Making the Case for Liberal Education

Commencement Remarks

Elisabeth Zinser
Southern Oregon University, June 11, 2005

Hello out there - our honored graduates! This is YOUR Day!

It's YOUR day to celebrate - not just your degree (and hopefully the job you have or are about to get), but what you have learned that will help you continue to learn. It's YOUR day to deepen your pledge to make a difference in the world around you so that -- at the end of the day -- you have a purpose and sense of direction, and enjoy the journey. It's YOUR day to make promises to your families and dearest college friends, to your most respected teachers and advisors, but most importantly promises to yourselves!

Later in the program, we shall honor our faculty for their part in your education; but I want us to take this moment to thank your families and longtime friends for their support. Would all families and friends please stand so that our graduates and we can acknowledge you?! Your presence today means so much to these graduates, and to this university. Thank You Very Much!

Nothing is more heartwarming to us than seeing a thousand inspiring stories sitting in front of us today. We are very proud of each one of you; and also very hopeful for you!

Our pride, our hope and our joy are grounded in what we believe about you and the meaning of your degree from Southern Oregon University - a practical liberal arts college within a university deeply rooted in this special region.

So, what do we believe about you as an SOU-educated person?

We believe that you have liberated minds that continue to seek freedom from the constraints of ignorance, sectarianism and myopia. Your minds are curious and yearn to know more. They are pluralistic and embrace diversity of ideas. With such minds, you are prepared for successful careers, meaningful lives, and engaged United States and global citizenship.

We know too that you possess specialized knowledge and skills that position you well for jobs and graduate study. You are self-directed and intentional learners. You reflect on your experiences so as to understand and build on them. You are facile with technology and information literacy; and many of you are at least bilingual. Moreover, you are on a journey to multicultural competency and abilities to differ constructively and respectfully.

For these reasons, we believe that you are empowered, informed and responsible - and will become more so with your capacity to learn and to grow, to inquire and to lead. I want to linger on these three qualities, one at a time:

First, we hope you feel Empowered by what you've learned here - it will grow with experience and confidence!

Of course, we know what many of you worry about right now! Getting or advancing in a job and paying off debts! Rather basic for feeling empowered, to be sure, but there's more to being empowered.

You're EMPOWERED with intellectual and practical skills; you use quantitative and qualitative ways of solving problems; you interpret and evaluate information from various sources; and you communicate in many forms.

At Southern, you've worked with complex systems and diverse groups. You've grappled with unscripted problems in internships and community-based learning. You've developed intellectual agility and abilities to manage change. You've learned to transform perception and information into knowledge, and then knowledge into insight, judgment, and action.

Being resilient is empowering! It's about habits of mind that foster integrative thinking and the ability to transfer knowledge and skills from one setting to another. You've learned to think critically and debate rigorously-skills to hone with more practice. In your research and artistic projects, you've framed important questions, analyzed complex information, examined great ideas expressed on the page or canvas or score, and produced work of quality and originality. You've learned to create and to be creative!

Being empowered requires the courage to take thoughtful risks for good purpose. It requires insight into the rhythms of life and nature, and good habits of the heart. It requires humility about your limitations. It is most brilliantly revealed when sharing power and privilege with others, and working in teams and with communities.

So, I say to you:
Live to Create and to Share your Power and Privilege!

Second, we believe that you are Informed, indeed Enlightened by your education here!

You are well INFORMED about the natural and social worlds and about forms of inquiry basic to these studies - the arts, sciences, humanities, and professions. You have mastered substantial content in one or more fields, and have engaged it with societal, ethical and practical implications.

You have the capacity to understand ideas and issues in context. You have deepened your knowledge of the values and histories underlying U.S. democracy. You know that human imagination and expression are the products of many cultures. You've found new relationships in cross-cultural communities.

Don't stop learning now! We believe that you are disposed to lifelong learning! Continue to explore connections among formal learning, career practices, citizenship and service to communities. Keep yearning for truth about the fundamentals of our humanity!

So, I say to you:
Live to Learn and to Teach, to Serve and to Lead!

Third, you are prepared to live Responsibly - for individual, civic, and social choices!

Your education at Southern has prepared you to do so! Keep your values and principles in view, and your beliefs open to critique. Be sure they are well-informed. Have the courage to act upon them. Be bold, and gentle too. Celebrate achievements, and pass along the praise. Accept consequences, and apologize freely. Experiment, but do so with integrity.

We have seen you be RESPONSIBLE for your personal actions and for civic purpose. We have witnessed your intellectual honesty. You've shown discernment of ethical consequences of decisions and actions.
You've deepened your understanding of yourself and your respect for the complex identities of others-their histories and cultures.

This university has a strong sense of responsibility for society's moral health and for social justice, and it is poignantly expressed in our community. The university tries not only to engage difference and dissent but to model and teach such engagement as one of the arts of democracy and one of the arts of a thriving business or organization.

In the course of your education here, you have contributed to our university's ideals and progress. Your intercultural knowledge and collaborative problem solving abilities position you for both successful careers and democratic citizenship. Your work environments will depend on engaged difference in order to be productive and innovative. Your efforts to build communities of respectful difference will be both intellectually exciting and socially responsible.

We believe that you graduate with a strong commitment to live in society and to help shape it for future generations! And that means living to differ, not begging to differ. Differing skillfully uncovers some startling surprises on the path to genuine understanding. It sometimes leads to profound change that turns our society to a more hopeful future.

Find the power of positive change in the juxtaposition and perhaps the synthesis of differences. Use your knowledge and influence in responsible ways! Expect resistance from those who feel powerless, and show them respect as you seek common ground.

Keep asking the deep questions that help us discover and overcome the fears and angers that underlie prejudice and undermine learning. Be courageous and kind, forgiving and path-breaking. And, understand that there are many ways to be patriotic as an American-to love our country-and to care for humanity as a whole.

You might as well enjoy the zig-zag journey! We live in an era when the world is our community and the globe is our home. Most modern problems are of a scale so large and complex that they require organized, cooperative effort to solve.
So it is our collective necessity that the boundaries separating people of different cultures, races, gender identities, religions, and nations be transformed from impenetrable barriers to inviting passages. Adventures across these passages are not easy, but they enlighten our minds, invigorate our spirits, and engage us in the world.

Consider the unexpected as our individual and socio-cultural world views come in contact, sometimes in conflict. Do you delight or despair when facing surprise? Delight teaches us to differ wisely and to use surprise as an instrument of positive change. After all, surprise is the sine qua non of learning!

The most creative ideas and enduring solutions come from the truth we discover in the middle between our understanding and that of people different from ourselves.

Opposing thoughts, ideas, theories and beliefs are erected on the landscape of our time - built upon those of ages past. In philosophy, the pillar of reason stands near the pillar of intuition. In literature, the classical beside the romantic. In ways of knowing, the pillar of science juxtaposed with the pillar of art. In religion, the Judeo-Christian and the Muslim. In linguistic culture, Spanish speakers and English speakers. In world politics, the East and the West.

Do you assume never the twain shall meet, or will you help mold them to reach creative alliances for the greater good? History shows us that, over time, commonalities are found and some builders have the vision to fashion stones of a new shape, positioning them to approach the opposite pillar.

Tension mounts as the hope of resolution comes into view. The completion of the arch forms a bridge and marks that dramatic moment when unity occurs between conflicting forces for a wholly new understanding - a loftier way of living and knowing. [Many of you will see that I'm drawing upon the teaching and metaphor of the great philosopher Hegel].

Leaders are those with insight to see the compelling needs of the times and what is ripe for development. What will be the lofty achievements of your generation - especially those of you young enough to live and work into the mid-21st Century?

Will you see and capture the spirit of the age when the imperative for change is felt overdue? Will you be among the leaders who step forward at the propitious moment to put the last stone in place, forming a new arch that stands self-supported? Only you can decide, but we think you can!

So, I say to you:
Learn to Differ; Live for Change; Delight in Surprise! And, Place the Stones that lift us up!

In closing, I ask you to remember that you are empowered, informed, and responsible, in no small measure by your education. Live these qualities well.

While we bring you words of wisdom from the stage today, what matters most is that you, each one, will walk across this stage to receive your degree. As you walk, reflect on what you have learned and the "unfinished" business of learning for the rest of your lives. At its core, the meaning of this day is very personal. It is what you take away from your SOU experience and how you think about your future.

Thank you for choosing Southern and leaving it a better place for your having been here! Welcome to a lifetime friendship with your alma mater! Keep in touch!

We extend our hands with heartfelt hope that you will be a part of our society's best future for the generation in which you live and for those following your footprints.

Congratulations and Best wishes!
This is YOUR Day! So, give yourselves a huge round of applause!

Elisabeth Zinser is President of Southern Oregon University

The Presidents' Campaign for the Advancement of Liberal Learning is supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. For more information contact Bethany Zecher Sutton at 202-387-3760.