Inaugural Address
[N.B. Those who have followed this blog will see some recurrent material that was being tried out in this venue.]
On September first
1858, at the laying of the cornerstone of the Missionary Institute, now
Selinsgrove Hall, Joseph Casey, Esq. provided remarks that included this quote:
“Education, in its
legitimate sense, includes not only the cultivation of the mental powers, but
the proper training and development of the moral sentiments and faculties, and
its true object is to ‘make us not only wiser but better…’”[1]
Over the past few
months, many of you have heard me refer to the four pillars of our work
together: Engagement, Citizen Leadership, Global Citizenship, and Access. Truly
these are four perspectives on the same fundamental objective of Susquehanna
University: helping students to be not only wiser, but better.
Susquehanna has always
been an integral part of this community. Leaders of 19th-century
Selinsgrove provided land and financial resources to create the Missionary
Institute. It was local leaders who insisted that the Susquehanna Female
College and the Classical Department be founded along with the Missionary
Institute to provide a transformative education for their children who were not
called to the ministry, and it is those two branches that persist as the
University we know today.
We will strengthen our rich
symbiotic relationships with Selinsgrove, Snyder County, and the Greater
Susquehanna Valley through an expansion of our Service Leaders Program and a
broader array of internships and externships in service to local businesses and
non-profits. We will work with commercial and community partners to organize a
diversity summit to unite our leading institutions in efforts to improve
diversity and inclusion throughout the region. We will build upon our success
in developing strategies to improve the environmental health of the river, its
tributaries, and our region. We will also expand our capacity to be a resource
for action research to the broader community by applying student and faculty expertise
to real challenges brought to us by the community.
We
will be not only wiser, but better.
This
is what we are called to do.
Citizen Leadership has
always been at the core of liberal education (meaning a broad-based education
rooted in free inquiry and critical reflection), but rarely in our nation’s
history has anti-intellectualism been so prominent, and never in our
history has the critical relationship between liberal education and the preservation
of an enlightened democratic republic been so poorly understood.
Twenty-one years before
the laying of the cornerstone of the Missionary Institute, Ralph Waldo Emerson
gave his now famous address, “The American Scholar,” to the Phi Beta Kappa society
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was a remarkably forward-looking essay that did
much to transform higher education and higher thought in our nation, and
ultimately, the world. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. referred to it as America’s
“Intellectual Declaration of Independence.”[2]
In his speech, Emerson
outlined three tenets of a scholar’s work, and for these purposes, all who teach
and study here and at our sister institutions are the scholars to whom Emerson spoke.
In summary, these tenets are:
First:
The scholar is our most attuned observer and interpreter of the natural,
physical world.
Second:
The scholar interprets the past and the works of the past to help inform our
understanding of the present world.
Third:
Now this is where Emerson was seen as revolutionary. The scholar must be a
person of action. The scholar must proclaim his observations. He must report
his analyses so that they may be applied to the pursuit of a greater good. [3]
As Shirley Chisholm said, “You don't make progress by standing on
the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing
ideas.”
Emerson further defined
the duties of the scholar as, quote:
The office of the scholar is to
cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances… He
is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He
is one, who raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and lives
on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world's eye. He is the world's
heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to
barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic sentiments, noble
biographies, melodious verse, and the conclusions of history. Whatsoever
oracles the human heart, in all emergencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered
as its commentary on the world of actions, — these he shall receive and impart.
And whatsoever new verdict Reason from her inviolable seat pronounces on the
passing men and events of to-day, — this he shall hear and promulgate.[4]
As ground breaking as
Emerson’s words may have been to his audience, liberal education has always had
its roots in application. The ancient Greeks organized the framework of studies
they believed were necessary to prepare free men to be informed and effective
citizens. The Latin, artes liberales,
referred to the intellectual pursuits for free citizens.
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses
the differences and interrelatedness of applied skills or techne (τέχνη),
practical wisdom - phronesis (φρόνησις), and theoretical wisdom - sophia (Σοφíα). We
could think about these as skills, problem solving, and an understanding of
universal truths. What is true, what is
good, and why?
This kind of thinking
is our contemporary world’s greatest want, and it is what liberal education
makes possible. The Stoics, in a prescient nod to the enlightenment, declared that
this intellectual endeavor is what truly made one free.
Professor Coleen Zoller
recently reminded me that Plato’s Academy was so named because he chose the
location for his lectures to be within a beautiful grove of olive trees named
for the hero of Greek mythology, Hekademos (Ἑκάδημος). Our beautiful arboretum campus is an
intentional nod to that heritage.
The rise of the
cathedral and monastic schools in medieval Europe led to the integration of
liberal and professional education to prepare students to lead the church. In
addition to the Trivium and Quadrivium, these schools provided training in
canon law, disputation, and accounting. The Faith had rules, priests preached,
and churches had treasuries.
It was at this time
that the guild model came to be applied to university life. The Magistorum, or
masters, professed and the Scholarium, or scholars, were their students. We
acknowledge this part of academic history every time we don these robes for
formal events.
The scientific
revolution set the stage for the enlightenment and provided some of the best
role models for Emerson’s scholar. These scientists observed the natural world and
imparted the truth of their science. Copernicus determined that the sun was in
the center of our solar system through mathematics. This was then confirmed
through direct observation by Galileo, who when asked to recant his finding in
the face of 17th-century “alternative facts,” apocryphally declared,
“E pur si muove — And yet it moves.”
This same rigor came to
be applied to the humanities leading to the Age of Enlightenment, an era that was
guided by the motto, “Dare to Know,” and led to the advancement of personal
liberty, tolerance, the separation of church and state, and constitutional
governments.
The spirit of the
enlightenment found fertile soil in the American colonies. The founding fathers
were keenly aware of the relationship between liberty and knowledge. In 1765,
John Adams wrote A Dissertation on Canon
and Feudal Law in which he stated:
The poor people, it is true,
have been much less successful than the great. They have seldom found either
leisure or opportunity to form a union and exert their strength; ignorant as
they were of arts and letters, they have seldom been able to frame and support
a regular opposition. This, however, has been known by the great to be the
temper of mankind; and they have accordingly labored, in all ages, to wrest
from the populace, as they are contemptuously called, the knowledge of their
rights and wrongs, and the power to assert the former or redress the latter. I
say RIGHTS, for such they have, undoubtedly, antecedent to all earthly government,
— Rights, that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws -- Rights,
derived from the great Legislator of the universe.[5]
Our nation’s founders were rapacious consumers
of information and systematic in their application of that knowledge in their
world’s laboratory. They knew that their inspired experiment to create a
democratic republic would require broadly educated citizen leaders to foster
and develop this revolutionary form of modern government.
George
Washington’s belief in the critical role education would play in our national
development continued throughout his career of public service. The draft of his
first inaugural address embraces the foundation of liberal education, quote:
Whenever the opportunity shall be furnished to you as public or as
private men, I trust you will not fail to use your best endeavors to improve
the education and manners of a people; to accelerate the progress of arts &
sciences; to patronize works of genius; to confer rewards for invention of
utility; and to cherish institutions favourable to humanity.[6]
In
his final annual address to Congress, Washington outlined his dreams for a new
nation, calling for the formation of a national university and a national
military college, quote:
The assembly to which I address
myself is too enlightened not to be fully sensible how much a flourishing state
of the arts and sciences contributes to national prosperity and reputation.
… and a primary object of such
a national institution should be the education of our youth in the science of
government. In a republic what species of knowledge can be equally important
and what duty more pressing on its legislature than to patronize a plan for
communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties
of the country?[7]
Washington was not alone in his
patronage of the intellectual future of the republic. The five authors of the Declaration of Independence were public
intellectuals of the highest order. Robert Livingston was a distinguished man
of letters who amassed a personal library of over 4000 volumes. John Adams was
a founder of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Roger Sherman was a
member of the Yale University faculty and served as the University’s treasurer.
Benjamin Franklin provided the leadership to create the College of
Philadelphia, which became the University of Pennsylvania, and of all his
accomplishments, Thomas Jefferson took his greatest pride in having established
the University of Virginia.
Ours is a nation conceived in intellectual idealism.
The visionary leaders who conceived this republic were deep thinkers who
embodied the best citizenship that is at the heart of liberal learning. They
were avid scientists, political theorists, natural historians, and moral
philosophers. Theirs was, however, an idealism deeply rooted in practical
wisdom.
Among the many articles in the first volume of the Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society (whose early members included Franklin, Washington, Adams,
Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Rush) were the
Society’s observations of the Transit of Venus in 1769, an essay on grape
cultivation and wine making, and designs for an automated bilge pump. The
preface of that initial volume stated:
Knowledge is of little use, when
confined to mere speculation… the members propose to confine their
disquisitions, principally, to such subjects as tend to the improvement of
their country, and advancement of its interest and prosperity.[8]
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was established
in 1780. Its founders were John Adams, John Hancock, and James Bowdoin. Among
the members inducted the following year were Washington and Franklin. Its creation
is another notable example of the founders’ belief in the relationship between liberal
learning and citizen leadership. As their Charter states, the purpose of the
Academy is:
…
to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest,
honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.[9]
The same spirit of scientific thinking and its
companion flourishing of the enlightenment that fueled these societies,
provided the spark that created our new republic, and to provide a citizenry
equipped to lead this nation, the founders cultivated institutions of higher
education rooted in the liberal arts.
As noted before, Franklin founded Penn and
Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. Washington provided support for
the creation of Washington College in Maryland, and he provided a
transformative gift to the Augusta Academy, which is now known as Washington
and Lee University. Patrick Henry and James Madison were critical to the
founding of Hampden-Sydney College, and Madison succeeded Jefferson as Rector
of UVA. Hamilton College was named for Alexander Hamilton, one of its first
trustees, and Benjamin Rush founded Dickinson.
These institutions and those founded upon their
model, prepared the next generations of leaders. Our liberal arts colleges have
continued to produce a disproportionately high percentage of leaders in
science, letters, business, and government. We develop informed citizen leaders
in no small part to safeguard democracy from thuggery and mob rule.
And so, here we are 241 years after the signing
of the Declaration of Independence
and 180 years after Emerson’s address in a nation so starved for citizen
leadership that we find ourselves perilously divided not over competing social
philosophies of left and right, but quite literally over issues of right and
wrong.
We have entered into an anti-intellectual
climate in which a significant portion of our populous is willing to reject
scientific facts in favor of convenience and self-interest. An inconvenient
truth is no less true.
Likewise, spewing hate speech is not an exercise
of civil liberties; it is a mockery of them, and denying social justice for any
of us, diminishes justice for all.
We must do better. The domains in which we will
apply citizen leadership are sustainability, social justice, and diversity. I
frequently tell students that we are here to learn how to have difficult
conversations. Like Emerson’s scholar who “raises himself from private
considerations, and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts,” we
must rise above the noise that distracts our public discourse from the
fundamental aims of responsible action, compassion, and human decency. We must
be the world’s eye, we must be the world’s heart, and we must be the world’s
voice.
We must not despair, as
Abigail Adams wrote, “These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It
is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that
great characters are formed…Great necessities call out great virtues.”[10]
This was our calling in
1858, and it remains our calling today. We must not only be wiser, we must be
better.
This is what we are called to do.
At Susquehanna University, we welcome the
stranger. Our friends in Hillel recently reminded us that this is the most
frequent command in the Torah. This is how we learn what we have in common and
how we can learn to celebrate our differences. This is what it means to be a
Global Citizen.
The term cosmopolitan
is attributed to Diogenes of Sinope, the great Cynic philosopher who is said to
have lived in a large clay pot. When asked from where he came, Diogenes said,
“I am a citizen of the world.”
Our friends the Stoics
who declared that it was a liberal education that made one free, developed
Diogenes’s dictum into the concept that each of us is from two communities: the
place where we are born and the human community writ large.
Over 2,000 years later, in Perpetual
Peace, Immanuel Kant wrote:
The peoples of
the earth have now gone a great distance in forming themselves into smaller or
larger communities; this has gone so far that a violation of rights in one
place is now felt throughout the world. So the idea of a law of world citizenship is not a
legal flight of fancy; rather, it is necessary to complete an unwritten code of
civil and international law as well as mankind’s written laws; and so it is
needed for perpetual peace. Until we can establish a law of world citizenship,
we must not congratulate ourselves on how close we are coming to that.
Susquehanna’s Global
Opportunities, or GO, Program requires that all our students have a study-away
experience that engages them in different cultures. Our academic preparation
before the GO trip and the interpretive unpacking that happens on campus after
our students return strives to give them the skills to appreciate and respect
cultural difference. We must prepare our students to be effective advocates for
their neighbors near and far.
This
is what it means to be a global citizen.
This
is what we are called to do.
There are many things
about this institution that inspire me, but our history of providing access to
a transformative, world-class education to meritorious students from across the
socio-economic spectrum remains one of the most moving.
As
Marie Curie said, “You cannot hope to build a better world without improving
the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement and,
at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity.”[11]
In 2014, the New York Times published a ranking of
the most economically diverse colleges and universities in the United States.
Susquehanna University was proud to be ranked 9th in the country
Susquehanna achieved
this position with the lowest endowment per student of the top-50
institutions. The average endowment per student of those top-50 institutions
was over 9.4 times that of Susquehanna, and the institution with the next
lowest endowment-per-student ratio was still 60% higher than
Susquehanna’s.
At Susquehanna, 31% of
the students in this year’s incoming class are PELL-eligible, meaning that
socio-economically, they come from the lowest 20%. This means that Susquehanna
is making it possible for a 70% larger-than-average share of America’s most
financially disadvantaged students to transform their lives with a high-quality
university education. In contrast with our 31%, the Ivy League only enrolls an
average of 18% PELL-eligible students.
From these humble
beginnings and with our modest means, our students outperform the highest-ranked
institutions in the nation. This spring, Zippia
published a list of the colleges and universities in the United States with the
highest employment rates of its graduates. Susquehanna was ranked No. 1 in
Pennsylvania and No. 9 in the nation.
Since its
founding, this university has done more with less. This has been the result of
institutional grit and self-sacrifice coupled with the scrappiness of our
students and alumni who will not let go of their goals.
The landscape of higher education continues to
elevate the challenges in our path: when adjusted for inflation, the families
sending students to Susquehanna have less capacity to pay than they did in
2000, and the resources required to sustain our academic competitiveness and
reputation have continued to outpace those means. The world needs Susquehanna
graduates now more than ever. This is why we must secure the funds to make a
Susquehanna education available to all deserving students in perpetuity.
This is what we are called to do.
This is what we must do for the New American
Scholar.
Like Emerson’s Scholar, The New American Scholar
is an observer of nature, an interpreter of the past, and a person of action,
but the New American Scholar represents the spectrum of human diversity. The
New American Scholar is more likely to be a woman than a man. The New American
Scholar is truly a citizen of the world: as young people come to our colleges
and universities from around the globe to become, and to help all our
students to become, cosmopolitan citizen leaders. This is Susquehanna. We are
the New American Scholar.
Let us celebrate our
motto through action: Achievement. Leadership. Service.
We will celebrate
access through academic achievement,
We
will celebrate engagement through service to the community, and
We will celebrate our
citizenship in the world through leadership.
Susquehanna University
educates students for productive, creative and reflective lives of achievement,
leadership, and service in a diverse, dynamic, and interdependent world to “make us not only wiser but better.”
This is what we are
called to do.
[1] Joseph Casey, Esq.: “Remarks delivered at the laying
of the corner-stone of the Missionary Institute at Selin’s Grove, PA, September
1, 1858.”
[2] Susan Cheever: American
Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau; Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work,
80. Detroit: Thorndike Press, 2006.
[3] Ralph Waldo Emerson: The American Scholar. 1837.
[4] Ibid.
[5] From John Adams: A
Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law, 1765.
[6] G. Washington: Draft of the First Inaugural Address,
c. January 1789
[7] __________: Eighth Annual
Address, 7 December 1796
[8] “Preface,” Transactions
of the American Philosophical Society, volume 1.
[10]
Abigail Adams, Letter to JQA, 19 January 1780.