Lehman urges engagement in an interdependent world

Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman, the final member of the academic procession, moves toward the podium as the graduating class applauds, May 30. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

By Franklin Crawford

The weather was perfect but the world is not, and in his first Commencement address since assuming office in 2003, Cornell President Jeffrey S. Lehman -- a graduate of the Class of 1977 -- urged more than 5,200 graduates of the Class of 2004 to neither hide their heads in the sand nor assume the moral high ground in dealing with the ethical and moral challenges facing the world today.

"It will sometimes take courage to reject calls for contented isolation and self-protection, and I am urging you to be brave," Lehman said. "I am telling you to take some chances, knowing they will sometimes go awry. I want you to do so because our world needs more engagement and not less, more opportunities for discussion and not fewer."

Lehman also said today's world needs "more commitment to strive for common ground and shared progress across boundaries of mistrust and suspicion that can sometimes be framed in moral terms."

As an example, Lehman cited Cornell's involvement with the Bridging the Rift Center, a joint venture among the nations of Jordan and Israel (to be built on their common border) and Cornell and Stanford universities.

"Through the center, graduate students in the life sciences from Jordan and Israel will come to Cornell and Stanford for training and will then work together to build a Library of Life, a network of databases that will include genetic and other information about each of the known species of life in the region and ultimately the world," he said. The leaders of both countries, he added, "are taking this project as an opportunity that is important and beneficial on its own terms" and "each believes that there are additional benefits that flow from engaging in a positive way with a former enemy."

The university's 136th commencement ceremony on May 30 drew almost 40,000 people to Schoellkopf Field, most of whom, as Lehman mentioned at the outset of his address, were "not wearing caps and gowns." He then asked graduates' families, friends, sponsors and loved ones, "who have provided the emotional, intellectual and, yes, financial support" for the graduates, to stand. As the audience members filling the stadium's crescent rose to their feet, the black-gowned celebrants seated on the field turned and cheered them.

Lehman had his oratorical work cut out for him, with his address coming a day after former U.S. President Bill Clinton regaled and inspired a crowd of 21,000 gathered in Schoellkopf for Cornell's Senior Convocation, May 29. Lehman referred to Clinton's message once, paraphrasing the former president's comments that "global interdependence characterizes the 21st century."

Lehman related that comment directly to his audience:

"That interdependence will mean that your generation of leaders will be expected, more than ever before in history, to engage effectively with people who see things differently from the way you do."

In a speech that revealed his keen mind for dissecting complex moral and ethical dilemmas, Lehman employed a very down-to-earth metaphor: dirt. He began his address with a brief history of the artificial turf on Schoellkopf Field and worked his argument up through the works of existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre and former Cornell student and noted author Kurt Vonnegut.

Citing examples from Sartre's play Les Main Sales, or Dirty Hands, and Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, the president described two types of failure to engage the world. One is to avoid conflict because our own actions in a sticky situation might "contaminate our souls." This he described as "first-order contamination."

The other, a more troublesome variant, involves what Lehman called "questions of second-order contamination." These he described as "questions about what will happen if you make contact with someone who has acted badly in dealings that did not involve you. Questions about whether even the slightest contact might transmit the dirt of their actions, their choices to you so that your soul becomes contaminated."

To illustrate this point, Lehman reached into a bit of obscure Cornell history. In 1965, he said, Sartre was invited to deliver a Messenger Lecture for the university's bicentennial. But Sartre cancelled his visit because of America's involvement in the war in Vietnam.

"Sartre made an error," Lehman said. "He preserved a sense of his own purity by not putting his feet into the dirt of a nation that he thought of as militarist. But in doing so, he forwent the opportunity to speak, to engage, to reason -- about morality and history, even about the war he opposed. In a circumstance that called for direct engagement and moral argument about important issues, Sartre chose disengagement to protect himself from the taint of contact."

It was here that Lehman referred to the Bridging the Rift project and its example of engagement.

Toward the close of his address, Lehman told students the Cornell experience should demonstrate how "the exercise of engaging, disagreeing and explaining your disagreement in a respectful way can strengthen your moral fiber rather than weaken it. You could not be better prepared for the challenges that await you after you leave Schoellkopf today," he told them.

"New graduates of Cornell University," Lehman said in closing, "you are about to embark on lives of service to a society that desperately needs you. ... May you frequently travel beyond the places that are comfortable and familiar, the better to appreciate the miraculous diversity of life. And may your steps lead you often back to Ithaca. Back to East Hill. For you will always be Cornellians. And we will always be happy to welcome you home."

The full text of Lehman's address is available at http://www.news.cornell.edu/campus/commencement04/gradspeech04.html.