Mike Solomon's thesis

Twenty five years of teaching experience at Wesleyan left me many memories, but not many contacts with the students I taught, even though I used to send out a Christmas letter to about a hundred of them.

I tend to remember more about the limits of classroom teaching than its successes. For example, once when I was teaching peace psychology at Wesleyan in 1984 a young man came to me during my office hours and asked if I would help him do a thesis on revolution. He seemed sincere in his interest, so I said OK and invited him to have a weekly meeting with me.

For his first assignment I asked him to bring me books from the library that were published recently and classified under revolution. The next week he came to our appointment bearing a tall stack of books.

I asked him to look through the prefaces of all the books and tell me who funded the books. Almost without exception they were funded by the CIA, the US State Department or some foundation close to them. The young man looked perplexed. "What do you suppose is going on?" I asked him.

"I guess these are books about how to understand revolutions in order to block them," he replied.

"Is that what you want?" I asked him, and he replied, "No."

"In that case, I suggest that you go to Nicaragua during the spring break and interview people about their revolution. Can you get some money from your parents? And do you speak Spanish?"

He replied that his parents might be willing to help him, but that he spoke no Spanish.

"That's not too bad," I said. "When you arrive, ask your first taxi driver to find you an interpreter/guide, and you'll be OK. And be sure to take a camera and take photos of all the people that you interview."

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