We Need to Talk

As part of my teaching life over the past dozen years, I’ve gathered with between ten and fifteen undergraduate students twice a week to talk. What we talk about depends somewhat on the subject of the course: the essays of the writer Zadie Smith, say, or the life and work of James Baldwin. I often organize courses about food. Classrooms sometimes have views of the courtyard where other students, nowadays prohibited from smoking, still gather. Other classrooms look onto hallways, where students and teachers pass by, looking in on our conversations. Once, when