President Frances Fergusson - Vassar's 138th Commencement
Good afternoon. And welcome, everyone, to Vassar's Spring Convocation. And an especially warm welcome to the inspiring wonderful, creative Class of 2002!
When we last gathered together for Convocation, in late August, at the start of our academic year, we noted a world with many imperfections that needed to be addressed. I urged that you act to address them. Back then, we recognized our place within the world to be both privileged and secure. Our actions would perhaps spring less from a pressing necessity of engagement than from a belief that, as privileged individuals, we had a responsibility to help others not so fortunate.
Since then, we came of course to recognize, all in an instant of horror, that our lives are intertwined with those of peoples literally on the other side of the world. Both our interdependence and our vulnerability are now obvious and immediate. Calls to action, to address ills, are now also more immediate and heartfelt, although our nation's actions outward are, today, more military than humanitarian. How do we move forward in these new and altered circumstances?
Certainly, our sense of security has been radically altered: and, yet, it is hard to live within the beauty and peace of this campus and not feel a bedrock sense of immutability, of values from long ago that still support and nurture us. Often, in the moments after September 11th, I contemplated the horror we had suffered, while experiencing the irony of those days of completely blue skies, benign breezes, warmth, and the sensual density of the colors of early autumn. Was all this beauty meant as nature's mockery of our losses? Or was it, in some way, a statement of comfort or even hope? I imagined equally beautiful days in France or Italy during World War II, when it would have seemed from nature that all was right with the world, when it was anything but that. I could not reconcile the competing messages of the horror visited upon us by humankind and the beauty of our natural world.
Indeed, in the months since September 11th, we have tried to reconcile much that seems irreconcilable. We've had to question our own resilience, our ways of looking at the world, and our ways of working and moving within it. I would like to focus briefly, because there is so little time today, on just one aspect: what has happened to our ability to critique and dissent.
Shortly after September 11th, Vassar had the first of a series of faculty discussions, at which David Schalk, our speaker this afternoon, addressed the community. Afterwards, one student raised the question of the American flag, which, as we all know, suddenly sprouted everywhere: on cars, on lapels, on buildings and front yards, in an unprecedented show of patriotism. For many of us, this was both understandable and also a bit jarring, because for so long in our personal histories the flag had been most often the symbol of those with more conservative sympathies, going back to the Vietnam War, the Goldwater presidential campaign, the National Rifle Association, and so on into the present. As liberal Americans, many of us weren't antagonistic to the flag, but we were more than a little wary of its coded messages.
On that occasion, I responded to the student that I thought it might be time for us to take back the potent symbol of the American flag and no longer allow it to be appropriated by the far right. I believe profoundly that the flag stands for all the good in America: the right to be free, to express that freedom, to disagree and dissent, to be the amalgam of those independent entities that created the United States in the 18th century, in the spirit of Enlightenment, not of conformity. Maybe now, faced with a violent, totalitarian and intolerant view of the world, we might be able to learn just how precious those freedoms and perspectives could be.
It was naïve of me to believe that September 11th had the potential to remind us of our freedoms. Since then, we have seen the systematic dismantling of many rights of due process by our federal government, the acquiescence by the vast majority of Americans to the removal of those rights and to new intrusions into our privacy, and the squelching of dissident opinion on a wide range of issues. The very freedoms that we have treasured and sought as fundamental to America are, I believe, under attack.
We snicker in disbelief when John Ashcroft covers elegant nude representations of justice ? works of art ? in the foyer of the Department of Justice with $8000 worth of curtains. We can laugh with Whoopi Goldberg at the Academy Awards who tied a cloth around a nude Oscar, "because," she said, "John Ashcroft finds it unsettling." But the ludicrous nature of Ashcroft's action should not blind us to the larger issue of censorship. This is just one very visible, petty, and risible manifestation of his deeply serious and dangerous suppression of any world view, any opinion, not coincident with his own.
More has been done to dismantle rights ? of habeas corpus, of due process, of a right to trial, of the Geneva Convention ? during the past six months than we have seen in decades of government policy. Although today's political leadership is savvy enough not to speak the words of suppression, so easily expressed during the McCarthy era, the facts are unavoidable. And those flags, which we might have hoped six months ago could express our freedoms, are now again, often depressingly jingoistic and exclusionary, rather than welcoming to all, and to all points of view.
I recently saw the revival of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which uses the Salem Witch trials as a metaphor for the McCarthy hearings of its own time. Richard Eyre, the director of the current production, has noted that he was drawn to the play, in the 1950s, because of "its depiction of a community?in which orthodoxy could be righteous expression and opposition to it seen as willful malevolence." By choosing heroes who are common people, farmers and housewives, Miller stresses the universality of choice, the urgency for all to act morally, in the face of authority that states unequivocally "you are either with us or against us."
How identical to the rhetoric of our own leadership! And how, too, that rhetoric has affected the perceptions of so many. In a very modest way, Vassar's decision this autumn to affirm the dignity of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people through removing ourselves from the United Way got caught in this polarization. Those who read the Poughkeepsie Journal, or my mail, know that our stand was interpreted as anti-family by some, who then spun that still further into anti-Americanism, characterizing the College as "pinko-liberal," forgetting the realities of the post-Cold War period. This is not far from the mentality of a McCarthy, who sought to extirpate from society any person who expressed free speech or dissent. And, with John Ashcroft's steady erosion of rights, we have reason again to be concerned.
A friend of mine, Anthony Romero, became the new president of the American Civil Liberties Union on September 4th. He has been busy. As an inspiring leader for the ACLU?and as someone who is young, Latino, gay, and not from a background of privilege ? Anthony has been able to attract some media attention to the critical issues of freedoms and rights, despite the overwhelming singularity of thought that has threatened to sweep the nation. The ACLU ? 300,000 members strong a year ago ? has added 75,000 new and deeply concerned members. Perhaps you are among them.
But Arthur Miller is ultimately right. It is the average person, not just the intellectual, who must understand the importance of preserving our freedoms, of making that American flag a symbol of our ability to question, to disagree, to dissent, and ultimately to live freely. Our public and private selves should be a continuum, such that our private thoughts can also be said without penalty in a public arena ? and can help direct the body politic. Our ethical sense of this world ? and how we as Americans fit and act within it ? should demand no less.
Thank you.
Good afternoon. And welcome, everyone, to Vassar's Spring Convocation. And an especially warm welcome to the inspiring wonderful, creative Class of 2002!
When we last gathered together for Convocation, in late August, at the start of our academic year, we noted a world with many imperfections that needed to be addressed. I urged that you act to address them. Back then, we recognized our place within the world to be both privileged and secure. Our actions would perhaps spring less from a pressing necessity of engagement than from a belief that, as privileged individuals, we had a responsibility to help others not so fortunate.
Since then, we came of course to recognize, all in an instant of horror, that our lives are intertwined with those of peoples literally on the other side of the world. Both our interdependence and our vulnerability are now obvious and immediate. Calls to action, to address ills, are now also more immediate and heartfelt, although our nation's actions outward are, today, more military than humanitarian. How do we move forward in these new and altered circumstances?
Certainly, our sense of security has been radically altered: and, yet, it is hard to live within the beauty and peace of this campus and not feel a bedrock sense of immutability, of values from long ago that still support and nurture us. Often, in the moments after September 11th, I contemplated the horror we had suffered, while experiencing the irony of those days of completely blue skies, benign breezes, warmth, and the sensual density of the colors of early autumn. Was all this beauty meant as nature's mockery of our losses? Or was it, in some way, a statement of comfort or even hope? I imagined equally beautiful days in France or Italy during World War II, when it would have seemed from nature that all was right with the world, when it was anything but that. I could not reconcile the competing messages of the horror visited upon us by humankind and the beauty of our natural world.
Indeed, in the months since September 11th, we have tried to reconcile much that seems irreconcilable. We've had to question our own resilience, our ways of looking at the world, and our ways of working and moving within it. I would like to focus briefly, because there is so little time today, on just one aspect: what has happened to our ability to critique and dissent.
Shortly after September 11th, Vassar had the first of a series of faculty discussions, at which David Schalk, our speaker this afternoon, addressed the community. Afterwards, one student raised the question of the American flag, which, as we all know, suddenly sprouted everywhere: on cars, on lapels, on buildings and front yards, in an unprecedented show of patriotism. For many of us, this was both understandable and also a bit jarring, because for so long in our personal histories the flag had been most often the symbol of those with more conservative sympathies, going back to the Vietnam War, the Goldwater presidential campaign, the National Rifle Association, and so on into the present. As liberal Americans, many of us weren't antagonistic to the flag, but we were more than a little wary of its coded messages.
On that occasion, I responded to the student that I thought it might be time for us to take back the potent symbol of the American flag and no longer allow it to be appropriated by the far right. I believe profoundly that the flag stands for all the good in America: the right to be free, to express that freedom, to disagree and dissent, to be the amalgam of those independent entities that created the United States in the 18th century, in the spirit of Enlightenment, not of conformity. Maybe now, faced with a violent, totalitarian and intolerant view of the world, we might be able to learn just how precious those freedoms and perspectives could be.
It was naïve of me to believe that September 11th had the potential to remind us of our freedoms. Since then, we have seen the systematic dismantling of many rights of due process by our federal government, the acquiescence by the vast majority of Americans to the removal of those rights and to new intrusions into our privacy, and the squelching of dissident opinion on a wide range of issues. The very freedoms that we have treasured and sought as fundamental to America are, I believe, under attack.
We snicker in disbelief when John Ashcroft covers elegant nude representations of justice ? works of art ? in the foyer of the Department of Justice with $8000 worth of curtains. We can laugh with Whoopi Goldberg at the Academy Awards who tied a cloth around a nude Oscar, "because," she said, "John Ashcroft finds it unsettling." But the ludicrous nature of Ashcroft's action should not blind us to the larger issue of censorship. This is just one very visible, petty, and risible manifestation of his deeply serious and dangerous suppression of any world view, any opinion, not coincident with his own.
More has been done to dismantle rights ? of habeas corpus, of due process, of a right to trial, of the Geneva Convention ? during the past six months than we have seen in decades of government policy. Although today's political leadership is savvy enough not to speak the words of suppression, so easily expressed during the McCarthy era, the facts are unavoidable. And those flags, which we might have hoped six months ago could express our freedoms, are now again, often depressingly jingoistic and exclusionary, rather than welcoming to all, and to all points of view.
I recently saw the revival of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which uses the Salem Witch trials as a metaphor for the McCarthy hearings of its own time. Richard Eyre, the director of the current production, has noted that he was drawn to the play, in the 1950s, because of "its depiction of a community?in which orthodoxy could be righteous expression and opposition to it seen as willful malevolence." By choosing heroes who are common people, farmers and housewives, Miller stresses the universality of choice, the urgency for all to act morally, in the face of authority that states unequivocally "you are either with us or against us."
How identical to the rhetoric of our own leadership! And how, too, that rhetoric has affected the perceptions of so many. In a very modest way, Vassar's decision this autumn to affirm the dignity of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people through removing ourselves from the United Way got caught in this polarization. Those who read the Poughkeepsie Journal, or my mail, know that our stand was interpreted as anti-family by some, who then spun that still further into anti-Americanism, characterizing the College as "pinko-liberal," forgetting the realities of the post-Cold War period. This is not far from the mentality of a McCarthy, who sought to extirpate from society any person who expressed free speech or dissent. And, with John Ashcroft's steady erosion of rights, we have reason again to be concerned.
A friend of mine, Anthony Romero, became the new president of the American Civil Liberties Union on September 4th. He has been busy. As an inspiring leader for the ACLU?and as someone who is young, Latino, gay, and not from a background of privilege ? Anthony has been able to attract some media attention to the critical issues of freedoms and rights, despite the overwhelming singularity of thought that has threatened to sweep the nation. The ACLU ? 300,000 members strong a year ago ? has added 75,000 new and deeply concerned members. Perhaps you are among them.
But Arthur Miller is ultimately right. It is the average person, not just the intellectual, who must understand the importance of preserving our freedoms, of making that American flag a symbol of our ability to question, to disagree, to dissent, and ultimately to live freely. Our public and private selves should be a continuum, such that our private thoughts can also be said without penalty in a public arena ? and can help direct the body politic. Our ethical sense of this world ? and how we as Americans fit and act within it ? should demand no less.
Thank you.
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