UUP Spotlight: Jeff Miller, Political Science
First published in November 2012 edition of The Bullhorn. The original publication can be found here.
I will admit, the first time I saw Jeff Miller’s name on the old UUP website as the Vice President for Academics, I was determined to get the chapter intern position. After three great successive courses with the political theory professor, how was I going to pass up the opportunity to work with him again? As Chapter Intern, I do not see Jeff as frequently as I would taking one of his courses, but when I stepped into his office for our interview, it felt like I was retaking Individual and Society: pleasant, motivating, and intellectually invigorating. Whenever I run into my minor adviser and previous Honors Director, I remember why I fell in love with SUNY New Paltz.
Jeff Miller eagerly starts off the interview talking about his little girl Clio and her developing New York accent. Born in the UCLA hospital and growing up mainly in the southern portion of San Diego, the Political Science professor “still feels a little bit like a non-New Yorker. The seasonal changes kind of catch me by surprise. I know they’re coming and I know what to expect, but I would be comfortable with no seasons and constant 70 degree sunny weather.” After receiving a bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Cruz, Miller worked for a state congressman, which cured him of the desire to work in politics and manifested his true loves of political theory and Ancient Greece into an academic pursuit.
What inspired his passion for the subjects? “My grandmother, when I was a little kid, used to read me stories from Herodotus and Thucydides, believe it or not. All the males, on my mother’s side, for several generations, had the middle name Leonidas; that’s the name of the Spartan commander at the Battle of Thermopylae. The Spartans held back the Persian army at bay for several days against insurmountable odds. There’s this great story about Leonidas, and this was read to me all the time, and my grandfather and uncle have this name. I escaped the name; my middle name is Lee, but it’s for Leonidas. So, something in my name, something in my early childhood, reading all the myths and stories as a kid, must have moved me towards it naturally in college.”
Miller then guessed my next question: why Greeks? Despite such an affinity to the subject at a young age, what keeps the political theorist attached to the material to this day? “For a political theorist, the Greeks represent something fundamentally different from the way that we approach politics, in terms of basic assumptions of the self and the relationship between the self and society. In Greek tragedies, there are no clear, easy answers: there is just a choice between two irreconcilable, bad options. When reading Plato and Socrates, you’re forced to provide your own answers. The Greeks have a particular way of reaching out and grabbing you, unlike a lot of traditional philosophy. Traditional philosophy has this tyrannical perspective—here’s the argument and here’s the conclusion—and that’s less engaging.”
Just as Jeff Miller gravitated towards Ancient Greek political theory, he gravitated towards his faculty status at SUNY New Paltz. When Miller pursued a master’s degree in political theory at the University of Virginia, he would take trips up to New Paltz for rock climbing. He noticed the college, said “Wow, how nice!”, but never thought he would get a chance to teach at the school. Years later, with a PhD in Political Theory and a few one-year visiting assistant professorships under his belt, “the stars aligned” and he was hired as the political theorist of the Political Science department in 1999.
Two years later, he accepted the position of Honors Director and ran the program for a decade. The Honors Program’s focus on small, discussion-based seminars that probe the difficult questions was highly attractive to the inquisitive professor. He continues to use discussion-based teaching over lectures, even in political theory courses with twenty to thirty students. He also admired the driven intellectual students who populated the Honors courses. Still, for a young professor following the legacy of Karin Andriolo, Professor Emeritus in Anthropology who launched the program, “to be entrusted with the program was both great and scary.” While Honors Director, he still taught some political theory courses, but at least half of his focus was devoted to expanding and enhancing the program, serving as advisor to all Honors students, and learning the administrative ropes.
In my first semester at New Paltz, I was a student in the last Individual and Society class he has taught. A year later, after always “wanting to come back to his department and work on the program more robustly,” he stepped down as Honors Director and devoted more time to his field.
Each semester, he teaches three political theory courses: one 4-credit survey on classic or modern political theory and two extra courses on a variety of topics, from liberalism to Theater and Politics. Over the course of his fourteen years at SUNY New Paltz, but especially in the past year post-Honors Director, he created most of the political theory courses he teaches today. “There weren’t a lot of theory courses on the books, and I was not particularly interested in doing the ones that were.” He also tries to serve on one committee every year. He has been on the Budget, Goals, and Plans Committee for the past three years, but he also serves on a variety of smaller committees, including a search this semester for an Ancient historian in the History department, which is a certain interest to the Ancient Greek aficionado. He was also just elected as a Liberal Arts and Sciences representative to the Liberal Education Committee.
One of the potential items on the table for the group is a move towards all four-credit courses, which Miller expresses can have great benefits. “As long as there’s not an overall increase in teaching, the credit shift would be a really good thing for students. Students are sometimes taking six or even seven courses. They don’t have the time to really think about their courses, and one or two of them end up being a sort of gut course where they say, ‘Oh, I don’t really need to pay attention.’ If you’re not paying attention to the course, why are you doing it? If it’s just to check off a box for your graduation form, then it’s a waste of time and money. At UC Santa Cruz, we were on a quarter system, and the average load was three classes a semester. So I remember having this feeling of expansive space, and I had a lot of time to think about whatever the course was doing. That’s a really important part of the undergraduate liberal arts experience. It’s a way to discover who you are, as opposed to being busy all the time.”
Along with balancing the Honors Program, his courses, and varying committee memberships, Jeff Miller has been involved with UUP from fairly early on in his SUNY New Paltz career as either a delegate or an officer. Within a week of Miller’s first year at New Paltz, former Chapter President and political science colleague Glenn McNitt encouraged the young political theorist to run for delegate the next year. After “getting his feet on the ground,” Miller took up the offer in 2001, the same year he became the Honors Director. His first officer position was Treasurer, for a single term, which he admits is the “most administratively taxing. It’s not something I’m particularly interested in doing, but I can.” Today, as VP for Academics, Miller finds he is “more engaged with issues that concern the faculty.” His current dedication to an accurate display of faculty workload in light of the “distinctive workload creep since I’ve been here, especially over the last two or three years,” reflects his interest to serve effectively as a representative of the faculty. Miller echoes concern that large increases in teaching load have a detrimental impact on the quality of instruction, advising, and research. Lack of time for research is a widespread complaint because of the “really close link between research and teaching. People come into the academe because they like to teach but they also like to pursue knowledge. To take away one of the primary parts is really going to do damage.” Research enhances instruction and benefits both the students and the instructor.
When asked what he would say to people who are on the fence about getting involved, he draws upon ideas of political and community obligation. “I don’t think everyone is dispositionally suited for or has interest in the union. But you don’t need to think very long on what unions have given you as an individual, either as an employee at New Paltz or as a worker in the United States, to see that, out of fairness, you should give something back. Your involvement can be anything from the bare minimum, becoming a full member, to running for office or taking on one of the major leadership responsibilities.”
Coming back full circle, I jokingly ask if Clio is going to be speaking Ancient Greek anytime soon. John Stuart Mill relayed in his autobiography that he was forced to learn multiple languages by the time he was four years old; Clio is past that point, but she recently received a deluxe kid’s edition of the Odyssey from colleagues Brian Obach and Ilgu Ozler for her fourth birthday, which she and her father have been reading ever since. He admits that she’s very girly, with nurturing tendencies and a love of dresses, which is something he didn’t understand very much at first since he grew up in a house full of boys. However, she also has a full suit of armor with a fake sword that she wears around the house, “sometimes with the dress on underneath it, a warrior princess, and she goes around chasing the dog. Fortunately, he’s still faster than her.” Despite an effort to keep public and private life separate, “these boundaries are not clear and distinct,” and that’s certainly recognizable in Jeff Miller’s background and the love of Ancient Greece that he shares with his daughter.
Jeff Miller eagerly starts off the interview talking about his little girl Clio and her developing New York accent. Born in the UCLA hospital and growing up mainly in the southern portion of San Diego, the Political Science professor “still feels a little bit like a non-New Yorker. The seasonal changes kind of catch me by surprise. I know they’re coming and I know what to expect, but I would be comfortable with no seasons and constant 70 degree sunny weather.” After receiving a bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Cruz, Miller worked for a state congressman, which cured him of the desire to work in politics and manifested his true loves of political theory and Ancient Greece into an academic pursuit.
What inspired his passion for the subjects? “My grandmother, when I was a little kid, used to read me stories from Herodotus and Thucydides, believe it or not. All the males, on my mother’s side, for several generations, had the middle name Leonidas; that’s the name of the Spartan commander at the Battle of Thermopylae. The Spartans held back the Persian army at bay for several days against insurmountable odds. There’s this great story about Leonidas, and this was read to me all the time, and my grandfather and uncle have this name. I escaped the name; my middle name is Lee, but it’s for Leonidas. So, something in my name, something in my early childhood, reading all the myths and stories as a kid, must have moved me towards it naturally in college.”
Miller then guessed my next question: why Greeks? Despite such an affinity to the subject at a young age, what keeps the political theorist attached to the material to this day? “For a political theorist, the Greeks represent something fundamentally different from the way that we approach politics, in terms of basic assumptions of the self and the relationship between the self and society. In Greek tragedies, there are no clear, easy answers: there is just a choice between two irreconcilable, bad options. When reading Plato and Socrates, you’re forced to provide your own answers. The Greeks have a particular way of reaching out and grabbing you, unlike a lot of traditional philosophy. Traditional philosophy has this tyrannical perspective—here’s the argument and here’s the conclusion—and that’s less engaging.”
Just as Jeff Miller gravitated towards Ancient Greek political theory, he gravitated towards his faculty status at SUNY New Paltz. When Miller pursued a master’s degree in political theory at the University of Virginia, he would take trips up to New Paltz for rock climbing. He noticed the college, said “Wow, how nice!”, but never thought he would get a chance to teach at the school. Years later, with a PhD in Political Theory and a few one-year visiting assistant professorships under his belt, “the stars aligned” and he was hired as the political theorist of the Political Science department in 1999.
Two years later, he accepted the position of Honors Director and ran the program for a decade. The Honors Program’s focus on small, discussion-based seminars that probe the difficult questions was highly attractive to the inquisitive professor. He continues to use discussion-based teaching over lectures, even in political theory courses with twenty to thirty students. He also admired the driven intellectual students who populated the Honors courses. Still, for a young professor following the legacy of Karin Andriolo, Professor Emeritus in Anthropology who launched the program, “to be entrusted with the program was both great and scary.” While Honors Director, he still taught some political theory courses, but at least half of his focus was devoted to expanding and enhancing the program, serving as advisor to all Honors students, and learning the administrative ropes.
In my first semester at New Paltz, I was a student in the last Individual and Society class he has taught. A year later, after always “wanting to come back to his department and work on the program more robustly,” he stepped down as Honors Director and devoted more time to his field.
Each semester, he teaches three political theory courses: one 4-credit survey on classic or modern political theory and two extra courses on a variety of topics, from liberalism to Theater and Politics. Over the course of his fourteen years at SUNY New Paltz, but especially in the past year post-Honors Director, he created most of the political theory courses he teaches today. “There weren’t a lot of theory courses on the books, and I was not particularly interested in doing the ones that were.” He also tries to serve on one committee every year. He has been on the Budget, Goals, and Plans Committee for the past three years, but he also serves on a variety of smaller committees, including a search this semester for an Ancient historian in the History department, which is a certain interest to the Ancient Greek aficionado. He was also just elected as a Liberal Arts and Sciences representative to the Liberal Education Committee.
One of the potential items on the table for the group is a move towards all four-credit courses, which Miller expresses can have great benefits. “As long as there’s not an overall increase in teaching, the credit shift would be a really good thing for students. Students are sometimes taking six or even seven courses. They don’t have the time to really think about their courses, and one or two of them end up being a sort of gut course where they say, ‘Oh, I don’t really need to pay attention.’ If you’re not paying attention to the course, why are you doing it? If it’s just to check off a box for your graduation form, then it’s a waste of time and money. At UC Santa Cruz, we were on a quarter system, and the average load was three classes a semester. So I remember having this feeling of expansive space, and I had a lot of time to think about whatever the course was doing. That’s a really important part of the undergraduate liberal arts experience. It’s a way to discover who you are, as opposed to being busy all the time.”
Along with balancing the Honors Program, his courses, and varying committee memberships, Jeff Miller has been involved with UUP from fairly early on in his SUNY New Paltz career as either a delegate or an officer. Within a week of Miller’s first year at New Paltz, former Chapter President and political science colleague Glenn McNitt encouraged the young political theorist to run for delegate the next year. After “getting his feet on the ground,” Miller took up the offer in 2001, the same year he became the Honors Director. His first officer position was Treasurer, for a single term, which he admits is the “most administratively taxing. It’s not something I’m particularly interested in doing, but I can.” Today, as VP for Academics, Miller finds he is “more engaged with issues that concern the faculty.” His current dedication to an accurate display of faculty workload in light of the “distinctive workload creep since I’ve been here, especially over the last two or three years,” reflects his interest to serve effectively as a representative of the faculty. Miller echoes concern that large increases in teaching load have a detrimental impact on the quality of instruction, advising, and research. Lack of time for research is a widespread complaint because of the “really close link between research and teaching. People come into the academe because they like to teach but they also like to pursue knowledge. To take away one of the primary parts is really going to do damage.” Research enhances instruction and benefits both the students and the instructor.
When asked what he would say to people who are on the fence about getting involved, he draws upon ideas of political and community obligation. “I don’t think everyone is dispositionally suited for or has interest in the union. But you don’t need to think very long on what unions have given you as an individual, either as an employee at New Paltz or as a worker in the United States, to see that, out of fairness, you should give something back. Your involvement can be anything from the bare minimum, becoming a full member, to running for office or taking on one of the major leadership responsibilities.”
Coming back full circle, I jokingly ask if Clio is going to be speaking Ancient Greek anytime soon. John Stuart Mill relayed in his autobiography that he was forced to learn multiple languages by the time he was four years old; Clio is past that point, but she recently received a deluxe kid’s edition of the Odyssey from colleagues Brian Obach and Ilgu Ozler for her fourth birthday, which she and her father have been reading ever since. He admits that she’s very girly, with nurturing tendencies and a love of dresses, which is something he didn’t understand very much at first since he grew up in a house full of boys. However, she also has a full suit of armor with a fake sword that she wears around the house, “sometimes with the dress on underneath it, a warrior princess, and she goes around chasing the dog. Fortunately, he’s still faster than her.” Despite an effort to keep public and private life separate, “these boundaries are not clear and distinct,” and that’s certainly recognizable in Jeff Miller’s background and the love of Ancient Greece that he shares with his daughter.
