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President Nannerl 0. Keohane
Charge to the Class of 1993
Across the past twelve years, in my charge to the senior
class, I have talked about many different things -- the
challenges of diversity, the wonders of intellectual life,
the tensions of community, the importance of service, the
meaning of America the Beautiful. I have quoted from other
Commencement speeches, including Gloria Steinem's, and from
Susan Sontag's ringing exhortation to the Class of 1983
(adapted from Spenser's Faery Queen): "Be bold, Be bold, Be
bold!", and from Professor Marcellus Andrews' stirring
admonition at Baccalaureate in 1988: "Be brilliant to the
point of scandal, and fierce beyond belief."
For the Class of 1993, I want to distill as much as I can
from all that accumulated wisdom by using the image of the
five senses - but instead of the ordinary five (sight,
sound, smell, touch and taste), five moral senses. I do
hope, by the way, that your use and understanding of the
powers of the five physical senses has also been honed by
the beauty and richness of this place -- but my point today
is analogical.
I am pretty sure that when you came to Wellesley, you
brought with you both a sense of humor and a sense of
fairness. These two traits tend to be developed early in
life, and to stand out in admissions applications. I trust
that because of your experiences at Wellesley, both your
sense of humor and your sense of fairness have been honed
and clarified.
Your sense of humor must sometimes have been sorely
tested by the seriousness and stress which we bemoan, yet in
which we sometimes almost seem to revel; however, I hope
that it has emerged not only intact but enhanced, with new
and more ironic dimensions. Your sense of fairness, the
almost instinctual reaction when some human action seems
unfair or out of balance, is the root sentiment of the
virtue of justice. I hope that at Wellesley you have come to
understand more of its complexities, without losing that
primitive healthy gut reaction of anger or distress when
someone is treated with blatant unfairness.
I hope that during your time at Wellesley you have also
developed three other moral senses that will be important to
you in later life: a sense of judgment, a sense of honor,
and a sense of compassion.
The sense of judgment is as much an intellectual as a
moral sense: it means being able to sort out true and
worthwhile things from those that are shoddy or valueless.
It encompasses the critical facility that you have, we hope,
developed in all those Wellesley classrooms: the ability to
tell a good argument from a bad one, to distinguish a
persuasive body of evidence from one that is deficient in
significant respects.
One of the main points in our intense and sustained
discussion this year of academic freedom and academic
responsibility had to do with developing this sense of
judgment. One of the main goals of a Wellesley education is
to develop that sense to the point where you are finally not
dependent even on the authority of your professors or the
authors of the books you are assigned to read, but on the
authority of your own well-honed critical judgment, to
decide what intellectual material is worthy and what is
flawed.
Yet this is not just an academic virtue: the ability to
discern worth and substance (or their opposites) in the
character of the people around you, and the ability to
decide where you will put your efforts and build your
professional career -- all these crucial aspects of the life
ahead of you are founded in the careful exercise of a sense
of judgment that we hope you have acquired at Wellesley.
At Wellesley, the term "honor" is almost always attached
to another word, "code." We all learn that we are not
supposed to cheat on exams or steal someone's packages from
the Bell Desk or pilfer the laundry room. We all know that
Wellesley's Honor Code is not perfectly adhered to, but we
can assume that certain principles will be accepted at least
as a basis for discussion.
In the associations in which you will now be living, that
will not necessarily be true. The rest of the world does not
live by honor codes. Even the term itself will rarely be
heard except in old-fashioned contexts like stories about
dueling in the Old South or the protection of the virtue of
women in 19th century novels. But I assure you that the
absence of an honor code is going to make a big difference
in your lives, and provide the occasion for some very
unpleasant surprises.
It is probable that many of the people among whom you
will now live and work will operate by principles of
ruthless egocentric selfishness, which they may hide behind
statements about altruism and responsibility, or which they
may even profess outright. Looking out for number one; doing
whatever needs to be done to get to the top; seeing all
those around you as potential competitors for money and
status, people who can be treated as instruments when they
are useful and readily discarded when they are not -- it's a
rough world out there, and the notion of honor is not going
to be prominent in the discourse.
But fortunately, not everyone will behave like that --
for if they did, society would soon fall apart. No one could
count on anyone else, suspicion and mistrust would make
collaborative endeavors impossible, and all the engines of
social, economic and political life would grind to a halt.
Fortunately, there are also people out there who believe in
keeping their promises, and who have built their sense of
self on the notion of personal integrity and
trustworthiness. People who have the courage to act on their
convictions and pursue worthwhile goals in life even at some
high degree of personal risk. This is what it means,
fundamentally, to have a sense of honor; and I hope that
each of you will be counted among those who define
themselves, in the end, honorably.
Finally, I hope that at Wellesley each of you will have
developed a sense of compassion -- in some ways the purest
and simplest, in others the most demanding and complex, of
all the moral senses. Compassion is a word that basically
defines itself: feeling with others, com/passion. It means
being able to put yourself in someone else's place, to
understand as fully as you can what it feels like to be
impoverished or sick or anxious or alone, even when you
yourself are fortunate enough to be healthy, beloved, and
successful.
If you can truly put yourself in someone else's place,
take up the burdens of their mind and spirit, then you will
almost automatically be moved to want to do something about
their plight -- to help relieve their suffering, because it
becomes a suffering with which you personally identify, a
suffering that is, in some sense, your own, because you have
taken it into yourself rather than observing it from
outside.
This will be a powerful motivator for service to others,
for helping make the world a better place by taking
immediate steps to help those who are close enough to you to
excite your compassion. The danger you will face is that
there is so much distress and poverty and sickness and
anguish that your sense of compassion will be blunted, that
you will have to guard yourself against too much openness,
develop a thicker skin, because nobody can possibly feel
deeply with so many people.
This is where your other four moral senses will come to
your aid: your sense of humor, fairness, judgment and honor
will help you make sense of the many stimuli that you will
experience because of your compassion, and help you decide
where best to put your efforts to make a difference in the
world. But without the sense of compassion -- -without what
we used to call charity or love -- all the other moral
senses are finally hollow and sterile.
Women of the Class of 1993, as you go forth into what the
step-singing song calls "the wide, wide world," I charge you
to maintain, with sturdiness and grace, your sense of humor,
fairness, judgment, honor and compassion, so that you can do
the work you are called upon to do. Know that our best
thoughts and wishes go with you, that we are proud of you,
have faith in you. Know that you will be remembered here,
and keep in your hearts the best of what you have learned at
Wellesley.
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