Two
conflicting images form my impression of Ed McLean
at the Wabash podium. The first burned into my
memory after one of his talks in the Chapel, when
I noticed one of his colleagues leaving the building
in frustration, shaking his head and obviously
angered by the professor’s conservative
views.
I captured the
second this March in Detchon Center, when Professor
McLean wheeled himself to the podium to accept
this year’s David Peck Medal for Eminence
in the Law from the College’s Pre-Law Society—the
alumni-student group he helped to create 30 years
ago. The standing ovation lasted more than a minute,
enough to bring a grateful smile and sparkle to
the eyes of a man who spent much of the year fighting
bad health.
There are dozens
of stories behind such respect and admiration
from some of the state’s most prominent
attorneys, Indiana’s secretary of state,
the Pre-Law society’s most supportive alumni,
and some of the College’s most respected
professors. As political science professor David
Hadley says, Ed McLean is “no ordinary man,
but one of strongly held beliefs, not all of them
mainstream, who has provoked us to think more
clearly about what we know and believe and do.”
Those beliefs,
that provocation, have been a part of McLean’s
teaching that has benefited generations of Wabash
students.
And they tell the
story best.
Many
years of hard work in and out of the classroom
paid off for author and assistant professor of
English Joy Castro, who was granted tenure this
semester.
Since her arrival
on campus in the fall of 1997 as a Byron K. Trippet
Assistant Professor of English, Castro has served
on a range of College committees, and was actively
involved in the strategic planning process. She
serves as chair of the Faculty Development Committee,
and is a member of the Gender Issues, Fine Arts
Fellowship, and Visiting Artists Series Planning
committees. Castro is the Wabash liaison to the
GLCA Women’s Studies Program, and has been
involved in the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal
Arts.
“Joy is not
only an excellent teacher, but she is constantly
looking for ways to improve,” Dean Mauri
Ditzler says, “Every semester she tries
something new in her courses in an effort to improve
her teaching, and she is active in sharing those
ideas with her colleagues.”
Castro has worked
diligently to nurture student writing, and has
been the advisor to the Wabash Review, as well
as a frequent advisor and contributor to Wabash
Magazine. She also has worked as a volunteer at
the Montgomery County Family Crisis Shelter.
Castro will be
on sabbatical during the 2003-04 school year,
and has been honored as the McLain-McTurnan-Arnold
Research Scholar for the spring semester. Castro
will use her research sabbatical to complete a
book-length manuscript on Modernism, Feminism,
and the Work of Margery Latimer for University
Press of Florida.
Castro’s
short fiction and essays have appeared in North
American Review, Mid-American Review, Puerto del
Sol, Quarterly West, Wabash Magazine, Indianapolis
Monthly, and Works and Days, the newsletter of
the Wabash College English Department. Her research
on Margery Latimer appears in the American National
Biography and the Review of Contemporary Fiction.
“I am constantly
inspired when reading her creative works,”
adds Ditzler. “Joy’s characters so
accurately depict the lives of people who struggle
in our society that many of us who read her work
become inspired. We become inspired to work harder
at the educational enterprise in an effort to
build a stronger society in which to live.”
“It was early
in my freshman year, and many of us still had
our “deer in headlights” eyes as we
transitioned from the ease of high school to studying
the Wabash way,” recalls attorney Matt Griffith
’89, co-founder of the College’s Moot
Court competition. “Professor McLean asked
one of my fellow wide-eyed students his opinion
on some political science theory, and the student
spoke with great conviction. He could not have
been more committed to his theory, as he tried
to impress Professor McLean, mostly with enthusiasm,
volume and emotion.
“He never
saw it coming,” Griffith says. “ Slowly,
Professor McLean engaged the student in a series
of questions and answers. Fifteen minutes later,
and unbeknownst to my highly-charged classmate,
Professor McLean had him arguing against his original
position with as much commitment as he had started
his argument in the opposite direction!”
“One of
Dr. McLean's greatest strengths as a teacher is
his sharp and quick wit, hence his nickname, ‘Fast
Eddy’,” says attorney Scott Himsel
’85. “He engages students in a series
of quick and challenging questions that allow
the student to discover his unstated assumptions
and perceive flaws in his logic. As a result,
we learned to make more thoughtful arguments,
critiqued arguments more skillfully, and learned
how to stand our ground. It was the quintessential
Wabash experience: to think critically and express
ourselves persuasively.”
“Professor
McLean made it very clear that you needed to be
prepared for class,” attorney Bob Grand
’78 recalls. And you paid the price if you
weren’t.
“I made
the mistake of missing one of Professor McLean’s
classes on constitutional law—a class with
just three students,” Griffith remembers.
“The next time class was held, he ‘asked’
me if I would like to teach that day. He rose
from his chair, pulled it to the far corner of
the room, crossed his legs, and sat back to enjoy
the show. Not another word was heard from him
until the class was over. Needlees to say, I did
not miss another class that semester!”
Griffith had the
chance to see McLean’s questioning skills
in a court setting, when the professor served
as Montgomery County deputy prosecutor.
“He was
examining a child support defendant—a big,
tough man, who thought he would not be pushed
around and told what to do. Twenty minutes and
few dozen questions later, Professor McLean nearly
had the man in tears from the guilt of not supporting
his child. I bet the man made his future child
support payments timely.”
But such tactics
were reserved for the courtroom.
“Professor
McLean challenged students, but he was never argumentative,
harsh, or mean,” Griffith says. “He
taught us, but he also challenged us to learn;
with few words, he made it absolutely clear that
it was our responsibility to learn. And that is
a lesson I took with me to law school and now
into practice.”
McLean’s
passion for the law became the catalyst for many
of his students’ vocational path.
“He was
the greatest influence in my decision to attend
law school,” recalls Indiana Secretary of
State Todd Rokita ’92. “He helped
me discover what I really wanted to do after Wabash.”
“Taking
constitutional law with Dr. McLean convinced me
to pursue the study of law,” says Grand.
“He was always available to help a student;
I remember stopping by often to talk about class
or the law.’
Once aware of
their vocation, McLean’s students fared
well.
“I placed
seventh in my entire law school my first year
in a moot court competition, because Professor
McLean had already taught me how to form an argument,
articulate a position, listen to questions, and
give well-reasoned, logical and structured answers,”
Griffith says. “Arguing against second and
third-year law students was easy compared to discussing
the law with Professor McLean in class!”
The McLean Legacy
“This semester,
I attended one of Dr. McLean’s classes,
11 years after graduation, just to get one last
formal dose of his teaching and thought processes,”
says Rokita. “He is the master of asking
“why?” to any premise put forward.
I employ that same analytical approach in my day-to-day
work as secretary of state, asking, ‘Why
does it have to be done this way?’ Things
he taught me about the practice of political philosophy,
I use everyday.”
Other McLean students
echo Rokita’s thoughts, and another—Scott
Himsel—will carry McLean’s teaching
forward at Wabash, teaching Constitutional Law
this fall with John Agresto.
“I’m
excited about teaching,” Himsel says. “Dr.
McLean’s courses were my first opportunity
to study Supreme Court opinions and to debate
Constitutional issues, and it was exciting and
challenging, especially at Wabash where students
and faculty thrive on that kind of intellectual
engagement. To be able to carry that forward is
a great honor.”
Himsel has already
tasted that intellectual engagement as a participant
and judge in another of McLean’s legacies—the
Moot Court competition. Griffith says the Wabash
competition was inspired by McLean and his courses
on Constitutional law.
But senior Seamus
Boyce says that, even with such a legacy in place,
McLean will be sorely missed on campus.
“He is a
gentleman, a mentor, and teacher unlike any other,”
Boyce says. Interviewing the teacher for The Bachelor,
Boyce took this advice to students from McLean.
“He warned
us ‘not to make everything into a political
issue,’” Boyce wrote. “All this
creates is unneeded guilt and inefficient conflict.
Each Wabash man is a person, not a political identity.”
As professor Hadley—hardly
one to see eye-to-eye with McLean ideologically
—noted in a tribute to his colleague:
“Students
found in Ed what we all have seen in him: a person
of unwavering commitment to principles and strong
belief in reason, who, at the same time, brought
a deep civility, even gentility, to our discourses.
As a teacher of politics and the law, he at times
found himself facing views and positions which
seemed wrong-headed or even distasteful to him.
Never, however, in conversation or debate did
he lose his civility or his commitment to humane
values. This faculty has indeed been fortunate
to have had such a colleague.”