Duane Lacey: "AUCA students are intellectually curious"

February 12, 2016

Associate Professor of Philosophy Duane Lacey currently teaches in the FYS Division. In the near future, he will also be teaching in the new L.L.M. Graduate Program. Professor Lacey shares his academic experience, research projects, thoughts on AUCA, and even some advice for students in this brief interview.

Your department and position.

I am an Associate Professor of Philosophy currently teaching in the FYS Division, and in the near future will also be teaching in the new L.L.M. Graduate Program.

Tell us about your educational background and your career path.
My Ph.D. is in Philosophy from The New School for Social Research in New York. I finished my Doctorate in 2007 and have taught philosophy as well as other subjects at various institutions, including: Bifrost University in Iceland, St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland (U.S.), The Organization for Liberal Education in Georgia (O.L.E.G.)/Grigol Robikidzi University in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, The United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), and now here at AUCA. I enjoy teaching in different cultures and locations all over the world, and decided to come here as part of that pursuit. I have been teaching at AUCA for three years, teaching both Introduction to Philosophy as well as First Year Seminar. My teaching method centers around two basic pedagogies, namely well-crafted lectures, and engaged seminars. I encourage students to read, analyze, and think critically about primary sources, and to formulate their own questions; I believe a student’s ability to formulate good questions is crucially more important than memorizing answers. Good questioning skills are the same as good thinking skills. Answers and memorization are the death of knowledge, sound thought, and intellectual curiosity. Students who are curious and self-motivated are the only students who succeed, and I try to cultivate that same curiosity followed by sound scholarship in the classroom, as well as a true academic environment beyond the classroom.  

What kind of research projects have you been involved with? What are you working on now?
Over the past two years I have shifted my research focus from articles toward a book-length project on a concept that I call ‘Inadvertence.’ As I develop the chapters for this book I plan to ‘test’ them out at conferences in the coming months and over the summer. The last conference in which I presented this idea was in Vienna, and focused on Inadvertence in the hermeneutics of the ‘Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement.’ That was a little while ago, however, and my theory of Inadvertence has changed somewhat since that time. In fact I have been developing this idea as far back as my Master’s Thesis on the Presocratic thinker Empedocles, so I am basically gathering together old research and combining it with new material for the book.

What is the uniqueness of your department and AUCA’s students in general?

FYS, which as of this year is now its own Division at AUCA and not part of ‘General Education,’ is unique in its emphasis on seminar-style teaching and core liberal arts texts. It is the foundation for every student at AUCA no matter what his or her major might be, and embodies most of all the Bard educational model. For the most part, AUCA students are intellectually curious and self-motivated, not simply to get a degree and a job, but to learn. We, both faculty and students, as the academic community at AUCA, need to keep emphasizing this difference. We are not a vocational school, we are a Bard-affiliated liberal arts institution. Nor are we a ‘Kyrgyz-only’ institution. We are a regional University located in Bishkek. AUCA students can and should differentiate themselves from students at other universities and colleges in the region by embracing an attitude of individual intellectual curiosity and a voracious appetite for learning in all fields, a voracious appetite for reading, writing and discussion, and not just a run-of-the-mill intention to get a degree and a job.

What kind of opportunities do AUCA students receive after graduation?

With a Bard degree the opportunities for AUCA graduates are potentially limitless. Creativity, ingenuity, and critical thinking are the skills that distinguish graduates at all liberal arts institutions. If students take advantage of their time and resources at AUCA, then they will be able to overcome cultural biases and beliefs, overcome language barriers and preconceived life-goals. If they study texts closely in a self-motivated way, write sincerely, and discuss openly, and most importantly if they aspire to the standards of academic rigor and scholarship, and if we as faculty help them along that path, then the opportunities for AUCA graduates will be limitless. If every student at AUCA becomes a philosopher, i.e., a lover of wisdom, then regardless of his or her major every student will be successful.

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