Why Liberal Arts.

Many people have been asking me what this whole liberal arts thing is about. I find it difficult to explain in less than a minute, which is the typical attention span of someone who is really asking just out of courtesy rather than burning curiosity, so my answer often gets watered down into something along the likes of "it just means that although I will major in Chemistry, I am required to take a host of courses in other subject areas like the Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts."

I've been meaning to transcribe this for awhile now—yes I know it's been a whole year—but Carleton keeps you busy, no? This was President Rob A. Oden Jr's informal address to the international students during International Student Orientation. My sincere thanks to Yansong for the video, and to President Oden for expressing so perfectly all that we stand for. If in some way this message reaches you, sir, even though we may not have met personally during your office, I am honored, humbled, and grateful.

Speech by Robert A. Oden Jr. Former President of Carleton College (July 1, 2002 — June 30, 2010). September 4, 2009. The Rookery, Gould Library.

Let me just start before I say something where that introduction concluded. Am I supportive, encoraging, keen on international students. When I came to Carleton, the class that had graduated had two international students. There are more than two today. So we started this massive expansion... My own field... I spent most of my life as a professor at Dartmouth College in New Hamshire. My own field is Near Eastern Languages. So I have spent an awful lot of my life, and I'm going to go back to that, in the international world. I don't need convincing how important it is that you're with us. So the massive unparalleled [?] and multiplied increase in international students over the last decade at Carleton is not an accident. It's very much something we have designed, and very much something that we planned, and we're very... It's working! And you are the ones who are making it work. And we're very grateful to you.

What you've joined, of course, in joining Carleton is a liberal Arts College. You know that, and I know you know that, but I want to make sure... Sometimes what's self evident needs to be stated or stated again so I want to make sure that I describe for you the kind of... what that means. And let me begin by saying what I know you all know and that's that even the name "liberal arts college" is odd for most of the world. In most of the world a college is a high school. Lots of you probably graduated from places called colleges. I've spent months of my life at CAC—Cairo American College in Maadi, in South Eastern Cairo, and it's a high school. And I've spent a lot of time at Robert College in Turkey and it's a high school. And Eton College, and Harrow, and most of the British public schools are called colleges... and that's true in Singapore, it's true in Hong Kong. So for most of the world, a college means a high school. You did not make a mistake, this is not a high school. So I want you to understand that we know that the name is unusual, that the liberal arts, the whole notion of a liberal arts college is an American invention—an intentional, thoughtful, deliberative American invention that begins with our name.

Secondly, and probably most obviously, but certainly most importantly, in most of the world, if a seventeen-year-old knows she wants to become a physician or a doctor, she heads right off to Med school. In most of the world, if a seventeen-year-old knows he wants to become an engineer, he heads right off to what we call graduate school in Engineering. So what's distinctive and different about this kind of education... it's not the only place that it exists... is that we think spending four years studying a variety of subjects, Biology and Chemistry and Math and Latin and History and English, is a far better preparation both for professional school and for the rest of your life, than not doing it that way. And you want to think about this because this is by design. Four years of studying a variety of topics before you head off for a career, or for medical school, or for engineering school, or for business school is a long time. And a whole lot of money. And it better be worth it. So that's what we keep asking ourselves: that's a long time and an awful lot of money... are we doing the best possible thing for preparing you for the rest of your lives? And we think we are. And there's all kinds of evidence to support that, to support what I and lots of my colleagues did: that by spending four years doing a variety of subjects you'll become a better writer, a better speaker, a better communicator, a better thinker, better able to negotiate your way through a complicated world. So if you lose patience with it, remember, in the end there is ample evidence that it has worked.

One final element of a liberal arts college I want to mention... or a liberal arts education I want to mention... and I want to mention it because it is supremely important and because I think it is often neglected and too seldom mentioned... and behind it there's a narrative. Two years ago, this past May, I spent several days in Beijing. Well I'm in Beijing most years, but I spent several days in Beijing, at something called the Chinese Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Chinese Academy of Arts and Sciences is a Chinese think-tank. So it's like All-Souls College, Oxford, or the Brookings Institution, or the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. There're no students there. It's just scholars working and studying together. And they had invited me to come and spend several days talking about Islam. They didn't know much about the religion of Islam. They knew that Indonesia is the biggest Islamic nation in the world and it wasn't very far away. And they wanted to learn more about Islam. And I tried to talk about Islam, that's what I did while I was teaching Near Eastern languages and religions for decades of my life, but they kept interrupting—I mean very politely interrupting, there was nothing unkind about this, about questions about the liberal arts. 'Cause they knew I'd come from Carleton. So finally I just stopped trying to talk about Islam and I said "well that's great but what's this all about? Why this rapt interest in the liberal arts?"

And basically, and this took awhile, and they said, "We think a lot of the world's education systems are pretty good at teaching people how to memorize things and manipulate standard data. But we have decided that what's going to be most important in decades ahead is innovation... (these are all their words)... innovation, creativity, and inventiveness, and we think maybe, we're on the verge of concluding, that the best education in innovation, creativity, and inventiveness is a liberal arts education."

And they're right. And they were ahead of me because I forgot to accent creativity the way I might have... A lot of the world's problems, dilemmas, challenges, things you guys are going to face in 20 or 30 years, are problems, dilemmas, challenges, for which we don't even have a descriptive vocabulary yet. We don't even know what we're going to call them. So you're going to have to be nimble. You're going to have to be adaptive. You're going to have to be quick. You're going to have to be inventive. And the rest of the world joins us in thinking that a best, or the best way to develop those skills is a liberal arts education. And you're going to get lots of practice in inventiveness and nimbleness during your time here at Carleton.

Second, I want to say something about shared experience, and basically it's: I've been where you are, so if things are going tough and you can't find anybody else to talk to come talk to me. And do. Every week you'll see... and sometimes more than that... there's a President's open hour. It means come in and talk. And sometimes, in fact fairly often somebody will come in and say, "President Oden, I'm sorry to take your time. I don't really have a problem I just wanted to come in."

To which I say, "Good for you! The last five people had a problem. I'm glad you don't."

So you don't have to have a problem, you don't have to have a crying absence or anything... just come in. The shared experience means I've been where you are. Before I was an undergraduate, and then when I was an undergraduate, I spent months studying and living in Europe. After I finished my first undergraduate degree here, having so loved undergraduate degrees, I went to Cambridge University in England and did a second undergraduate degree. In graduate school, and then throughout my career when I was doing Near Eastern languages, I have lived for months of my life, I mean, years overall, in Egypt, in Jordan, in Syria, in Turkey, and a lot of places. So the incredible joy and successes you're going to feel, I know. And I also know the difficulties and the challenges and the frustrations. You're committing(?) a great thing. It's also a courageous thing. Not everybody goes someplace else, to go to university or to go to college. And I don't know if this is going to be true for you but I have to tell you, what really was most frustrating to me, that I thought sometimes would drive me mad, wasn't big stuff. You know, wasn't "will I survive the week". It was little things. And here's an example. The first several weeks I lived in Cairo, I spent hours a day trying to figure out where in heaven's name do they do laundry in this place. I mean, I figured out some of the big stuff but they're not laundromats in Cairo! And there no washing machines in the basement of the student dorms. How do you do laundry in this place? You don't have that problem here. But there'll be issues like that. How do I do stuff that is utterly routine, that I know how to do where I grew up, and where I lived... And it won't be automatic. So ask somebody. And you'll get over these frustrations swiftly, 'cause you'll learn how to do your laundry. And you'll learn how to do these other things. But a part of the psychological cost, for awhile, when you study abroad, is the kinds of things that were automatic for you, won't be. And we know that. And we're here to try to help you try to figure that stuff out. So not to worry about it.

The final thing I want to say, and for this I have unfortunately to read a few things. I don't like to speak and read at the same time but I stumbled upon, very recently, an issue of the Harvard Business Review, H-B-R, a publication produced by the Harvard Business school, to which some of you will probably apply in three or four years. And it was an issue devoted to future global leadership. So I'm going to read you a few things. What happened was the editors of HBR, the editors that help them run the Harvard Business Review, interviewed several score... a whole bunch of political, artistic, business, academic, economic, engineering leaders. And what these folks said in common was stunning. You'd have thought they were reading from the same script. They weren't. They didn't consult each other. And I'll just give you some examples and I'll stop pretty soon because you'll see I don't have to go much farther. So here's somebody who happens to be the leader of one of the world's largest banks.

"When we're looking for people to hire, we don't look so much at where the people have studied, we look at their drive, their initiative, their cultural sensitivity, and the readiness to see the whole world as their home. We don't care whether they've studied Classics, Economics, History, or Languages. What matters are the qualities necessary to be well-rounded leaders in highly international settings."

Second example, from... this happens to be an academic leader.

"The key is having a global attitude. Putting people in foreign settings doesn't automatically imbue new attitudes. It's attitudes rather than experiences that make a culture global."

Third: "the most capable leaders I've known, and the leaders for the future, will be those who've travelled extensively, learned other languages, and often been educated abroad."

I guess I'll stop rather than... let me just read one more.

"You need to remember, that people are pretty much the same everywhere (I really like this person, good for her). You need to remember, that people are pretty much the same everywhere. The respect you've got to show for different cultures isn't all that different from the respect you must show the people in your own culture. Developing a global mindset and learning about other cultures are the keys. The world's future leaders will be the ones who've lived in several cultures, and have conversed in at least 2 languages."

So, how smart are you? You knew this before these folks said that. Being fluent in a couple of languages, learning how to be adaptive and live in different contexts, not fearing the frustrations that go with living elsewhere, being nimble and quick to understand others, and above all knowing that people are people—pretty much the same around the world... you've learnt all of those things and that's what brought you here. And we're powerfully pleased and glad that you've joined us. So thank you and come see me, please, and during my office. Thank you.