<p>What do you mean by liberal causes?</p>
<p>I consider Hc liberal but not screaming liberal like some other LACs.</p>
<p>Regarding "activist", I think Hc's history as an institution founder by Quakers gives it (and BMC and Swat) a special flavor that enhances the education provided. If you go to the website, the admissions videos address this. There's a range of political activism on campus from diehard to apathetic but I think Hc's mission statement attracts a few more kids who are interested in "making a difference." In addition, how things are taught and the dynamics between faculty and students enourages kids to ask questions... for example, the president, Steve Emerson (MD/PhD from Yale) has open office hours for kids to come in to talk about any concerns on their mind. This kind of respect accorded to students I think promotes an, well, since you mentioned it, "activist" mentality. </p>
<p>Building</a> for the Arts</p>
<p>“A Haughty Indifference to Fashion”
Architectural historian Michael J. Lewis ’79 on the difference between the cultures of Haverford and Williams:</p>
<p>Michael J. Lewis ’79 was an economics major at Haverford, but he now teaches art and architectural history at Williams College. He is the author of The Politics of the German Gothic Revival (1993); Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind (2001); The Gothic Revival (2002); and a forthcoming survey history of American art and architecture; he is also a frequent contributor of architectural criticism to journals such as The New Criterion and Commentary. It’s fair to say that Michael Lewis lives for architecture, but he is not at all sure that a new building is the best way to raise Haverford’s arts consciousness.</p>
<p>“I don’t believe the building does it,” says Lewis. “The building is a sign of success. The first line is the faculty, then the students, then the building.” </p>
<p>Lewis’ own aesthetic awakening came in his senior year at Haverford, when he took a course on urban history at Bryn Mawr. Upon graduation, he secured a Fulbright Fellowship to study the reconstruction of Germany after World War II, then earned a Ph.D. in architectural history at the University of Pennsylvania. After returning to Bryn Mawr for two years (1989-91) to teach the very course in urbanism that had sparked his professional interest, he served as a historian at the Canadian Center for Architecture before joining the Williams faculty in 1993. </p>
<p>When he got to Williams, Lewis says he assumed teaching at one highly selective liberal arts college would be pretty much like teaching at another, but he discovered that the cultures of Haverford and Williams were decidedly different, largely owing to their respective heritages. </p>
<p>“I tried doing exactly what had been done to me at Haverford and Bryn Mawr,” Lewis recalls. “I’d come in to class and say something like ‘Frank Lloyd Wright was a bad architect. Flat roofs leak, so that’s bad architecture.’ Then a student would say, ‘But, Mr. Lewis, is architecture just about keeping the rain out or is it about ideal form?’ When I got to Williams and I said ‘Frank Lloyd Wright is a bad architect,’ the students would just look at me and write it down. I could not push their buttons.” </p>
<p>Lewis came to believe that the difference between Haverford and Williams students was not a matter of intellect but of historical roots. </p>
<p>“Haverford and Bryn Mawr, while not religiously Quaker, have inherited the culture of a Quaker meeting house. Any moment, the spirit may move and someone will speak out. Williams is a Puritan culture. When I speak, I am Cotton Mather in his pulpit. There is a tremendous culture here of cordiality, the covenant of the camp. It may be the product of our remoteness. You don’t argue during the day with someone you’re sure to see that night.”</p>