Wellesley College
Opening Convocation
September 7, 2004

President’s Remarks

"A Year for Integrity"

Diana Chapman Walsh
President, Wellesley College

Welcome all and thank you for being here to open, officially, the 129th academic year of Wellesley College. A special welcome to those who are new today—students, faculty, staff. We hope you will come to love this place, as so many of us have done and do.

To the class of 2005: seniors looking very senior now in your commencement robes—we look forward to a year of learning and discovery under your influence, together with friendship and fun. You will set the tone for the year, perhaps more than you realize, and I know we can count on you to be mindful of the impact you can have as role models and mentors. To the class of 2008, the splendid new first-year class, it’s wonderful to welcome you here to take your place and inscribe your stories on this historic college, your college now to inhabit and reshape. We look forward to four years in your company. And to all the students, I want to confess how glad we are to have you back. Even with noisy construction all over the campus all summer, it was way too quiet around here without you.

We gather in opening convocation every fall for a ritual coming together that harks back to the founding of the college and provides us an annual opportunity to begin anew and reflect together on the year ahead. For my part, this is a time of gratitude. I’m thankful to all who have labored to prepare the campus, the curriculum, the programs, and thankful to generations of wise and generous people who preceded us, cared faithfully for this college and transmitted it to our care. I feel, too, the weight of responsibility to exercise that care with a dedication that honors the legacy on which we build today, and that opens possibilities for a future we cannot fully foresee.

We do contemplate a future, sadly, that is fraught with peril. The two national conventions, separated by the Olympics, structured much of the news this summer, against a backdrop of violence around the world. The recent images from Russia, Israel, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, so many war-torn places of such harrowing chaos and suffering, is frightening and tragic, so gruesome and heartbreaking, often, that it’s hard not to turn away. But if there’s one message I want to convey to you, it is that we must not turn away.

This is the twelfth opening convocation over which I’ve presided and the third in a presidential election year. Compared to the previous two, this one seems more consequential for us as a learning community and I want to reflect on why that may be so. This election year is significant for us on four distinct levels. First, thinking globally, Wellesley is becoming ever more diverse and international; our diversity is the dimension along which we are most obviously changing. The class of 2008 represents 41 nations; fully 12 percent of its members are international students or Americans living abroad. And many others in our ranks have ties to other parts of the world through our own life experiences and/or through family connections.

So we cannot take for granted, as the college once did, a common understanding of America’s place in the world. And yet we find ourselves in a global crisis in which United States foreign policy is under intense scrutiny. We need informed and sophisticated discussions of how the nation can best position itself strategically against security threats that are ubiquitous and nebulous, and what our obligations are, as the world’s sole remaining superpower, to the future of human life on the planet. The range of perspectives, experiences, and expertise assembled on our campus is a rich resource for that conversation. And at this decisive moment, we have an obligation to make the best possible use of that vital resource we are so privileged to have at our disposal.

Second, on the national level, irrespective of political persuasion, many perceive this election as very high stakes. The nation is sharply divided, edgy, and emotional about the Iraq war, the war on terror and other international developments, environmental concerns, domestic economic and social policy—many fundamental choices that could affect our safety and the quality of our lives far into the future. The harsh and ruthless tenor of public political speech has driven many ordinary Americans away. “Let’s not go there,” friends and relatives have been saying all summer long when someone broaches the loaded topic of presidential politics.

And young Americans are opting out in especially large numbers. Voter turnout among people aged 18 to 24 has declined steadily for over two decades. In 2000, scarcely more than one-third (36%) of 18–24 year olds exercised their franchise, compared to 70% of senior citizens. No wonder we hear so much about prescription drugs and Social Security. Far too many of the nation’s youth distrust government, lack interest in political affairs, and view orthodox forms of political involvement as futile, pointless, a diversion from their hectic lives. Many who are passionately involved in grassroots activities and volunteer commitments fail to see the links that connect those passions to mainstream electoral politics. A healthy democracy cannot afford politics to become taboo or irrelevant, and for that reason I’m very encouraged by the efforts of CPLA and other student groups to get out the vote. All of us should help them in every way we can.

Third, the American academy is embroiled in a debate about the roles of colleges and universities in the contemporary world. Many contend that liberal education has been failing in its duty to prepare students for lives of moral and civic responsibility. Others counter that this isn’t our job, that we are already too politicized and that to preserve academic freedom for all, colleges should not advocate particular values or ideals.

As one of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges, we ought to be more active in this debate. We need to be asking ourselves how we understand the public purposes of a Wellesley education, and what we are and should be doing to educate ethical and effective citizens of a learning community that depends on each of us, of a nation to which many but not all of us belong, and of a world on which we all depend.

Finally, on the local level, we are entering the final year of a five-year fund raising campaign that is transforming our educational landscape, opening many new learning possibilities— in global education, internships and directed research, study abroad, quantitative reasoning, the humanities, and other areas that have broadened the student experience and expanded collaborative possibilities for the faculty—and in dramatic physical changes to the campus, most visible now in the intriguing form of the Wang Campus Center. That curious structure is inviting us to imagine ourselves into a more coherent global learning community, to engage in the rare process of constructing community by design. But what sort of community do we aspire to be?

The simplest answer, it seems to me, when we strip all the rhetoric away, is that we aspire to be a community that practices what Parker Palmer calls “obedience to truth.” Stephen Carter writes in a similar vein about integrity, a “primary virtue,” he says, that crosses the political spectrum, a virtue “without which other political views and values are useless.”

Integrity, Carter continues, “means an unblinking obedience to … right. This is a hard test,” he adds, “few of us can meet it very often. Yet the struggle itself is important. Indeed, nothing but an all-out effort to demand integrity of our political leaders—and of their bosses--us—will preserve democracy as we have come to know it.”

What would it mean to say that the community we aspire to be is committed, first and foremost, to an all-out struggle to demand integrity of ourselves and each other? For one thing, it would suggest an alternative framing of the worldwide struggle for democracy in our time, a framing very much in keeping with the insight of the 9/11 Commission that what we are enmeshed in now is in part a war of ideas. For another, it would align us with the founding impulse behind this college and with the ideals our alumnae and other supporters believe and trust we are trying to advance.

I was concerned to hear on Friday from a new student leader that in summer visits with alumnae she was surprised to learn that their most enduring experience of Wellesley—the overriding lesson from their time here—was a sense of responsibility for others, as embodied in the motto of the college, non ministrari sed ministrare, a sense that what was expected of them was to be good and ethical people above all else. Today, this senior continued, students may be taking away something different. She thinks you may be hearing the message that we want you to do well, to be successful, to have an impact, to make a difference. She isn’t as sure, however, that you are hearing us say that we want you to be honest, to follow the rules, to do what is right. So today, women of Wellesley, hear me please. Nothing is more important, while you are here on campus, and after you graduate, nothing matters more than your integrity. Maybe we need some new banners.

I would like to suggest then that we put this question of integrity at the very center of our work this year. The honor code committee, continuing from last year, will need every one of us to help design and implement a campus-wide program promoting academic integrity. This is one of the shared values that defines us as a community, and we must develop the practice of reaffirming it regularly.

With that in mind we’ve started a new orientation tradition and I was encouraged to learn on Friday from our chief justice that after hearing a presentation on the honor code on Wednesday evening, 565 members of the Class of 2008 participated in a signing ceremony affirming their commitment to academic integrity. Many waited for two (hot!) hours here in Alumnae Hall to sign a special book, donated by the alumnae association on the occasion of their 125th anniversary this year. Perhaps others of us on campus will have a chance to sign it. Thank you, Class of 2008, for leading the way.

Where honor codes are effective, the research and logic attest, faculty play the indispensable role modeling and teaching academic integrity, designing meaningful and appropriate assignments with clear instructions, bringing out the best in students and promoting a culture of honesty in their classes and beyond. We need our faculty to think deeply this year about what they can do to strengthen and uphold the Wellesley honor code.

Faculty leadership is necessary, but not sufficient. Effective systems also mobilize the entire campus community to create an environment of shared responsibility, high expectations, and no tolerance of cheating of any kind. When the norms against cheating erode badly, as they have in many high schools, students are put in the unfair position of having to choose between their personal integrity and their GPA. This has not happened at Wellesley, and we want to be sure it never does.

So I see this as a year for us to address what Stephen Carter calls “America’s integrity dilemma,” not only in our review of the honor code but in all we do, including our work this fall as “the bosses” of our elected officials, identifying who we believe will be trustworthy leaders and why.

And, further, I would like to assert that this emphasis on integrity is entirely consistent with our primary educational purpose, even as I conjure in my mind all the ways in which you might like to argue that point with me. Yes, these are confusing times to be crusading for a fundamental virtue. Yes, we are multiple communities, not one, and certainly not all of one voice.

The value we necessarily place on tolerance and respect for difference means that we must avoid sliding into moral indoctrination or old-fashioned moralism. And no one wants to weaken the academic freedom so basic to who we are, least of all now when our civil liberties are being undermined.

And yet, we begin this year at a moment in world history when differences are taking precedence over commonalities, a time when we urgently need those of good will to invest their psychic energy in sustaining safe environments for people to come together to find common ground. A residential liberal arts college can be such an environment, a self-conscious community created to foster collaborative learning and teaching, a community seeking, above all else, obedience to the truth.

The ideal of a liberal education rests on the understanding that probing the assumptions behind high-stakes ideological debates, subjecting them to informed examination, speaking one’s own truth and hearing the truth of others, practicing the art of honing, defending, and revising a sustained and serious argument is the best lifelong protection against any kind of indoctrination, perhaps the only effective one. Turning away cannot be the answer.

This work we are doing here at Wellesley, then, is the work of the world. And much is at stake, not only because of the volatility of the world situation but also because outside of educational institutions there are so few places now where these honest conversations are taking place. This is a time for us to proceed with exquisite care.

The orientation committee gave us a place to begin with a booklet we discussed last Tuesday morning in small groups of first-year students led by faculty, staff, and upper class first-year mentors. The students with whom I explored the readings were insightful, smart, and honest with themselves and one another; they renewed my spirits.

Our group focused mostly on a writing by Karl Popper, the 20th century social and political philosopher who offers three principles as “the basis of rational discussion, that is, of discussion undertaken in the search for truth.” These are ethical principles as well as epistemological ones, he says, and they “lead us to a self-critical attitude and to toleration.” In that sense, they can be touchstones of our integrity.

I’ve posted Popper’s three principles, with his elaboration, on Official Notices for easy reference as a guide we can apply in this high-voltage election year. They boil down to this: knowing we could likely be wrong, testing rational arguments, avoiding personal attacks. If all of us adhere to those three rules as best we can, we will be playing our part in ensuring that we have a learning space that is hospitable to everyone.

“A learning space needs to be hospitable not to make learning painless,” Parker Palmer has written, “but to make the painful things possible, things without which no learning can occur—things like exposing ignorance, testing tentative hypotheses, challenging false or partial information, and mutual criticism of thought. Each of these is essential to obedience to truth. But none of them can happen in an atmosphere where people feel threatened and judged.”

Feeling threatened and judged drives us into isolation, and from isolation it is a short distance to feeling overwhelmed and powerless. The world is a scary place, and our individual efforts seem so inadequate in the face of problems of such magnitude. But the more we can come together and pool what we know, the more we will come to see the ways in which doing our small part fits into a larger whole, and the more we will be able to be hopeful and efficacious.

It starts with personal integrity (the ongoing struggle to do our best to be someone others can trust), it extends to our campus community (and the small contribution we can make to the cause of more inclusive and rational discourse), and it ramifies out from our protected Wellesley bubble into a global conversation on which the future of humanity depends.

That is why it is so crucial that every one of us take responsibility for the impact we have on one another and on this contentious and lively community whose bonds of connection are so easily sundered and so essential to our work.

Let this be a year after which you will be able to say, “Because of the care I took, the world is a little more harmonious than it might otherwise have been.”

I wish each of us a year of discovery and learning and wonder, and I wish all of us a year of integrity.

Thank you again for your time and attention.