WHAT S A COLLEGE FOR ANYWAY? (Inauguration of Carl Strikwerda as President of Elizabethtown College, Oct. 1, 2011) Nicholas Wolterstorff Let me begin by congratulating my friend, Carl Strikwerda, on the honor of being chosen as the fourteenth president of this fine college, and congratulate Elizabethtown College on the wisdom of choosing this fine person, scholar, and administrator, Carl Strikwerda, as your fourteenth president. An occasion such as this calls for reflection on the fundamental question, what s a college for anyway? Or more precisely, what is this college for, Elizabethtown College, a liberal arts college in the tradition of Church of the Brethren for whom service is a major commitment. I tell you nothing you don t already know when I say that we live in troubled and turbulent times. The United States is in a deep and stubborn recession, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930 s, with unemployment hovering around 9%. On September 13 it was reported that the number of Americans living in poverty has hit a record high of 46.2 million. Contributing to our difficulties is the fact that, given economic globalization, the debt of a small country like Greece threatens the financial institutions and economy not only of the rest of Europe but even of the U.S. One of the results of radical changes in communication technology is that the most rabid and wacky opinions now get wide circulation. Previously it was the educated elite who controlled most of the sources of information and opinion; that is no longer the case. Not unrelated to the changes in communication technology is the fact that the political process here in the United States is full of angry voices and immobilized by large blocs of voters and
politicians who are unwilling to take seriously the views of those they disagree with and to work toward compromises. Revolutions have been rippling across the Arab world; tyrants who ruled for decades have been toppled. Within Islam there are movements seething with anger at the West; I need not remind you of the forms this anger has taken nor of how our lives have been altered by the steps our country has taken to protect us against this anger. And whereas for a century or so religion seemed to be in decline around the world, especially in modernized societies, now religious voices in all their diversity are full throated and often angry. Religion has not disappeared in modernized societies; it has instead taken different forms. If we understood these developments and were able to predict their emergence and outcome, we would feel less vulnerable. But we don t understand and can t predict. Nobody predicted the Arab uprising; no one can reliably predict its eventual outcome. Very few predicted the economic collapse of 2008. And no economist fully understands the workings of the globalized economy, or even of the American economy. Our times are not only troubled and turbulent but unpredictable and inscrutable. This is the social context within which we ask the question, what is a college like Elizabethtown for? It s a context very different from that when the college was founded, very different even from that of ten years ago. Part of what a college is for is research. But on this occasion I want to set that off to the side and focus on the teaching of students. What is the goal, or what should be the goal, of the educational endeavors of Elizabethtown College? Every student who graduates from this college will occupy certain social roles. You will all eventually find yourself in some occupation or so one hopes. You will all occupy the role 2
of citizen. Most of you will occupy the role of parent. And so forth. One of the goals of collegiate education is to equip students for choosing and living out their future social roles. A marvelous writer on education I think he s marvelous even though I vigorously disagree with him on many points is the University of Cambridge political theorist, Michael Oakeshott. Oakeshott is dismissive of the goal that I just now presented; he thinks education should not prepare students for choosing and living out their social roles but should liberate them from their present and future social particularities by inducting them into humankind s cultural heritage. I think Oakeshott s dismissal presupposes too pinched a view of what it is to equip students for choosing and living out their social roles. Let me explain. In most societies, the social roles that a person occupied were simply ascribed to him or her; one had no choice. The son of a serf was a serf; that was it. We in our society not only do choose but must choose. One consideration that should go into that choice is whether or not one is good at the role under consideration; another consideration that should go into it is whether one can find fulfillment in that role. For lots of students, collegiate education clarifies what they are good at and clarifies what they find fulfilling. There s a third consideration that should go into choosing one s social roles, a normative or moral consideration. Can you occupy that role in such a way that you can be of genuine service to your fellow human beings? Can you occupy it in such a way that you contribute significantly to their well-being, their flourishing? Can you occupy it in such a way that you honor everyone s dignity? Can you occupy it in such a way that you advance the cause of justice? 3
I submit that one of the fundamental goals of collegiate education is to equip students to ask and to answer that normative question when choosing the roles that they will occupy, and then to continue asking it as they live out the roles they have chosen. For it s not enough to choose to become a lawyer because one judges that one can occupy that role in such a way that one is of genuine service to one s fellow human beings, and then, once one is in that role, to remove one s moral thinking cap and practice law the way everybody else does. Each day anew one has to ask the question: am I living out this role in such a way that I am of genuine service to my fellow human beings? Not infrequently one s answer to that question will require that one not do things the way everybody else is doing them. Distinct from this moral dimension of liberal arts education, but interacting with it, is another dimension, the one that Oakeshott affirms and celebrates. Liberal arts education inducts students into the cultural heritage of the attempts of humankind to understand the world, ourselves, and God, and into the cultural heritage of the products of human creativity. Understanding, whether it be of stars and galaxies, of plate tectonics, of our human biological makeup, of some stretch of history, or whatever, requires data. But understanding goes beyond data to discern something what makes sense of the data. Understanding answers our why? questions. Why does this happen? Why are things like that? Sometimes our attempts to understand are animated by our desire to improve our lives. But sometimes they are animated instead by love, by the disinterested love of understanding and by the disinterested love of the products of human creativity. At the root of liberal arts education is such love. Were the disinterested love of understanding and the disinterested love of the products of human creativity to disappear, a fundamental dimension of liberal arts education would disappear. 4
Every now and then, coming to know and understand ourselves and the world evokes in us awe at that which we have come to understand: awe at the astounding immensity and the astounding intricacy of God s creation. So too, every now and then we are stopped in our tracks by awe at the products of human creativity by Bach s B minor Mass, for example. But also coming to know and understand the history of humankind evokes in us, every now and then, horror at what human beings have done to each other and to the world. I say this having been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington three weeks ago. Awe is one of the roots of religion; horror at what human beings have done is religion s greatest challenge. If a student in her four years at college never feels awe, something has gone wrong, either with the student or with how she s been taught. If she never feels horror, then too something has gone wrong. Liberal arts education has a distinct moral dimension; that s the main point I made when I said that liberal arts education equips students to choose and live out their social roles. The point I am now making is that liberal arts education also has a distinct affective and emotional dimension. It is grounded in love, disinterested love of understanding and of humankind s creativity; and when it goes well, it evokes two of the deepest of human emotions, awe and horror. Let me close by posing a question that I will leave it to you to answer. Some of you will have heard about a new book by the sociologist Christian Smith and associates titled Lost in Transition. The book includes interviews with 230 young adults from across the U.S. aimed at uncovering their moral thought and lives. What the interviews reveal, to put it bluntly, is that most of those interviewed were moral morons, almost incapable of thinking in moral categories. 5
In our troubled and turbulent times, the affective and emotional dimension of liberal arts education is as relevant as ever; the moral dimension is more relevant than ever, and more important. But the interviews Smith conducted raise the question, is such an education possible today? Or have I abused your time by constructing a pure fantasy? I think such an education is still possible. Very few of the students I taught across some forty-five years seemed to me to be moral morons. Many of them had a disinterested love of understanding. Many of them experienced awe; it was my impression that most of them experienced horror. But perhaps my experience was atypical. So what do you here think, students, professors, staff, and supporters of Elizabethtown College? Is liberal arts education as I have described it -- a moral enterprise, motivated by love, evocative of awe and horror is such an education still possible here in this place? Or is its day over? 6