{"id":34,"date":"2009-10-26T20:44:24","date_gmt":"2009-10-26T20:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/speeches\/david_wee\/"},"modified":"2013-06-25T14:59:17","modified_gmt":"2013-06-25T19:59:17","slug":"david_wee","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/speeches\/david_wee\/","title":{"rendered":"David Wee"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n
\n <\/p>\n
Phi Beta Kappa Initiation Banquet Address

\nSt.Olaf College, 19 April 2005

\nDavid Wee ’60, Professor of English <\/p>\n


\nCONGRATULATIONS to all of you on this distinctive achievement\u2014it will be with you forever, and the letters Phi Beta Kappa after your name and on your resume will serve you well. All of us here are immensely proud of you. Membership signals to all that you are smart, industrious, scholarly, liberally learned. Especially smart. <\/p>\n


\nBut to be an exemplary citizen of the world, smart isn\u2019t enough. Not nearly enough. Tonight I challenge all members of the Society, but especially you initiates, to be not only smart, but to be wise, to be kind, to be good. We know that you can use your intellect; I hope that you will be as skillful with your heart. <\/p>\n


\nI have three children, all born in the 1960s. Two are graduates of St. Olaf, the other of Luther College. They are all pretty smart, but none of them smart enough to earn Phi Beta Kappa. But I am as proud of them as a father can be, for they are kind young people; they are good people, especially about things that matter deeply; and in many ways they are wiser than I am. <\/p>\n


\nI think that many of you in this room might consider what I say next to be hereti cal for this event, but here it is: I have spent my professional career wanting my students and my children to be wise, to be kind, to be good\u2013 and if possible, but also less important, that they also be smart. <\/p>\n


\nSome day many of you will be parents. As you nurture those little miracles of life toward adulthood, you will be constantly hoping that they will embody certain admirable characteristics. What will you hope for? That they be generous toward the disadvantaged, or canny about what the advertisers call wealth enhancement? That they work for economic and political justice, or to hold on doggedly to privilege and power? That they be wise enough to recognize a scoundrel in power, or only smart enough to achieve power without looking deep inside to ask the right questions? <\/p>\n


\nLook around this room at each other. Go ahead\u2014 look into each other\u2019s faces. Some of the people in this room will teach your children. Others will provide medical aid to your dying parents or your partner or your child. Others will hold political office, and will make the decisions that will determine whether your dear Aunt Maud gets the social services she needs, whether your parents can afford life-sustaining medications, whether your lesbian daughter can live fully and freely with the woman who is the love of her life, whether your son will have to go off to war and shoot other human beings. <\/p>\n


\nAll over our society smart people are already doing these things. No matter on which side of the political spectrum you live, smart people on the other side are making decisions that you abhor. Is smartness enough for us? Is intelligence enough? Of course not. You bear the heavy responsibility of putting your considerable intelligence to work for life, for generosity, for justice, for grace, for love\u2014 these are the things that matter. <\/p>\n


\nDon\u2019t get me wrong; by saying these things I do not imply or believe that you smart people are not already kind, and good, and even wise. Many of you are my students and my friends, and I know that you are kind and good and sometimes wise. So also are many of your classmates who are not in this room tonight. I never expected to teach here for 40 years, but good people like you keep coming and coming, and you have made teaching here a privilege and a pleasure. But life after Olaf will throw at you countless temptations, opportunities, and surprises, and you will face difficult decisions. As you do, be sure to decide for justice, for fairness, for equity, for kindness, for generosity, for love, for life. You have strengthened your mind. Now be sure that you listen to your heart, wherein lies much wisdom yet to be learned. <\/p>\n


\nAs a St. Olaf undergraduate I fell in love with British Victorian literature, which I\u2019ve taught for 40 years, expecting early on that I might someday tire of those texts, but I never have. These writers were the great intellectuals of their day\u2014had they attended certain colleges in this country, they too would be members of Phi Beta Kappa. I cannot ignore their wisdom, which almost unfailingly acknowledged that real wisdom, about the things that matter, resides not in the head, but in the heart. Listen to three of their voices, all from the 1850s, and hear the ways in which they characterize reason, goodness, emotion, wisdom. <\/p>\n


\nAlfred Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate

\nFrom In Memoriam (1850), in a section on the difficulty of finding religious certainty through study and reason: Whenever doubt and disbelief began to crush his faith, he wrote,

\nA warmth within the breast would melt

\nThe freezing reason\u2019s colder part,

\nAnd like a man in wrath the heart

\nStood up and answered \u201cI have felt.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nAnd in another section of that poem, he advises us all to <\/p>\n


\nRing out false pride in place and blood,

\nThe civic slander and the spite;

\nRing in the love of truth and right,

\nRing in the common love of good. <\/p>\n


\nAnd a few lines later:

\nRing in. . . the larger heart, the kindlier hand. <\/p>\n


\nMatthew Arnold, a professional Inspector of Schools and Professor of Poetry at Oxford <\/p>\n


\nIn \u201cMemorial Verses\u201d on the death of Wordsworth in 1850, Arnold writes that Wordsworth had encountered the nineteenth century, <\/p>\n


\nthis iron time

\nOf doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.

\nHe found us when the age had bound

\nOur souls in its benumbing round;

\nHe spoke, and loosed our heart in tears. <\/p>\n


\nCharles Dickens

\nIn Hard Times (1854), a novel exposing the dangers of certain educational philosophies, Mr. Gradgrind, who put his children through an education based on facts and reason, finally sees how his teaching has crushed his daughter, and responds: <\/p>\n


\n\u201cSome persons hold . . . that there is a wisdom of the Head, and

\nthat there is a wisdom of the Heart. I have not supposed so;

\nbut . . . I mistrust myself now. I have supposed the Head to be

\nall-sufficient. It may not be all-sufficient . . .\u201d <\/p>\n


\nAnd later in this novel, in a delightful irony, Dickens puts wisdom into the words of the one character with a speech impediment\u2014Mr. Sleary, who runs a circus that Mr. Gradgrind has despised because it is impractical. Mr. Sleary tells the eminently rational Mr. Gradgrind: <\/p>\n


\n\u201c\u2019It theemth to prethent two thingth to a perthon, don\u2019t it, Thquire?\u2019 . . .

\n\u2018one, that there ith a love in the world, not all thelf-interetht after all, but

\nthomething very different; t\u2019other, that it hath a way of ith own of calcu-

\nlating or not calculating. . . Thquire, thake handth, firtht and latht! <\/p>\n


\nDon\u2019t be croth with uth poor vagabondth. People mutht be amuthed.

\nThey can\u2019t be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can\u2019t be alwayth a

\nworking, they an\u2019t made for it. You mutht have uth, Thquire. Do

\nthe withe thing and the kind thing too, and make the betht of uth;

\nnot the wortht!\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n


\nI\u2019ll end with two modern poems (1986), both by Wislawa Szymborska, winner of the l996 Nobel Prize for Literature. The poems are translated from her native Polish. <\/p>\n


\nThe first is about something that has occupied all of you this year; it\u2019s entitled \u201cWriting a Resume.\u201d As you revise your resumes to include membership in Phi Beta Kappa, think of her irony as she explains how to do it: <\/p>\n


\nWhat needs to be done?

\nFill out the application

\nand enclose the resume. <\/p>\n


\nRegardless of the length of life,

\na resume is best kept short. <\/p>\n


\nConcise, well-chosen facts are de rigueur.

\nLandscapes are replaced by addresses,

\nshaky memories give way to unshakable dates. <\/p>\n


\nOf all your loves, mention only the marriage;

\nof all your children, only those who were born. <\/p>\n


\nWho knows you matters more than whom you know.

\nTrips only if taken abroad.

\nMemberships in what but without why.

\nHonors, but not how they were earned. <\/p>\n


\nWrite as if you\u2019d never talked to yourself

\nand always kept yourself at arm\u2019s length. <\/p>\n


\nPass over in silence your dogs, cats, birds,

\ndusty keepsakes, friends, and dreams. <\/p>\n


\nPrice, not worth,

\nand title, not what\u2019s inside.

\nHis shoe size, not where he\u2019s off to,

\nthat one you pass off as yourself.

\nIn addition, a photograph with one ear showing.

\nWhat matters is its shape, not what it hears.

\nWhat is there to hear, anyway?

\nThe clatter of paper shredders. <\/p>\n


\nThe other, \u201cThe Century\u2019s Decline,\u201d ends with the question that I hope this talk has urged you to keep before you for the rest of your lives. The century of which Szymborska writes is the one that most of the older people in this room have been responsible for; you initiates must take major responsibility for this new young century in which you live. <\/p>\n


\nOur twentieth century was going to improve on the others.

\nIt will never prove it now,

\nnow that its years are numbered,

\nits gait is shaky,

\nits breath is short. <\/p>\n


\nToo many things have happened

\nthat weren\u2019t supposed to happen,

\nand what was supposed to come about

\nhas not. <\/p>\n


\nHappiness and spring, among other things,

\nwere supposed to be getting closer. <\/p>\n


\nFear was expected to leave the mountains and the valleys.

\nTruth was supposed to hit home

\nbefore a lie. <\/p>\n


\nA couple of problems weren\u2019t going

\nto come up anymore:

\nhunger, for example,

\nand war, and so forth. <\/p>\n


\nThere was going to be respect

\nfor helpless people\u2019s helplessness,

\ntrust, that kind of stuff. <\/p>\n


\nAnyone who planned to enjoy the world

\nis now faced

\nwith a hopeless task. <\/p>\n


\nStupidity isn\u2019t funny.

\nWisdom isn\u2019t gay.

\nHope <\/p>\n


\nisn\u2019t that young girl anymore,

\net cetera, alas. <\/p>\n


\nGod was finally going to believe

\nin a man both good and strong,

\nbut good and strong

\nare still two different men. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cHow should we live?\u201d someone asked me in a letter.

\nI had meant to ask him

\nthe same question. <\/p>\n


\nAgain, and as ever,

\nas may be seen above,

\nthe most pressing questions

\nare na\u00efve ones. <\/p>\n


\nMay you go through life always asking, \u201cHow shall we live?\u201d <\/div>\n

\n <\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phi Beta Kappa Initiation Banquet Address St.Olaf College, 19 April 2005 David Wee ’60, Professor of English CONGRATULATIONS to all of you on this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"featured_media":0,"parent":32,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-34","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/32"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/pbk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}