Father Wild, members of the Marquette community, honored guests and especially those who are graduating today, thank you for this opportunity.
At my own commencement, the president of the university was the speaker. And though, according to my family, the president was saying interesting things, I only remember the two men stationed in front of the stage. They were wearing dark suits, serious looks and wires behind their ears, and were scanning the crowd during the entire speech for apparent threats to the president. Since as a graduate student I was sitting in the front row and thus in the potential crossfire, I found this situation somewhat disconcerting to say the least.
Given my pending degree in the field of international relations, I suppose I should have been less surprised at the show of security. For years I had explored the works of realist scholars on the dynamics of power, self-interest and the dangers of the world I was about to enter. Their warnings overshadowed works from other theoretical traditions noting the rule of law in an expanding international society and the potential for cooperation based on the recognition of common interests. Brown bag lecture series in the program, for example, were distinguished by academics and policymakers exploring theories of deterrence, the latest trends in intercontinental and cruise missile design, and breakthroughs in nuclear warhead technology during what, unbeknownst to us, and I expect to them, would be the last decade of the Cold War.
While the absence of a security detail in front of our stage this morning bodes well for Father Wild, and those of you sitting in the front row, it is no understatement that you who are graduating today face a different world than that of years past. Challenges posed by terrorism, genocide and other human rights atrocities, the resurgence of pandemic diseases, and widespread poverty vie with the array of new opportunities for political, economic, and cultural exploration and cooperation in our increasingly global world. As graduating students of Marquette University, you have learned to engage this changing world in a manner informed by a Catholic, Jesuit tradition of exploration, reflection, and commitment to the service of others.
My question, however, is whether you, the graduating students of Marquette, have learned enough about engaging the world, and whether we as an institution have done all that we could to help in your formation. Clearly you have embarked on a path of life-long learning and, just as clearly Marquette is continuously exploring ways in which to better prepare its students. But, all that said, the answer to both of my questions is no—neither we nor you have learned or done enough.
I realize that I may be breaking here with what often appears to be the unwritten code of commencement speakers. As the economist John Kenneth Galbraith once observed, “commencement oratory ... must [avoid] anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.” With all due respect to Dr. Galbraith, I would like to offer an unduly firm opinion.
Five years ago Jesuit colleges and universities were given the charge by Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, to better engage students in the pursuit of justice. In what has become an oft cited passage, Father Kolvenbach observed that “Students, in the course of their formation, must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering and engage it constructively. They should learn to perceive, think, judge, choose, and act for the rights of others, especially the disadvantaged and the oppressed.” Father Kolvenbach challenged Jesuit colleges and universities to do more to close the gap between rhetoric and action on engaging the world around them.
Now if we are honest, we must admit that despite the significant accomplishments of the Marquette community, we, and I refer here to both the royal “we” and most of the individual administrators, faculty members, staff and students that comprise this community, continue to remain relatively isolated from the gritty reality of which Father Kolvenbach speaks.
How can we as a university, as individual members of a university community, and as those who are graduating from this community this morning, begin to better engage the gritty reality of this world? Let me briefly suggest three starting points.
First, we, as an institution and as individual members of the Marquette community need to acknowledge our ability to selectively engage and disengage from the gritty reality of this world.
Specifically, no matter how much we choose to engage the gritty reality of this world and engage in acts of solidarity with and on behalf of those who have no voice, most of us in this room are privileged by the ability to return, when we chose, to corners of the world that are much less gritty.
Granted, now more than ever, the gritty reality of an increasingly integrated world affects all of our lives regardless of whether we chose to engage it or not. But, it does not affect all of us equally.
Failure to recognize that we are privileged clouds our ability to truly understand the world we seek to engage, limits the constructiveness of our engagement, and inhibits the realization of our obligation to do more.
More important, failure to recognize, reflect on, and explicitly acknowledge this privilege does a disservice to those we seek to serve. Especially, since it is readily apparent to them that we—as an institution and as individuals—can step away from the realities that are their daily lives. We might leave at the end of the day, the week, the semester, the year or longer, but we can still leave.
The sources of our ability to selectively engage and disengage from the gritty reality of the world are many and integrated in a complexity that can be uncomfortable to face. Yet, wrestling with uncomfortable things is what must take place at a university, especially at a Jesuit university, and the desire to face rather than avoid complexity and discomfort must be the hallmark of our institution, and our graduates.
Helen Keller once observed that “People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.” My charge to you the graduates, and others who are Marquette, is to think long and hard about the ways in which we are able to engage the world, and the greater obligations to service that we incur because of our ability to engage the world selectively.
Second, we, as an institution and as individual members of the Marquette community need to strengthen our commitment and capacity to listen to the world we seek to engage. Though essential to our mission of providing voice to the voiceless, it is all too clear that the practice of truly listening in our society is becoming a lost art. It has been replaced by shouting, talking over, confrontation for the sake of confrontation, and denigrating or simply ignoring that which we do not understand or would prefer not to hear.
As the noted Italian journalist and author Italo Calvino once observed, “it is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.” The commitment to the free flowing exchange of ideas held up to the critical light of reason and reflection lies at the heart of a university and must distinguish its graduates, especially those from a Jesuit university. We are all better served by the extent to which such exchanges take place within as well as beyond our university walls.
Commitment to listening must be met with enhanced capacity, especially the capacity to truly listen in an increasingly global world. Sources such as the British Council observe that within the next decade roughly half of the world’s population will speak English, with non-native English speakers outnumbering native speakers by three to one. I expect that this pending wave of English usage may come as a relief to those of you who struggled with or were able to avoid foreign language requirements in your college curriculums.
That the world is becoming more bilingual, or I expect multilingual, however, does not relieve us as individuals of the responsibility of learning the languages of those we seek to serve, or relieve Marquette as an institution from the responsibility of better providing students with the opportunity and ethos to explore languages as diverse as the world we seek to engage.
Language also is a living thing, grounded in the theologies, philosophies, histories, cultures, literatures, and, no shameless plug for my field intended, in the politics and governance of societies within which individuals live their daily lives. In short, we cannot truly listen and devote ourselves to the service of others if we cannot understand their words and the contexts that give these words meaning.
Third, we, as an institution and as individual members of the Marquette community need to better demonstrate our commitment and capacity to speak out and act on behalf of the disadvantaged and oppressed. This also poses a challenge for as much as the practice of listening has become contested, so too have the ways in which we raise our voices.
The old Quaker call to “speak truth to power,” for example, has become a well-worn and politically charged catch phrase. With its origins well over a century ago in the context of decisions of war and peace, the phrase has taken on new meanings over time. It is now largely caught up in debates over universal and relative meanings of “truth” and a dialogue of the deaf across the political spectrum—concerning the agendas of those challenging, holding, and seeking power.
Yet, the lessons here must not be that searching for and speaking truth are to be avoided, or that we must deny that those in need often lack the power to bring about change.
Informed by a commitment to excellence and the promotion of a life of faith, our mission at Marquette requires us to engage in “the search for truth, [and] the discovery and sharing of knowledge.” But our discoveries do little to serve others if despite our power to do so we do not fully voice what we have learned…if we remain silent in the face of others who may be more powerful than we are.
Our mission at Marquette requires us to embrace principles of leadership and service to those in need. But these commitments serve little purpose if our concerns with the risks of speaking to power, limit our expression of these principles in words as well as deeds.
Clearly the Marquette community is often diverse in its voice, and as such it may well be easier for us as individuals than as an institution to speak out and act. Despite considerable accomplishments, we have room to grow in the realization and exercise of our institutional voice.
We encourage our students to “be the difference.” The same should hold true for how we as an institution engage the gritty reality of the world.
In closing, I offer these three steps—involving reflection, listening, and voice—as starting points, a potential path to meet Father Kolvenbach’s challenge to better engage the world. The path will not be easy but we should not expect it to be.
When I was little my mother the poet would suddenly turn to me in crowded grocery stores and say, “Are you THE Richard Friman?” Much to my embarrassment, heads would turn to see who this famous person in their midst must be….as if they were expecting acts of greatness to take place in the produce aisle right before their eyes.
Well…are you THE graduates of the Marquette University? Show me acts of greatness.
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