Keynote Address: Dedication of the Watson Institute's Stephen Robert '62 Hall

May 29, 2019

Chancellor Mencoff, President Paxson, members of the Corporation and the Watson Board of Overseers, faculty, students, staff, alumni, parents and friends – it is a profound pleasure to be with you to celebrate this wonderful new building – Stephen Robert ’62 Hall.

As Ed Steinfeld said, and as many of you know, I began my time at Brown right here at the Watson Institute.

In fact, I was drawn to Brown specifically because of the Watson Institute, to be part of a wonderful group of faculty charged with re-launching and re-positioning Watson to make a difference in the world through its research, teaching and outreach activities. Now more than ever, our society needs what Watson has to offer.

In my brief remarks today, I would like to make three points:

First, I would like to remind everyone about why the work of the Watson Institute is so important to our society, especially in these complicated times.

Second, I will note how Watson and Brown are especially well-positioned to address some of the world’s great challenges given not just the particular work we do but also, and especially,  how we do it.

And finally, I will underscore why this is an especially auspicious moment for Brown. Given the 50th anniversary of the Open Curriculum, the incredible progress we’re making on implementing the University’s strategic plan, Building on Distinction, and the amazing leadership we have in President Christina Paxson, Brown is particularly well-positioned to lead in re-imagining higher education and its role in our society at this critical juncture of world history.

Let’s begin with why Watson’s work is so important.

What brings us together today is a collective conviction that our society – global society – needs important institutions like the Watson Institute.

Watson seeks to promote more peaceful, just and prosperous societies through its teaching, research and outreach. It’s one of the anchor institutions of our strategic plan, Building on Distinction.

I would argue that this work is especially critical today given the current global condition, which appears so uncertain, fragile, and conflict-ridden.

Let me remind you of some of the major challenges we face as a society today:

  • Across the globe, we are witnessing an erosion of democracy and democratic values – values that some of us took for granted just a few years ago. The rise of illiberal leaders in Europe, Latin America, and Asia  -- not to mention the U.S.-- are undermining democratic institutions, civil rights and individual liberties.

    And, the impact is being felt.

    According to a recent Pew Center Research survey of more than 30,000 people in 27 countries conducted last spring, more people around the world (51%) are dissatisfied than satisfied with the way democracy is working in their country.

    According to the report, the main factors influencing dissatisfaction relate to economic frustration, the status of individual rights, and perceptions of corruption among the political elite.

  • We’re also seeing instability and civil strife across the globe, in places as varied as Venezuela, Egypt, Ukraine, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan, just to name a few.

    There are growing tensions within and across regions, in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and of course the Middle East.

  • In terms of global security, we’re witnessing traditional threats re-emerging – on the Korean peninsula and elsewhere – while alliances meant to stem these threats have weakened.

    But we are also seeing new security threats: cyber-wars, pandemics, and those emanating from climate change -- floods, famine, mass migrations and conflicts.  its impact on the most vulnerable populations,  

  • And, there’s growing inequality within societies. According to the 2018 World Inequality Report, income inequality has increased in nearly every region of the world in recent decades. And rising inequality undermines faith in political and economic institutions and erodes social stability.

    These and other factors that threaten the peace, prosperity and stability of our societies must be understood, analytically, so that they can be addressed in more effective and lasting ways.

This is what Watson does.

And Watson does this through the work of the amazing community of faculty, students, staff and practitioners-in-residence, all committed to addressing these issues through their research, teaching and also by convening conversations among stakeholders: Stakeholders with different perspectives and interests and partisan affiliations about these important issues.

At a time when there is so little measured, fact-based, discussion and debate about the important issues of the day, Watson creates a forum for exactly those conversations.

Watson has built its new strategy around three encompassing themes – Security, Development and Governance – which are highly relevant given our current global landscape.

Regarding Security: The focus at Watson is not just on traditional security concerns centered around force mobilization grand strategy (as important as these are), but also on new security challenges such as cyber-security, environmental change and security, pandemics and security, etc.

Just think about Professor Peter Andreas’ work on illicit trade and border security, or Professor Cathy Lutz’s multi-year project on the Cost of War.

Concerning Development: Watson’s approach is not just about increasing GDP/capita, but more broadly human development, social and community and institutional development.

This approach embraces Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen’s concept of development as freedom, and development promoting capabilities of individuals so that they can make choices to pursue the lives they want to live.

We see this approach echoed in the work of our Watson faculty, including Sarah Besky’s work on labor standards in the global tea industry; Nitsan Chorev’s work on global health; John Friedman’s work on access to high quality education and income inequality in the US; and Prerna Singh’s work on ethnic identities and how they can be mobilized to provide solidarity across different classes within the same society.

As for Governance: Watson’s approach is not limited to individual nation-state governance, which cannot alone address the complex issues we face as a society, but rather on the innovative mix of public and private governance, including collaboration across sectors.

We see this in Professor Rob Blair’s work on rebuilding state capacity in post-civil war societies in Africa; Patrick Heller and Ashutosh Varhsney’s work on housing and public services in India; and in my own work on labor standards in the global economy.

So, we have great research taking place at Watson, on some of the most important issues we face as a global society, conducted by some of the country’s leading scholars, all here at Watson.

But as important is the way that we at Watson and at Brown approach our work, which has real consequences and promise given the significant complexities of these global challenges.

So, what distinguishes the work being done at Watson?

First, we are truly interdisciplinary. Others say this, but we actually do it. At Brown, we blend intellectual rigor with cross-disciplinary inquiry to yield important insights, new ways of thinking, and innovative solutions.

All of the work I described above brings together scholars from different disciplines. And, because we’re at Brown, all of this work also involves collaboration across campus. There are linkages between Watson and the Schools of Public Health and Engineering, the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Computer Science, and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. This is distinctively Brown.

Second, the work at Watson blends together deep regional expertise with cross-cutting big issues.

This means that people working on these big, global issues – security, economic development and prosperity, climate change and its impact on the most vulnerable populations – are also collaborating with other scholars with deep regional expertise on some of the most important regions of the world, including Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, China, the US, and Europe.

This interplay between deep regional expertise and analytical research focused on important issues gives Watson and Brown distinctive capabilities and insights that simply do not exist elsewhere. This, too, is characteristically Brown.

Why is this work so important for universities like Brown today?

As all of you know, in many ways, these are trying times for higher education, and for universities like Brown.

We find ourselves in a period when the basic principles and values underlying higher education are under attack. Values like:

  • The importance of scientific research and facts to help us understand and mitigate great challenges, like climate change;

  • The centrality of critical thinking and free inquiry as we come together to think through some of society’s most pressing issues;

  • And, the fundamental importance of diversity and policies like affirmative action that help us create truly diverse communities that are central to academic excellence.

And we may in fact be facing a crisis of confidence in higher education

There have been a number of polls that underscore this problem. For example, Gallup has reported that confidence in higher education in the U.S. has decreased significantly since 2015, more so than for any other U.S. institution that Gallup measures.

Based on a report released last fall, just 48% of U.S. adults expressed "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in higher education in 2018, down from 57% in 2015. The decline is most evident among Republicans, whose confidence level has fallen by 17 percentage points, but Democrats and independents are also less confident now than they were three years ago.

I’m not seeking to be political here, and I know that there are many things that universities need to do to address some of the issues raised in these polls. But these days, we are witnessing significant threats to higher education and its core values – in legislatures, the courts, and in terms of public opinion.

We need to regain the confidence of the public and policy makers alike so that we can defend our core values and continue to serve as agents of social mobility and positive social change.

And-my final point is this: that Brown, through key units like the Watson Institute, is well-positioned to play a leadership role in redefining and re-imagining the role of higher education in our society, and regaining the trust and respect of the American public and policy makers.

Brown is currently in the midst of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Open Curriculum. This is one of Brown’s most distinguishing and well-known features.

The underlying philosophy of the Open Curriculum is to let students take charge of their own education, and to be the architects of their learning.

It was born of the idea that education is a partnership between faculty and students, and cultivated by the open exchange of ideas, experiential learning, and broad and deep exploration rather than simply checking off boxes.

This philosophy of education reflected the times. It emerged in the late 1960’s, during yet another period of great uncertainty both domestically and globally.

Not unlike today, college and university campuses were centers for both turmoil and change, reflecting the broader societal pressures, as well as incubating and amplifying them.

It was a pivotal period, when the role of the university was being questioned. Are colleges and universities agents of the status quo or of progressive change? Finishing schools for the elite or agents of social mobility and positive social change. The books that were published in that period: The Sheepskin Psychosis, Alienated Youth, Divided Academy, reflect the debates that were taking place on and about college campuses in that era.

Out of these debates within and about college campuses and their role in society, new ideas about higher education were born, borrowing from John Dewey, James Coleman and other leading thinkers on how best to deliver higher education for the future. These broader debates informed Brown’s own thinking about what became the New (now Open) Curriculum.

Today, we’re witnessing much the same phenomena. There is tremendous uncertainty in our domestic politics and in the global order. College campuses are once again reflecting – and amplifying – these broader tensions.

It is time, once again, to reflect on the role and purpose of higher education, and the specific role that we can play, here at Brown, to innovate, and to lead – in the research we do, the education we provide, and the ways in which we affect change.

What are the most appropriate and effective ways to teach and learn? What roles should universities play in our society?  Today, given all that we know about cognition, learning, decision-making, human behavior; and today, given our ability to collect and analyze huge amounts of data and our renewed appreciation for the benefits of truly diverse and inclusive communities, what new educational philosophies and principles should guide us through this current moment and into the future?

These are the questions that we must face, as a university community, in the months and years to come.

Brown is once again poised to play a leadership role in these debates, in this movement to redefine higher education and its role in our society. The roots of this new vision are embedded in the research and teaching taking place at Watson and other centers of excellence we have at Brown. This gives us the capabilities but also the responsibility to lead higher education to its next stage of development.

This is our challenge, and also our opportunity. Let’s take advantage of this opportunity and work together to create more just, peaceful and prosperous societies.

Thank you.

And now, it is my sincere honor and distinct privilege to invite our chancellor, Sam Mencoff, to the podium, for the official dedication.