Ross Brann is Cornell's Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies, Alice Cook House professor and dean, and a Stephen H. Weiss presidential fellow. The following piece is a version of an article that was previously published in the Cornell Daily Sun blog.

The local television access feed of the "Lincoln at Gettysburg" book project panel discussion in Barton Hall Aug. 24 was so dismaying I decided to post a comment on my Cornell Sun blog. Before I could complete a post about the choices some students made during their "first intellectual experience" at Cornell, I had a conversation with a distinguished university alumnus who boasts not one but three grandchildren currently at Cornell. He related that he had taken them out to dinner the evening before, and each proceeded in turn to tell him that they had navigated the course selection process (none is new to Cornell) without so much as a conversation with a faculty adviser. The alumnus-grandfather expressed disappointment with Cornell; I was thoroughly embarrassed for the university that is my intellectual home. At least his complaint gave me an opportunity to challenge some new students and chide some colleagues all in the same blog entry.

First the new students: By any measure you belong to the most select group in the university's history. You clearly excelled in secondary education and in performing on standardized tests, and you demonstrated extraordinary character and talent to merit admission. But when I tuned in to observe the book project panel discussion, I saw students asleep, students milling about, students on cell phones, students texting, students talking and laughing with others, and what seemed to be a precious few engaged by the faculty presentations. I gather it was uncomfortably hot in Barton. Admittedly the speakers were not rock stars or comedians, merely highly gifted and marvelously articulate thinkers; and I grant that Wills' "Lincoln at Gettysburg" might not have enthralled everyone equally (no work could), although it surely speaks to gripping and pressing questions of American political community and racism, among other things. So too I realize that it is probably unreasonable to convene 3,000 18- and 19-year-old students and expect you to place your social interaction on hold especially on only your third day at Cornell.

But ... this was the first intellectual experience Cornell offered its new students. Unless the photographers were dispatched from rival institutions to capture images of singularly disinterested Cornell students we have a problem: What are you doing here at Cornell? Our uniquely diverse institution of seven undergraduate colleges means some of you are here for training in preprofessional programs. But most of you new to Cornell are ostensibly here to engage in three or four years of open-ended, sustained intellectual inquiry and discovery whose imaginative and creative pleasures are invaluably rich, wondrous and lasting. Have you already opted out because all that matters these days is getting in and passing successfully through with degree in hand?

Now, in brief, the faculty: For all our significant cutting-edge research the first order of our business is the education of our students. Society (and Cornell) grants us academic freedom and provides us the facilities and the virtually unlimited opportunity to test hypotheses in the lab and to read, reflect and write on account of our educational mission. Yet some of us are apparently absent from our offices, unavailable or disinterested during orientation and registration when students are thinking about their courses of study. If we fail to advise our students in conversation about their programs and engage in reflection with them about their choice of courses, how can we hope to succeed in conveying the significance and value of thinking and ideas? What are we doing here at Cornell?