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Reclaiming Politics
The Baccalaureate Address
July/August 2010
by Richard Levin ’74PhD
Richard Levin ’74PhD is the president of Yale University. This speech was delivered three times, to three different groups of graduating seniors and their families, May 22 and 23 in Woolsey Hall.
What
a journey you have had! Four years of exploring a place so rich with treasure:
courses taught by some of the world’s most brilliant and creative scholars and
scientists, a library with few peers, museums that expose you to the full
variety of nature and human cultures, musical and theatrical performances of the
highest quality, vigorous intercollegiate and intramural athletic programs, and
classmates whose excellence never ceases to astonish—and all this set within
the imposing and inspiring architecture of a campus that is itself a museum.
You have had the chance to interact with classmates from 50 states and 50
nations, and the great majority of you have taken advantage of Yale’s abundant
international programs to spend a semester or a summer abroad.
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Yale’s president urged graduates to raise the level of political discourse.
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In
the classroom, you were encouraged to engage thoroughly and rigorously in
thinking independently about the subjects you studied. You were challenged to
develop the powers of critical reasoning fundamental to success in any life endeavor.
Outside the classroom, as you worked productively in the hundreds of organizations
you joined or founded, you exercised the skills of teamwork and leadership. In
your overseas experiences, you deepened your capacity for understanding those
whose values and cultures differ from your own—preparing you for citizenship in
a globally interconnected world. You may not recognize this in yourselves, but
you are ready for what is next.
Understandably,
you may be uncertain and a bit anxious about what lies ahead. But, if history
is to be trusted, you will find many paths open to you. Because of the talent
you possessed before you came here, as well as the intellectual and personal
growth you have experienced here, you will find, with high likelihood, success
in your chosen endeavors. And we expect you to stay connected. The vibrant life
of this university is greatly enriched by the deep commitment and active
participation of its graduates—think of all the master’s teas and guest lectures
and college seminars offered by our alumni. And keep in mind that when you
thanked your parents a few moments ago, you might also have been thanking the
generations of Yale graduates whose gifts past and present supported half the
total cost of your education.
Perhaps
I am overconfident about your prospects for personal fulfillment and
professional success, but I don’t think so. If you will concede my point for
the sake of argument, let’s ask the next question, one so deeply rooted in
Yale’s mission and tradition that for most of you, fortunately, it has become
ingrained. And that question is: how can I serve? How can I contribute to the
well-being of those around me, much as we all have done in building communities
within the residential colleges and volunteering in so many valuable roles in
the city of New Haven? Now is an important time to be asking this question. Let
me suggest why, and then let me suggest an answer.
Aristotle
tells us that we are by nature political animals. But one wonders whether he
would recognize the species that we have become. Eighteen months ago, the
United States elected a new president who was prepared to address, intelligently
and collaboratively, the most pressing problems confronting the
nation—education, health care, climate change, and improving America’s image in
the rest of the world. Late in the election campaign, the financial crisis
intervened, and economic recovery and financial sector reform were added to
this ambitious agenda.
What
has happened since does not inspire great confidence in the capacity of our
system to deal intelligently with important problems. We legislated a stimulus
package that was less effective than it should have been, and far less
effective than the corresponding measures undertaken in China. Fifteen months
later, unemployment in the United States is still 9.9 percent. After months of
stalemate, Congress enacted a health care bill that extends care to millions of
uncovered individuals and families, but takes only the most tentative steps
toward containing the escalating costs that will create an unsustainable burden
of public debt within the next decade or two. We failed to address climate
change in time to achieve a meaningful global agreement in Copenhagen. And,
although financial sector reform now seems to be a possibility, the debate has
been replete with misunderstanding of what actually went wrong and a misplaced
desire for revenge.
Why
is this happening? Let me make two observations, and then trace their
implications for how you might conduct yourselves as citizens and participants
in political life. First, contemporary political discussion is too often
dominated by oversimplified ideologies with superficial appeal to voters. And,
second, political actors in the United States give too much weight to the
interests of groups with the resources to influence their reelection, and too
little attention to the costs and benefits of their actions on the wider
public.
In The
Federalist, No. 10,
James Madison addresses the second of these observations, in the context of the
fledgling republic established by the U.S. Constitution. He notes that the tendency
to pursue self-interest can never be entirely suppressed, but it can be
mitigated by the proper design of political institutions. In contrast to a
direct democracy where individuals would tend to vote their own interests, a
republican form of government, Madison argues, will have a greater tendency to
select representatives who attend to the broader interests of the whole. And,
he further argues, representatives in a large republic constituted of a wide
range of divergent interests will find it easier to rise above parochialism
than those in a smaller republic comprised of a small number of competing
factions.
The
protections that our form of government offers against ideology and faction
have attenuated greatly since Madison’s time, for at least two reasons. First,
mass communication increases the opportunity to sway voters by appeal to simple
formulations. Of course, the rise of mass communication could be a tool for
raising the level of discourse through more effective education of the
electorate. But it interacts with the second attenuating factor: that the money
required to win elections through the media has created a dependence on funding
from special interest groups. And it is these interest groups who distort
reasoned dialogue by sponsoring oversimplified messages.
It
is easy to see how these developments have thwarted recent efforts to shape
responsible public policy. For example, the interest groups opposing health
care reform defeated efforts to contain costs by labeling them “death panels,”
and they defeated the creation of a new public vehicle for providing health
insurance by insisting that we must “keep government out of the health care
business,” when in fact Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration
already pay nearly 40 percent of the nation’s health care bill. I am not taking
sides here, only pointing to the fact that intelligent debate on these subjects
was crowded out by ideological distortion.
How
can we create a national and global dialogue that transcends such
oversimplification and parochialism? Let me suggest that we need each of you to
raise the level of debate. You came here to develop your powers of critical
thinking, to separate what makes sense from what is superficial, misleading,
and seductive. Whether you have studied literature, philosophy, history,
politics, economics, biology, physics, chemistry, or engineering, you have been
challenged to think deeply, to identify the inconsistent and illogical, and to
reason your way to intelligent conclusions. You can apply these powers of
critical discernment not simply to fulfill personal aspirations, but to make a
contribution to public life.
Every
signal you have received in this nurturing community has been unwavering in its
message that the growth of your competencies is not to benefit you alone. You
have learned in your residential colleges that building a successful community
has required you to respect and value one another, and, when appropriate, to
moderate your own desires for the benefit of the whole. And so it should be in
your lives after Yale. If you are to help to solve this nation’s problems—or
work across national boundaries to address global problems such as climate,
terrorism, and nuclear proliferation—you will need to draw upon both these
fruits of a Yale education: the capacity to reason and the ethical imperative
to think beyond your own self-interest.
I
know that many of you are taking advantage of these first years after
graduation to take up public service, and I hope that even more of you will
consider this path. There are plenty of jobs in the public sector for
enterprising recent graduates; many are short-term but others may lead to
careers. Many of you have signed up to be teachers. Others will enter business
or the professions. But whatever choice you make, you can help to strengthen
the nation and the world—by treating political choices not as triggers for an
ideological reflex and not as opportunities to maximize self-interest. To
combat reflexive ideologies, you must use the powers of reason that you have
developed here to sift through the issues to reach thoughtful, intelligent
conclusions. To combat parochialism, you must draw upon the ethical imperative
that Yale has imbued in you—an imperative that begins with the golden rule.
Whether you serve in government directly or simply exercise your
responsibilities as a citizen and voter, recognize that we will all be best
served if we take account not merely of our own self-interest, but the broader
interests of humanity. To move beyond ideology and faction, we need to raise
the level of political discourse. You, as the emerging leaders of your
generation, must rise to this challenge.
In
the first paragraph of The Federalist, No. 1, writing about the infant republic whose
Constitution he was endeavoring to defend, Alexander Hamilton asserts:
It
has frequently been remarked, 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 … are really capable or
not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice.
There
is much in America’s history of the past two-and-a-quarter centuries that would
incline us to conclude that Hamilton’s question has been answered in the
affirmative. Our institutions of representative government have proven themselves
to be durable; the rule of law has prevailed, and the scope of personal liberty
has expanded far beyond what the founders envisioned. But today, in the face of
oversimplified ideology and the dominance of narrow interests, we must wonder
again whether Hamilton’s question is still open.
Women
and men of the Yale College class of 2010: it falls to you, the superbly
educated leaders of your generation, to rise above ideology and faction, to
bring to bear your intelligence and powers of critical thinking to elevate
public discourse, to participate as citizens, and to answer the call to
service. Only with your commitment can we be certain that our future will be
decided by “reflection and choice” in the broad best interest of humanity. You
can do it. Yes, you can.  |
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