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July-August 2000
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Open Book |
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| Plimpton at the podium Harvard University Gazette |
Although many of the 250 speeches Smith excerpts are by Harvardians, only two were given at Harvard, and one of those was a Class Day speech in 1977. (Writer George Plimpton '48 advised seniors to "stop now. Tell them you won't go. Go back to your rooms. Unpack!") The other one was by Czech president Václav Havel, LL.D. '95, in 1995. Although Smith has failed to do his homework on speeches given at Harvard, his sampler is at turns funny, touching, historically interesting, and wise.
Consider this reflection by politician Barbara Jordan, IOP '72, M.P.H. '76, LL.D. '77, at Middlebury College in 1987: "Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap."
Writer John Updike '54, Litt.D. '92, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1993, pleaded, "Your generational savviness, it could be, in our age of imagery and sound bites, is a matter more of imagery than of the heft of real things, of earth and the tools that bit by bit move it. You cannot but learn more of the world's heft, as you take it now into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is an old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it."
Stem-winding injunction came from journalist Anthony Lewis '48, Nf '57, at Williams College in 1978: "Those of us who are not saints are bound to wonder, in the circumstances of this terrible century, what difference we can make. The belief that an individual can transform society is usually an illusion; newspaper columnists suffer from it, occasionally. But if wholesale transformation is unlikely, change does happen--and it usually comes because enough individuals refuse to live inside a compartment. Even in the overwhelmingly difficult circumstances of a South Africa, one person can make a difference. Do not turn your head away from injustice. Know the limitations of your country and yourself, but do not give up. Do not stop believing you can make a difference. Care!"
Frances Fitzgerald '62, writer, at Sarah Lawrence College in 1982, warned her young audience to "Watch out, watch out, as you go along, that what you're doing is not merely a job, not merely a career, but your work, the thing that you really want to do."
Shirley Chisholm, politician, at Mount Holyoke College in 1981, urged commencers to "Be as bold as the first man or woman to eat an oyster."
And columnist Ellen Goodman '63, Nf '74, at Smith College in 1993, said reassuringly: "This afternoon, I solemnly promise you that these have not been the best years of your life. The truth is that people who look back to college as the peak experience have had the dreariest of adulthoods. I don't wish that on any of you."
[July-August 2000, Vol. 102, No. 6: page 28]
Monastic Time/Harvard Time
Each June for the past six years, Robert Kiely, Ph.D. '62, has been a guest at an Italian monastery for a time of prayer, meditation, instruction, and silence. Loker professor of English and American literature, master emeritus of Adams House, he is the author of Still Learning: Spiritual Sketches from a Professor's Life (Medio Media, $14.95, paper). He has come to feel, he writes, that the monks of Monte Oliveto Maggiore are welcoming, which is more than can be said for the cloistered ones of Harvard.
From the point of view of some guests, students, and new faculty,
the entire concept of hospitality is alien to Harvard. Stories abound
about scholars from other universities and countries spending an entire
year in Cambridge without ever being spoken to by any member of the
Harvard community....
There are explanations for Harvard's neglect of invited and uninvited guests. From inside the enclosure, it looks as if there are so many of them and so few of us. And no one at Harvard has a spare moment....Monastic time is governed by eternity; Harvard time is governed by 50-minute class periods, two-hour committee meetings; three weeks until an essay, manuscript, or lecture is due; four years until graduation or tenure review or retirement.
Every profession has its exchange currency and status symbols. For politicians, the coinage is power; for business people, money; for movie stars, fame. Professors like all these things too, but the most common and least tangible is time. The message, "I am busier than you," is the ultimate claim to glory.
At the conclusion of long committee meetings, as the sun is setting over the Charles River, we do not sing Compline at Harvard, but there is a ritual. Everyone takes out his or her little black calendar book. Not an abbot, but a weary chairperson asks whether anyone is free for a lunch meeting a month from Thursday. "Count me out," says someone proudly. "My lunches are booked until March." "Don't even mention lunch or dinner," says another. "I haven't eaten at home all semester." "You should talk," chirps a third, frowning at her little black book. "I don't have a free breakfast until April." And so on. In saecula saeculorum.
I can describe but not really criticize my colleagues because when I am at Harvard, I have no time either. I have no doubt that my pulse rate and stride quicken when I cross Massachusetts Avenue, not just because I am trying to avoid being hit by a bus, but because I am about to cross a threshhold into a performance space of high intensity. I have to admit that if I have an errand in the Square or am late for class or office hours, I put on sunglasses and pull a hat down over my face in the hope that I will not be recognized and delayed by an unwanted encounter....
Time feels scarce here because there is so much worth doing and so many impediments to doing it. The distractions are legion. In the frescoes at Monte Oliveto, little horned demons with pitchforks are constantly prodding the monks into drowsiness, gluttony, envy, lust, and pride. At Harvard, visiting demons, tenured and untenured incubae, administrative succubae--all with their distracting demands and pitchfork loads of time-killers--lurk behind each bush and bookshelf.
