Remarks of President William G. Durden '71

Before proceeding, I would like to continue another important Dickinson tradition. Members of the Class of 2004, you owe a significant debt to your families and friends-those who have made it possible through their love, guidance and support for you to be here today. Please rise and join me in giving them a round of well-deserved applause.

Members of the Class of 2004, four years ago, you walked up these Old Stone Steps to sign in to the College and, at that moment, you began a life-long affiliation with Dickinson College. During the past four years, you have had the opportunity and privilege of receiving one of the finest and most distinctive liberal arts educations in the world.

On perhaps just one or two occasions during the past four years, you may have heard me mention our founder, Dr. Benjamin Rush. A committed revolutionary and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Rush founded our College in the closing days of the American Revolution to prepare the citizens and leaders who would ensure the success of the new democracy.

Today, you become the first class to graduate under the watchful eye of Dr. Rush who assumed his lofty position to my left earlier this week and is, of course, at the urgings of your class, dressed appropriately for the occasion. Through the generosity of trustee, Walter Beach, Class of 1956, his brother, Allen, Class of 1955, and trustee, Sherwood Goldberg, Class of 1963, Dickinson commissioned a replica of the statue of Benjamin Rush from the original one that is located on the grounds of the Naval Bureau of Medicine and Surgery in Washington D.C. Our statue will be officially dedicated on June 11-exactly 100 years to the day after the original statue was presented to President Theodore Roosevelt as a gift from the medical profession to the nation. It was Dr. Rush, after all, as Surgeon General of the Middle Army during the Revolution who recommended that the fledgling American navy require its sailors aboard to eat citrus fruit to stay healthy. I also mention that you are the first class to graduate both under the approving eyes of Dr. Rush and the witness of our namesake's-John Dickinson's-lion, which is directly before you inside the doors of Old West. This, again, is the original-it represents one of the icons upon his family's coat of arms from England. As an American patriot, he chose not to have a coat of arms in the United States, but instead, he abstracted a singular icon from it for use.

The lion traveled with Dickinson from home to home. It was thus most likely present when he drafted the "Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania" that initially provoked widespread American protest against England and when he chaired the committee that drafted the Articles of Confederation. It was likely present when he first introduced the phrase "United We Stand" while he wrote America's first patriotic song-"the Liberty Song." It was likely present as he agonizingly debated signing the Declaration of Independence (he, of course, did not do so at the last moment because he believed the colonists were not ready for active resistance-but he later signed the U.S. Constitution). And finally, it was likely present as he deliberated to suggest allegedly the formal name of our country-The United States of America.

It is especially appropriate that this is the first commencement to take place under Dr. Rush's statuesque guardianship. Later this morning, you will be addressed by Mr. Lawrence Small, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, thereby giving us the occasion to pay tribute to the importance of intellectual inquiry and exploration that links Dickinson and the Smithsonian and to celebrate the historic connection between these two distinctly American institutions.

While Dr. Rush's symbolic presence has been enhanced by the arrival of the statue, his vision has long served as a ubiquitous, guiding force for Dickinsonians. Rush ardently believed that the new country with its then revolutionary concept of participatory democracy called out for a distinctive type of American education. If the success of the new government depended upon an active and engaged citizenry, then those citizens must be given a very different type of preparation than was traditionally offered to the privileged classes in Europe.

Recognizing the inherent value of American pragmatism and resourcefulness, Rush intended for a Dickinson education to be, above all, useful. The knowledge and skills acquired at Dickinson College would become the building blocks of the new government, its economy and social institutions.

Yet this distinctive American ambition has in every generation since the founding of the nation been judged inappropriate, and unacceptable by many of the historically uninformed. This is frankly unbelievable and points to how far we have drifted from reference to our past to guide our future.

The ever-communicative Stanley Fish, at present Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, stated in a New York Times op-ed piece only this past Friday that the idea that universities should be in the business of forming character, fashioning citizens for a democracy, and encouraging more young people to "save the world" is entirely wrong and wasteful. The academy, rather, should concern itself strictly with the academy and focus on academic subjects, assigning and correcting papers and meeting classes. How out of touch Dean Fish is with the origins of a distinctively American education. How nostalgically he seems to desire that privileged, removed and monkish education our founder, Dr. Rush, Thomas Jefferson and others found to define education in England at their time and which they were determined to reject in the new world. How wistfully and wrongly some in the academy still envy royalty and the seeming privilege and isolation it bestows.

The distinctively American useful education was to be grounded rigorously in the traditional liberal arts, but always within an emerging contemporary context. Rush wanted to encourage students to stretch intellectually, to draw connections among seemingly disparate disciplines and ideas and, by so doing, to create new knowledge and new conceptions. Again, this was a distinctively new American education emerging in the global context. Rush knew that our country would depend on citizens and leaders who were flexible, hard-working-relying less on inherited economic and titled privilege for a good education-progressive and intellectually nimble enough to grasp emerging knowledge and to shape it into innovation and invention. And in the true spirit of democracy, Dickinson students would willingly embrace contemporary challenges and differences of opinion to find those legitimate ways that refine and advance continuously this "Great Experiment" in American democracy. After all, it was Dr. Rush who said that the ending of the American Revolution with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in September 1783 was not the final point of the American struggle with democracy, but rather its first chapter. For Rush, the revolution was just beginning. Our College is most legitimately infused with this revolutionary intent as we were the first College chartered in America just days after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

Today, at the dawn of the 21st century, America and the world are entering an era every bit as challenging and full of opportunity as the one our founders faced. It is a century that will require the courage, talents and ingenuity of able citizen leaders. Dickinson remains committed to fulfilling Dr. Rush's mission to prepare our graduates to assume these responsibilities.

Members of the Class of 2004, you are the first Dickinsonians to begin and conclude your undergraduate education in the 21st century. As such, you are the pioneers of a millennium that is breathtaking in its promise and daunting in its complexity. You will be called upon to lead a world that is marked by rapid and radical change, shifting national and cultural alliances, uncomfortable uncertainty and danger. It is also a world in which traditional boundaries of culture, class and gender are disappearing while others are being radically asserted. It is a world in which the transfer of knowledge and the rapid blurring of traditional academic disciplines are creating expansive intellectual horizons. It is a world in which we, as heirs to an American revolutionary legacy, must commit to our defining tenets of democracy-a democracy in which dissent is to be as valued as assent. It is a world in which many others-even our traditional allies-are asking us as individual U. S. citizens to account for our government's motives and global intent. It is a world judged by many to harbor an unprecedented intensity of anti-Americanism where negative dispositions are readily converted to dangerous actions against us. To you now belongs also this task of explanation-pro or con. To you belong diplomacy, leadership and action.

Members of the Class of 2004, you have been the beneficiaries of Dr. Rush's foresight. Over the past four years, you have received a liberal arts education that continues to be marked by the distinctiveness of its approach and purpose. You have been encouraged to "engage the world" in every sense-through world-wide study abroad opportunities, innovative interdisciplinary initiatives, on-campus involvement in student organizations, faculty-student research projects, internships, community volunteer activities, the Mosaic program, and intramural and competitive athletics. You have been encouraged to grasp the facts before you criticize and to be mindful of traditional grammar in public human exchange.

You have been encouraged, both in and out of the classroom, to explore and understand the most challenging and serious issues of the day. You have learned how important it is to be civil and respectful of the opinions of others while remaining firm in your own convictions yet continuously testing them. You have lived and studied with groups of students from widely diverse backgrounds and you have learned that, together, you can create just, compassionate, diverse communities. And in so doing, you have learned that democracy is not always a flawless or purely comfortable process. One of the greatest virtues of a democracy is the ability and freedom to criticize and to suggest alternative courses of action even amidst on-going action. Indeed, our founder felt compelled to criticize the leadership of General Washington during the American Revolution because he thought insufficient care from the highest ranks was being devoted to the health of the combat troops. He was right and his words saved lives. That is the perpetual revolution of which Dr. Rush spoke centuries ago.

Members of the Class of 2004, you are ready to embark from these limestone walls as the heirs to the legacy of Dr. Benjamin Rush and his closest friends and correspondents-John Dickinson, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson, a "founding mother." As you prepare to accept your responsibility as a Dickinsonian, lean into your distinctive legacy. Remember that Dr. Rush was an outspoken revolutionary who never hesitated to hold forth on those issues he believed would create a more just and compassionate world-issues such as capital punishment, slavery, public education, educational opportunity for women, the treatment of the mentally ill, and environmental sustainability.

Members of the Class of 2004, as the first citizen leaders of this revolutionary new century, find strength in your own convictions and do not be afraid to act upon them. Remember that Dickinson has prepared you well for lives of leadership and service. It is now up to you to translate the qualities, abilities and attributes of a Dickinson education to your communities, our nation and the world.

As Benjamin Rush once commented simply and characteristically about himself as a signer of the Declaration of Independence-"He aimed well." I now ask of each of you as Dickinsonians to strive for the same seemingly self-effacing, yet powerfully effective perspective for the conduct of your own life-I ask that you, too, "aim well." The world community will be a better place for that simple, but sophisticated conviction. It is your and my distinctive heritage as Dickinsonians.

I wish you well and I congratulate you on an education thoroughly engaged.

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