New Students' Convocation Keynote Address
Delivered by Dr. Sue E. Estroff, Chair of Faculty
Professor, Social Medicine and Anthropology
On behalf of the faculty, of those people who you hope desperately will continue to engage in grade inflation -- if only yours -- Hello class of 2005. It is an honor for me to have a few minutes of your time tonight to make some observations and pose some questions about your summer reading assignment -- which I'm quite sure you have all done -- to make some remarks about the issues in the book-and to welcome you to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
I was working very hard on this short talk until last Thursday when at the reception for new faculty members the chancellor said, A recent national poll of college students asked what they remembered about their convocation address. The overwhelming answer was -- nothing. So, that let's me off the hook. All I have to say is "Nothing", and you'll remember it. Nothing.
On a more serious note, I want to talk about just two of the many interesting points that are provoked by reading The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. This is a book about a tragic process and a tragic outcome. A tragic process: doctor's orders at their very worst, the arrogance of science and being too sure that science is truth, having the power to be right, and desperately needing to be right. A tragic outcome: a severely disabled child, a wounded, traumatized family, opportunities for compassion and understanding -- and perhaps healing -- squandered. The book demands a conversation about the nature and dynamics of disagreement and misunderstanding. And that's the first thing I want to talk about.
DISAGREEMENT
I said just a moment ago that I was honored to be asked to speak with you about your summer reading -- that was a half truth -- the part about the reading. Actually, I recommended strongly against the choice of this book, and disagreed with the decision to make it the focus of the summer reading program. But, here I am, more or less ready to discuss it with you. Indeed, I was asked to discuss it with you by the people with whom I disagreed. This is a perfect example of what makes this University, any university really, alive and intellectually nourishing. We disagree often with one another, but we do so as peers, with respect, with good intentions, and we do so by listening, by argument, and by fair play. You make your argument as best you can, and if you do not prevail, you can continue to argue (as I'm doing right now), but you don't break the bonds of community-of trust, of regard for difference.
It is part of the culture of the university that disagreement is not mistaken for misunderstanding. Disagreement should not be mistaken for misunderstanding. We don't misunderstand why people go to Duke -- we just disagree with them. You won't disagree with any of your professors, you'll just misunderstand them! To the extent that you learn the art and practice of disagreement, you will learn period. To the extent that you learn to first tolerate and then appreciate contradiction, ambiguity, paradox, and unfinished business your mind will be richer (and, by the way, your grades will be better). To the extent that you can make a persuasive argument, you will have understood your material and, more importantly, your audience. If you have to move from persuasion to coercion, as the doctor did in the book, you have moved from the realm of learning and teaching to the realm of power and dominance. So, learn how to disagree well -- with humor, empathy, and reason. It one of the most important skills you will acquire here. But disagreement and misunderstanding are not the same. Misunderstanding can be alleviated by more information, by learning, by time, and patience and entertaining newness. Disagreement may not be altered by more information, by knowing the other view -- you can still be unpersuaded by it. But here's the key, just because someone disagrees with you does not mean that they misunderstand.
DISAGREEMENT
In the book, disagreement and misunderstanding are a bit confused. The Lees largely disagreed with and somewhat misunderstood the doctor's orders and intentions, and they surely misunderstood his power. The doctor largely misunderstood the Lees, and somewhat disagreed with them. The difference between the Lees and the doctor revolves around a difference in power. In authority. Many of their disagreements were not based on misunderstandings. Someone can understand you quite clearly and still disagree. It is what you do after, and not before the disagreement, that concerns me here. Needing to be right is a bit of an addiction. Being too sure you are right is a signal to begin asking yourself some hard questions or to find others who can ask them of you. This is what seminars and classes are for. One of the unfortunate omissions made by the doctor in the book was his failure to question himself with any of his peers. He never subjected his judgment to the scrutiny of other physicians, much less an ethics panel. He ruminated privately with his wife. Take advantage of this precious resource of the University -- question yourself in the presence of others. But, and this is a big but, learn to question yourself and your beliefs without being unsure of or losing confidence in yourself.
In the book, we see the arrogance of science, science as truth, dissing culture as belief. Each age and era develops a sense of inevitability about itself, about its ways and ideas. And so we have about ours, particularly in the realms of science and medicine. By what warrant, what right, did the doctor's orders over-ride parental love, belief, and responsibility? Who was there to disagree with him? To ask him the hard questions? Find people to help you ask the hard questions. Don't mistake power for knowledge.
BEING OTHER
The second theme I want to touch on briefly is about difference, about being other. The trick is to recognize cultural difference without stereotyping or exoticizing, to see and know difference without making it into a cartoon or a sound bite. Culture is not a set of rigid rules or practices that everyone in a particular group follows. Taking such a view can lead to stereotyping, or a cookie-cutter view of culture -- that it stamps out identical people with identical beliefs.
Culture is an evolving collective product, a negotiable and negotiated template for leading and making sense of daily life. Cultural practices guide how everyday life is lived and how extraordinary events are understood -- including disease, disability, and death.
The Lees were immigrants who brought with them a complex, enduring set of cultural practices and beliefs. They were unprepared for the force of the culture of Western biomedicine, the science that has to be and is right, they encountered. They were in the minority; they were different. The doctors had science; they had quaint beliefs. I do not want to trivialize in any way the experience of immigration, but I want to make some analogies to you. You've come to this place with practices, beliefs, and experiences from elsewhere. You don't know the culture of this place yet. You will change this place over time, but it will also try, and hopefully succeed, in changing you. Remember your unease of the moment. Remember your homesickness, your wariness, the extra energy you are expending not to seem like a complete dork. Remember what seems odd or strange to you about life here. Magnify and deepen this a thousandfold, and you may have a glimpse of what it is like to be an immigrant to this country. I hope, actually, that some of you are -- new to us but still part of us.
The challenge is to figure out what to hold on to of what you brought, and what to embrace of the new. The challenge is to make your own way, not the way someone else prescribes. Each of us feels like and is other at some point. These are disquieting but also hugely valuable times. She who remembers being an other will understand and lessen the unease of others. Remember your otherness.
IN CONCLUSION
If you are lucky, while you are here, you will fall in love. I hope you fall in love with something and someone. I hope you fall in love at least twice: once with an idea, issue, or cause -- an injustice, a project, a new view of the world -- and once with a person -- perhaps unlike anyone you've ever known or perhaps someone familiar from your dreams. This is a time and a place for passion . . . passionate ideas, emotions, and acts. You've no doubt heard a lot during orientation about moderation in this or that, about avoiding risks, about balance and keeping your head clear. All of these are good things, but they too must be kept in check. The moments of passion are what will stay with you. Being over the top about something or someone . . . that's what you'll recall -- and that's what will shape you, shake you up, change you. The moments of passion are worth it.
And so I leave you with two proposals for your coming four years at Carolina. One from local author Annie Dillard, and one from me. First Dillard:
"Push it. Examine all things intensely and relentlessly. . . . Do not leave it, do not course over it, as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see in it the mystery of its own specificity and strength. . . . Admire the world for never ending on you -- as you would admire an opponent, without taking your eyes from him, or walking away . . . spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place. . . . The impulse to save something good for a better place is the signal to spend it now. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely, and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes."
Leave us no ashes. Be kind to Carolina, and she will be kind to you. Be generous with Carolina, and she will be generous with you. Give your best to Carolina, and she will offer you her best. And most of all, leave Carolina better than you found her, and leave Carolina better than when she found you. Welcome home, class of 2005.
For more information about the Carolina Summer Reading Program, send email to read@unc.edu.
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