Wide-eyed and tight-lipped, students sit facing the podium in the Warner Hemicycle. The class will continue its discussion of Plato’s Republic today. As Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science Murray Dry begins to write his outline, the whispers begin.
“Is that a d?”
“No, no – that’s definitely an ‘s’ and a ‘t’?”
“Positive?”
“No.
Mr. Daniel Dignan ’17 — Dry always addresses his students using honorifics — suggests the class set up a fund for handwriting lessons. There’s a murmur of agreement.
Dry turns around, his face beaming. He begins his lecture with a three-minute-long question addressed to Ms. Ella Marks ’17. She is clueless; it’s not her fault. Dry restates the question.
If you have done the reading thoroughly, the lecture and ensuing discussion is a delight. There is passion in his voice that draws students in — a passion fueled by his desire to convey the zenith of his chosen author’s philosophical heights, even if he has to go overtime. This is his 47th year teaching political science, and few if any students remember him ever finishing class on time.
If you haven’t done the reading thoroughly, however, “your shame will be very public and your justice swiftly dealt,” wrote Mr. Caleb Cunningham ’14 in a Campus article two years ago.
Sometimes, Professor Dry will ask a particularly difficult question and his face will contort with anxiety as one by one, his students fail to come up with the answer.
Mr. Alex Brockelman ’18 remembers one such day. The class was discussing the Republic with a particular ferocity. Dry had just asked the class whether or not the philosophical life was possible.
Dry knew it was a tough question; the purpose of Socrates’ teaching was at stake. He wanted his students to stimulate their intellects and utilize their reasoning capacity to their fullest. If that involved buckling knees under the intense gaze of Dry’s eyes, so be it.
Nine people attempted to answer the question. All were wrong. Brockelman raised his hand and said that the philosophical life is possible as Socrates himself embodied it.
“AND THE DUCK COMES DOWN!” Dry shouted.
He started pacing around the room in ecstasy, his face red as a tomato and his hands held high in the air. The students – some excited, others still as a statue – heaved a sigh of relief and began to laugh.
Dry was referring to the duck that dropped whenever an audience member said the secret word on You Bet Your Life, a 1950s comedy quiz show.
This is trademark Dry: exacting and exuberant. He will laugh uproariously at Socrates’ hints at the impossibility of the communalism of men and women in Plato’s Republic.
For Dry, there are two prerequisites for good teaching: interest in the subject matter and in talking about it. He fell in love with political philosophy as a senior at the University of Chicago. As a Ph.D. candidate, he decided that being on one side of the lecture wasn’t very different from being on the other. When a friend recommended applying for a teaching position at Middlebury in 1967, he did not hesitate.
“Why have I stayed? My wife asks me that too. She said she thought we’d get married, I’d do well and we’d go elsewhere!” he exclaims, laughing.
From the very first day, he felt that Middlebury was the right place for him. He has occasionally taught at some other institutions. For him, the differences between teaching at a small liberal arts college and a major university are stark. One just cannot find time “to be the complete teacher of your students,” he says.
And then there’s the freedom.
“Nobody says, ‘What on earth are you doing teaching a course called Love and Friendship?’” he says. “They even say it’s pretty good.”
Dry met his wife, Cecelia, at the College. She started as a student the same year he began to teach, and was among the first group of students housed in mixed-gender dorms. She took two of his courses.
“I don’t think she wanted to do constitutional law,” he says with a chuckle.
When they got serious, she decided she was not going to take any more of his classes. He believes her friends and fellow students accepted their relationship, even though it was unusual.
“It is a little more difficult to do now,” he adds with a smile.
Dry has two daughters: Rachel, who attended Harvard University, and Judith, who graduated from the College. Judith found a world here in complete contrast to her father’s. She was a theater major and did not take a single political science course. He would have liked if she had, but concludes that the experience turned out perfectly for her.
“There are many Middleburys in Middlebury,” he concludes.
For Dry, teaching always complemented his familial responsibilities. However long his office hours might have been, he was always five minutes away from home. Though Cecelia had the major parental role, he was the parent who “did the trips to the school,” he says. He was a timer for his daughters’ swim team and served on the board for Middlebury Union High School.
Mr. Dignan says if he were to create a statue of Dry, it would depict him leaning back on his podium with arms outstretched, book in one hand, chalk in the other; a timeless visage of intellectual might and fortitude.
Professor Dry is known for his absolute intolerance of hats in class, his struggle with memorizing names, his hatred of e-books, and his habit of calling on students instead of waiting for volunteers.
Most of all, however, he is known and respected for his ability to inspire his students care about learning from the great philosophers. The fear of being called on is part of the reason, but mostly it is his enthusiasm, his vigor, and his love for the material he is teaching. He is in love with Plato, and will not rest until he makes you fall in love with him too. Aristotle, Hobbes and Locke are mountains of knowledge, but the best way to reach their summits at the College is to go through the Murray Dry experience.
A version of this article appeared in the Jan. 2015 issue of “The Snow Globe,” a publication of the J-term course, Reporting and Writing.
Nothing Dry about the Murray Dry Experience
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