Commencement Address

May 19, 2007

Welcome. It is a great honor to stand before you today and speak to you. It's by leave of our students, to whom this day belongs. Let me use presidential privilege to call for the first of many rounds of applause for them.

I think it's appropriate that we also recognize some folks without whom no one would be graduating. Graduating students of Hampshire, you know well that all of Hampshire takes pride in your accomplishments and rejoices with you today. You know how hard they worked to make it possible for you to study here. Can I turn the tables for a moment and ask you to recognize the faculty and staff, every one of them, who are such dedicated and loyal members of the entire Hampshire Community? Let's give them an enormous round of applause.

And, students, there are some other folks here without whom you'd have had a heck of a time being here today: your parents and families. Students, faculty and staff: let's all give a hearty round of applause for the parents and families of our students who were gracious enough to lend them to us for a few years.

Yes, this is a day of joy, laughter, and applause. We have of course, almost inevitably, to face a few "farewells"-for example, to our outgoing Vice President for Finance and Administration and Treasurer, Johan Brongers. As most of you know, Johan and his wife Janet are going boldly where few have gone before: Johan is taking up the post of chief financial officer of the American University of Kabul, Afghanistan. Janet will be applying her noted skills as a teacher of English as a second language. I've joked with Johan that, clearly, Hampshire has become too comfortable for him; at 36 years old we are clearly too well established and our physical plant much too plush for our dour Dutchman. But of course, to those who know him well, neither Johan nor Janet is the least bit dour. Far from it. I wonder if the people of Kabul and those white-SUV-driving warlords know what they are in for! But in fact, I continue to be rapt with admiration not so much for derring-do but for the spirit of service to the developing world, and to women's education in particular, that has motivated them to face great personal risks. It is, it seems to me, a very Hampshire thing to do. It would not surprise me if some of us start finding ways to link Hampshire and Kabul. Johan, and Janet-thank you and farewell.

Yes, there are farewells, but it's a time when the phrases of other languages would be even more appropriate: arrivederci, au revoir, Auf Wiedersehen, hasta la vista, all ways of saying "until we see one another again," for you will come back and visit us here, and you will arrange to see one another at intervals over the years. Indeed, given the ways we "instant message" these days, I strongly suspect that as alumni you will remain in touch with one another even more than did graduating Hampshirites in years gone by. And we are building new ways and reasons for you to remain in touch with us.

I feel a great deal of joy today, too. We are mindful of losses as well. This year began with the untimely death of the parent of a new student; I learned yesterday that-by a fearful symmetry-this year closed with the death of a parent of a graduating student. Our thoughts and sympathy are with them, and the families of all students, staff, and faculty who have experienced such losses. I want in particular to recognize Stephanie Baril and her family, who until two days ago had planned to be here but whom sudden family illness prevented from joining us. By all rights Stephanie should be here marching as a graduate in this class, but last year was severely injured at the very doorstep of our campus when she and Lydia Broussard were struck by a vehicle driven by an alcohol-impaired driver. He has now been convicted for his recklessness, and this case is yet one more reminder, much too close to home, how we need actively to be responsible for one another. The courage of Stephanie and her family is remarkable. Let us recognize them, even in their absence, and show them, in a small way, the deep respect and love we have for them.

This second year has marked a new phase in my ever-deepening appreciation of Hampshire College and its singular mission. I am learning much from all of you who have taken time to join in the discussions under the rubric "Making of the College 2.0," including those who wanted to mark their own critical interventions under a different title, "Saving the College 2.0." This has been a year of deepening commitment to long-term sustainability on many fronts. There is much to do, and I want to thank all of our students, staff, and faculty who are meshing bold vision with realism. It has also been a year of growing awareness that ours is anything but a utopia when it comes to real, lived diversity. My sense of the depth of the problems and the challenges we must take up-and a sense that I had not appreciated them sufficiently before-came rudely and uncomfortably, but I thank all of you who have pushed and who continue to push Hampshire to be the best it can be. Strong statements are not sufficient, but they are necessary. I have today released a memo to the entire community, available on-line, in which I have committed my team, and the entire community, to the steady work of culture change-of careful listening, authentic dialogue, education, and inclusive values. The commitment to diversity must be ongoing and deep, not mere rhetoric.

Our student trustee, Jacob Lefton, has written in the latest number of The Omen, a sometimes controversial student publication, that-and I cite his words-"We need Ralph to start protecting the ideas that brought us here." This is a heavy burden, but one I am proud to be asked to shoulder even as I ask myself how I can best discharge my responsibility. Surely there is some variety in the ideas that brought each one of us here, even each student, and Jacob is referring to Hampshire students above all.

Among the central ideas that Hampshire has always stood for - and I know from the Making of the College 2.0 committee's soundings across all sectors of the college that this is an ideal around which the community rallies-is the empowerment of each student to create hir own individual college curriculum. Our students draw upon the resources of the entire college and the Five Colleges and determine their path and their vision in dialogue with faculty advisors, who push back, challenge, and help each student make the most of the opportunities Hampshire and its partner institutions and programs have to offer, but ultimately, it is the student who must shape hir own educational experience.

This is, I firmly believe, not only as it should be; this is an essential Hampshire value that needs protecting. It may be in peril. I want today to raise the alarm at a more distant but nonetheless much more ominous level. As you may know, the federal government is seeking to extend the principles behind "No Child Left Behind" to higher education. Now, that all children, in public and private education, should be receiving high quality instruction in fit surroundings seems right to me, but federal legislation and guidelines no more provide for this than federal emissions standards have solved the problem of pollution. A class of Hampshire students working with Professors Kristen Luschen and Laura Wenk have shown how impoverishing the rigid straits of "No Child Left Behind" actually are; they have produced a DVD that shows this quite clearly. I would like to send a copy of this to every member of Congress just before they start to debate its reauthorization.

The charge on higher education has been led by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who convened a blue ribbon panel of business people and higher education administrators to give her-and us-answers to a series of challenges. Many are extraordinary and real problems: affordability, for example. Of course, colleges and universities would be more affordable for a broader spectrum of the public if: (1) there was more federal support of higher education; (2) there was more support for higher education at the state level; (3) families with lower and mid-range incomes received tax breaks instead of those families and individuals at the highest levels; (4) families didn't have to contend with rapidly increasing health insurance premiums (if they can afford health insurance at all), didn't have to fear the demise of social security and pensions, and didn't have to worry about covering the costs of their aging parents' retirements; and (5) loan programs were run on a nonprofit basis and not for the benefit of the lending industry. I can guarantee you that Secretary Spellings doesn't think of any of these as related problems, because at a face-to-face meeting in New York City I asked her, and what she said would help families find funding for education was a more streamlined on-line system of applying for financial aid. I am not making this up.

Secretary Spellings is a highly intelligent, energetic, charming Texan. I'd love to go to a barbecue with her. Her daughter attends a fine private liberal arts college, Davidson College, in North Carolina. She's talked about her experience as a parent seeking a college for her daughter-yes, that's right, I've heard her talk about this more than once, and I never had the sense that her daughter was in charge of the process. Secretary Spellings not only assumes that father and mother will know best, she quite unabashedly presents the challenge as that of a consumer seeking the best value for her family. She wants everything up on a website so that comparisons can be made from the comfort of one's living room. We're already "Consumer's Guide"; can eBay or Home Shopping Network be far behind? But this is of a piece with the makeover of the American citizenry already underway, if not completed. I realized this one day a couple of years back when I heard a radio announcer tell us to just use our "consumer card" for the purchase of some geegaw or other. "Consumer card," not even "credit card." There was no responsibility for the shopper to bear. Se was being hailed as a "consumer," and as we know, such hailing calls into being. The citizen is dead. Long live the consumer.

Ms. Spellings also wants to change the way colleges are evaluated and accredited. I don't have a problem with a college being expected to state its mission and to measure itself against its stated goals - and even to be expected to share those measurements. I do not, however, want the federal government dictating to colleges, even to regional accrediting bureaus, exactly which parameters can exist and which cannot. Were that to be the case, there would be few of them; they would be narrowly prescribed; they'd all be quantitative; and they'd all point in one direction. How would the federal government handle Hampshire's narrative evaluations? I can only imagine one way: give grades or lose federal funding, possibly even accreditation. And would there be standardized tests? Of what? I wouldn't want any government, much less this one, establishing the standards for "critical thinking." What would be the right and wrong answers when it came to asking students if they've learned biology, economics, political science? Or do you think they'd let us establish our own rigorous standards in subaltern studies? global sustainability? heterodox economics? queer theory? the thought of Michel Foucault? Judith Butler? Eqbal Ahmad?

What, in sum, would Ms. Spellings make of the glorious list of Division III topics on the basis of which first the faculty and then the board of trustees voted to approve the degrees I am about to confer, each one of them a veritable field of study in itself?

No, education is not a consumer good. Authentic education is something each one of us, if we are willing to expend personal energy, can engage in, can produce in ourselves by means of our commitment. Educational achievement can be valued; indeed, each one of us needs to be striving to define our educational values, nor do I for a minute want to say that anything goes. Many cultures, now over thousands of years, have brought those who would learn together with those who devote their entire lives to the serious pursuit of knowledge together into educational establishments. Every one, at every stage, benefits when ideas are exchanged, conceptions are challenged, misperceptions are eradicated. There is value, and there is value in difference and diversity, of persons and ideas, value and values strengthened by honest and open exchange which at times is even fierce, but loving, debate. But we should not mistake a ranking, however derived, for value, and imagining that there is one parameter by which education can be measured, one axis on which the desirability and thus value of an educational establishment can be displayed is utter folly. Not a week ago I attended the memorial service for Amherst's thirteenth president, Cal Plimpton, who was a key figure in Hampshire's history long before he attended my inaguration, for it was he who actually accepted the gift for the "new college" from Amherst alumnus Harold Johnson that made it possible for "The Making of a College"-the document, that is-to become a reality. As a close associate of President Plimpton, Hampshire's second president Chuck Longsworth spoke, I was inspired to write down the words Chuck quoted Cal as saying in his inaugural address to the Amherst community: "We're trying to be first," he chided them, "instead of trying to be ourselves." No wonder Cal supported Hampshire's creation, for I don't think one could better express what we're about. We are about becoming ourselves, for that is what the world needs: ourselves evolved to a new level of commitment, engagement, and education in response to the challenge that is, and will always be, Hampshire.

Thank you, and congratulations.