By Richard Warch
President, Lawrence University
It has been my custom in previous years to use this annual president's report to share with the wider Lawrence community some of my thoughts about various aspects of how we engage each other in a residential liberal arts community. This year, however, we all have other things, other people on our minds. We are preoccupied with the events of September 11, 2001, events that have shaken not only our nation, but also our world. I want to use this occasion, then, to share with the wider Lawrence family the remarks I delivered to the campus community at the Matriculation Convocation on September 27, remarks that I've altered only slightly for this report.
What I noted then remains true now: following the tragic attacks of September 11 and the anthrax scares we have experienced since, we are filled with a kind of looming uncertainty about the future, a future that it seems will be changed fundamentally not only by the terrorist assault but by our individual and collective responses to it. How could it have happened? Who is to blame? Are we at war? If so, against whom? Someone is going to pay, we've heard, whether that someone is an individual, an organization, and/or a nation-state. But how will we make them pay? What are we to do to them? Arrest Osama bin Laden? Launch surgical strikes? Deploy ground forces? Whatever we do, will we eliminate or exacerbate the threat? The answers to these questions are unfolding even now, as we bomb Afghanistan and cope with the warnings of more attacks at home, and it would be surprising if we did not anticipate at least some of those answers with dread.
The days to come
September 11, 2001 now stands with December 7, 1941 as another Day of Infamy, although the death toll from the assaults in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania is roughly double what it was in Hawaii. In addition, how we will respond militarily is far less evident today than it was 60 years ago. What we confront is not another war against a nation-state enemy as was the case in World War II, much less a video-game war like Desert Storm; we face prospects wholly new and unknown, for which the President and others have been seeking to prepare us.
Lincoln's words during the Civil War resonate today: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."
We all know, expect, and accept that we will face tighter security measures at airports and other centers of travel and public gathering. Convenience will be sacrificed to safety. We must certainly disenthrall ourselves of the good old days of airline travel -- which, to be honest, had not been so good to begin with -- and disenthrall ourselves as well about the safety of the U.S. Postal Service. But these may only be the tips of the proverbial iceberg. President Bush has declared war on terrorism and on the countries that harbor and support terrorists. Indeed, he has referred to this effort as a crusade, hinting at our own holy war against those who have presumably waged holy war on us, not to mention hinting as well at the deep roots of a conflict between the "West" and the "Middle East." As the rhetoric escalates, the dangers increase. We can expect life to change as we witness the further deployment of our armed forces, but life has already changed in other respects. Our sense of vulnerability has increased; our security from the kinds of mindless violence we have witnessed in other parts of the world has been breached.
As we seek protection from the sort of horror we experienced in September, we may retreat into a kind of fortress mentality, seeking scapegoats for our fears, closing ranks against others different from ourselves, isolating ourselves from the inhabitants of other parts of the global society in which we live, even demonizing those who share national or religious affiliation with those we have identified with this horror. It is not merely that we may return to a kind of collective isolationism as a nation, but that we will embrace a kind of personal isolation as individuals. Our response may involve not only physical safety, but also psychic safety. We may well return to the kind of mindless nativism that typifies some of the least attractive and most vicious traits of our national experience: "America for Americans." "No hyphenated Americans." "America: love it or leave it."
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, such views were directed against African Americans, Catholics, Jews, Eastern Europeans, Asians, Hispanics, and others. Those deemed different were deemed dangerous. Foreigners were frightening. Aliens were anathema. We have, or so we like to think, moved beyond these earlier manifestations of xenophobic thinking, but the temptation today is to respond to the evil that has been perpetrated on us by resorting to a vengeful, vitriolic assault on others, in this case Arabs and followers of Islam.
Callers have harassed Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, accusing it of "training terrorists" and demanding that the university expel Middle Eastern students. We have witnessed assaults on Arab-Americans, rocks thrown through the windows of Arab-American businesses, attempts to set fire to mosques, vilification of Muslims, the mindless search for someone or some group to serve as the focus of our anger. One caller on a national public radio show advised all Arab-Americans to report to the FBI to have their loyalty tested. These assaults have affected not only Muslims, but Sikhs and others who are being persecuted because they "look Middle Eastern." Thus we revert -- or some few of us revert -- to the thinking that prompted the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, or that fed the fears exploited by Senator Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s, or that have led to racial profiling by police officers in our own day. In this we must stand with the President, who stated clearly that our enemy is not our many Muslim or Arab friends but "a radical network of terrorists" who are, he said, "traitors to their own faith."
Justice or vengeance?
The national mood for revenge is, of course, understandable. The sense of vulnerability and fright prompts the need to fight back, to assert our power, to exact punishing retribution. You've undoubtedly seen or heard the expressions of outrage. We have been called upon to "Strike Back," with some arguing that we can do so by investing in the stock and bond markets, a message that was at least initially ineffectual. We have been urged to have "Resolve."
One of the earliest responses that I saw, by Leonard Pitts in the Miami Herald -- since reprinted in The Appleton Post Crescent -- said that "in this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown author of this suffering. 'You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard.'" We have been bloodied, Pitts wrote, "as we have never been bloodied before. But there's a gulf of difference between making us bloody and making us fall. . . . When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length in the pursuit of justice."
In some form or fashion, we identify with the seething anger that prompted that article. We rally to that sense of a proud and good people who will be avenged. We've heard it before. We've sung it together, and it was sung at the National Cathedral on September 14: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on."
Julia Ward Howe's Civil War hymn expressed and spoke to the religious and patriotic sentiments of the northern states in the 1860s, but how will it speak to us today? One can only hope that it will not speak to us in the voice of Jerry Falwell, who, though he has since apologized, used the occasion of the tragedy to lash out at those he accuses of secularizing America and came mighty close to identifying the terrorist attack with the judgment of God against a wayward nation. Surely, we must reject the assertion behind that outrageous sentiment, just as we must have the forbearance and foresight to distinguish between calls for justice and cries for vengeance in our national response. As Shibley Telhami put it in The New York Times, our "hearts must never be so hardened as to forget that what is at stake is much bigger than mere retaliation or that one cannot defend one's values by subverting them."
Above all, it seems to me, this is a time when we should harken to the words of Abraham Lincoln, uttered at the outset of our Civil War, when he invoked "the better angels of our nature" in an effort to rally the nation to prevent the conflict.
What are the better angels of our nature? They are expressed in part by the ways in which Americans have, in the main, responded to the tragedy that befell us. Physicians, firefighters, rescue workers, and ordinary citizens have come to the scenes of these disasters to lend their assistance, some people have raised funds to support the relief effort, and others have given blood to aid the injured. We have gathered in prayer vigils, in churches and synagogues and mosques, to express our grief and to acknowledge our common suffering with those who have suffered most directly. We have lit candles, all across this broad land, and stood in sad and silent unity with our neighbors.
Defining moments
In many ways, life is a matter of defining moments. For Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Civil War was the defining experience of his generation. "Through our great good fortune," he said in 1884, "in our youth our hearts were touched with fire." Those who remember Pearl Harbor or have heard about it from grandparents or great-grandparents will recall how the nation responded to fight and win what has been called "the last good war," how that event touched them, and why Tom Brokaw called them "the greatest generation." Those of us who were alive at the time of the assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy know how those tragic events affected us all, just as we can remember the war in Viet Nam and how it tore this country asunder. For good or ill, these moments in our national life have shaped and informed the generations who experienced them.
The current generation of college students has just experienced, I believe, its defining moment, and, like their parents and forebears, they will bond with each other because of this tragedy in ways we cannot yet foretell. President Bush has said that the central mission of his administration will be to fight and exterminate terrorism. If it is to be his mission, it will perforce become ours as well, in ways we cannot yet understand or describe.
But our students have yet another mission -- in many ways one more enduring and important, as it will inform and sharpen their bonding. In the halls of this college, they are undertaking a journey that will equip them to be productive and proactive participants in our common life. For the moment, that common life may be dominated by present circumstance, but it will inevitably involve more issues and opportunities than fighting to end terrorism, which itself will be no easy task.
Understanding the socio-political, intellectual, and religious roots of terrorism is no simple task either, and finding ways to craft a national foreign and domestic policy that addresses the root causes of terrorism is yet more complex, whether in the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, Northern Ireland, Africa, or at home.
I do not pretend to know the answers to these dilemmas, but I do believe that liberal education as practiced at Lawrence contains the ingredients of those answers, not by providing them, not by describing what we are to think and do, but by encouraging us to be thoughtful and informed, not glib and ignorant, as we think and act. To learn about the peoples for whom terrorism is an expression of ideologies; to understand their beliefs, histories, and conflicts, from beyond and within our borders; to comprehend what aspects of our national identity and foreign policy provoke them, will make us not just knowledgeable but aware, not just smart but sensitive.
Above all, liberal education should enable us to develop the qualities of mind and character that are the intellectual and personal prerequisites for informed citizenship in a changing, challenging, and suddenly more dangerous world. Liberal education is education for a free people, and it is in service to our freedom that we should seek that education.
What we can do
Lawrence has a proud tradition of being an inclusive community. From our founding as a coeducational college to our hospitality to men and women of different viewpoints to our openness to individuals of all nations, races, and creeds, our community embraces and celebrates the individual, with all the varying identities and belief systems and values that each individual possesses. One particular set of shared values binds us to one another most of all: the belief in free inquiry, the desire to achieve the status of an educated person, the willingness to learn from and live with each other, and most especially to learn with and from those most different from ourselves.
Beyond the enduring purposes of the college, however, the Lawrence community has both the opportunity and the obligation to do more. At one level, we can contribute funds to support the relief efforts, and I am pleased that, in various ways, efforts have been undertaken to do just that. One such effort occurred on Sunday, October 7, when the conservatory held "A Concert of Healing and Remembrance" at which voluntary contributions to the Red Cross were collected. At another level, we can support and comfort one another, as indeed we have already begun to do.
In addition, we can and should draw upon our own resources and those of the community to inform ourselves about the issues that confront us as a people, both now and in the foreseeable future. In the weeks following September 11, we have sponsored talks and symposia on topics ranging from Islam to national security, drawing on the expertise of faculty members and others to engage these matters with and for us. In October, three distinguished visitors to the campus spoke to and about the terrorist attacks: jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who encouraged us to find "a new American mythology" to bind the nation in common identity and purpose; founder of Solidarity, former president of Poland, and Nobel Laureate Lech Walesa, who urged the United States and its people to exercise leadership in this dangerous world; and primatologist Jane Goodall, who exhorted us not to let the terrorists deflect our attention and commitments from caring for the global environment.
In the days and months ahead, as we go about the quotidian business of teaching and learning, we will, at times inadvertently, at times willfully, even at times necessarily, shut out the thoughts of the tragedy we have witnessed. We will go about our business, as we should. You hear people say that these tragic events put everything else in perspective. So they do -- but, as I said to our students at the beginning of this academic year, that perspective should not be to see their higher education as of little moment but as of greater importance. We must all remain true to our callings at Lawrence, remember why we are here, and profess together the purposes we hold in common as a learning community.
In 1942, as the nation entered World War II, the president of Wilson College wrote a short piece titled "Liberal Education and War-Strategy" in which he said:
The liberal arts college cannot turn out at a moment's notice quantities of physicians, stenographers, meteorologists, engineers, acetylene welders, steamfitters, and shipbuilders [occupations that fit the needs of the time]. But it can turn out men and women thoroughly grounded in the liberal disciplines; men and women who understand what is happening in this world, see its problems in perspective, know what solutions have been tried before with success or failure, and know the hopes and fears in men's hearts and how to foster the one and allay the other. It can turn out men and women who have a vision of the future and trained judgment for the attainment of the vision, who have zeal to pioneer in fields of which we may not yet even guess the existence, who are persons of integrity and honesty and understanding -- qualities peculiarly well taught by the disciplines of scholarship; above all, men and women who have a will to do, not only to know.
Sixty years later, that assertion still has value and force.
Lawrence President Henry Merritt Wriston put the matter more concisely: the college may take pride, he wrote, if it gives the student the "opportunity for the cultivation of powers that will let him meet [the tensions of the world] with alert mind, calm spirit, and courageous heart." That was and remains a worthy objective for Lawrence, in the present instance and beyond, and I hope and trust that we will always strive to provide and perfect that opportunity for our undergraduates.