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On my WHIP semester, I took Contemporary Political Thought with Dr. Azerrad, Narratives and Propaganda in American Journalism with Mollie Hemingway, and Shakespeare’s Republican Leadership with Dr. Matthew Mehan. Dr. Azerrad’s class was hands down my favorite politics class I have ever taken.

Engaging with Patrick Deneen, Delgado and Stefancic, and Martha Nussbaum gave me the intellectual backdrop I needed to make sense of the current political landscape and have intelligent conversations with people I met in D.C. I was shocked by the number of times Deneen came up not just at work but in casual conversation — maybe that is more of a sign of the kind of people that I hang out with. Dr. Azerrad was very engaging in class, which I really appreciated given how long the class period was. He did not let us look at our notes but made us rely on memory to answer questions, which helped keep everyone accountable and engaged. He seems to really care about his students and want us to succeed. I am sad I will never have the chance to take another class with him, but the arguments I engaged with in his class will stick with me.

Dr. Mehan’s class informed the way I think about friendship in the political realm. In our independent study, we began by reading Cicero’s De Amicitia, where he establishes the stoic ideal for friendship as a natural relationship between two virtuous equals rather than a relationship of utility or necessity. If this theory is true, then there is no such thing as a friendship of utility as Aristotle would have it. For the rest of the class, we read through Shakespeare’s political plays, including Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Hamlet, and Sir Thomas More. Mehan has a reading of Shakespeare I have never encountered before. He argues the playwright engages with the tradition of the ancients and the Romans and advances a republican theory that draws upon the intellectual tradition of Cicero. I found his argument that Shakespeare believes friendship serves as the basis for the political order compelling. Thinking about friendship as a natural relationship of goodwill and the basis of the political order has implications far beyond the realm of Shakespeare scholarship. Taking Mehan’s class and then going out into D.C., I found myself less inclined to think about people as useful “connections.” In an environment where everyone wants to “network,” it is far more valuable to be a friend and to seek friendship from others.