Maxwell School of Syracuse University

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Robert McClure, professor of political science and public affairs, greets his morning class with a simple question: “Who here plans to vote in the presidential election?” Seventeen hands rise in the air, one for each of the students sitting around the conference table. “That would really be something,” he says. “Statistically, only 20 to 30 percent of your age group votes. Now who here is actually registered?” By the show of hands, everyone (including one who has registered in her home town and in Syracuse, and who is now unsure where to vote).

McClure helps her sort that out. He then chides a student at the end of the table for losing his tentcard (“How will I ever learn your name? Make a new one.”) and praises another for arriving with a New York Times (“Is that a habit acquired at home, or one you’ve picked up since you’ve been at school?”). Finally, he turns conversation to the day’s topic: how liberty and equality in democracy were viewed by the ancient Greeks, during the suffragette movement, and by African-American leaders during Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement.

It’s heavy stuff for this group of mostly freshmen and sophomores, but McClure is clearly trying to lay a foundation. “Students come to university more consumed by their own time than by earlier times,” he’d told us earlier. “It’s difficult to get them to think about historical events from the point of view of the people at that time. They want to see it all as they see politics today.”

Given his credentials, McClure doesn’t need to be teaching a 100-level course this fall. But he’s in MAX 123 because both undergraduate education and citizenship education matter to him. They also happen to reside in Dean Mitchel Wallerstein’s strategic vision for the School.

A dozen years ago, as associate dean, McClure wrote the application that secured a $4-million grant, by which tenured faculty members would team-teach two interdisciplinary courses providing a foundation in the obligations of citizenship. McClure’s course, MAX 123: Critical Issues for the United States, covers domestic issues and students’ obligations as citizens. MAX 132: Global Community focuses on world issues and students’ roles as citizens of the world.

The MAX courses are rooted in Maxwell history. Into the 1960s, Maxwell’s citizenship courses were required of all Arts and Sciences students; alumni frequently cite them as a seminal college experience. “We wanted to offer the same kind of experience for today’s students,” McClure says.

Though the MAX courses are not required of all undergraduates, they do meet liberal-arts core requirements across the University. McClure views them as a fulfillment of the Maxwell mission. “These courses encourage students to take their obligations as citizens seriously and to do the kind of hard reflective analytic work to make a considered public judgment,” he says. “That’s something that’s been part of Maxwell from the beginning, and something George Maxwell would be proud of.”

When McClure stepped down as senior associate dean in 2003, he chose to coordinate MAX 123 and teach one of its sections. He says this class has special importance in the long run. “No matter what they do professionally,” he concludes, “these students are all going to be citizens, hopefully active and informed.”

MAX 123 is McClure’s first teaching assignment in 20 years. “I was eager to see if I could do what I’ve long told other people would be easy to do,” he says. He returned to teaching with modest jitters, he admits.

Three weeks into the semester, though, things are going smoothly. McClure’s students are able to debate the tensions between the pillar values of liberty and equality in a democracy. The student at the end of the table promises to make a new name card before next class; the other one deliberates whether to cast her ballot absentee or vote in Syracuse.

-- Renee Gearhart Levy