Franklin book captures crowd

Freshmen will be happy to learn that they were not the only people reading the 133-page autobiography of Benjamin Franklin this summer.

President Amy Gutmann sent several copies of this year's required reading to city and state officials, including Governor Ed Rendell.

But for those on campus, this year's incarnation of the Penn Reading Project -- inaugurated in 1991 -- culminated last Sunday with lectures and discussions led by faculty members.

With the project centered on the University's founder in the academic year of his 300th birthday celebration, discussion leaders were able to approach the conversations from very different perspectives.

"The magic of this university is that different people will have different views on the same thing," said Provost Ronald Daniels, who led one of the discussion sessions. Some freshmen found themselves taking the scientific approach to Franklin, while others preferred historical and economic standpoints.

"You'll be the kind of people who can contribute to the overall goodness of the public sphere with traits that Ben Franklin had," the provost said to his group sitting outside College Hall on Sunday afternoon.

Daniels, who incorporated his academic interest in law and economics into the discussion, noticed that Franklin anticipated most of the debates we have today, such as the role of the government in everyday life.

College freshman William Heyer agreed with Daniels, saying, "All of [Franklin's] ideas were to start things that people needed but that the British were not willing to provide. He saw the private sector as the way to get them."

The discussion sessions were preceded by three lectures, given by English professor Peter Conn, History professor Richard Beeman and Physics professor Nigel Lockyer.

Beeman referred to Franklin as "the quintessential depiction of the cliche 'follow your passions,'" and, while showing freshmen a portrait of Franklin, described him as "not as ostentatious as Donald Trump, but definitely as clear-cut and polished as any top executive you would find at Goldman Sachs."

Beeman was inclined to think that Franklin's intellectual curiosity was his most remarkable trait. He said that Franklin's passions, except that for women, came from his intellectual curiosity.

"I believe the passion for women came from a different part of the body," Beeman said, and the freshman audience in Irvine Auditorium burst out laughing.

Some freshmen might not have found the Penn Reading Project as insight-inducing as the University intended it to be, especially when most were busy this summer packing and saying goodbye to friends.

"I read the intro and four pages, and then I got busy writing thank-you notes for graduation," College freshman Anna Turetsky said.

"Most people I've talked to say they read nothing or just the beginning of it, but most people were going to do SparkNotes," College freshman Julia Xu said in reference to the popular online study guides.

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