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Transcript of 2019 Senior Assembly Speech

I am Catherine Epstein, professor of history and Dean of the Faculty, and welcome to Senior Assembly for the class of 2019. Senior Assembly is when we celebrate the academic and other accomplishments of the senior class. And today we are celebrating you, the class of 2019. Do you remember four years ago, when you were first-year students, you came to Johnson Chapel on labor day for convocation? This was the day before your very first classes at Amherst College. And as you filed into the Chapel, the faculty sat in the middle section where many of you are seated now. So right down here, you sat all around the faculty on the sides, on the edges of the faculty. But this afternoon, the seating is reversed. You are in the middle and the faculty surrounds you. We, the faculty, envelop you, we embrace you. And today you are at the very heart of our community. Now while you will always be part of our community, today's celebration is part of the launching you into the world, part of us launching you into the world.

You will soon leave the physical space of Amherst and live and work and love in other parts of the country and indeed the world. And this brings me to the College's motto, terras irradient. And I brought a prop today. So it's right there. That's not usually there for Senior Assembly, but I brought it for you. And most often we translate this motto as "Let them give light to the world." Bear with me as I dwell on this for a few moments. In Latin, terras irradient means earth or land and Irradient is a verb in the third person as in they give light. Those words are found in the middle of our College seal. Above the words, there are the rays of the sun streaming down and below the words, there is an open book. This seal has been with us since the College's founding. It was designed by Professor Nathan Welby Fiske, a professor of Latin and Greek. Professor Fiske readied

The seal for the College's first commencement in August 1825. There is little doubt of the seal's original meaning, the sun and a Bible illuminated the terrestrial globe. The sun captured divine truth, and it poured into the Bible, the written word. The "them" in terras irradient, as in, let them give light to the world, referred to the graduates. Armed with divine truth, graduates were to spread the Christian gospel at home and across the globe, or as another translation of the motto reads, let them enlighten the lands. In the first decades of the College's history, Amherst graduates fulfilled this mission in spades. Many of our graduates became ministers and not a few became missionaries abroad. Between 1830 and 1950, roughly 140 Amherst graduates served as missionaries in Hawaii, the Middle East, India, China, and Africa. For them, terras irradient meant spreading their Christian truth. And they did so with great zeal and great sacrifice.

Others understood terras irradient somewhat differently, if quite literally too. They chose to light up the world by spreading the powerful model of an Amherst education. Indeed, Amherst graduates have founded or helped found important institutions of higher education abroad, institutions and their graduates that have now, in their way, enlightened the world, such a small school, but what a huge impact on higher education. Edward Jones class of 1826, was the first African American alumnus of the College. After graduation, he enrolled in the African mission school in Hartford. The school sent him to Sierra Leone where he became the principal of Fourah Bay College founded in 1827. As principal, he helped to develop an Amherst-like curriculum. Fourah Bay is today the oldest university in West Africa and was the first Western-style university in Africa altogether. Another graduate, Daniel Bliss, class of 1852, experienced a Christian revival at Amherst and became a missionary. Bliss went to Syria and founded Syrian Protestant College in Beirut,

Now Lebanon, in 1866. Syrian Protestant College was renamed the American University of Beirut, AUB, in 1920. And in the history of the Middle East, AUB has played a significant role in developing and spreading notions of Arab sovereignty and nationalism. In 1871, Bliss gave an interesting speech at the laying of the cornerstone for a new building at Syrian Protestant College. This College, Bliss said, is for all conditions and classes of men, without regard to color, nationality, race, or religion, a man, white, black, or yellow, Christian, Jew, Mohammadan, or heathen may enter and enjoy all the advantages of this institution and go out believing in one God, in many gods, or in no God. Yet he then added, but it will be impossible for anyone to continue with us long without knowing what we believe to be the truth and our reasons for that belief. It is this surety, this keen sense of knowing the truth. To which I will return in a minute.

One final Amherst-inspired founding of an institution abroad. Joseph Hardy Neesima, class of 1870. So his portrait is right over there next to the door. Neesima was the first Japanese citizen to earn a college degree in the United States. He was bent on learning about Western science and Christianity. To do so, he escaped Japan under threat of death. After he graduated from Amherst, he attended seminary and was ordained a minister. His goal was to return home to found a Christian university in 1875. He founded the Doshisha English School in Kyoto in 1920. This became Doshisha University and under Neesima, Doshisha started with eight students. Today, it is a university of 30,000 students and is considered one of the most important universities in Japan. At Doshisha, the word Amherst commands great respect. Some of you may know a new cafe in town, Shiru Cafe. Shiru's business model is that it takes your resumes in return for cheap or even free coffee and Amherst was chosen as one of the company's first U.S. Sites because Shiru's CEO went to Doshisha and knew all about Amherst College.

Let's get back to the seal here. By the 1870s, the religious deal that initially motivated the founding of the College had waned. Amherst, like the United States as a whole, secularized. In turn, interpretations of the seal change too. In 1937, for example, the Student claimed that the sun personified natural sciences and the open book, the Bible, and that the two illuminated the world with their radiance. The Student further wrote though that quote some authorities, however, are of the opinion that the opened volume represents book learning. So I suspect that when many of us think of terras irradient, we think along these more secular lines, that Amherst graduates, that is you will take your broad liberal arts education, and light up the world. That your Amherst education will equip you with what you need to approach the world's many-faceted problems. I have no doubt that each of you will light up the world and that you will bring the intellectual skills that you have honed here to solve the critical problems facing society.

But here's the thing. I've always found the terras irradient motto just a little bit troubling. What about the world? I've wondered. What role does the world play in all of this? How many of you studied abroad? Raise your hands. Nice. Okay. Keep your hands raised. You've got to keep them raised. How many of you otherwise went abroad during your time at Amherst? Add more? Good. Good. How many of you experienced a very different part of the United States while you were at Amherst? Did any of this change, you? Maybe a little? Not at all? Not sure? Wow. All right. Maybe just a little bit. It changed. So, to me, our motto hints a little bit too much that we know what is best for the world. In either its religious or secular variants, terras irradient involves a tinge of righteousness of moral superiority.

And I worry about all of us being just a little bit too sure of ourselves, that we are all a bit too sure of our convictions, and that we are all too quick to assume that those who think otherwise are simply wrong. What seems missing in our motto and what sometimes seems missing in our exchange with one another is humility. Humility involves questioning ourselves, our motives, our truths, our sureties. It involves a recognition that others with whom we don't agree may still have profound insights. Humility involves thinking that exposure to the other, whether in places like Sierra Leone, Beruit or Kyoto, or simply to other views, will strengthen our thinking. As you spread light through the world, I hope that you will do so with a certain humility, that is in a spirit of openness generosity and exchange. Henry David Thoreau, the transcendentalist, once wrote humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights. So I repeat, humility like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights. It is my expectation that you are leaving Amherst with many intellectual strengths, but it is my hope that you are doing so with a measure of humility that will truly light up the world. So terras irradient. And before you go, we are now going to celebrate the light that you have produced here at Amherst. So welcome to Senior Assembly, class of 2019.

Transcript of 2018 Senior Assembly Speech

Please be seated. Good afternoon. Welcome to Senior Assembly, class of 2018. I'm Catherine Epstein. I'm Dean of the Faculty. And I really want you to know that Senior Assembly marks the official start of a season of celebration. And we are celebrating you, class of 2018.

Do you remember four years ago, when you were first-year students, you came to Johnson Chapel on labor day for convocation? This was the day before your first classes at Amherst College. As you filed into the chapel, the faculty sat in the middle section where many of you are seated now. You sat all around the faculty on the sides and on the edges of the faculty, right where the faculty are sitting now. But this afternoon, the seating is reversed. You are in the middle and the faculty surrounds you. We, the faculty, envelop you. We embrace you, and you are at the heart of our community. Now, since you first stepped on campus, you have been part of this community and you share that with all others who have come before or after you at Amherst, it is a community created by bonding over what makes Amherst College special, the commitment to critical questioning the commitment to passionate inquiry, the commitment to excellence in all endeavors, but it is also community created through a connection to place, this place, Amherst. Perhaps you've heard the phrase, the consecrated eminence. Has anyone heard this phrase? No. All right. You'll hear a lot about it this afternoon. There's actually a book titled The Consecrated Eminence and its subtitle is The Story of the Campus and Buildings of Amherst College. The book was written by Stanley King, the President of Amherst College between 1932 and 1946. And King was an important president for the college. Some even believe that he put Amherst on the map, not least he played an important role in shaping the physical plant of the college. And more on that in a minute. Now, Stanley King is actually the fellow right in the back behind the first section here, the man with the portrait right at the back. So that's what I'm talking about. Now, I have always been really puzzled by the phrase the consecrated eminence. I've heard it, but I could never really figure out what does it mean?

The word "eminence." it turns out has several meanings. The meaning that I was always familiar with was high station, rank, or repute, but it also means a high place or a hill or an elevation. So "the consecrated eminence" essentially means sacred hill and we're on it. Johnson Chapel is at the pinnacle of the consecrated eminence. As King tells us in The Consecrated Eminence, and I'm quoting here, "the college had been founded by men of strong religious convictions. They were Orthodox Congregationalists who believed in the doctrines of John Calvin as interpreted for their generation by Jonathan Edwards. They wanted, above all an educated ministry. So vigorous were they in the expression of their religious convictions that they were taunted with trying to establish a priest factory. It was natural for them to use religious terms in their conversation. And they called the College grounds, 'The Consecrated Eminence.'" End. Quote.

Mike Kelly, who heads up archives and special collections, has a blog title, the Consecrated Eminence. And it's a blog about the history of the college. Mike has determined that the phrase, the concentrated eminence, was first used in the earliest student magazine now preserved at the College. That magazine was called the Sprite and was first printed in May 1831. In its first issue. The Sprite, writing of Amherst students, made reference to the quote "inhabitants of the consecrated eminence." It is not known how widely the phrase was used as a nickname for the College. Clearly, you're not familiar with it, but Stanley King knew the term. And some years ago, Biddy held a holiday party for senior staff. Believe it or not, we played charades and either she or someone else decided to throw "the consecrated eminence" into the mix and our Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, Katie Fretwell, got stuck with trying to act this out. Can you imagine? Even Katie couldn't do it.

However anachronistic the term sounds today, "the consecrated eminence" captures something of the passion that the founders felt for the physical place that is this college. Its religious overtones capture the beauty and the specialness of the place, while "eminence" conveys gravitas. And that place, our campus can be interpreted as a metaphor for us as a community, and for you as individuals. In your time here, you have seen one of the largest physical transformations of the Amherst campus for good or ill. You were the last class that lived in the social dorms. Not infrequently, growth includes loss, the shedding of some aspects of ourselves to make way for the new, and in the place of those social dorms, we now have a new science center that will open its doors this summer. You are also among the first to live in the Greenway dorms. Another extension of the College's building footprint, and what a change all this is from Amherst's modest beginnings. So in the first decade, Amherst College consisted of just South College, dedicated in 1821, North College completed in 1823, and Johnson Chapel right here built in 1827. Many other buildings, some of which no longer exist, were built in the College's first century, including the Octagon, Morgan Hall, originally the library, Barrett, Fayerweather, Converse, and some buildings that are now iconic dorms, such as Appleton, Williston, Morris, Pratt, and Morrow. But even 86 years ago, when Stanley King took over as president, the college had a much smaller plant. During King's time, in the 1930s and forties, the college built the Alumni Gym Valentine Hall, Kirby Theater, James and Stern's dormitories, Memorial Field, and the War Memorial. King also had Johnson Chapel remodeled.

So it looks the way it does now since King's time, the College, of course, has continued to expand with the Mead completed in 1949, Frost Library dedicated in 1965 and ARMS music building and Merril both dedicated in 1968 to name a few of our larger buildings. Now, the campus' physical growth reflects the growing influence and significance of Amherst College in American higher education. From a local, all-male institution intended to be a priest factory, to a regional institution that drew students primarily from New England, it is now a co-educational institution that draws the most talented students from the United States and indeed the world. Similarly, your own personal growth follows something of the same process of extension from local origins, your family and local communities, through regional institutions, perhaps your middle and high schools, and now Amherst, a national or even international destination for some of you. Your initial influence was in your family, in your role as child or sibling.

It then grew to encompass school and other youth communities as well as this College. And it will soon extend out into the world as you join work or other larger communities. Eventually, if the promise of an Amherst education holds true, and I'm sure that it will, your influence will transcend those known personally to you. And in this vein, in your time at Amherst, I hope that you have made another transformation, a transformation that characterizes Amherst alumni more broadly. In his inaugural speech in November 1932 Stanley King stated, this is as president in his inaugural speech, quote: "The College is the place from which men start in search of the happy Isles of the Greeks, the city of the son of the Italians, the city of God, of the Christian mystics in quest of the good life. To the college come a throng of eager boys from the college go forth each a band of men, most of whom have caught some vision of the ideal, some dream of a better world. They travel towards the eternal city." Now forgive the gendered language, but think about the words. You may have come to this College in quest of the good life, but I hope that you have left with a purpose as well. The purpose of making a difference in whatever field of endeavor you choose and note that that extraordinary transformation happened here in a very special, specific place in the consecrated eminence, you are now forever linked to this place and to all others who have shared the experience here in this place in Amherst. It is a place to which I hope you will return often, both literally and figuratively. It is a place that I hope you will call a home, in community with all those before and after you. It is a place that I hope will grow and evolve just as your relationship with the College will change with time. It is a physical place that I hope marks for you much that you hold near and dear for what this community has given you and for what you have given this community. And now, here, in Johnson, Chapel, at the pinnacle of the founders, consecrated eminence, we are gathered in community to celebrate some of your many accomplishments. So once again, welcome to Senior Assembly.

Transcript of 2017 Senior Assembly Speech

Good afternoon, please be seated. Welcome to Senior Assembly, class of 2017

I should add the great class of 2017. Senior Assembly marks the official start of a season of celebration. And we are celebrating you, the class of 2017. Do you remember four years ago when you were first-year students, you came to Johnson Chapel. So right here on labor day for convocation, this was the day before your first classes at Amherst College. As you filed into the chapel, the faculty sat in this middle section where many of you are seated now. You sat all around the faculty on the sides, on the edges of the faculty. But this afternoon, the seating is reversed. You are in the middle and the faculty surrounds you after four years of lectures and discussion questioning and doubting, we envelop you. We embrace you and you are now the heart of our community. You are now an integral part of the Amherst community, and with that of Amherst tradition. So what do I mean by that tradition? Some of you may know that I'm a historian and it's hard for me to leave history out of anything and indeed, why would one ever want to? So today I'm going to focus very briefly on two events. Both of which happened exactly a hundred years ago. In 1917, Robert Frost began his 40-year association with the College. And in 1917, the United States joined World War I. Each says something enduring about the College. So to explain this, I need to talk about Alexander Meiklejohn. Meiklejohn became president of Amherst College in 1912. He was an educational reformer and he passionately believed that college students should not just learn facts, but rather that they should learn how to think as he declared in his famous inaugural address delivered right here in Johnson Chapel. Instruction at a liberal arts college is intended to take human activity as a whole, to understand human endeavors, not in their isolation, but in their relations to one another.

And the total experience which we call the life of our people. For Meiklejohn, the value of education was not the specialized knowledge which contributes to immediate practical aims, but the unified understanding, which is insight. Now Meiklejohn did all he could to make Amherst a college where the faculty inspired its students. He set Amherst on its course of academic excellence. He fired some mediocre teachers and he hired some stellar professors. He also took a big risk. He hired Robert Frost to teach at the College. So Frost didn't even have a college degree and it was not common at this time to invite writers to be in residence. Still, in December 1916, Meiklejohn told students that Frost would be coming the following January. He then read right here in Johnson Chapel "The Road Not Taken." Many of you likely know this poem and it ends with "two roads diverged in a wood.

And I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." Meiklejohn may have prided himself on taking the road less traveled when he hired Frost. But Frost is an example of the vexed yet productive relationship that many have with the College. Frost was quite a teacher. Some would say even a non-teacher. He would sometimes hold evening classes in a fraternity house. Amidst reading and talk of poetry, he would ask questions such as why do they have classes anyways? He was challenging the core activity of the institution instruction. Meanwhile, he had his own ideas about the philosophy of education, education by poetry, in his words, education by poetry is education by metaphor, and Frost meant that only metaphor could give meaning to knowledge. In his words, the man who gets lost in his material without a gathering metaphor to throw it into shape and order is the lost soul.

So it's the questioning, the challenging, the throwing out of all orthodoxies that Frost delighted in. After his first few years here, he actually did very little formal teaching. Several times during his career, he left Amherst and entirely. One of these moments is hard to square with today's norms. In 1919, Frost tried to persuade Meiklejohn that an English professor, Stark Young, had to be fired. This was simply because Stark Young was gay. Meiklejohn refused to give in to Frost's prejudice, and Frost, in turn, resigned from the College. He soon came to complain of what he called Mickeljaundice. To him, Mickeljohn was too much on a high horse, too sure of his understanding of liberal education. Meanwhile, though, Mickeljohn had other problems besides Frost. On April 6, 1917, Woodrow Wilson brought the United States into World War I. Mickeljohn had spent years arguing that the United States should stay out of war.

He did not want to see special military training or preparation at a liberal arts college. Partly he believed that liberal arts education was actually good preparation for successful war, making students, for example, practice precision and order, as important in waging war as in many other endeavors. For Mickeljohn, however, liberal arts education also trained students to question why they would fight in a war. So when war was declared Mickeljohn spoke right here in Johnson Chapel, and he reminded students we have two loyalties, the abstract loyalty to principles to truth, goodness, freedom, beauty, youth, and gladness, and also the concrete loyalties to the institutions of which we are members, to the family, the church, the school, the state, the humankind. Meiklejohn told students to use their education, their loyalty to abstract principles, to better serve their institutions by making them intelligent. He urged students to stay in school.

as long as they could. Students, he insisted should leave College only if they had some special talent to offer the war effort. Did the students listen? Absolutely not. War fever seized the College. Half of all students soon left to either fight in Europe or to work in domestic war industries. By June of 1918, all but six of Amherst's 125 seniors had left college early. Faculty members too rushed off to war or to war work. The physical campus changed to adapt toward needs. Pathways became military parade grounds. Appleton became an armory, housing rifles used in on-campus military training, and Hitchcock Field became a firing range. And Meiklejohn was dismayed by his students, his faculty and his country. The war tested all of Meiklejohn's ideals about liberal education, not least the U.S. War department turned to college presidents and demanded their help in rooting out subversive and seditious activities on the home front.

Many college presidents acquiesced, but Mickeljohn was outraged. He wrote President Wilson to insists that if the United States was fighting a war for democracy, the suppression of dissent on the home front was unacceptable. His letter, however, fell on deaf ears. Similarly, Meiklejohn came to lose the trust of the board of the trustees and the faculty. And he resigned as president in 1923. So what do these two incidents tell us about Amherst College, about tradition of the College from which you are about to graduate? Whatever frustrations Frost had with Mickeljaundice, he came back in the mid-1920s. Then he wrote, "I ought to have been poet enough to stay away, but I was too much of a philosopher to resist the temptation, to go back and help show the world the difference between the right kind of liberal college and the wrong kind." It was at Amherst that Frost wanted to test his ideas about a liberal college.

Similarly, despite his campus's reactions to the war, Mickeljohn did not give up on his educational ideals. Even when Amherst thrust him out, he held true to his convictions. This is the Amherst tradition that you have inherited in your time here. You have already contributed to it. Amherst Uprising and the mascot debate are just two examples. This is a tradition of hard questions, pointed challenges, principled decisions, necessary compromises, and sometimes even warm embracing. And it all flows in my view from the hard thinking that you have done at this College. Today, we celebrate what makes this tradition possible today. We celebrate your work in the classroom that makes you the thinkers, that Amherst and the world so sorely needs. It is the Mickeljohns and the Frosts and now you who have made and will make all the difference. So, this evening we are going to celebrate you, class of 2017

[applause].

So we're now going to begin the process of giving out the prizes.