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Philosophy
Prof
Welcomes Students at Convocation
The following is an address
by Jay Garfield, philosophy, delivered during Smith's Opening
Convocation Sept. 3, 2008.
Welcome back, returning Smithies,
and welcome aboard new Smithies! You are re-joining, or joining
a magnificent academic community, dedicated to the education
of women, to the advancement of knowledge and, in the words
of our founder, Sophia Smith, to remaining a “perennial
blessing to the world.”
Welcome students of colour;
welcome to the melanin-challenged; and welcome to those who
prefer not to identify themselves with reference to race
or colour. Welcome to students
from the United States; welcome to students from Europe,
from Asia, from Africa, from Australasia and from elsewhere;
welcome also to all who prefer not to be identified with
any region, citizens of the world. Welcome gay Smithies;
welcome straight Smithies; welcome trans Smithies, bisexual
Smithies, Smithies of all other sexual orientations; and
welcome to Smithies who prefer not to be identified in terms
of sexual orientation. Welcome Muslim Smithies, Hindu Smithies,
Buddhist Smithies. Welcome Jewish and Christian Smithies.
Welcome Pagan Smithies. Welcome Wiccan Smithies. Welcome
to all who prefer not to be identified with any religious
tradition! Welcome
to our youngest first-year Smithies and to Adas who will
find themselves in classes with friends of their grand-daughters!
Welcome to the naked and the clothed.
We
convene in an election year, in a season in which an election
will be held in this country that may have profound implications
for the entire world for decades to come. Recent elections
here and abroad have demonstrated that cynicism about the
electoral process has no place. Elections do matter. Votes
matter. It makes a difference who wins this election. SO,
a warm welcome all of those who are registered to vote in
this fall’s election! And a warm welcome to all of
those who, because of age or citizenship, are not eligible to
vote in this election. I encourage you to participate in
the electoral process in other ways, for even if you are
not of American citizenship, for better or for worse, you
have a stake in November’s outcome. Welcome even
to those anarchists and others who refuse to participate in
principle. But no welcome for those who simply
can’t be bothered. There are limits even to my
hospitality.
Welcome, Smith Democrats! Welcome
Smith Republicans! Welcome
Independents! Welcome to pro-choice Smithies and to pro-life
Smithies. Welcome to Smithies who want the troops home,
and to those who support current policy. Welcome to members
of Students for a Free Tibet, and welcome to those who celebrate
and work to maintain the unity and integrity of the Chinese
motherland!
I love the fact that at Smith
we do not tolerate, but celebrate diversity,
diversity of all kinds. Not just diversity in appearance,
in origin, in language, in age, or in sexual orientation,
but deep diversity—diversity in ideology,
in religious belief, in outlook, in commitment. That
is why we are not simply a community—a social institution—but
a college—an academic fellowship.
As an academic community,
we celebrate this diversity in ideas. When we speak,
we do so with the knowledge that we put our ideas at
risk, but that in putting
our ideas at risk, we ourselves are safe. To be
sure, we speak with confidence and commitment to our values
and to our views, but always in humility. We speak
in the knowledge that we are not possessed of the entire
truth, perhaps not of any of it; that we may be
seriously wrong; that
we may learn from those with whom we engaged in dialogue.
Our views, that is, are exposed to possible refutation. We
can place our ideas at risk in this way precisely because
we trust that our friends and our colleagues take us seriously—because
we share with them the conviction that refutation is a mark
not of ridicule, but of respect. We come to discussion,
and we come to college not because we are fully
formed, already knowing all there is to know, needing only
to persuade others of the truth we have grasped. Nor do we
come because we are empty vessels that others must fill.
Instead, we come to join with others in collective inquiry
by means of which we all may grow.
When we listen,
we do so critically, grateful
that our colleagues entrust us with their views, committed
not only to hearing what they say, but to the possibility
of being transformed by their words—of changing
our minds, just as we are committed to the possibility of
changing theirs through our reasoned critique. We
join with others neither to find our own views confirmed,
nor to celebrate uniformity in the name of solidarity, nor
to shout down those with whom we disagree, nor even simply
to wait our turn to assert our own view, but to learn and
to teach in the context of our joint celebration of genuine,
deep, diversity. That genuine collaboration aimed at truth
is made possible only when we all agree that each of our
views are open to debate, and that each of our fellows is
worthy of our respect.
This might appear paradoxical:
we demand of ourselves commitment to our own positions and
values sufficient to fuel advocacy, respect for our fellows
and their views sufficient to motivate open attention, humility
that enables us to change our minds, and passion that enables
us to open and to change the minds of others. But these
demands are mutually entailing, and together constitute the
foundation of the public sphere of discourse in which all
ideas and all persons are welcome. That
is the world to which I, on behalf of my faculty colleagues,
welcome you tonight. That public sphere is the only guarantor
of the privacy we all value—the privacy that permits
each of us to lead our lives as we will, to pursue the truth
as we see it, and to advance the good as we conceive it and
to seek beauty where we may find it.
The beauty of the academic community,
of this college, to be sure, derives in part from our visible diversity
of ethnicity and tradition, of language, heritage and
sexuality. But that beauty, in the end, does
not give the academy its point. I was drawn to academic life
three decades ago by the frisson of intellectual debate;
by arguments full of fire, and yes, occasionally obscured
by the attendant smoke, between friends and colleagues who
disagreed passionately, often about what was most important
to them, but who could sit down together over bread and beer,
and laugh together not despite, but because of
the differences that joined them. This fire, and the
joys of this fellowship, have never left me, the academy
has never disappointed me in the end, and it is to this joy,
to this frisson, and to this endless argument that I welcome
you tonight.
Oh yes, and a welcome to all
veterans of Logic 100. And
to all of you who are enrolled in Logic 100 this Fall. And
a warm welcome to the rest of you—somebody has
to lose all of those endless arguments!
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