Convocation Remarks: Examine, Probe and Question
August 26, 2005
As
you now know, you are not the only new arrivals this afternoon. This is
my first convocation as well. We have much to share, much in common,
the Class of 2009 and I.
Both of us have new living quarters and new working spaces. Though mine are older, and apparently larger.
Both of us are struggling with the names of buildings and halls and dormitories—places like Barrett and Bell and Bennett and Blair and Blow and Botetourt and Brafferton and Bryan and Brown—and that's just the 'B's'.
We'll both act this year on stages somewhat larger than in the past. We'll occasionally feel like we're in over our heads. And we'll no doubt make mistakes—though, mine, I trust, will be more public than your own.
We'll both face the wonder and the charge of a new life unfolding—a path that moves beyond old horizons—that alters and challenges our spirits—that unleashes and expands our capacities—that touches and engages our hearts.
I will have only one entering class that initiates my presidency. God willing, you will have only one freshman year. So I offer my warmest welcome: we will get through this together, we'll prosper and we'll thrive, and we'll live to tell it. For my part, I can't wait to get under way.
You will soon become engrossed, almost all of you, in the College's famed liberal-arts experience. Moving beyond the faddish and the momentary. Embracing the sweet power of inquiry; developing supple skills of investigation, attention, imagination and detail. Honing and defending serious and sustained argument—argument rooted in standards of scholarship and demands of excellence and rigor.
Asking the hardest questions and relentlessly following the unfolding terrain. Seeking the prepared mind and the engaged spirit. Recognizing, with Llewellyn, that "compassion without technique can be a mess, but that technique without compassion can be a menace." And that our efforts can never omit the weightiest matters of life—judgment, mercy and faith.
And you embark upon your journey at a curious time. When much of the world around you trumpets a shriller and less demanding path. Where every idea and every event and every actor is reduced to a prescribed and oversimplified formula. Liberal or conservative, red state or blue, Franken or O'Reilly, fundamental or faithless, patriot or pacifist. As if the goal of inquiry is simply to identify a team and to choose sides. Reassuring ourselves of the perfection of our predispositions and of the glory of our chosen path. Circumscribing what we are willing to hear and whom we are willing to hear from. Shutting out the unsettling insight, seeking cloister in a seemingly congenial regime.
But that is not our mission here. Our charge is not for the feint-hearted nor for the followers of time-worn dogmas. Your challenge is to defy category, to question received wisdom, to probe the assumptions that underlie ideology, to push past the comforts of unexamined point of view. Employing the daring, the energy, and the confidence to seriously explore. Avoiding what Chesterton called "the clean, well-lit prison of one idea." It is not our mandate to sustain what you already assume. You should be glad that's so. Human history is.
And this great College—rightly—is a place that invites a regard for the past. Cradle and wellspring of an American Enlightenment philosophy—what Lincoln himself called his "ancient faith'—crafted at the hands of Jefferson and Marshall and Wythe and Small and St. George Tucker—ideas that have not only moved a campus and a Commonwealth but that have, quite literally, defined a nation and become the most powerful force for progress in the world.
But we are, as well, a vivid and rending example of the American paradox of exclusion and separation, of exploitation and subjugation—losing our calling and weakening our cause. Nothing reminds of that tragic history more movingly than John Lewis' testament today. So let me encourage you, as you think of those mighty souls who have gone before, to revel also in the new, the distinct, the different, opening your eyes to the as yet unknown and opening your hearts, as well.
You come to us from every section of the nation and from across the globe. You are black and white, Asian, Latino and Native American; rich and poor, rural and urban, gay and straight; Republican and Democrat, Libertarian and Green, Christian, Jewish, Muslim and none of the above. Even, apparently, the occasional Texan. We have sought you out. We have hoped it would be so.
We understand that our social orderings—political, economic, cultural, religious—cannot be studied in isolation. We are convinced that the diverse nature of our programs and our people produces a richer understanding of the challenges and tensions of modern life. And as ideas, information, capital, and terrors, cross our borders more rapidly than ever before, it is certain that citizens of the future must become citizens of the world.
If you would take full advantage of the College, then, you must learn from those who have come here with distinct perspectives, altered experiences. All now members in a newly-fashioned community. Bound in shared venture. Proud of divergent stories. But locked in common cause.
And I ask you to believe, with me, that the mission of the College of William and Mary is to be both great a nd public. And that these demanding adjectives pose independent challenges and obligations. As John Kennedy argued over four decades ago, "great public universities are not maintained by the people … merely to give their graduates an economic advantage in the life struggle. [Though that] they do ... . [Unless those] who are given a running start in life are willing to put back those talents, the broad sympathy, the understanding, the compassion, into the service of the republic, [then] the presuppositions on which our democracy is based" will surely fail.
I will ask, throughout the coming year, for your assistance in a conversation about the College's public charge in the 21st century. Put differently, almost one-quarter of a million Virginians living in poverty pay taxes to support your education. They'll want to know what we're going to do to pay them back.
Today, as an opening volley in that discussion, we announce the creation of Gateway William & Mary—designed to make it dramatically more feasible for lower income students to join our College community. The program will, for future incoming classes, ensure that talented students whose parents earn less than $40,000 can graduate without debt. Building on an initiative of President Sullivan. Following Jefferson's aspiration that "worth and genius [be] sought from every condition of life." Recognizing that talent, initiative and drive are not the exclusive domain of those with significant economic resources; and that the path to leadership must be made visibly open to all.
Finally, as you begin your studies, I ask you to look carefully within. This College has a defining commitment to masterful, involved classroom teaching. For our faculty, almost uniquely among the great public universities, teaching is an honor and an opportunity—not merely a 'load.'
But even with such mentors, your obligations are pronounced and self-demanding. Benjamin Franklin is reported to have encountered a skeptic of the Declaration of Independence in a tavern shortly after the resolution was passed. The young man, apparently in his cups, claimed, "them words don't mean nothing at all. Where's the happiness the document says it guarantees us?" Dr. Franklin responded, "My friend, the Declaration only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."
And what is true for the Declaration is true for the College. We can provide a life-altering educational opportunity. You—through discipline and character and engagement and commitment—you have to make the promise real. And that, of course, is as it should be. Eudora Welty was more than right to claim "all serious daring starts from within."
The College of William and Mary, for all of its accomplishment and all its traditions, is not a Great Hall, or a Wren Chapel, or a Crim Dell, or a Sunken Garden or even a Thomas Jefferson or a Chief Justice Marshall or a David Brown or a Jon Stewart. This College has struggled, endured, prospered and become such a central part of our culture because, at heart, it touches the deepest concerns of the human spirit.
The need to examine, to probe, to question, to contribute. The challenge to understand, and to share the fruits of that understanding with our fellows. An unquenched belief in excellence, in the call to a better future, in the opened door, the brightened lamp, the extended hand. An institution worthy of a life commitment rather than merely the punching of a ticket or the passage of a time. A place that lifts you up, that ennobles you, that teaches you of yourself and of the world that you inhabit. And of the obligations that residency entails.
I know, with keen assurance, that this storied institution will make its mark on you. You will be doused in the waters. Your lives will be opened; your frameworks changed. We will expand your sense of the possible. But I charge you today to make your mark on the College as well. Etch your history on these ancient walls. This remarkable community of inquiry is now your own. Engage it. Enliven it. Press your hard won aspirations. Work your magic. Stake your claim.
It would be impossible—and contrary to the patent lessons of history—to assume that anything is beyond the reach of the graduates of William and Mary. I am honored to join you in the cause of the College. Welcome to the realm of the Green and Gold. Go Tribe. Hark upon the gale.
