A new year always brings with it both hope and fear, hope that the year will be a good one and fear that it might be worse than past years. This year, in particular, I suspect the whole nation approaches the new year in such a way, hoping beyond hope that we may have a better year than last.
For me, this coming year is actually quite special. In a few days, I turn 50, a milestone that I approach with mixed feelings, glad I'm here to celebrate it, but wishing somehow that I were still 35. This coming year also marks my 25th year in university teaching and my 10th year as a part-time journalist and legal commentator. And, what is particularly exciting for me, I am on officially on leave from the university for the next semester. This is the first time in my academic career that I have ever had a leave. The combination of anniversaries with this leave has given me pause for thought in the past few weeks. How best to spend this precious time?
I have three research projects for the next semester, each of which, I hope, will result in a book and some articles. But in spite of these overly optimistic serious academic plans, I also intend to spend some time reading. Indeed, I have always tried to spend the Christmas holidays catching up on reading. Every year in December I seem to become a fixture at the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence looking for the newest academic or British mysteries (or, preferably, both). This year has been no exception.
In past years, I have also attempted to read or reread one book or collection of works. In Christmas holidays past I've tackled Gibbon, Quintilian and Conan Doyle. But always in the past I knew that my time was quite limited. Teaching and administrative duties always beckoned. And, during the years when I was a dean, I often spent much of the vacation trying to find the money needed to keep the law school in top form. But this year, the months stretch out before me and, quite honestly, I'm not quite sure how to deal with this.
Tentatively, I've decided to use my non-directed reading time over the next months to do several things. First, I'm doing background reading for a new course I've decided to teach on the history of murder and humanity's proclivity for and fascination with this unspeakable act. I suspect that part of my reason for teaching this course is in reaction to the events of Sept. 11 and my continuing attempt both to understand the act and the proper response to it.
Second, I'm determined to read more biographies. I find the art of biography fascinating, both as a historian with a penchant for people rather than statistics but also because biography often presents us with a deep understanding of how others think and live. The first three books in this genre I am reading are a diverse lot lives of Thackeray, the great English author, Iris Murdoch, an Oxford philosopher and novelist who recently died, and Mark Pattison, a scholar of Latin and Greek and head of an Oxford College in the late 19th century who was a model for the protagonist in "Middlemarch" and was known by his contemporaries as "dry as dust" Pattison.
I must confess that I'm really having a great deal of fun planning out my reading and research for the next few months. I've also realized that I'll probably be working longer hours while on leave than I do when I'm teaching. But I realize that one of the great perquisites of university teaching is the research leave. It is not, as some legislators suspect, a paid vacation. Instead it is a time to recharge and to explore new intellectual paths with a freedom not otherwise available. So if you see me around town or on the Hill with a large shoulder bag filled with books and a smile on my face you'll know why.
May you all have a productive, prosperous and blessed new year, and may all our hopes and none of our fears come true.
Mike Hoeflich is a professor in the Kansas University School of Law.
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