The Challenge to Higher Education in an Interdependent and Changing Global Society

2004 Graduate School Commencement Address presented May 13, 2004 by Regents Professor Allen Isaacman

Regent Metzen, Dean Bloomfield, Dean Muscoplat and Dean Stafford, Vice Provost Swan, distinguished colleagues and staff from the University community, and especially honored graduates:

What a terrific day. To our Graduates, I want to stress how delighted all of us in the auditorium are with your many achievements. We celebrate your dedication, intellectual commitment, passion for learning and academic accomplishments. Congratulations. The future is yours and there is much to do.

This is also an occasion to acknowledge your loved ones -- family members, partners and friends -- who over the years provided so much material, emotional and moral support. They were there for you at critical junctures in your graduate careers and have helped to make this day possible. Join with me in giving them a well deserved round of applause.

Never lose sight of the significance of this network of family and friends, even when you are engaged in the most exhilarating professional work. I almost did. But happily my son Geoff, then two years old, quickly brought me back to reality. It was three days before my birthday. I was a young and ambitious junior faculty member on my way toward tenure. My wife Bobbie, Geoff and I were sitting around the dinner table. Bobbie turned to Geoff and said “It’s Daddy’s birthday in three days. What should we get him?” Geoff look bored. Bobbie reminded him how much he liked receiving birthday presents. Geoff remained silent. Then Bobbie said “Geoff, just think what Daddy likes more than anything else in the world.” His face lit up. Without hesitation he announced “I know mommy, let’s get Daddy some work”. So I was reminded of the tricky and challenging balancing act of being a loving dad and husband and attempting to be a successful scholar.

I am humbled and honored to be asked to speak on this wonderful occasion. I too am a product of public education in which I spent my entire academic life. I went to a neighborhood grade school, attended an inner-city high school in the Bronx -- a discerning ear might be able to detect subtle hints of those origins. I subsequently studied at the City College of New York and received my PhD in African history at the University of Wisconsin. For the past thirty-four years I have taught at the University of Minnesota and at a state university in Mozambique.

In these public institutions of higher education, I was privileged to learn from gifted teachers and fellow students. It was at Madison that I developed a passion for African history and a deep commitment to document the rich and diverse past of that continent. Through intense conversations with colleagues and students at this University I came to appreciate the importance of extending my analysis beyond the world of the powerful and explore the experiences, creative adaptations and struggles of ordinary people – women and men, farmers and workers, young and old -- whose lives have all too often been consigned to the shadows of history. These intellectual concerns have framed my field research and publication for the past thirty years.

The two accomplishment in which I take most pride, however, are in teaching. The first is the development of a graduate program in African History which did not exist when I arrived here. Our department has produced a cohort of graduates who today are playing a leading role shaping the field of African history. The other is helping to conceptualize and direct the MacArthur Program and the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change. In partnership with Raymond Duvall, Karen Brown Thompson, Jim Johnson and more than 50 extraordinary faculty, over the past two decades we have built a vibrant intellectual community that stretches access the social sciences, humanities and natural sciences. Among the major universities in the late 1980s receiving grants from the MacArthur Foundation to start parallel programs, only Minnesota’s focused on north–south relations and the underlying social and economic causes of conflict, rather than on guns and bombs and East-West strategic rivalries. We have recruited more than 300 gifted students from all over the world. There are currently 130 graduate students based in six colleges across the University enrolled in our program -- several of whom are graduating today. More than that number have already completed their PhD’s or professional degrees and are now on the faculties of more than forty major colleges and universities across the world or playing important roles in leading international organizations.

It is from the vantage point of both a scholar of Africa and student of contemporary world affairs that I want to explore briefly “The Challenge to Higher Education in an Interdependent and Changing Global Society.” I use the term global or world society to stress the complexity, multi-dimensionality, interconnectedness and uncertainty of the world in which we live. Since the dramatic and unpredicted end of the Cold War in 1989, scholars, practitioners and policymakers have often failed to foresee some of the most significant changes in world society. Who could have predicted 15 years ago that an expanded NATO alliance would go to war in the Balkans to protect the human rights of a Islamic society? Not too long ago it was virtually unimaginable that the commercialization of genetically engineered organisms would become a source of major tension in the world or that disagreements about greenhouse emissions would set us at odds with our Western allies and much of the international community.

The end of the Cold War has brought neither security nor peace. These unstable and uncertain times demand that we give serous consideration to how we produce knowledge and organize higher education. Our challenge is to train new generations of young women and men who have the wisdom and courage to tackle many of the seemingly intractable problems of the day. Toward this end I offer five modest suggestions.

First we must develop an institutional culture that encourages those in the academy to take intellectual risks and challenge inherited orthodoxies. We need to teach our students and remind ourselves that the assumptions and relative certainties that frame how scholars, policymakers and activists understand world society are provisional, at best, even if they are widely held. In the social sciences, for example, uncritical use of terms such as ethnic conflict, globalization, sustainable development and failed states may often obscure more than they reveal. We must continually interrogate and challenge our own assumptions as well as those of others which enjoy substantial standing. For instance, in an attempt to explain the underlying reasons for the major conflicts that we are witnessing in the post cold war era, Samuel Huntington, Professor of Political Science at Harvard University, has advanced the highly influential “clash of civilizations” thesis. He argues that the critical global divide is between major world cultural zones, particularly the democratic Christian West and the authoritarian Muslim East. His view of an inevitable ideological war presumes that the Muslim world is dominated by so-called radical Islamic fundamentalists bent on jihad against the West. It stereotypes, homogenizes, and demonizes the World of Islam. It fails to recognize that there are deep theological and ideological cleavages which historically have distinguished and divided various Muslim polities, communities and brotherhoods. “Muslim Fundamentalists” no more speak for all in the Islamic World than Christian or Jewish fundamentalists represent the views of all Christians and Jews. Moreover, to the extent that so-called radical fundamentalism enjoys increasing popularity it probably has less to do with any religious tenets and more to do with inequities of global political and economic power and the desire of people in the Middle East to avoid the brutal experiences of empire and loss of sovereignty which they have suffered over the past centuries.

Second we must promote interdisciplinary research and teaching. Universities have traditionally been organized in colleges and around disciplines. There are compelling reasons for this, but such structure has inherent limits for scholarship. The value of innovative cross-disciplinary analysis has become increasingly clear, particularly in the sciences, opening up new areas of scholarly inquiry. I contend that we need an approach that crosses multiple disciplinary boundaries and perspectives in order to deepen our knowledge of the complexities of change in global society. Social scientists and humanists studying such multi-dimensional issues as food security and how peasants understand and remember famines can no longer afford to treat the environment merely as backdrop. Similarly, natural scientists working on genetically modified organisms or the AIDS pandemic must understand that their research and its application are embedded in specific historical and social contexts and contemporary fields of power.

Consider the increasingly contentious issue of access to water, a resource which most of us presume to be free or, at least, plentiful. Because water is simultaneously a prerequisite for all life on earth and a crucial factor in critical economic and social transformation it has become a focal point of intense competition between different social actors at the state, regional, community and household levels -- whether in Southern Africa, the Mekong River Basin, the Amazon, the Middle East, India or the American West. This intense competition has led UN General Secretary Kofi Annan to warn that “If we are not careful, future wars are going to be about water and not about oil.” Despite its significance, the study of water has been badly fragmented along disciplinary lines. What we need is a new generation of scholars who are conversant with the physical side, from the hydrologic cycle to aquatic ecosystems, as well as with the complex and contested human dimensions of water management and usage. The University of Minnesota’s Programs in Conservation Biology and Water Resources Science are just such path-breaking initiatives. Cross-disciplinary and inter-collegiate initiatives must be supported regardless of financial constraints and the more narrow interests of some departments.

Third: We must take a long historical view. Far too often discussions of the contemporary world have a strong presentist bias. As a historian, I would contend that we need to take a long view and deepen our knowledge about the complexities of change. This is not to minimize the enduring character of some structures, forms of interaction and concentrations of power which have shaped global social change. To the contrary, it is to call attention to the complex and dynamic interplay between powerful legacies of the past and contemporary human agency. But we must not presume that today’s conflicts -- whether about ethnicity, race, religions or gender -- are simply the product of age-old hatreds. Such an analysis is not only unduly pessimistic but rarely stands up to historical inquiry.

The widely held view that ethnic conflicts in Rwanda, Bosnia or Biafra reflect long-standing rivalries is a case in point. In all three instances ethnic identities were mobilized for organized violence, but these identities were themselves a product of a unique set of historical processes and struggles over power and scarce resources whether material or cultural. None of these conflicts was prefigured. This point needs to be stressed in order to avoid misguided policies based on a sense of hopelessness and inevitability. Witness how wrong political pundits were who predicted that the demise of the apartheid regime and the liberation of South Africa would lead to a racial holocaust or that religious conflict in Northern Ireland or the Indian subcontinent is inevitable.

Fourth. We must recognize the value of economic, cultural and racial diversity at this university. Diversity and academic excellence are inextricably intertwined. You cannot have the one without the other. The programs with which I am associated at the University are far richer because we draw upon the lived experiences, epistemological insights and theoretical propositions from a broad array of student and faculty. Having more students and faculty of color and recognizing the creativity of women and men across the globe is essential. It is also good public policy. For example, it is certain that the debates on U.S. support for the apartheid regime in South Africa would have been very different if more African-Americans were at the decision-making tables. Fortunately we have in Minnesota an administration, led by President Bruininks, who understand that we can never be a world-class university unless we expand our horizons and include all our citizens.

Over the past decade the University has made some important strides but there is still much more that needs to be done in this arena. The spiralizing cost of higher education poses a new challenge which cuts across racial and cultural lines.

Finally, we need to challenge the false dichotomy between scholarship and practice or advocacy. These are not necessarily in contradiction; quite the contrary, especially in a Land Grant institution such as ours. Political and social engagement can, and often do, deepen scholarly inquiry and vice versa. The University of Minnesota has had a long and proud history of major scholars who were also public intellectuals and tackled some of the seemingly intractable problems of the world. Consider the important contributions of Nobel Peace Prize Winner Norman Borlaug and Regents Professors Walter Heller and Vernon Ruttan, all of whom made important contributions to the fight against poverty. On our faculty today geographer Abdi Samatar, political scientists Kathryn Sikkink and August Nimtz, sociologist Rose Brewer, historian Michelle Wagner and fisheries geneticist Anne Kapuscinski are, just to name a few of many, all playing critical roles at home and abroad in the fight for social and economic justice. Happily many in your class are carrying on this tradition.

The University of Minnesota Alumni Association proudly proclaims that we change the world one student at a time. I could not agree more. Speaking of the Association I want to urge you never to forget your alma mater which has given you so much and relies on your moral and material support to do so for future generations

On this occasion fifteen years ago Ronald Phillip, Regents Professor of Agronomy and plant Genetics offered some very smart advice on how to make a good speech. “Be sincere. Be Brief. And be seated.” My warm congratulations to all of you and your family and friends.