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Events

Annapolis, Commencement - May 11, 2008

Remarks of Chairman Bruce Cole
"To Whom Much Has Been Given..."
Commencement Address – St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
May 11, 2008

President Nelson ... Members of the Board of Visitors and Governors ... Tutors of the College ... families and friends of the graduates ... and, most especially, members of the Class of 2008, St. John's College:

I am honored to celebrate this special day with you and to speak on this occasion. It is a privilege to stand here amid such distinguished company – the leaders and faculty of this extraordinary College. I'm also happy to help today's graduates turn the page to a new and wonderful chapter in your lives. You have worked very hard to reach this moment, and I salute each of you for your achievement.

I honor your families as well, for all they have done to help along the way. Having put my own two children through college, I know how your parents are feeling. It feels great to write that last tuition check. Parents, I know you are proud of your sons and daughters, and I know they are grateful. On this joyful day, let's honor the parents of the Class of 2008.

Now, I realize I'm the only thing standing between you and your degrees – and the celebrations to follow. So I will be mercifully brief. Nonetheless, I do want to pass along something of value – especially here at St. John's College, because I know this community appreciates hearing more than just ceremonial words on such ceremonial occasions.

I must confess that, as I began considering what to say today, I was a bit anxious. In my six years at the NEH I've been asked to give a fair number of commencement speeches. Typically, I urge graduates – regardless of their degree or field of study – to remember the great books and thinkers and the great questions and ideas that they have encountered in the liberal arts. I remind them that the liberal arts are not luxuries for the rich, nor are they amusements for idle moments, but rather, ever-renewing gifts that will enlighten and sustain them in their lives after school.

On most campuses today, where a rising tide of vocationalism often threatens to drown any area of study that doesn't promise maximum return on the dollar, this is a message that most graduates and college administrators very much need to hear.

But St. John's is different. I hardly need to convince anyone in this community of the intrinsic value of a liberal education. If you didn't believe in it, you would never have come to this place.

So today, I want to help you reflect on the unique nature of your education here ... the tremendous possibilities that education has opened in your lives going forward ... and the duties that come with it.

Before I came to Washington to lead the NEH, I spent almost all my adult life in the groves of academia. I have studied, researched, and taught at schools ranging from small liberal arts colleges to research universities with large lecture halls and even larger football stadiums. So I can say with confidence that the great books education you have received at St. John's is truly one–of–a–kind.

The first difference is the books themselves. At this College, you haven't acquired knowledge in the form of textbooks and lectures, pre-packaged for easy consumption like a frozen TV dinner. You haven't absorbed these great works through the filter of another person's mind, however brilliant that person might be. Instead, you have been asked to confront directly some of the most profound books and thinkers in the history of humanity. You have grappled with Aristotle and Aquinas and Kant and Shakespeare and Dostoevsky and so many others. And through this experience, you have achieved a great freedom: the freedom that comes from thinking for yourself. A second difference: In a world of increasing specialization, you have accepted this College's challenge and dared to believe in the unity of all knowledge. Your sense of the world ... your search for truth ... and your beliefs about what an educated person can and should know, have not been circumscribed by oddities such as courses titled "Physics for Liberal Arts Majors." Fortunately for you, this College has not allowed you to accept that some areas of intellectual inquiry are simply beyond your reach. And that, too, has helped you aspire toward true intellectual freedom.

A third difference is that St. John's has given you the gift of a truly democratic education. By this I mean an education accessible to anyone – one that addresses you in universal terms, as a human being, rather than boxing you into trendy categories such as "race, class, or gender." Eva Brann, the senior member of your faculty, has said that all a student needs to attend St. John's is a love of reading and a smattering of basic math skills. Anyone who wants to succeed at this College can do so.

By a "democratic" education, I also mean the sense of a shared experience – what one St. John's alumnus has described to me as an "intense commonality." One thing that struck me when I met with some members of this graduating class in January was how consistently all the students spoke in terms of "we," not "I," when discussing their experience here at the College.

This shared experience takes many forms – from the way students and Tutors address each other formally, as equals, to the famous "Seminar Chairs" found in every classroom at St. John's. You've read the same books together, and you've helped each other understand them – questioning, provoking, and challenging each other to examine and defend your points of view.

These things occur to some degree on any campus. But the wonder of St. John's is that it is the dominant mode of things.

A final difference in the education you have received here: It has given you a moral sense. By their very nature, most of the books you have encountered at St. John's have forced you to constantly ask yourselves, "What should I do? What does it mean to live a good life?" On too many campuses today, these fundamental questions are left unasked – sometimes, as incredible as this might sound, because other questions are deemed higher priorities; and often, simply because it is presumed that ultimately we cannot find the answers. At St. John's, these questions have guided your whole education, and for that, you should be profoundly grateful.

It has been said that a good education is a travel guide to life, infusing all that one sees, hears, and experiences with more meaning. A truly liberal education gives us an enlarged imagination, a broadened perspective, and a critical intelligence. Here at St. John's, you have received such an education – and now, you are about to put it to use, as you commence the next stage of your life.

I'm sure many of you are now thinking: "OK, this is the part where he lectures us about the 'Real World' – capital R, capital W." And you're right. After all, even the loftiest and most high-minded education should prepare students in some way for the practical demands of life. From my conversations with some members of this graduating class, I'm aware that some of you – or if not you, perhaps your parents or your peers at more conventional schools – are indeed wondering just how you will make a living with your degree from St. John's.

On this point, let me briefly yet emphatically reassure you: Today's employers are desperate for employees who can think critically, write a coherent sentence, and challenge preconceived notions. The time you have spent at this College reading and discussing a bunch of old books has, in fact, thoroughly prepared you for whatever advanced studies or career you might wish to pursue.

But even more important than this, your St. John's education has prepared you to be uniquely effective in addressing the problems and cant of the contemporary scene. You have not merely acquired a set of vocational skills that will be rendered obsolete as soon as the next generation of machines and economic processes replaces the current one. Rather, you have gained something of more enduring value: the most fundamental thinking and learning skills ... the intellectual versatility wrought by this College's remarkable Program ... the respect for texts and for careful reading and writing and discussion ... and a sense of the great intellectual conversations and traditions that you have absorbed these past four years and must now carry forward.

In your seminars, you have also learned, through much practice, the art of real conversation. This is one of the arts of civilization that we are in danger of losing in our broader culture, in a world where there are fewer and fewer real conversations.

Above all, you have discovered that philosophy and reflection are not spectator sports, but activities that we all are called to engage in, because they are at the core of the life most worth living, the examined life of which Socrates spoke – a life you have learned about here, and should now model in the things you do next.

So St. John's has prepared you to thrive in the so-called "Real World." But as you surely know after four years here, a good life encompasses more than one's working hours and the bottom line. And fortunately, St. John's has given you more than just the means to make a living – it has also given you the tools to make a life, a good and flourishing private life as an individual ... as a spouse ... as a parent ... as a friend.

Edmund Burke wrote that "to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed toward a love to our country and to mankind."

So today I ask you to use your St. John's education to build, strengthen, and sustain the "little platoons" that you will form and join in your lives – your marriages, your families, your friendships, your communities of worship, your neighborhoods. These are the commitments that will bring you true joy and fulfillment – and, as you have learned from reading Tocqueville, these associations are also essential for the survival of liberty in our society.

That brings me to the final point I wish to impress upon you today. This College has given you a great gift – an extraordinary education unlike that of any other college or university in this nation. You now have a duty to use this gift to do more than just cultivate your own private gardens in this world – although that is certainly important. You also have an obligation to contribute something to your country by being good citizens and stewards of democracy.

I have spoken of the tools that your education here has given to you. I hope you will use those tools prudently. Use them to uplift the current scene, which so desperately needs your abilities to think critically, and to value the wisdom of the past while applying it in fresh ways to the challenges of our time. And use them to lead an active and contributing life, in a society that is built on the idea that "We the People" are responsible for governing ourselves.

Finally, I urge you to use the education you've received at this College to sustain our civilization. No well–ordered society can exist without educated and thoughtful citizens, without a sense of goodness and moral purpose, and without knowledge of its place in the world and in history.

St. John's has prepared you to be good citizens at a time when your country needs you most. Civilizations are vulnerable on many fronts – so defending our democracy demands more than successful military campaigns. It also requires an understanding of the principles, institutions, and ideas that have shaped our country.

Your education has enabled you to safeguard everything our civilization stands for: tolerance, the rule of law and the consent of the governed, freedom of conscience and inquiry, and the dignity and worth of every individual life, to name just a few. Use what you have learned to challenge the sophistry of those who deny and denigrate these things. And use it to preserve the great achievements of our civilization, which it has been your privilege to study at St. John's.

Again, I turn to one of the texts you have read at this College. Recall Alexander Hamilton's provocative lines at the beginning of Federalist Number 1. He wrote that "It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice..."

"Reflection and choice" – these words should resonate with you graduates, who have spent your time here reflecting on the difficult and high–stakes choices involved in deciding how we should live, both as individuals and as a society. Use your education to help your nation reflect deeply, and to choose wisely and well.

Now, how you choose to fulfill these duties is up to you, and I don't intend to prescribe the options for you today. I'm not asking you wake up tomorrow and enlist in the Marines, or join a political campaign, or apply for a job at the NEH...

I ask you simply to remember the words of another great book you encountered here: "From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded."

St. John's has given you so much, and entrusted you with so much. And the challenging times that we live in demand all of it, and more. So Class of 2008, go forth and – as Lincoln put it – dare to do your duty as you understand it.

Thank you, good luck, and once again, congratulations.

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