Three professors received Spirit of Inquiry Awards from the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy on November 4. The annual awards are given to North Carolina professors in recognition of outstanding courses that have been nominated by students and selected by a panel of judges. The awards dinner, held at the Umstead Hotel in Cary, North Carolina, was the Pope Center’s third Spirit of Inquiry Award celebration.
The recipients were:
- Brian J. Shaw, Professor, Political Science and Humanities, Davidson College, for his course “Foundations of Liberalism”
- Derek Yonai, The Lundy Chair of the Philosophy of Business, Campbell University, for his course “World of Business”
- Andrew Taylor, Professor, Political Science, North Carolina State University, for his course “Public Choice and Political Institutions.”
The award is named the “Spirit of Inquiry” to express what the Pope Center believes college courses should do—reflect a spirit of open-minded exploration within the guidelines of a particular discipline. In addition to promoting inquiry, winning courses must also be interesting and challenging. The Broyhill Family Foundation of North Carolina provided financial support for the award.
At the dinner, each professor spoke briefly, describing his course or sharing his ideas about the value of free and open classrooms. Andrew Taylor reminded the audience that faculty are “in the important business of looking after young minds.” Yet higher education has no natural overseers—and academicians generally bristle at the idea of limitations or watchdogs. Thus, there is a role for organizations such as the Pope Center, which keep higher education accountable.
Derek Yonai shared his vision of what college courses should do. He said, students should “leave a course with something they didn’t have before—a trained mind.” He said he relishes his World of Business class because it gives students a chance to put down the tools of business administration and “ask the big questions.” These questions address fundamentals such as, “Why do we have business?” “What institutions are necessary to support private enterprise?” He wants his students to understand how the system works so that graduates don’t enter business “apologizing for their existence.”
Brian Shaw explained that his winning course, the “Foundations of Liberalism,” is designed to teach student the many different interpretations of the liberal tradition—from John Locke in the seventeenth century to John Rawls in the twentieth. He tells students, “We’re all liberals now,” but helps them understand that diverse policies can flow from liberal origins. Shaw remarked that students rarely know his personal views about the philosophers they study. “When we do Rawls, I work for Rawls,” he said. “When we do Nozick, I defend Nozick.” Indeed, his comments summed up the nature of the “spirit of inquiry” as embodied by the Pope Center award.
The introductory speaker was John Baden, chairman of the Foundation for Research in Economics and the Environment (FREE), in Bozeman, Montana. Baden proposed the idea of an award for outstanding courses in North Carolina several years ago. He also was one of the judges of the contest and, in his remarks, he praised the winning courses highly.
Baden, who has taught at several universities, including the University of Washington and Montana State, described academia as all too often a “closed system” with “an extraordinary degree of conformity” of ideas. He said that the Pope Center award offered an antidote to that narrow-mindedness.
This year’s contest garnered 59 nominations from 11 colleges and universities. Undergraduate and graduate students from any college in North Carolina can nominate faculty.
A panel of judges makes the final decisions. This year’s judges were:
- John Allison, Distinguished Professor of Practice, Wake Forest Schools of Business
- John Baden, Chairman, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment
- J. Edgar Broyhill, President and Managing Director, The Broyhill Group
- George Leef, Director of Research, The John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy
- Anne Neal, President, American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
Jane S. Shaw, the Pope Center’s president, concluded the evening by noting that the Pope Center often criticizes higher education. But tonight, she said, “it’s wonderful to spend a little time thinking about and learning about the best in our colleges and universities.”