anyone out the REALLY like Ike?

January 26, 2006 5:57 PM

Did Dwight Eisenhower ever say this about leadership... "I'm not sure how to define it, but I know it when I see it"?

Yes, I know that is a paraphrase of what Potter Stewart said about pornography.

I am taking a college management class on "Leadership" and I'm afraid the professor might be ignorant. One reason is that she opened the first day of class by reading a quote (which is also prominently featured at the top of her syllabus):
"Leadership, I'm not sure how to define it, but I know it when I see it." -Dwight D. Eisenhower...

and I'm not sure Eisenhower said that.

It seems to me that she is just misremembering the Potter Stewart quote. (Eisenhower did nominate Stewart to the Supreme Court - coincidence?) Any Ike fans out there know one way or the other? My internet searching has been futile. I need to know before I leave a strongly worded course evaluation...

Also... should I just lighten up?

posted by peppermint22 to Law & Government (15 answers total)

FYI, even if she did get the quote wrong, that doesn't mean she's "ignorant." The term "ignorant" implies that a person is uneducated in general or that they lack knowledge in their field. When they get a quote wrong, they're just wrong or mistaken, not necessarily "ignorant" -- and I'd venture to guess that a truly ignorant person would have a hard time becoming a college professor.

So yes, you should just lighten up.

Besides, how does that have any effect on the overall quality of the course?
posted by JekPorkins at 6:15 PM on January 26, 2006

If it really sticks in your craw you might want to bring it up cordially sometime, like say after class 'you know about that quote? I found it interesting and googled it for context but found that it's apocryphal'.

I would let it go. Fussing over random decoration is not worth anything.
posted by Firas at 6:22 PM on January 26, 2006

General Maxwell D. Taylor

If the quote was Eisenhower's, or even if he put it his own spin on an existing quote, it would almost certainly be widely archived online.

Since such does not appear to be the case, I'm thinking that the above lecture by a general whose service coincided with Eisenhower's might have been the original source of your professor's confusion.
posted by The Confessor at 6:22 PM on January 26, 2006

I think it's a bastardization of the obscenity quote, but google pulled up a sketchy power point thingie that attributes something similar to Ike. (Link to google search, not the powerpoint.)
posted by CunningLinguist at 6:26 PM on January 26, 2006

I'd say about 90% of quotes are attributed to the wrong people. Thinking that great people think up great quotes at the perfect moment is just a figment of romance. This stuff is written by others and choreographed well beforehand. The truly great people in this world never get the chance to lead because their Q rating is too low.
posted by any major dude at 6:33 PM on January 26, 2006

I would let it go. Fussing over random decoration is not worth anything.

Then again, the devil is in the details...
posted by any major dude at 6:38 PM on January 26, 2006

I thought it was from Reality Bites - when Winona Ryder is asked to define irony.
posted by clh at 6:38 PM on January 26, 2006

CunningLinguist: I'd say about 90% of quotes are attributed to the wrong people.

That many? I can't imagine it being so common.
posted by mendel at 6:42 PM on January 26, 2006

Mendel wins.
posted by JekPorkins at 6:56 PM on January 26, 2006

Just as a layman's guess, I would feel pretty confident in asserting that Eisenhower never said that about leadership. If you think about it, it's sort of a weird thing to say about leadership, which isn't a term one is often called upon to define precisely.

So I would be more concerned that your professor is feeding you nice-sounding but vacuous-beneath-the-surface quotations about the ostensible subject matter of the course than that she misattributed one.
posted by staggernation at 7:25 PM on January 26, 2006

Ask for the source of Ike's remark. The Internet is full of quotes misattributed and invented.
posted by Carol Anne at 5:33 AM on January 27, 2006

I'd say about 90% of quotes are attributed to the wrong people.

Yeah, this is a ubiquitous problem (if it is a problem). To anyone who cares about such things, I highly recommend the book Nice Guys Finish Seventh. A couple of f'rinstances:

Keyes confirms that William Tecumseh Sherman didn't say "War is hell." Nor did he vow, "If nominated, I will not run. If elected I will not serve." According to Keyes such words voice observations we want made. Freud may never have said "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar," for example, but we certainly wish he had.

For a misquote to become familiar it must come from a well-known mouth. Take "You can't trust anyone over 30." Abbie Hoffman, right? Or was it Jerry Rubin? Mario Savio? Mark Rudd? All have been given credit for this 60s catch-phrase. Keyes discovered that its real originator was a student named Jack Weinberg. Remember him? Few do. That's why Weinberg's words were assigned to better known mouths.

I wouldn't make the mistake of attributing the misquote (and I'm pretty sure it is one) to your teacher's ignorance, except in the sense we're all ignorant. If you wanted to make sure you yourself never misattributed a quote, you'd spend your life doing nothing but researching quotes.
posted by languagehat at 5:56 AM on January 27, 2006

" and I'd venture to guess that a truly ignorant person would have a hard time becoming a college professor."

Bwa ha ha ha ha ha! Ignorant people become professors all the time, especially in business. Which isn't to say that they're not at least mildly qualified in their fields, but that often they have absolutely no knowledge of anything outside their field, and often have a poor grasp of things inside their field. You should talk to my girlfriend about the grad school Business Administration class she had to take in her library sciene program. "Who Moved My Cheese" was the central text, and it was treated as if it had been revealed on high. Right now, my Contemporary Issues in Journalism class is taught by a well-meaning but entirely out-of-his-league prof who assigns us things like "Google propoganda and write about what you find. Also use the wiki-cyclopedia..." He was a great journalist in his day, but has absolutely no business teaching any of the classes he teaches because he's so amazingly out of touch with journalism today.
posted by klangklangston at 7:17 AM on January 27, 2006

Thanks for all your input. I guess my main issues with her are:

a) I'm not especially well-read (let's be honest - my usual fare is US Weekly and Gawker.com)... and even I know that's supposed to be Stewart's quote on pornography. I know that's what all of you immediately thought of. And you know, that really doesn't sound like something Eisenhower would have said. I think that's the source of my "ignorant" reaction.

b) she introduced herself as "Dr. _____" and her degree is an Ed.D. Now, I realize this is a convention at some schools but as someone who grew up surrounded by academics, I just recoil at this. Seriously, only people with an M.D. are referred to as Dr. and college professors are referred to as "Professor ______". (I mean, I'm not out there calling my lawyer "Dr. Lawyer", despite his J.D.) Are you really so excited about your doctorate? Because I'm not.

It would probably be easier for me to just lighten up and realize nobody's perfect. I'm thinking of yoga or tai chi.
posted by peppermint22 at 8:10 AM on January 27, 2006

peppermint22, your instincts are correct—judging everyone who's in an 'authority' position based on what you personally would do given your current knowledge/background will rile you up at the vast majority of the world eventually. That's no way to go through the day.
posted by Firas at 2:04 PM on January 27, 2006