the United States is largely an intramural debate between different wings of liberalism.

Liberalism did not begin as a self-conscious social and political movement. This is evident in the fact that “liberal” did not enter the vocabulary of politics until the early 1800s, at least a century after what we now call liberalism became an important force in political thought and action.

Computers inspire mixed emotions among political scientists. Love, hate, fascination, ennui, and frustration sometimes occur during the course of a single computer work session. Individuals come to terms with the beast in varying ways; obviously personal work style and level of computer dependency are each scholar's own business. However, expanded use of information technology in the disciplinary curriculum is a common concern deserving discussion. Like earlier debates between behavioralists and traditionalists, the current discussion raises questions about the discipline's central purpose. This essay reviews proposals to “computerize” political science curricula in light of contemporary theories about information and managerial work.

Historically, political scientists' computer involvement has been limited, but it is now intensifying in response to educational, technological, and environmental influences. Political scientists have used computers as teaching tools since at least the early 1970s, when the APSA “SETUPs” began appearing, but as novelty items, diversions reflecting the devotion of idiosyncratic individuals. This publication has disseminated many such “experiments,” as have Social Science Computer Review and the National Collegiate Software Clearinghouse. Even as desktop machines began proliferating in the early 1980s, their use in the classroom was considered to be optional, something peripheral to the discipline which one could attempt if one had the inclination.

This laissez-faire ambience may be ending in the face of societal transformations. In the classroom political scientists foster intellectual skills broadly useful to former students. A student may be an activist or an avid pre-lawyer, but his or her future professional development will be built on analytical, and communications skills honed in political science courses. This linkage between political science classrooms and the professional world could weaken if we do not adopt to societal change.

These comments are mostly derived from my teaching experience at the University of Texas at Austin, which has a sophisticated and elaborate teacher evaluation system, and in the universities of London and York in England, which don't.

1. Students' evaluations of their teachers do not depend solely on the qualities of the teacher. If objective evaluations are to be obtained, a multivariate statistical analysis should be conducted, controlling for such factors as:

a. class size—the smaller the class, the better the evaluations.

b. expected grade—one of the strongest correlates of teacher evaluations proved to be the grade the student expects to receive—the higher the expected grade, the “better” the course. This too can be controlled for—by asking the students on the form what grade they expect to receive.

c. whether the class is required or optional—compulsory courses will obviously be less popular. One way to test for this is to ask students on the evaluation form to rate the class relative to their expectations of the class (above, below, or as expected).

2. A statistical study at Texas by J. Sidanius showed that student evaluations of teachers tend to be biased against women and minority teachers. Apart from the intrinsic worries this raises, such information, if true, could be used in court actions over denial of tenure for women/minorities where teacher evaluations played a role.

3. There is of course the general philosophical question of whether students are best able to assess whether they are learning anything from a given teacher.

In writing of the seven deadly sins of college teaching, Eble (1983:3) observed that “Arrogance, Dullness, Rigidity, Insensitivity, Vanity, Self-Indulgence, and Hypocrisy” are sins as deadly to students' chances of learning “as the traditional deadly sins were to chances of salvation.” Focusing on “dullness,” Eble comments that though it is a seemingly benign sin, it competes for the “highest (or lowest) place.”

With this in mind, and on the assumption that instructors are the dominant influence in the classroom, the major focus for many researchers has been the analysis of teacher behavior. From their studies five characteristics of effective college teachers have been identified: scholarship (Mayhew, 1980); interest in subject (Beatty and Behnke, 1980); enthusiasm in presentation (Barr, 1981); keen wit (Bryant, et al., 1980); and the ability to dramatize a subject (Norton and Nussbaum, 1980). Consequently, the communication style of instructors has emerged as a prevailing factor in the teaching-learning process and has served as the basis of a growing body of research.

In the usual college classroom environment, communication is the central element in teaching. Norton's studies (1983) offered evidence showing perceived teacher effectiveness to be related to a teacher's perceived communication style, while Scott and Nussbaum (1981) found students' perceptions of teachers' communication styles to be associated significantly with student achievement. In the last instance, the findings showed that an instructor's perceived adeptness in communication was highly related to a student's evaluation of the overall performance of that instructor in the classroom.

Approximately 65 applicants opted for acceptance in this seminar, from whom twenty were ultimately selected. All accepted. They came from seven colleges and thirteen universities, located in ten states; ranked from instructor through professor; ranged in age from 29 to 61; and included seventeen men and three women.

Wisely, the objectives of the four seminars conducted under the program constituted both substantive inquiry and teaching methodology. Consequently, my approach to the examination of “landmarks in the judicial interpretation of civil rights in America” was designed to stress the communicative responsibilities of teaching as well as content matter. All too frequently, the latter suffers because of insufficient attention to the former. I did not utilize video aids in the seminar, but I provided sundry types of exhibits that have proved helpful in my now more than four decades of teaching at the university level.

Although the thrust of the seminar's aims and context was self-evident, it seemed to me that to address the subject matter without an analysis of seminal components of the nature of the judicial process, in general, and the parameters of judicial power, in particular, would be both short-sighted and dysfunctional. Looking back to the seminar now, I am more persuaded than ever that that resolve was appropriate—for, perhaps quite naturally and understandably in view of the deeply felt components of the subject matter, pre-conceived personal, as well as professional commitments, were indubitably in evidence at the threshold. Consequently, the entire first day's attention to an examination of the lines and limits of the judicial role and the postures of individual jurists would serve as seminal background material for the gravamen of the seminar's remaining days.

The title of this article is much broader than its subject matter, which discusses political liberalism only and only a selection of the attacks that have been made upon it and some of the responses they have elicited. More specifically, certain large and important topics are almost wholly excluded: to wit, the Marxist attacks, the concept of liberty, and rights and justice.

It will appear as we proceed that the arguments develop on various levels: philosophical (especially epistemological) foundations, practical ethics, and theories of governmental operation. However, these will not be used as the basis of organization in what follows.

Liberalism may be considered as a kind of individualism, a fact that is relied upon by both its proponents and its opponents. Individualism comes in many varieties (see Lukes 1973). Oversimplifying, I shall reduce them to three. The first of these (with which many critics of liberalism identify it) may be called “atomistic” individualism. It represents the extreme view of the priority (both chronologically and in terms of value) of the individual as opposed to society. The works of Thomas Hobbes, F. A. Hayek, and Robert Nozick are representative of this type of theory. They tend to think of the individual as having a fixed nature dominated by rational self-interest, emphasizing the satisfaction of preferences. In the words of Christopher J. Berry, individuals “are depicted variously as alienated, selfish, competitive, possessive, apathetic, and so on” (Berry 1989, 2).

It was hardly surprising that John Rawls' argument that a liberal political theory had to include a commitment to welfare rights was quickly countered by Robert Nozick's contention that welfare rights were incompatible with liberalism's devotion to freedom and private property. This controversy over the relationship between state funded welfare and liberty, especially the liberty to acquire property, has been and is still part of the politics of all advanced industrial nations, including America. As a matter of political fact, however, the welfare interpretation of liberalism has been triumphant. Government programs to alleviate suffering, to increase economic opportunities available to the poor, and to redistribute wealth go hand in hand with representation and civil liberties in virtually all of the advanced industrial nations of the West. That this has occurred, I want to argue here, is entirely consistent with the mainstream of the liberal tradition and ought to be presented that way to students.

The distinction between classical or libertarian liberalism and welfare or the new liberalism emerged at the end of the nineteenth century in England. From the start this distinction was politically charged, meant to imply that the welfare measures enacted particularly during the second Gladstone administration represented a treasonous repudiation of the liberal tradition. Herbert Spencer's The Man Versus the State (1884), little read now but enormously influential then, was most important to spreading this view.

This article discusses (1) the extent to which an introductory course in urban politics is currently offered by political science departments in American colleges and universities; and (2) the thrust or orientation of such a course as reflected in survey responses, syllabi, and textbooks. The discussion is based principally on the findings of a mail survey of the 485 political science departments listed in the 1987 Directory of Undergraduate Political Science Faculty and of the 246 departments listed in the 1986 Guide to Graduate Study in Political Science, both compilations published by the American Political Science Association. A total of 377 completed questionnaires were returned, for a response rate of 51 percent. Approximately one-fourth of the respondents also furnished copies of course outlines as requested.

The answer to the question of whether political science departments offer the introductory urban politics course recalls the old bromide of the “half full” or “half empty” water glass. Forty-nine percent of the respondents stated that they offer such a course while 51 % answered in the negative. A small minority questioned the importance of the offering, one respondent commenting, “An urban politics course is not of central importance to an undergraduate curriculum in the liberal arts.” Most non-offering departments, however, tended to be apologetic about the absence of the course from their curriculum, citing various reasons for its exclusion. The two factors most frequently mentioned are lack of resources (31 %) and the coverage of urban material in a state-local government offering (39%).

The twenty participants in this seminar came from a variety of colleges and universities that ranged from major research institutions to small teaching colleges. The academic ranks and interests of those in attendance also were diverse. This heterogeneity of participants was intentional and designed to facilitate a meaningful exchange of ideas and perspectives on the topics to be discussed. Formal class sessions were held for three and one-half hours each morning. The instructor made herself available for individual discussions later each day. Seminar participants were urged to take advantage of the unique location of the seminar. It was held at the APSA convention site only a few blocks away from the Martin Luther King, Jr. birth site and the MLK Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

The focus of this seminar in the main was to explore the role that interest groups have played and are likely to continue to play in the judicial process. Our focus was on the federal level, particularly the United States Supreme Court. Given the varied backgrounds and interests of those attending this seminar, it was believed that such an approach would provide a broader and richer understanding of not only the development of law concerning civil rights but also of the judicial process itself.

After introductions the first morning, we immediately launched into a discussion of the readings for the day. They were designed to acquaint the participants with some of the literature on interest group litigation. Interestingly, however, the focus of our attention was immediately turned to the idea of “group” and what was meant by interest group or social movement. Several participants had been grappling with these questions in their own research, and others had had extensive experience in a diverse set of groups. A lengthy discourse from varied perspectives then ensued.

From campus to campus, there is only modest variation in the core content of the introductory science or social science course, from anthropology to biology to physics to sociology. But what should the first course in political science include? Political scientists have less consensus on the content of their introductory course than teachers in any of these other disciplines. I have grappled with this question over the last 16 years in attempting to teach “Introduction to Political Science” at a large public university. The question became even more compelling when, during the last several years, I was writing a textbook (Danziger, 1990) for such an introductory course. This forced me to be more universal (or at least less idiosyncratic) in the choice of topics and examples.

In fact, the first course in political science at most colleges and universities does not introduce students to “the discipline.” Rather, the course focuses on the American political system. It seems unimaginable that the first course in biology would center in American biology, or that the first course in economics would be a study of the economic system of the United States. In most fields, an introductory course aims to familiarize students with the basic theoretical and conceptual elements of the discipline, whether the discipline is paradigmatic or preparadigmatic (in Thomas Kuhn's terms).

The tendency to begin political science with a course in American politics does have some reasonable justifications. First, it is possible to learn basic principles and ways of thinking within a discipline by the study of an exemplary case which is used to reveal those basics.

We are a nation of cities. The 1980 census reported that almost three out of every four Americans lived in urban areas, and estimates are that the 1990 census will show that the proportion of the population living in urban areas will increase further. Many of the nation's most pressing domestic problems deeply affect the well being of urban residents: welfare reform, homelessness, substance abuse, education, health care for the uninsured, quality of the work force, and the like, all have significant urban dimensions. And while we may never see “urban” regain the popularity it obtained during most of the 1960s, any policy response designed to address these pressing problems will have a major urban component; whether it is called urban policy is another matter. It was interesting to observe during the past presidential campaign how frightened the candidates were of using the word urban or city. While I have not yet seen a content analysis of the 1988 election campaign, the words urban and city were noticeably absent from the debates, speeches, and sound bites. We did, however, hear a lot about community in one of the debates.

The purpose of this essay is to highlight some of the prominent issues cities and their residents are likely to face in the 1990s, with emphasis on ways in which these issues can be structured into an undergraduate urban policies and urban policy curriculum through reference to the recent book literature.

Ideologies are important in modern politics. This is the standard reason political scientists give for studying them. In this article I provide another rationale for the study of ideologies: to promote democracy. This normative argument has been superceded by empirical ones, in part, because of the pejorative connotations of ideology. Those connotations are, however, based upon a selective history and hence an incomplete definition of the term. By reviewing that history, I recover a positive association between ideology and democracy. In the process, I hope to encourage political theorists to teach political ideologies.

The Oxford English Dictionary provides two standard definitions of ideology. The first is descriptive or neutral: ideology is the “science of ideas.” This definition, indeed the word itself, originated with Destutt de Tracy, a French Enlightenment philosopher. The second is critical or deprecatory: ideology is “ideal or abstract speculation” and “unpractical or visionary theorizing.” Napoleon Bonaparte, Tracy's contemporary, first used ideology in this pejorative sense. Both definitions are operative in contemporary political science.

Political scientists who study ideologies as “belief-systems” follow the first definition. For example, standard texts define ideology as “a set of closely related beliefs, or ideas, or even attitudes, characteristic of a group or community” or “a value or belief system accepted as fact or truth by some group.” These texts focus upon the various functions of ideologies, e.g., communication, legitimation, socialization, and especially mobilization.

Many negative comments have been made about lecturing. One suggests that this methodology “violates the belief that learning results on the part of the students” (Adler, 1984). Another author suggests egotistical reasons for lecturing: “when we professors get into a classroom, we profess” (Balliet, 1970). One widely published writer blames both administrative policies and faculty preference: Lecturing has “continued due to cost-conscious administrators whose major interest is the logistical efficiency of the large lecture…” (Erickson, 1970) and many professors use lectures as a “security blanket without which they would neither feel like teachers nor be recognized by their students” (Erickson, 1970). The traditional lecture has faced stiff competition from other teaching methods: coaching, Socratic questioning, simulations, collaborative education contracts, role playing, self-instruction, the case method, and personalized systems of instruction.

Despite the challenges of innovative teaching methods, lecturing persists. Wagner Thielens (1987) in a random study of half of American universities found that 81 percent of social scientists lectured. This confirms an earlier study which found that “the dominant mode of instruction remains the lecture…” (Eble, 1972). Thus, lecturing persists because of the power of tradition, the structure of the classroom, the textbooks, and the subject/discipline orientation of higher education.

The truth of the matter is that lecturing, when done well, is effective, for “a skillful lecturer can gain as favorable a response as a seminar leader” (Eble, 1972). Lecturing is an efficient method of imparting information, analysis, and explanation of complex questions and concepts, and thus is an effective medium for introductory classes. Further, good lectures can update texts, synthesize tomes, provide structure, and pique students' interests.

Most Americans take for granted the notion that the powers of government are circumscribed by individual rights. But this commonplace notion is, in fact, very complicated conceptually and poses difficult problems institutionally. This course explored both the conceptual and the institutional problems, from their origins to their contemporary manifestations. We began with the formation of the Constitution: the writing of the document in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, its ratification, the addition of the Bill of Rights in 1789, and the establishment of judicial review. As a starting point, I offered my own perspective through excerpts from my forthcoming book, Private Property and the Limits of American Constitutionalism: The Madisonian Framework and Its Legacy. My central argument is that the Framers' concern with protecting the rights of property distorted both their understanding of constitutionalism and the institutions they designed to implement that understanding. The Framers wanted to design a republican form of government based on the notion of consent by the governed, and thus some form of democratic (as we would call it today) representation. But the Federalists, whose views dominated the convention, also wanted to ensure that civil rights would be secure in the new republic. Property became the focus of their efforts to make the political rights implicit in republican government compatible with the security of civil rights. Unfortunately, their focus on the protection of unequal property, the property of the minority as threatened by the (future) propertyless majority, distorted their vision of the basic problem of protecting individual rights in a democracy. Their fears of the propertyless bred a focus on containing the political power of the people.

In June of 1789, Representative James Madison fulfilled a campaign promise to his Virginia constituents by asking colleagues in the House of Representatives to consider a group of constitutional amendments designed to secure basic individual liberties. By December of 1791, ten of these were ratified by the necessary number of states, becoming the first amendments to the new Constitution—the U.S. Bill of Rights. Despite the bicentennial “burnout” which some individuals are experiencing, the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights—which we begin in earnest this spring—should be a most meaningful occasion for every American. The Declaration of Independence made the nation a possibility; the Constitution created the structure of public authority in the nation; but the Bill of Rights has done nothing less than define the very quality of public and private life in the United States. If the Constitution is a “living document,” then surely the Bill of Rights is about daily living and the freedom we have to experience life. This makes the Bill of Rights America's most important “founding” document.

The Bill of Rights has been variously described as “a shield to every American citizen,” “the one guarantee of freedom to the American people,” “fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline,” and “the foundation of liberty against the encroachments of government.” However, even as we prepare to celebrate its bicentennial, ignorance, indifference, intolerance, ideology, and perhaps even modernity threaten the viability of its guarantees. Historian Michael Kammen (1986: 336-356) calls it a “subtle attack” while others see it as a direct frontal assault.

The familiar final exam survives as a fundamental component of most college courses, but usually proves frustrating and disappointing to both student and instructor. The culmination of the undergraduate teaching and learning experience, the completed exam usually exhibits a rapid display of facts and figures gleaned from countless lectures and months of readings. It rarely reflects thoughtful, mature analysis or the application of the substantive knowledge acquired during the course to particular problems or themes. A strong factual knowledge of course material hardly prepares the student for such a task. Even if the final challenges the student to exercise rudimentary analytical skills, the end product tends to suffer from time constraints as the task of writing generally outweighs that of organizing and pursuing thoughts.

Instructors normally entertain certain objectives in elaborating a course which may or may not be incorporated into the syllabus. These demarcate the scope of material to be covered and the theoretical and analytical abilities to be mastered by the student; but rarely are these incorporated or represented in the content of the final exam. Usually, these pedagogical goals are more comprehensive and rigorous than what is actually tested or graded on the final given its traditionally limited and constrained format. Consequently, the final's impact on the student's grade tends to surpass its role in shaping the learning experience; the course suffers from treating the final as solely an evaluative instrument rather than a learning device.

Just as central research questions and an elaborate strategy guide sophisticated scholarly research, issuing the final exam questions at the course's outset can help focus and steer the learning process and more appropriately correspond to course objectives. A number of advantages result from issuing the final exam up front.

The standard approach to teaching political philosophy involves the transmission of a given body of information, organized either historically (Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Marx, Nietzsche, etc.) or topically (the state, freedom, equality, human rights, authority, etc.). The aim is to transfer a core of knowledge to the students, whose responsibility is to comprehend the factual material much as they would material in any other course.

The historical and topical approaches to political philosophy are useful in that they allow the student to familiarize himself with the great themes of western (or world) civilization, but they have their limitations. The problem of these approaches, to use an expression of Edmund Husserl's is “sedimentation.” The tradition of philosophy is so covered with generations of silt that it is almost impossible to uncover the original experiences that led to the development of philosophy in the first place. To understand Nietzsche you have to understand Marx; to understand Marx you have to understand Hegel; to understand Hegel you have to understand Kant; to understand Kant you have to understand … ad infinitum until we reach … to understand Aristotle you have to understand Plato, and to understand Plato you have to understand Socrates.

A second approach to political philosophy is more concerned with encouraging students to engage in philosophical reflection than it is in developing the mastery of scholarship encouraged by the first approach. This second approach returns us to the origins of political philosophy.

I have developed and used the role playing simulation described here in discussion sections of a first-year course entitled “Introduction to the Study of Policy Problems.” The purpose of the game is to materialize concepts presented in a lecture entitled “Revitalizing Urban America: Values and Urban Policy,” which has been an organizing focus for the course. It introduces four views of the functions cities perform for those who live and work in or near them. These views include seeing the city as an engine of economic growth, a provider of services to residents, a locale for social communities, and a forum for democracy.

Before playing the game, students learn about the history of American urban development, current economic and fiscal problems in cities, and options for economic development and residential revitalization that have been suggested to make the transition from an industrial to a service-based economy. (A list of readings from the course syllabus follows.) The values to be represented by each group in the game are described as the goals of residents of a metropolitan area as well as their perceptions of themselves and their surroundings.

Students are put into four groups, each representing a distinct functional interest, or “vision” of the city. The groups represent the values identified in the lecture as answers to the question “What are cities for?” They include a “pro-growth coalition,” a “service bureaucracy,” a “social communities” and a “political officials” group.