On Tuesday, November 29, lifelong scholar, specialist in eighteenth century history and professor of literary history Dr. James Basker made his first appearance on the hilltop for the season’s penultimate Society of Skeptics event.
 
It wasn't long into Dr. Basker’s presentation before students and faculty start believing that they’ve all traveled back in time to the early 1800s when early abolitionists began to resist slavery. That is because of Dr. Basker’s preferred method of teaching–interactive learning–resulting in simulations of real-life events through literature.
 
“I’m looking forward to asking students to read a poem so that these words come out of their mouths. One of the most powerful poems I’ll ask them to read is a poem written in 1798 by British poet Robert Southey. It’s a monologue in ballad form based on a true story of a sailor who sailed during the slave trade, who comes back to his home port in Britain and has a nervous breakdown because he’s had a horrific experience on the ship,” said Dr. Basker before the event. 
 
“The sailor recites this experience of a slave woman where the captain made him whip her to the point of death. Her body was tossed overboard and he writes about how he was so haunted by that experience that he began to have nightmares and developed post-traumatic stress disorder due to it.”
 
Entitled “How the world changes its mind,” Dr. Basker’s presentation explored his philosophy that the only things that truly change peoples’ beliefs are compelling arguments or compelling experiences, whether those stem from literature, film, teachings or real life. “Literature is about vicarious experiences and it allows us to enter into the lives of other people, people unlike ourselves,” said Dr. Basker. 
 
“Literature is fundamentally an act about trying to enter imaginatively into the experiences of people unlike ourselves,” Dr. Basker explained. “I’m hoping the event will be more like a conversation, and I’m looking forward to sharing a few examples, for instance, examining works of anti-slavery writers, and how it wasn’t due to kings or dictators that people changed their minds.”
 
“People changed their minds through cultural influences, through empathetic props and through other humane activities.”
 
Though Dr. Basker was born and raised in a small, rural Jacksonville, Oregon, it was not long before he packed his bags for the bustling city of Boston, where he started his undergraduate degree at Harvard University. Passionate about his studies, the magna cum laude graduate pursued his academic career across the pond, at both Cambridge University and Oxford University, where he earned both his Masters of Arts and doctorate, respectively. 
 
Today, Dr. Basker spends his time fulfilling his roles as president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and professor of Literary History at Barnard College and Columbia University in New York. His latest published works include: Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery 1660–1810, Early American Abolitionists and American Antislavery Writing: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation.

Click "play" below to watch Dr. Basker's Skeptics presentation.

History of Skeptics
 
The Society of Skeptics was established as a forum for students and faculty to discuss and debate important global issues; it has grown to become one of the premier high school lecture series in the United States. Each week, speakers from the political, social, scientific, economic and literary arenas share their unique perspectives with students, who are encouraged to engage with presenters, asking questions and debating points of view.

The program, which is funded in part by the Class of 1968 Society of Skeptics Endowment Fund, is an outgrowth of the Blair International Society, begun in 1937. Forty years later, former history department chair Elliott Trommald, PhD, Hon. ’65, established the modern Skeptics program as a regular forum for student discussion and debate; history teacher Martin Miller, PhD, took over in the mid-1980s and molded the program into a weekly lecture series, one that has since continued without interruption. Under the tutelage of Dr. Miller and his successor, history department chair Jason Beck, Skeptics has featured a wide variety of speakers who are thought-provoking, engaging, accomplished in their respective fields and often controversial. For a listing of upcoming Skeptics programs, please visit Blair’s website.