Welcome and Remarks
Commencement-St. Lawrence University
Daniel F. Sullivan - May 18, 2003
Colleagues and distinguished guests, faculty, trustees, parents,
friends and family of graduating seniors and masters candidates,
members of the wider St. Lawrence family, and—most of all—graduating
seniors and masters candidates, whether you are summa cum laude,
magna cum laude, cum laude, or “thank you Lordy,” a very
warm welcome to this, the commencement ceremony of the Class of 2003.
It’s been an interesting year. Thinking back on the ups and
downs of it, I am reminded of a story by Marshall Dodge and Robert
Bryan, known all over the Northeast (at least in my generation) for
their “Bert and I” Down East humor. This story is called “Kenneth
Fowler Goes Hunting:”
Kenneth Fowler had had an awful season. Everything he planted had
been eaten by blackbirds just as soon as he scattered the seed. Fire
had destroyed his blueberry ground at rakin’ time, and termites
had ate up his icehouse. On top of that, a stray cat had drowned
in his well.
By October he decided he’d better stock up on food for the
winter. After loadin’ his gun, the one with the side-by-side
barrels, he headed into the woods to find some game.
All day long he walked without firin’ a shot. He was all set to quit
about sundown when he spied a fox about twenty yards distance. Takin’ careful
aim, he almost squeezed the trigger when he saw another fox about five feet
from the first.
He aimed somewhere in between and pulled the trigger.
The shot hit a rock, split in two, and killed both foxes. The kick
from the gun knocked Kenneth into the stream behind, and when he
come to, his right hand was on a beaver’s tail, his left hand
was on an otter’s head, and his trouser pockets were so full
of trout that a button popped off his fly and killed a partridge.
Does that sound like our year? Ongoing, of course, has been the
Green Wall around our student center construction site, which for
a while prompted almost daily accusations by one group or another
that their freedom to speak by writing on the wall was being suppressed
by another group that had overwritten them. These accusations frequently
included the demand that the administration “do something” about
the transgressions of the “other group.” These demands
are what prompt my remarks today.
Freedom of Speech
A few years ago I read for the first time John Milton’s Areopagitica.
It was, Milton said: “a speech for the liberty of unlicensed
printing, to the Parliament of England”, published in 1644
in response “to Parliament’s ordinance for licensing
the press of June 14, 1643.”
“ The effect [of the ordinance against which Milton wrote]
was to give Archbishop Laud, who was also Chancellor of the University
of Oxford, actual control over every press in England, with power
to stop publication of any book ‘contrary to . . . . the Doctrine
and Discipline of the Church of England.” This was deeply disturbing
to Milton, who wrote:
as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: [he] who kills a man kills a
reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills
reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.
Milton’s essay is powerful, political, persuasive—a
precocious argument that becomes more libertarian as it progresses.
In the early pages, Milton distinguishes scandalous, seditious, libelous,
blasphemous and atheistical writing—which he says everyone
would, of course be willing to suppress, even in advance of publication—from
everything else, which should be completely free from constraint.
By the end, Milton has thrown caution to the winds. There he says: “Give
me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to
conscience, above all liberties.”
Milton explains why censorship is so antithetical to a free and
democratic society in a basically four-fold argument, embellished
with all sorts of bells and whistles. Where there has been censorship,
he says, there has also been extreme political repression. Censorship
is associated with the most despicable of societies. Surely Parliament
would not want people elsewhere in the world to see England in that
light. If a book proves to be bad, in the opinion of educated critics,
it can be ignored. Or, in a society with freedom to publish like
the one he hoped England would be, it can be attacked. Many responses
other than censorship are available.
Second, according to Milton, the reading of literally anything has
some basic, beneficial effects, even the reading of error and untruth.
Exposure to error leads to greater understanding of how to locate
the truth. [Milton didn’t say, of course, how much error and
untruth you have to read to gain the beneficial effects he described.]
Third, Milton argued that prior restraint is not a practical method
for achieving the goals of the censors. Banning a book is counterproductive
because it will ensure that it be read. Further, how will one find
good censors in a society that has censored its literature if knowing
how to distinguish truth from falsity is learned only from having
read both? How will potential censors get any practice? In addition,
what about all the books that have already been published? And why
just books? What about theater, dance, and normal conversation? To
censor all of these modes of expression would require a massive governmental
or church apparatus that would tie up huge resources that could be
put to better uses. Here Milton has a scary vision of one of the
most important features of the modern totalitarian state; it is one
of the best examples of the precocity of the Areopagitica.
Finally, Milton argues that licensing the publishers will have a
chilling effect on truth-seeking and knowledge-creation, much to
the detriment of England, particularly in its attempt to remain economically
competitive with the rest of Europe. For knowledge leads to the development
of technology, and technology leads to the creation of new products
and more efficient means of producing old products. I was stunned
to read Milton on this point; he might just as well have been writing
in a modern business magazine or The Wall Street Journal.
Because he believed England to be innately superior to other countries
in these matters, Milton thought censorship would hurt England above
all other countries:
Lords and Commons of England, consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and
whereof ye are the governors; a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious
and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath
the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.
[I seem to recall that the American colonists noticed in England
something of the kind of arrogance Milton is expressing here.]
For Milton, the pursuit of knowledge is inherently messy; there
will of necessity be much conflict of opinion; therefore tolerance
of the views of others is critical. Intellectual conflict within
a society is a sign of health. Out of difference comes a larger coherence,
a better whole. He says it beautifully, I think:
"Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will
be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good
men is but knowledge in the making."
Our pursuit of knowledge here at St. Lawrence this year has frequently
been messy, but the best universities have about them a kind of intellectual
scratchiness. I’m not sure exactly just what the right scratchiness
coefficient is for a university, but I do know that it’s greater
than zero and that great universities, especially, must bend over
backwards to allow very wide latitude to their students, faculty,
and staff to express themselves freely.
I hope you have learned here at St. Lawrence that the freedom to
speak, and the freedom to publish, carry with them great responsibilities.
Sometimes people misuse these freedoms and offend deeply the spirit
of a learning community, or its members individually. But Milton
convinces us, I believe, that in a free society, absent a clear and
present danger, the response to such offense by Church, State, college,
or individual should not—indeed, cannot—be prior restraint
or the imposition of a general program of censorship. The corrosive
effects of censorship, Milton argued effectively, in my view, outweigh
any conceivable positive benefits.
On the other hand, out of fear of being accused of intolerance,
we must not let our special sensitivity to the issue of free speech
keep us from challenging truly offensive speech. Individuals must
use their freedom to speak and publish to confront those who misuse
it. Our freedoms to speak and publish are protected, but we are not
insulated from the consequences of what we say. Only by having the
courage to speak out can we ensure that those who speak and write
offensively—as each of us define that—are not insulated
from the consequences of what they say. This is not always easy to
do, but we must have the courage to do it.
I also believe that in a university we must find ways to say what
we need to say with civility. In response to such an urging by a
colleague, a faculty member asked how we should define civility.
Professor Rediehs of our philosophy department proposed this simple
rule: “Civility is challenging ideas as strenuously as you
wish, while refraining from attacking people (as individuals or groups).” I
hope you leave St. Lawrence today more skilled at civility than you
were when you came.
Some people do not believe that college students live in the real
world. I have always found that a spurious claim. No member of the
St. Lawrence community, where the issues about which Milton wrote
have this year been the subject of intense debate and deep feeling,
could find support for such a notion. As we look around the world
we continue to witness attempts to open up societies where free speech
has long been suppressed. The contrast between those struggles, and
our freedom—born of similar struggles throughout our history—could
not be more clear, but those worlds, and our world here at St. Lawrence,
are all the “real world.”
And as we occupy this real world together here today, I want to
say in closing how very proud we are of you. You have worked hard,
and learned much. I know you understand that you are still at the
relative beginning of a life of learning. As an old friend of mine
once said: “Remember, you’re never educated until you’re
dead!”
Conclusion
You arrived on campus in August of 1999—eyes filled with enthusiasm
and promise, anxious to make your way and find your place. I hope
indeed that you have found your place, that you will think of St.
Lawrence as home throughout your life no matter where you are and
what you are doing, and that you will come back home here many, many
times in the years to come.
You are a class whose friendships are broad and deep. Your commitments
to each other, your commitments to St. Lawrence, the way you have
helped us get better with your “loving criticism”—all
of these make you distinctive and very, very special. I’m going
to miss you all a very great deal. Thank you!
