Running the Race (My speech given as Distinguished Faculty recipient)

I have had the honor of being named as the Hun School’s first recipient of a new Distinguished Faculty Endowed Chair. One of the prices is that, today, I had to give a speech at the first-ever Convocation. Since some people have asked, and since I have an ego the size of Montana, I decided to put it up on the Web — to wit, right here on Mongrel Dogs.

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”

H. G. Wells wrote that in 1920, in the lull between the world wars. Since then, the species has seemed bent on proving his conjecture.

But in this new century dawning, that race might be approaching its end. Certainly the potential for catastrophe has never loomed more menacingly. Ever-larger groups of people face risk from power vested in the hands of ever-smaller groups of people. Take as one example atomic weapons. In 1945 for the first time, humanity gained the ability to obliterate a city in an instant. But executing that ability had required the harnessed wartime resources of an industrial superpower, and even that vast weight was barely enough: In exploding a second device, the United States exhausted its nuclear arsenal. For nearly a month after Nagasaki, the world was again, briefly, nuclear-free.

Only four years later, a second superpower — mighty, yes, but noticeably lesser in industrial heft — had built its own bombs. And within a decade, three other nations had them. By the turn of the millennium, the expertise had spread to seven nations. None of the new members of the club could be considered “industrial superpowers”. Indeed, two were considered to be in the “developing world” at the time they achieved fission. Despite the strenuous efforts of the “nuclear club”, that technology has continued to spread. Now minor nations are on the brink of achieving nuclear armaments. Within a decade or two, the nuclear option might be available to large subnational groups. And remember, many of the nuclear weapons of the Cold War remain — including more than 10,000 in the former Soviet Union, in uncertain hands.

Nuclear proliferation is just one of the danger zones in the coming decades. It might perhaps be one of the tamer ones. The world’s climate is changing, rapidly and at a rapidly accelerating rate. The human race unquestionably contributes to this change. But we don’t know how much or in what ways. Whole ecosystems are being shifted, modified, or destroyed. The geographic extent of natural disasters have begun to expand precisely at the moment that travel and telecommunications have made the world smaller. New diseases arise from ecological destruction and are released into the general population. The mobility of capital has undermined the political structures of developing countries and the social contract of the industrialized world. Job security is a thing of the past; career security is likely to follow it to the dustbin of history.

Yet… at the very same moment we are poised on the edge of an age of wonder. For the first time in human history we understand the world well enough to design materials, rather than make do with what we find lying around. Already products have reached the market that utilize structures on the nanometer scale. With them, materials weigh less, withstand more, and last longer. Within a handful of decades at most, we will have the capacity for direct nano-manufacture, allowing efficiencies that will make possible a world of riches hard to conceive. Imagine automobiles light enough to pick up with one hand but strong enough to withstand high-speed impacts. Imagine the Statue of Liberty preserved forever by layering it in a thin film of diamond. Imagine a strand of carbon stretched from the equator to near-Earth orbit, opening up a whole new frontier of exploration and growth.

But the miracles of the material engineers pale compared to what’s in store in biology. What we have learned of genetics in the past fifty years is like a narrow beach on which we’ve landed. An entire continent awaits our exploration. We are on the cusp of designer genetics. In the 20th century, the elimination of one worldwide disease, small pox, was heralded as perhaps the greatest humanitarian achievement ever. In the 21st century, new diseases will be analyzed, countered, and eliminated routinely. Doctors will tailor your medicines to your unique genetic signature, eliminating unwanted side effects and interactions. Better knowledge of the operation of genes will lead to smaller, less disruptive, but more effective doses. A combination of nano-machines and tailored bioware will render invasive surgery obsolete.

In the 21st century, degenerative aging will become an outpatient condition.

There is a bit of conventional lore that says that, in Chinese, the word for “crisis” is made up of the characters for “danger” and “opportunity”. Sadly, this picturesque wordplay turns out not to be true. But the idea behind it is solid. The word “crisis”, in fact, derives from a Greek root that means, literally, “decision”. Usage in the media has added a taint of alarm to the word, but really, a crisis is where a decision is made because it must be made.

Every wonder of the new age will have its evil twin. The tools that will let us eliminate diseases will let us create new ones, if so we choose. Novel materials can be used to build wondrous new cities — or to build the weapons that will demolish them. Advances in communications bring the world closer — but make the world smaller. We don’t know what shape the future will take. But we do know that the 21st century will be a time of tumult and change. Revolutions in chemistry, in biology, in communications will all invariably shake up the existing order. In that tumult lies great danger — and, for the brave and the wise, great opportunity.

“Human history more and more becomes a race between education and catastrophe.”

From the moment I learned I was to speak today, that quote has been running around in my head. I’ve gone through several versions of what I’m going to say, but inexorably that line worked itself into all of them. It expresses the essence of why we’re here. And not only why we’re here today, inaugurating a tradition of academic Convocations — but why we’re here at all, why an institution like Hun exists, and why we all gather at it. I like Wells’ quote because it outlines more than the importance of education; it captures the urgency of education.

In June I finished my first decade as a teacher, which by the way makes me officially a crotchedy old guy. And one of my required duties as a crotechedy old guy is to ruminate at length on What It All Means (all caps): Why I got into this field and why I do what I do rather than any of the other things I could have chosen. I will not subject you to that full story. But in casting my mind back, I was sort of embarrassed to realize that my motivation had been best summed up by someone else — by a former music teacher at Hun, Amelia Nagoski. Somehow or another we had gotten on the topic of motivation. I had offered a long string of reasons which I can’t remember but which I have to assume were grandiose and verbose. Eventually I wound down, as I do from time to time, and Ms. Nagoski offered up her own reason for why she was a teacher: Quote, “To save the world”. End quote.

As mission statements go, you couldn’t ask for one more simple and devastatingly clear. As soon as I heard her, I realized that all of my long-winded boilerplate came down to the same thing. If the world is going to be saved at all, it will require us to rise above our animal instincts, our basest motives, our narcissistic fascination with our own selves. And the only road from here to there is through education. We as a species face tough going in the coming century. We are going to be stretched and challenged beyond any strictly rational ability to bear. Our survival is going to depend, at least in part, on plain old bullheaded optimism, the sense that things can be better and the faith that we can make them so.

Hope is not enough, of course. Your math teachers would categorize it as necessary but not sufficient. Successful navigation of the next hundred years will require comprehending the strange new technologies shaping it. Your science and math classes will be crucial in launching you on that path. But surviving and prospering in the 21st century will also require understanding where we are and how we got here. That’s the point of studying history. This century will require understanding who we are and what it means to be human. That’s why you take English literature and art and music. It will be necessary to think outside your usual parameters, to see the world through the eyes of others, to think as they think. That’s why we ask you to learn at least one language not your own.

You might have noticed how I snuck in that other bugaboo of students and favorite of teachers: hard work. Wanting to do well is not enough. Having faith that you can do well is not enough. You have to actually do well — to put in the energy, the sweat, the time, the tears. Teachers at Hun are going to challenge you. We’re going to set the bar high and demand that you reach it. If we don’t, then we’re not doing our job and you should be outraged. We will push you as far as you can go not because we enjoy the misery it causes you — although that’s a nice side benefit. We set the bar high because we know that you can reach it and that you must reach it. We know that, although the 21st century is going to be an age of wonder and a fount of opportunity, it’s also going to be hard — really hard.

(An aside to my colleagues gathered here today: Challenge your students — all of your students. Don’t settle for less than their best. Don’t offer them less than your own. The historical appeal and strength of this School is that we lead each student to the utmost of his or her personal potential — no matter where he or she starts.)

The Hun School already embodies an orientation suited to the world we’re all going to live in. Our mission statement opens with it: “The Hun School provides a diverse community.” Although the statement goes on to name quite a number of other desirable characteristics, pride of place is given to diversity. And though we certainly have a ways to go, the School does in fact embrace diversity: in ethnicity and language, in socioeconomic status, in geographical origin. Students at Hun are exposed to a far wider cross-section of humanity than the typical American student.

Unfortunately, the mission statement doesn’t say a lot about why we provide such an environment. That leaves it open to interpretation, and here, at least, is mine. We don’t seek diversity because it’s “correct” or because it’s cool or, Heaven knows, because it’s easy. It isn’t just to satisfy some vague sense of what is “right”. We embrace diversity because progress and even survival depend on it. In the coming years, the stranger from halfway around the planet will become your client, your competitor, your neighbor. Ever-expanding networks of global trade and communications will continue to shrink the world. Forget the global village. It’s going to be nine billion people all sharing the same house — if not the same room! Living at all will mean living together, coming to some sort of accommodation. History and psychology both tell us, that doesn’t happen in a state of nature. People must learn to live together; and that can only happen when we step outside ourselves and learn what it’s like to be the other.

Getting ahead in this shrinking world — even just keeping pace — requires that you be more than just passive vessels into which facts are poured. You must wrestle actively with what you are told. You must probe deeper and go further. Yes, you must learn the facts but you must also learn to see the patterns behind those facts. You must see the world from many angles, because it’s going to come at you from many directions. Your teachers alone cannot give you a sound education for the 21st century. The School as a whole cannot give you such an education. No one can give you an education. You must take it, make it your own, make it part of you.

So: Be aware of the unique opportunities Hun offers for your education, in the classroom and out of it. Take advantage of them. Expect — no, demand — excellence from your teachers, from your peers, and especially from yourself. Recognize the new world being born and embrace it. But most of all:

Don’t let catastrophe win.