After Associate Philosophy Professor Nancy Bauer took her first philosophy course as an undergraduate at Harvard, she quickly decided that philosophy was not her calling. These days, however, Bauer teaches classes at Tufts that cover film, feminism and ethics - all in the Tufts philosophy department. "Looking back, I know that I was always interested in the big theoretical picture, and in the big philosophical questions," Bauer said. "But the way that the course I took was taught just didn't work for me."
Bauer majored in social sciences at Harvard and returned to the university as a graduate student of philosophy, receiving her Ph.D. in 1997. But for the past eight years, she has been imparting her philosophical knowledge to Tufts students.
As an undergraduate in Cambridge, Bauer had one word to describe the experience: overwhelming. "I was the first student from my high school to go to Harvard, and I wasn't prepared academically or socially. I found it really overwhelming while I was there," she said.
During Bauer's first semester at Harvard, her initial foray into the extracurricular scene didn't work out as well as she had hoped it would.
"I had been a singer in high school, and in my first semester of my freshman year I got into a pretty elite vocal group," she said. "But I didn't like the vibe there - they were all kind of snobby."
So she wandered down Plympton Street to the Harvard Crimson, the university's daily newspaper. Bauer stayed with the Crimson for the rest of her college career.
"I had always been interested in writing, and at the time, the Crimson was the best college newspaper in the country," she said. "While I was first trying it out, I was incredibly impressed with the quality of work - and those people have gone on to do award-winning work."
Bauer's devotion to the Crimson was enormous: "I spent at least 50 to 60 hours a week at the Crimson, and most of my friends were there, too... we would be up at 4 a.m. writing our paper on manual typewriters," she said, laughing.
Bauer's time as a journalist did more than put her name in print. "I was really attracted to finding a place where I could put down my roots and orient myself among the sea of other people," she said.
Bauer is quick to explain that the undergraduate experience at Harvard was not an easy one: "I was totally overwhelmed. It's a big, impersonal place, with no real center," she said. "I felt lost and frightened - but I found a home for myself at the paper."
Bauer is the only professor in the Tufts philosophy department specializing in feminist philosophy.
"When I was in college, everyone called themselves a feminist," she said. "To say you weren't a feminist was akin to saying that you were a horrible, terrible person."
But awareness of feminism was greater then, she says. "My interest in feminism was the same as everyone else's. Asking how someone became a feminist was like asking, 'How did you not become a racist?'" she said.
Social change was certainly afoot during Bauer's undergraduate years. "When I started college, the gay and lesbian community was mostly underground," she said. "By the time I graduated, there were gay and lesbian
awareness days, and open awareness. There was a huge shift in people's understanding of gay and lesbian people."
The social change of her era was meaningful for Bauer. "It had a huge effect on me, that these people could be so brave. It was the most profound social change of my college career," she said.
"One thing that is great about Harvard is that it is a truly diverse institution, much more so than Tufts," Bauer said. "There were massive distinctions in class, race, country of origin... it was incredibly eye-opening to see that not everyone lived the way that I did."
So how does Bauer's Harvard experience compare to what she sees at Tufts? "The thing I find most overwhelming at Tufts is how happy most students are," she said. "I'm used to a place where students are unhappy!"
The academic focus is different, too. "The fact that Tufts is so focused on undergraduates is huge. At Harvard, the focus is on graduate students, and it's very unusual for undergrads to form relationships with professors - which isn't true at Tufts," she said.
Perhaps one of Harvard's biggest influences on Bauer is how not to teach: "The way I teach is due to my unhappiness at Harvard," she said. "I still try to base the way I teach on not doing the things I thought were poorly done there."
Although Bauer's experience wasn't perfect, she has some positive feelings about her undergraduate experience. "I don't regret going there, but I don't think I'd wish it on anyone else," she said. "But I did meet so many interesting people, and it opened my eyes to the diversity of people in the world - that has a lasting value for me."
