Chancellor Martin's remarks
September 1, 2009 — Listen to the chancellor’s remarks
Good morning, Badgers! I’m Chancellor Biddy Martin. I’m here with my colleagues to welcome the class of 2013. Yes, that’s you – yes. I’m going to start by introducing the people on the stage.
First, our student essay winner. Every year we have an essay contest where students compete to speak to you, the entering class of convocation, and as chancellor I had the privilege of selecting the winner from the final list, and this year you’re going to hear from Ariel La of Silver Spring, Maryland, who was seated where you were last year.
I want to introduce Paul De Luca. He is the university’s provost. How many of you know what a provost is? That’s what I figured. No one knows what a provost is. I was one for eight years at Cornell University and nobody ever knew what I did. The provost at the university is the chief academic and chief operating officer. Responsible with the chancellor for the overall academic leadership and administrative management of the university. Paul De Luca.
We have a number of academic deans with us this morning to welcome you on behalf of the university: first, Julie Underwood, dean of the School of Education; Gary Sandefur, dean of Letters and Science; Molly Jahn from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences; Paul Peercy from Engineering; Marv Van Kekerix from Continuing Studies; Robin Douthitt from the School of Human Ecology; and your dean of students, Lori Berquam.
In your convocation programs you’ll find some very helpful advice from Dean Berquam on how to make the most of your time here, and I hope that you’ll play close attention to that.
Finally I’d like to get you to help me celebrate the runners-up in the essay contest. They’re seated in the front row. Becca Chimis, Hannah Karns, Jaime Bell and Steven Olikara Would you all stand so we can applaud you?
How excited are you to be Badgers? (Audience cheers.) Excellent! This week you’re starting an extraordinary adventure, and it’s one that is going to have a huge impact on the rest of your life. We’re here to wish you well and also give you some advice. You probably haven’t gotten any advice yet, have you? No, no one’s tried to offer you any.
I’m going to start by telling you a little bit about who you are as a class. You may know some of this, but you were selected from 25,000 applicants. About 5,700 of you enrolled. This is a highly selective e institution obviously, and I want to congratulate all of you for getting into UW-Madison and choosing to come here. (Applause.)
Like Ariel, 1,200 of you are first generation college students, and I’m a first generation college graduate and I understand what a thrill and also what a challenge it can be to be a first generation college student. Will those of you who are first generation raise your hand and let’s applaud you and celebrate you. (Applause.)
Fifty-seven percent of you were in the top 10 percent of your class. That’s astonishing. I’m not going to ask you to raise your hands, however.
Two-hundred ninety-two of you are from countries outside the United States. Would those of you who are from countries outside of the U.S. please stand up? (More applause.)
Welcome to all of you.
Now let me list the states from which most of our students have actually come. What state do you think has sent the most students? Oh, that’s brilliant. No wonder you were in the top 10 percent of your class. We have 3,546 students from Wisconsin, and what do you think is the next in line? Yes, Minnesota, and then what? Yeah, Illinois. You know all this already. And then what? No. New York. And then what? California. And then Maryland. I don’t know where Michigan is. They’re going to the wrong school, those folks in Michigan.
We have a handful of states that sent only one student, and if you’re from one of these states, please stand and we’ll give you a hand for coming on your own from that state. South Dakota, Utah, Hawaii, Arkansas, Maine, Idaho and South Carolina. (Applause.)
Where are the students from my home state of Virginia? Well, maybe there are two of you. That’s good.
So, welcome to all of you. You are incredibly fortunate to be among such a diverse group of students, and the first bit of advice I’m going to give to you is take advantage of the diversity of the student body. You won’t have many other opportunities of the kind you have here to meet people from all over the world, from every ethnic, racial, religious and political perspective and background. Take advantage of that, build your networks and make lasting friendships with people are different from you.
There are five things about the University of Wisconsin-Madison that I loved when I was a student here and which I love now, and for which the university is widely known and revered.
The first is academic freedom: UW-Madison was one of the universities that helped establish the strength of the protection of academic freedom in the country, and it has protected it for over 150 years.
Academic quality: The faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is one of the world’s great faculties. It’s ranked by Shanghai Jaio Tong’s rankings as the 17th most productive faculty in the world. Faculty and alumni have won 17 Nobel prizes and 34 Pulitzer prizes, and among those outstanding researchers and creators are outstanding teachers and advisors.
Second piece of advice: Seek them out and get to know them. Make it a goal to get to know one of your faculty members or TAs or more every single semester.
Third thing for which Wisconsin is known: Education outside the classroom. We call it the Wisconsin Experience. We have amazing student life staff, faculty and academic staff who are eager to help you find opportunities to grow by engaging in independent research, international experiences, internships, athletics, arts and culture, student government, public service, activities of a million other kinds.
So the third piece of advice: Get involved and get to know each other.
Fourth, Wisconsin is known for social contribution. It’s called the Wisconsin Idea. It was named the Wisconsin Idea in the first part of the 20th century and it’s the notion that the boundaries of the university are the boundaries of the state of Wisconsin and the world, meaning that all the great research and teaching that goes on here should work to solve some of the world’s most urgent problems. And from the fortification of Vitamin D by Harry Steenbock to the development of stem cells by Jamie Thomson, this university’s faculty have been doing work that addressed some of the world’s most urgent problems for a very long time.
Fifth, UW-Madison is known for fun: I know that you came here to study and it’s probably hard for you to find things to do before classes start. I just want to let you know that there are lots of opportunities here for fun. They’re wide-ranging and we want you to have fun, but do it in responsible ways.
So you’ve got great opportunity here, but you also face enormous challenges, not just as a class, but as a generation. Those challenges range from threats to the environment to the need for new energy sources, struggling economies around the world and the lack of affordable health care. And given those challenges, what I want to emphasize today is that getting a diploma or a degree will not be enough. The data certainly show that having a college degree will significantly increase your earnings over your lifetime and it will also end in a better health outcome, but you are going to need a lot more than the degree. You are going to need a range of skills and abilities, habits of mind and a passionate sense of curiosity. Your future employers will demand these things of you and the world needs them very urgently.
Now the world is full of information and your generation is the best generation ever in finding that information, but there’s a difference between information and knowledge and there’s a distinction between knowledge and insight or understanding. And then there is still another distinction between understanding and the courage to make your own discoveries and think for yourself.
Knowledge and insight, unlike information, require an understanding of history and context. They require being a Badger – being dogged and persevering until you get to what seems like truth. They require integrated thinking, so let me say just a bit about what I mean by integrated thinking. I mean the ability to synthesize information from a range of sources to sift through the glut of data out there in the world in search of meaningful, logical and truthful connections.
The real challenge is taking those connections and applying them to the world around you.
I want to focus today on our book project as a way of saying what I mean by integrated thinking and what it means to think in a rigorous and unfettered way.
Starting this year, we choose a book that we’ll ask everyone to read each year and discuss throughout the year. And you’re going to get a copy of this year’s book today at lunchtime. We are asking not only students to read the book, but faculty and staff and members of the community outside the university.
Please be sure you get a book today and that you read it. It’s going to be used in a lot of your classes and in many outside-of-the-classroom activities. The book for this year is called “In Defense of Food” and it’s written by Michael Pollan.
How many of you have read Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food?” Well, a number of you have.
How many of you know who Michael Pollan is? Many more of you. O.K.
Well, Michael Pollan has become well-known for his efforts to promote a safe and healthy food supply, for his criticisms of agribusiness and food production methods in the United States. And in this book he explains what he believes to be the problem with the so-called western diet and nutritionism or food science – the food science that he says supports the western diet. He tells us what he thinks an ecological approach to eating would involve.
We chose the book because there was a large constituency of faculty, staff and students who were interested in talking about it, because it raises issues of importance to people from a wide range of disciplines and sectors. The issues it raises are especially important in Wisconsin, which is a state with a proud history and a promising future in agriculture and the provision of food for the world’s hungry.
Wisconsin agriculture is actually unique in its diversity and in its strength, and it has a profound impact on the well-being of the state and beyond the state and on all of us.
Now some people think of Pollan’s book as gospel. Some people think of it as well-researched, well-founded and true. Other people wonder why we chose the book at all, arguing that Pollan is a journalist who has synthesized scientific studies that support his point of view and has failed to deal with complexities of agriculture and food supply in the United States and the rest of the world.
Let me just say that the purpose of choosing a book by the university is not either to endorse the book and its author or to oppose them. It’s simply to choose a book that raises issues people want to consider and to discuss.
So the question before us about the book and about learning in general is this: How do we deal with strong differences of opinion and perspectives?
There are a number of options and some of them I consider to be very poor options. If we were to follow the model that the mass media and political culture seems to promote these days, we would just identify representatives from two opposing points of view and let them yell at each other, exchanging accusations, but offering little in the way of sound evidence, reasoned argument or genuine debate, and offering nothing in the way of an effort to understand the other person’s point of view or consider issues in a context that is larger than the one they had when they started.
Another option, which is often seized by people who hate adversarial yelling matches, is something a colleague of mine once called respectful disengagement. By respectful disengagement, Jeffrey Lehman meant that the tendency to be content with the notion that you have your opinion and I have mine, I’m o.k., you’re o.k., we don’t need to argue. We’ll simply agree to disagree without risking any genuine effort at truth.
The education you’re about to receive here I hope will encourage you to try a different way – what Lehman called respectful engagement. We shouldn’t be satisfied with the ultimately lazy view that each one of us is just entitled to his or her opinion and there’s no need for discussion, nor should we participate in the general deterioration of public discussion that’s going on in the culture in general.
Of course we are all entitled to our own opinions, but there is a difference between opinion and an informed point of view. There is no progress or deepening of our understanding of the world in the passive and hopeless assumption that the best we can do is leave each other to our own devices, nor is there any hope in simply maintaining a point of view and arguing to the death.
The point is to engage, question, subject the data analysis you hear to contradictory data and analysis in the pursuit of something that gets as close as possible to truth in its complexity. We won’t end up in the same place about Michael Pollan or anybody else, but the goal is to come to a deeper and richer understanding of the complexities of the issues that get raised.
I encourage you to be part of the discussion with one another, with the faculty, with staff, with community members, with Michael Pollan himself, who will be here in the Kohl Center to speak September 24.