November 5, 2004
Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota
"The Audacity of Project Pericles"
Thank you, President Rosenberg, and thanks to Macalester for hosting this conference. Thanks to each of you for caring enough about our mission to participate.
I knew that we were on the cutting edge of political dialogue when Jon Stewart, in his best-selling book America, quoted Pericles on the first page: "It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not the few." The book goes on to reprint Socrates' little-known reply, "Yes, Pericles, but have you gotten a load of the many?"
You are the many, and you are why we are here - to take stock of where we are and what we are doing, as Pericleans, as citizens, and as a country. At our first conference, we numbered only 10 schools, "the Pilot Pericleans" and we remained at 10 for three years. As of today, nineteen institutions have formally committed to make education for responsible citizenship an essential part of their educational missions. Seventeen of those institutions - all but our two newest - are represented at this conference. At our first conference, we explored the meaning of our Periclean objectives, and how we would fulfill them, each institution constructing its Program in ways that reflect its values, its culture, its community. This conference is our opportunity to bring us together again to examine how that vision has developed, and to find common ground in our ideas and collaborations.
We share the belief that our democracy must do a better job responding to the energy and enthusiasm of young people. The efforts to register young people and encourage them to vote in this election were wonderful, and the percentage of 18-24 year olds who voted far exceeded the percentage who voted in 2000. But with the beauty of hindsight, do we feel that voter registration efforts were only part of the issue?
If the only tool of engagement we encourage you to use is the ballot box, and specifically the ballot box that comes around only every four years, a great deal of you - in this case more than half of you - may feel powerless. What do we say to the tens of thousands of young people who we encouraged and cajoled and led to the polls - even if they voted for President Bush - but who, like Robert Redford in the movie, The Candidate, are saying, "What do I do now?" What about other aspects of civic engagement? Are colleges providing a real opportunity for students to influence the direction this country is going to take, and are we listening to you?
We hope through our Periclean Programs to address that question. In Joe Trippi's book about the Howard Dean campaign, he wrote about the difference between Dean and the other presidential candidates - specifically, how they related to the crowds at their rallies. Trippi said that each candidate would tell the crowd how amazing he/she is and what he/she would do if elected. Dean, however, would tell all of those gathered how amazing they are, and all of the things they could do to make their lives and their country better.
Project Pericles shares the belief that the power to make a difference is in your hands, and that colleges have an obligation to teach you about that power, your duty to exercise it, and how to use it most effectively. We believe that our greatest weakness is expecting too little of you. We need to heed the wisdom of Henry David Thoreau, who said, "The fate of the country does not depend on what kind of a paper you drop into the ballot box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning."
I recognize that isn't particularly controversial or revolutionary to talk about promoting citizenship, or service, or engagement, and indeed it's a popular topic these days in educational circles. But we are not concerned about feeling good or rewarding effort or spouting platitudes that everyone agrees upon but that are devoid of meaning and unencumbered by accountability. We aren't concerned about registering people to vote, and then forgetting about you until the next big election. Our goal is to transform education. Gene Lang says that Project Pericles is in the business of starting fires, and that's what I mean by audacity. We have the audacity to say that what we are doing is not good enough. We have the audacity to think that colleges have lost sight of their historic mission to help make this country stronger by deliberately educating for and cultivating responsible citizenship. We have the audacity to ask colleges to take a critical look and to do better.
The institutional Commitment and broad Program reach that are policies of Project Pericles mean that each institution is itself a Periclean. The effort isn't limited to students and the classroom. The Periclean Commitment goes beyond academic matters to every facet of the institution—how it treats its employees, involves its alumni, and interacts with and supports its community and its environment. We believe that colleges should produce activists, and be catalysts for social responsibility and thoughtful citizenship. We believe our institutions should model these ideals - free and open speech, fair labor practices, compassionate benefit policies, and wise stewardship of resources - but not as the foil for any one party, privilege, or preference.
We expect our Pericleans to impart knowledge, of course, but also to instill passion and to incite action. Project Pericles cares about the viability of our democracy, the involvement of our graduates, the country we nurture. Having knowledge and doing nothing is like owning a plane without flying. We want to encourage risk-taking. One of our presidents said he is blessed with trustees who figure he's not doing his job if students aren't protesting, or threatening sit-ins, or angry about something. To effect a real transformation of higher education may mean upsetting some apple carts, or at least improving the quality and diversity of the apples that are available. We are audacious enough to want to do it anyway.
I welcome you in this enterprise. I am confident that you will have the knowledge, will be filled with passion, and will take significant actions. That you will join with us in shaking things up a bit from time to time. As Erasmus said, "Fortune favors the audacious." We believe our country will be better for our audacity.
The writer E.B. White, who was part of the Writers War Board during World War II, was asked by them to answer the question 'What is Democracy.' He wrote:
"What is Democracy?" It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don't in 'Don't Shove.' It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in voting booths, the feeling of communion in libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn't been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It's the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the [rationed] coffee. Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is."
I say, Democracy is getting together, on a cold fall day in a battleground state, the weekend after a contentious presidential election, to talk about democracy and our role in making it better. It's what we are and what we hope. Enjoy yourselves, learn, grow, share, and provoke. Let us work together to make our country a better place. You have the power.
