I am conflicted in my criticism of our new Center for Community Engagement: on the one hand, it was only through a fellowship with the center that I was able to spend a month in New Orleans this summer working with Habitat for Humanity, and it was good work. In as much as I was directly helping someone to rebuild their life, the effort seems to justify itself and, in some sense, to lie beyond the sometimes abstract business of general criticism.

On the other hand, I find myself strangely apprehensive about the sudden preeminence of the center at the College, and the seemingly undisputed way in which it has assumed a central part in the Amherst experience. My unease may simply be that it feels to me like the question of whether such a Center actually belongs at a liberal arts college was never seriously posed to our community, that it slipped in unnoticed, and then, that the significance of its arrival has, since, been precariously underestimated.

The question of the relationship between engagement and the Liberal Arts cannot be simple because to deal with it is, in a basic way, to deal with the general question of the purpose of Liberal Arts–of what justifies the now famously prodigious endowments of institutions like ours and what explains the tenured respect they have commanded from societies for centuries. Moreover, I admit, at first glance, that there doesn’t appear to be anything contradictory about a Liberal Arts college committing to the sort of community service opportunities offered by the CCE. In fact, it almost seems to be the opposite case, that the one must actually beget the other. But despite appearances, the accommodation is more difficult than it seems.

A simple thought experiment helps to illuminate some of the complications: imagine for a moment we accept that the particular sort of community service work that the CCE offers is indisputably good–noting here that I speak of the work itself, of bricks and mortar, and not of the CCE, or of the more general idea of community service. In other words, that the work Habitat offers (and other similar volunteer labor) is worthwhile. Accepting as much is only to accept that performing a good service for another individual, in need of that service, and without payment, is a good thing.

However, if we accept this premise (and it does seem to me a kind of necessary premise) then, if we are honest with ourselves, we are obliged to take a hard look at the Liberal Arts education we are taking from Amherst and try to figure out if the “good” it affords is as good as the “good” of the community service. In other words, if we accept that Habitat work is good, then the question becomes–is reading John Donne as valuable to the individual, and through the individual to society, as working for Habitat for Humanity? Or if not John Donne, any sort of study at Amherst College? If our answer is no–which, perhaps, at first it must be–we then have to ask ourselves, what it is about reading John Donne, or even, coming to the College in the first place, that justifies our being here for four years and not being in New Orleans rebuilding houses?

Of course, I don’t know-but there seem to me to be three immediate options: First, it is possible–though bizarre–to accept Habitat work as “good” without feeling an obligation to enlist in the cause. If short-term self-interest were the guiding force in our life, we might see the suffering of the people in New Orleans, be aware of our potential to relieve some of that suffering, and, because the cause did not immediately concern us (i.e. we are not suffering), we might still feel no need to travel to the place and help.

Second, we might clearly see our potential for doing good work (being the robust twenty-somethings that we are) and perceive our potential being wasted in the slow and more introspective movement of the Liberal Arts education. In other words, we might conclude that, yes, John Donne has written a very many pretty things, and even that we enjoy reading them, but that our reading them represents, in some fundamental way, an indulgence–an accident of our privilege–and, as it is only pretty rather than helpful, that we have no right to indulge in our inheritance, and must put down the books and locate our hammers.

Third, and differently, we might have had some experience with John Donne, perhaps, here:

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I

Did till we loved, were we not weaned till then,

But sucked on country pleasures childishly,

Twas so….

That, though it seemed unrelated at the time, and centuries apart from the storm-beaten city, lent something to us, in access to ourselves, that made more vivid both the suffering we would come to witness and our obligation entangled therein.

I have been vague and brief in my characterization of this last possibility, and some will, unfortunately, discount the entire notion only for the reason that one man has struggled to express its significance, today. It is the most difficult possibility to describe because, unless you have felt something lent to you, at some point in your stay at the College (in whatever field of study), it will most certainly seem like the empty words of a wandering imbecile, who, if you sympathize with the first hand, must seem like he is wasting his time, or, if you sympathize with the second, like he has compounded the problem by trying to justify the already wasted time.

Still, each hand has his blindness and his indulgence, and it seems to me, the burden of the original problem must be shared across all three (and others, perhaps). The problem is complicated-it is that I could tell you, had I never read a word of Donne, I would not have seen Orleans as vividly, but that I cannot show you what the difference is, what it feels like, or what its different mandates are–only that I went, and it seemed to me upon return, more and more certain, that our sympathies are only keen as our imaginations, and that imagination is won. Moreover, I believe it is won here, at the College, first and most importantly.

In any event, it is no longer a question of whether we should have a Center or not. We have a center, and presumably (barring some great scandal!) the effort spent on the Center was not done so provisionally. I believe, for better or worse, it is here to stay, if for no other reason that that the vague intentions of a vague majority have, historically, sunk deep roots.

Yet it seems clear to me that a serious commitment to a Center for Community Engagement (and if we are to commit, it should be seriously), if accepted, must represent a significant redirection of the resources of the College (resources, in the most general sense), perhaps towards progress, or then to pitfall, but at least away from the bedrock commitment to a measured, contemplative, imaginative, and essentially individual growth.

The redirection must also correspond to a revision in our understanding of the purpose of our own education: whether it is to prepare us for the immediate cries in our world, the hungry now, and poor, or whether some withdraw from the world–which might also be, originally, a commitment to that world–is necessary, at intervals, in our development, in order that we might hear cries clearly and feel their purpose deeply.