President’s Welcome to First Year Students and Families
President’s Welcome to First Year Students and Families
Sunday, Sept. 2, 2007
I am delighted to add my welcome to those of so many others on this day when the lives of all of us will begin to change in dramatic, unique and uplifting ways. For us, you are the long anticipated protagonists of narratives that we have been writing for almost a year. Every individual on this campus has been involved in one way or another in preparing that text. Grounds and facilities people have been sprucing up the areas where you will live, eat, play and walk. Faculty have been delving into new areas of knowledge to ensure that you have access to what is most recently known about what you are to study. Staff members have been fielding your calls and e-mails to reassure you that this will all fall into place. Chefs have been developing new recipes to respond to the endlessly changing tastes of young people today. Even as everyone focuses on getting the scene ready for you today, they must also be absorbed with equal vigor in planning the sequel for decades hence.
You will see and experience signs of that preparation everywhere: wire fences surrounding construction sites, web sites under construction, committees studying problems and developing new programs and courses, new faculty learning their way around … While much of this activity may not be meaningful to you today, it will matter a good deal in future years, especially after you will have graduated. Living your lives in far-flung orbits, you will find that the reputation of this place means a good deal to you. Your degree from Brown will be validated or undermined by how faithfully we focus on planning the future of this 244 year old university. So, as you begin your time at Brown, you will be reminded frequently that we are constantly editing this narrative not with the intention of having a best seller today but with the expectation that the story told here about you will be a classic, its impact enduring for hundreds of generations.
I am often asked why I do what I do. My answer is quite simple: because I am absolutely convinced that of all the influences and factors that might have an impact on the future well-being of society, few are as important as our capacity to advance knowledge and enhance understanding. This multi-faceted thing that we call education is within our reach when we are born and it remains available to us until we die. Whether in a formal or incidental form, learning can be delivered through the use of many media, strategies and tools, and can take place in almost any setting. We cannot predict precisely the effect of each strategy but we do know that where we assign the time and allow the focus for knowledge to enter our minds and affect our lives, we can maximize its utility. The magnificent bounty that is available to us through even the most rudimentary learning is one of the greatest resources to human society and well-being. When exploited fully, it can perform miracles.
It can create cures, save lives, eliminate waste, improve our spiritual health, create deep personal satisfaction, bind us to each other, reduce conflict, remedy inequities and economic disparities, boost self-confidence, make us better people, enable us to make fewer mistakes, allow us to enjoy the beauty around us and to create new perspectives on that beauty. Most of all, at the highest and most satisfying level, education can help us create a spirited life that is complex, deeply stimulating, phenomenally productive, extraordinarily satisfying, ethically and morally secure, and useful to society. It is that very power that motivates us all to be here today and to welcome you onto this stage of learning where you may derive virtually limitless benefits.
You notice that I said “may derive.” Education, while available due to the extra-ordinary amount of knowledge and know-how that has been created and bequeathed to us over the centuries by discoverers, scholars, writers, inventors, scientists, theologians and others, is there to be captured and held by us but is only as good and as sound and as beneficial as what we bring to it. That is the reason that we can notice so many disparities among educated people. We can find those who have had every tool at their disposal since infancy display a lazy intellect and an inferior disposition when it comes to learning. At the same time, we can see those born in the most abject circumstances who, hungry for learning, surpass greatly those who have had access to the best books, the best supplies, the best facilities. Education works best for those who come to it with an eager heart, an open mind, and a diligent disposition.
It matters not one whit whether you have traveled around the world, have the highest SAT scores possible and come from the most prestigious schools to continue your education at Brown. Here, you must be as a newborn who cannot make out the shapes of the mobile above his crib. You must be ready to absorb what you encounter as you have never before.
I noticed something when I was in graduate school, something that I never forgot. Overwhelmed to be studying with some of the most able people in my field, I found it difficult to approach them and to advance my ideas. However, in spite of my trepidation, they all had in common a modesty that reflected a central element of their success as scholars: an ongoing doubt about whether they knew enough. If that doubt is absent from you and if it ever leaves you in the future, your education will have failed you.
Enter Brown with that perspective. It will not be enough to study what you are good at and what you are interested in. You must go far a-field of what is comfortable and seek out unknown areas. If you cultivate such a disposition – the disposition to know and to keep knowing across the vast enterprise of knowledge – your education will never disappoint you. If, on the other hand, you take this to be an opportunity to study merely what you like rather than what you need to challenge your intellect, you will be a cardboard figure, looking glossily complete but lacking depth behind that veneer of knowledge.
I hope that when you leave Brown, you will say confidently as so many great scholars and achievers before have said, “ I have learned finally how little I know.” I hope that Brown is able to demonstrate to you that the universe of knowledge is so vast and wonderful that you will have access to this replenishing and ever-expanding feast for the rest of your days.
Related to this, is another important dimension of learning, one that I will hope and expect you to grasp in your time at Brown. If you pay attention to the world at all, you will have perceived that no matter how capable one is, one is never exempt from the most basic of human needs: interacting with and caring for your fellow human beings. Here, too, the will to select narrowly is enticing and easy, but, again, not the best course. Many of us will spend much of our lives with a narrow set of acquaintances. They were reared as we were, enjoy the same music, worship in the same fashion, believe in the same things, support the same politicians and otherwise are a reflection of who we are.
There is nothing so wonderful as to be in the presence of people we know who understand us, respect us and validate who we are. Many college students exult in finding such a group on their campuses. They may hang out with their teammates, their hall mates, the students they worship with, the students from their home town. If you come to Brown to do ONLY that, you might as well have stayed at home. Instead, I hope that you came to Brown to partake in an experience of the world that, while often jarring, can help you understand better the complex relationships that human beings are capable of managing. We deliberately shape the composition of our campus so that you can have that essential and increasingly important world experience that is dominated today not by sameness but by diversity.
If you become a leader and a high achiever in any field today, you are likely to be on the world stage. The world stage, unlike your high school gymnasium stage, is vast. There are many more important actors, the equipment and lighting are complicated to run, and the director of the productions in which you are involved may speak a language different from the one you understand. The ability to grasp the full meaning of what is taking place, to see all the parts and to know when to act, and to maintain your intellectual and personal equilibrium in the face of an enormous variety of inputs will determine the overall balance and success that you achieve as a human being.
You must have not only an international disposition if you wish to be of use in the world but you must also have an open disposition with respect to diversity in this nation, in your community, and on your hallway. Identifying and sloughing off notions you inevitably have about entire categories of people, you can develop an ability to feel comfortable in any part of the world. I want you to be a model for how we can live and work in a complicated world by promoting through your actions a robust and sincere respect for difference.
Wherever you go, you will be an emissary for the culture, identity and groups that you represent. Be patient with the ignorance of those who know little about what these identities reflect. I am very impatient with people who take easy offense at questions. We must be permitted ignorant questions if we wish to have intercultural learning and international exchange. Take every question as an opportunity to enter into discourse about your culture or your opinion even if your inquisitors demonstrate a laughable ignorance of difference. The college experience is meant to demonstrate in every setting the nature of diverse perceptions and the promise of commonalities.
But don’t just wait for questions, be an advocate for interacting across difference. On a college campus, political divisions can be pointed and extreme. Here at Brown, we are committed to open dialog around political and other issues and we are intolerant of efforts to prevent debate that contributes to learning. There is nothing more harmful to liberal learning than the setting up of an environment that privileges only certain perspectives.
I have tried in this brief moment to suggest something of what I believe can be achieved if you enter this place with an open mind and a willingness to learn as a newborn intellect. I have tried to convey how important I believe difference to be to the quality of your learning. Seize this advantage and you will not be disappointed. Savor this opportunity and you will grow. Mine what is available here and, though you will suffer some (for truth is also about suffering), you will spend the happiest days of your life here. Work until it hurts and play until you can laugh no more. This is truly a time of pain, laughter and learning and they go together well.
Welcome to this funny, painful, miraculous, wonderful world. I am so pleased that you are here.
Ruth J. Simmons
September 2, 2007