British University Instruction in 1966
The following is from an article by Tony Judt in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books. It concerns his early days at Kings College, Cambridge, and particularly the instruction he received (cir a 1966).
My greatest debt, though I did not appreciate it at the time, [was to] a very young Research Fellow, now a distinguished professor emeritus, who... in the course of one extended conversation on the political thought of John Locke... broke through my well-armored adolescent Marxism and first introduced me to the challenges of intellectual history. He managed this by the simple expedient of listening very intently to everything I said, taking it with extraordinary seriousness on its own terms, and then gently and respectfully picking it apart in a way that I could both accept and respect.
"That," says Judt, "is teaching." Ands so it is. Judt finishes by saying, "It is also a certain sort of liberalism: the kind that engages in good faith with dissenting (or simply mistaken) opinions across a broad political spectrum."