Trashing Harvard (what fun!)
Some of you may have heard that J.K. Rowling spoke at Harvard’s graduation. Some of you also may have heard that the graduating class of 2008 was less than pleased.
Some choice quotes from the NPR story:
"I think we could have done better," shrugged computer science major Kevin Bombino. He says Rowling lacks the gravitas a Harvard commencement speaker should have. "You know, we're Harvard. We're like the most prominent national institution. And I think we should be entitled to … we should be able to get anyone. And in my opinion, we're settling here. "
Senior Andy Vaz: "From the moment we walk through the gates of Harvard Yard, they constantly emphasize that we are the leaders of tomorrow. They should have picked a leader to speak at commencement. Not a children's writer. What does that say to the class of 2008? Are we the joke class?"
Apparently you’re the doesn’t-get-a-joke class. Good lord. What really seems to piss them off is that she wasn’t a) a Pulitzer prize winner, b) a Nobel prize winner, c) a world leader. She wasn’t powerful enough.
There are many types of power in this world. There is the power of Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, all of whom were past Harvard commencement speakers. But there is the power of family, of teachers, of art. Bill Gates can send billions of dollars to Africa but it is art that shows that it is the right thing to do. To quote Stoppard: “Art – Fugard or Auden or the entire cauldron- is important because it provides the moral matrix, the moral sensibility, from which we make our judgments about the world… The plain truth is that if you are angered or disgusted by a particular injustice or immorality and you want to do something about it now, at once, then you could hardly do worse than write a play about it. That is what art is bad at. But the less plain truth is that without that play and plays like it, without artists, injustice will never be eradicated. In other words, because of Athol Fugard, the Guardian understood that the Raphael piece [an article about wage inequality in 70s South Africa] was worth leading the paper with, worth printing.”
It is arguable that J.K. Rowling has done MORE for the world than Kofi Annan (perhaps not true but arguable). Annan led an ineffective and ponderous bureaucracy that, through the wimpy way its charter is written, stood by and watched terrible atrocities play out without a way to rectify them. Rowling also hasn’t stopped any genocides but her books push the ideas of family, of love, of justice, and equality. She has, through metaphor and imagination, dealt with genocide, xenophobia, the Patriot act (or whatever the British version is), how you survive if you lose everything, and what you do in the face of injustice. You fight back. Books change our moral compass. Its subtle but it happens. Rowling is a force to be reckoned with. Thank goodness she has a giant heart.
I suppose both Kofi Annan and J.K. Rowling have made me cry but in very different ways and in different circumstances. Which just gets back to my point – power comes in many variations, its not always a business or world leader, its not always a MAN. And the Harvard grads are going to need to learn that very very quickly or they will find themselves manipulated by someone they think has no power over them.
And on that note I will let J.K. take you into the weekend with my favorite excerpts from her commencement speech.
“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared…. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet… Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know…What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy…If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better…As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.”
--J.K. Rowling
Some choice quotes from the NPR story:
"I think we could have done better," shrugged computer science major Kevin Bombino. He says Rowling lacks the gravitas a Harvard commencement speaker should have. "You know, we're Harvard. We're like the most prominent national institution. And I think we should be entitled to … we should be able to get anyone. And in my opinion, we're settling here. "
Senior Andy Vaz: "From the moment we walk through the gates of Harvard Yard, they constantly emphasize that we are the leaders of tomorrow. They should have picked a leader to speak at commencement. Not a children's writer. What does that say to the class of 2008? Are we the joke class?"
Apparently you’re the doesn’t-get-a-joke class. Good lord. What really seems to piss them off is that she wasn’t a) a Pulitzer prize winner, b) a Nobel prize winner, c) a world leader. She wasn’t powerful enough.
There are many types of power in this world. There is the power of Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, all of whom were past Harvard commencement speakers. But there is the power of family, of teachers, of art. Bill Gates can send billions of dollars to Africa but it is art that shows that it is the right thing to do. To quote Stoppard: “Art – Fugard or Auden or the entire cauldron- is important because it provides the moral matrix, the moral sensibility, from which we make our judgments about the world… The plain truth is that if you are angered or disgusted by a particular injustice or immorality and you want to do something about it now, at once, then you could hardly do worse than write a play about it. That is what art is bad at. But the less plain truth is that without that play and plays like it, without artists, injustice will never be eradicated. In other words, because of Athol Fugard, the Guardian understood that the Raphael piece [an article about wage inequality in 70s South Africa] was worth leading the paper with, worth printing.”
It is arguable that J.K. Rowling has done MORE for the world than Kofi Annan (perhaps not true but arguable). Annan led an ineffective and ponderous bureaucracy that, through the wimpy way its charter is written, stood by and watched terrible atrocities play out without a way to rectify them. Rowling also hasn’t stopped any genocides but her books push the ideas of family, of love, of justice, and equality. She has, through metaphor and imagination, dealt with genocide, xenophobia, the Patriot act (or whatever the British version is), how you survive if you lose everything, and what you do in the face of injustice. You fight back. Books change our moral compass. Its subtle but it happens. Rowling is a force to be reckoned with. Thank goodness she has a giant heart.
I suppose both Kofi Annan and J.K. Rowling have made me cry but in very different ways and in different circumstances. Which just gets back to my point – power comes in many variations, its not always a business or world leader, its not always a MAN. And the Harvard grads are going to need to learn that very very quickly or they will find themselves manipulated by someone they think has no power over them.
And on that note I will let J.K. take you into the weekend with my favorite excerpts from her commencement speech.
“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared…. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet… Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know…What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy…If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better…As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.”
--J.K. Rowling
posted by Lark(e) at 2:17 PM
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