Charles Hill wasn’t like other professors. He clomped into class attired in a stone-colored suit and motorcycle boots, which inspired much fascinated whispering. (I later learned that he started riding a motorcycle during his years in Saigon.) At first he hung back, assigning one of us to begin discussion. If the student had forgotten to prepare, he did not come to the rescue; he stared, silent, ready to endure the self-conscious flailing for as long as necessary. But he never let our conversation meander for too long without some oracular intervention. A flick of the wrist, deliberate white lines on the blackboard: This six-part schematic is the way Thucydides explained the fate of Athenian civilization, he would declare. Or: here, this ragged line is Machiavelli’s real meaning. Our pens raced to copy these cryptic chalkboard diagrams. Maybe we too could see, if we looked closely enough.
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