I first want to thank Professor Margot McLeod for her generous introduction. She made my return to Goddard a sweet and memorable joy in a time of trial and tribulation. I want to thank the 2008 graduating class of Goddard College for your kind invitation for me to speak, even as I congratulate you all on your accomplishments at one of the finest and most unique colleges in the country.
Those of us who have had the pleasure of attending Goddard are no doubt familiar with the name, ideas, and influence of American philosopher and educator John Dewey, a central figure in the progressive education movement that transformed American education in the early 20th century. As ever, Goddard was ahead of the curve, transforming individuals and their respective communities by expanding the realm of knowledge, based on the fundamental principles of democracy. Goddard opened its doors to men and women from quite literally all walks of life, from virtually every nation on earth, at a time when it wasn’t done. I met people there from apartheid South Africa to East Africa, Kenya, from Nigeria to the West Indies. I shall always be grateful to Goddard for allowing me to enter when I was a young man back in the 70s, and also a middle-aged man in the 90s.
A few weeks ago, while speaking with another Goddard alum who attended school with me years ago, she said something that echoed in my consciousness. She said, “There’s no place I could have gone to school other than Goddard.” Now, this was a very intelligent woman, a teacher who’s multilingual. Surely, she didn’t mean that this was the only school that would accept her. She meant, and didn’t need to say out loud, that Goddard was right for her. It fit her sense of self. It fit her view of the world. It meshed with her need to freely explore her field, education, in a way that had meaning and relevance. As your graduations have demonstrated, it has fit each and every one of you as well.
You leave Goddard at a time when the nation and the world faces serious challenges, as do indeed you all. This is a time of economic and indeed growing ecological crisis. As you no doubt know, these two phenomena are irrevocably linked. How could it be otherwise when the nation was literally rebuilt in the 50s based on the internal combustion engine? It is also a time of social, national, and international conflict. Politics is ever the manipulation of conflict, often to the detriment of the combatants and the enrichment of the few.
What the nation needs, and indeed what the world needs as well, is new, clear thinking about the challenges facing us. The old verities have failed us. The status quo is crumbling. One need look no further than the foreclosure crisis which has, according to some reports, drained Black American wealth to the tune of at least $164 billion, and when we add in Latinos, some 213 billion. This is unconscionable. Yet, wasn’t it also business as usual?
There’s a war raging in Iraq, which has cost the life of almost a million men, women, and children through various and related effects, such as the destruction of infrastructure and the like. And what can be said about the realm of American popular culture? It would be difficult to envision media projections that would be more misogynist than what we see on TV screens daily. Women, especially young women, are seemingly given the unenviable choices of starring in a vapid so-called reality show or becoming hookers. What is amazing is that this kind of media garbage is being fed to us precisely at a time when women are becoming the majority graduating classes of law schools and rising in med schools as well. It’s almost as if the men who own and manage the media seek to erase these social truths in a sea of frivolities.
What does this mean for Goddard graduates? I believe it means that people schooled in Goddard’s way will emerge with more than a degree that enables one to get a job. You will emerge with a hunger for social justice, a wish to engage and serve the community, and with the need to try to make the world better through social change. Gifted with an alternative education, you should be better equipped to examine the world with more flexibility than your elders and more insight.This is no doubt helped by the diversity among the student body for which Goddard is justly famous. I’ve expressed my gratitude for Goddard’s formal educational structure, but there’s more.
In meeting and talking with fellow students from around the world, I learned a great deal, much of which couldn’t be transmitted in a textbook. Those discussions and personal insights will reward Goddard’s graduates for generations by providing you with real life experiences to counter the projections of the corporate media and equally corporate politicians. By this I mean: when you read in the paper—assuming many of you still do that—hear on the radio or see on TV the demonization of some foreign country in the future, you’ll be able to critically question and examine those projections based on real human beings who you have met at Goddard, and remember with delight, and perhaps affection.
The great John Dewey once said, “We only think when we are confronted with a problem.” Well, Goddard graduates of 2008, as you leave these sweet green grounds, you will have no shortage of problems facing you. As I congratulate you all, I must add, welcome to real life, but as Goddard grads, you are all fully equipped with the ability to think, a faculty I might add, not much in evidence in our national political life, I’m afraid. But this ability, when used critically and flexibly, may yet result in finding sane, humane solutions to our problems. I thank you all, and to all the Goddard community, On the Move . Thank you with all my best wishes. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
