Students enrolled in Moral Reasoning 22 say that when the professor lectures about Communitarian philosophy, everyone ardently takes notes.

President Clinton had a similar compulsion during a White House dinner in November when Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel discussed the importance of community values in society.

Intrigued by Sandel's words, Clinton asked the White House usher for a pen so he could take notes on the back of his menu.

The notes, scribbled in between mouthfuls, were to inspire much of Clinton's subsequent visionary political rhetoric--the need to reasses community and moral values in America.

Though the President invited a dozen scholars, including Eaton Professor of the Science of Government Samuel P. Huntington, Dillon Professor of Government Emeritus Richard E. Neustadt and University of Chicago sociologist William Julius Wilson, Sandel made a particularly resonant impression on Clinton, insiders say.

"I know for a fact that the President was impressed with the quality of Michel's insights," New York Times political reporter Thomas L. Friedman says. "The discussion gave the President an opportunity to think through things he intuitively felt."

Friedman says Sandel helped President Clinton "crystallize his thoughts" and develop them in several public forums, including a speech to Black ministers in Memphis, one to movie moguls in Los Angeles and even in his most recent State of the

Union Address.

The November discussions, which extended beyondthe dinig room to an informal after-dinner"seminar," allowed the President to solicitreflections on his presidency, says ColumbiaUniversity historian Alan Brinkley, who alsoattended the meeting.

"Some of us encouraged President Clinton tostep back from the details of policy to articulatea broader moral vision for his presidency," Sandelsays. "In his Memphis speech and in the State ofthe Union address he has begun to do this veryeffectively."The President seems to have taken Sandel'sscholarly communitarian theory--which emphasizesthe interrelating value systems amongcommunities--and incorporated it into a preachableand practical theme.

"Clinton was impressed by the way Michael wasable to integrate the operational tendencies ofthe President with his own philosophical insightinto the President's public discourse," Friedmansays.

"Michael puts it all together in a way onlyMichael can," adds Friedman, who studied withSandel from grade School in St. Paul, Minnesota,through their undergraduate educations together atBrandeis University, and later at Oxford.

The emphasis on shared community values hastraditionally been included in the rhetoric ofconservative politicians, but Clinton has made itan important aspect of his progressive message.

It is a vision of community which, he says,will lead this nation peacefully into the 21stcentury.

"Let's be honest. Our problems go way beyondthe reach of any government program. They arerooted in the loss of values, the disappearance ofwork and the breakdown of our families and ourcommunities," the President said in his January 25address before Congress. "The American people mustwant to change within, if we are to bring backwork, family and community."

Even Vice President Al Gore '69 has picked upon the administration's emphasis on the community.In words that echoed those of President Clinton'sin Memphis less than a month earlier, Goredelivered a speech at Harvard's Kennedy School ofGovernment on December 6 where he introduced athree-step plan to empower inner-city andpoverty-stricken communities.