Speeches
Faculty Address
David Feldshuh
September 7, 2006
Quadrangle of the Arts and Sciences
Thank you, Biddy. I'm honored to be able to join you and Tony Gotto, and Pete Meinig, and the thousands of members of the Cornell and Ithaca communities, and our distinguished guests from around the country and around the world, and four former Cornell presidents—Dale Corson, Frank Rhodes, Hunter Rawlings and Jeff Lehman, and my own family—to welcome you David and Robin and to help celebrate your inauguration, David, as the twelfth president of Cornell.
When David first called me, I wasn't home so he left a message asking me to please return his call. I didn't know what to think. At first, I became concerned because as a physician people new to the community often call me with questions about medical problems. But then I remembered that Dr. Skorton was a distinguished cardiologist, and that it was unlikely that he was calling for advice about nasal congestion.
The next obvious thought, this being Ithaca, was that David wanted me to recommend a good real estate agent. But then I remembered that a house comes with the job.
Well, we did connect and I thank you, David, for the invitation to participate here today.
I'm grateful because your call gave me the opportunity to think hard about why I have chosen to spend more than two decades of my life at Cornell, and what I have come to admire, value, and even love about this place.
Now just to set the record straight: I'm not in the employ of the development office and I do agree with Shakespeare:
"The course of true love never did run smooth."
There have been bumps and bruises but working through those has only increased my respect for this place. And I'd like to tell you why.
One of the first things I discovered shortly after my arrival was that I began speaking about "Cornell" as if it had nothing to do with me.
But just as chaos theory suggests that a butterfly flapping its wings will have an affect across the world—that the the smallest input can change a whole system—I have come to believe that:
Every student, faculty, staff, alumni, friend, community member, supporter, protester…
Every person, who cares about Cornell; who makes it beautiful and alive intellectually, artistically, physically, emotionally, athletically…
Each person is recreating Cornell, little by little, moment by moment, in his or her own image.
So when I speak of "Cornell," in my own mind, I am thinking of each of us.
Now by way of introduction and balance, Cornell certainly is a place of many opinions. I've come to value that. It feels similar to play writing. As soon as you write a play, you discover that there are three basic human instincts: the instinct for food, the instinct for shelter and the instinct to rewrite somebody else's play.
Also at Cornell I admit that over the years I've noticed behavior in myself if not in others that confirms the important physiologic observation by the late comedian, Georgie Jessel, who noted that: "the human brain begins working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public."
Nonetheless, I've found Cornell to be a brain continuously at work. And at high voltage. And that work uses energy. And that energy makes heat. And that heat is a kind of passion. And that's one of the things I love about Cornell. It is a passionate place.
Now there are many kinds of passion and for those of us who are-I won't say "older"- I prefer the term, "chronologically gifted". We might respond to the words of novelist, Virginia Woolf who said:
"My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring, roaring, diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?"
It's a passion for learning. For creating. For discovering. A brain on fire.
"I went out to the hazelwood," the Yeats' poem begins, "because a fire was in my head."
If Cornell were a character in a play, it would suffer from insomnia. With a vast never sleeping brain with synapses sparking every moment day and night in every direction. Thinking up a new poem, a new formula, a new perspective on our world and each other. Alive and energized with curiosity. I admire Cornell's passion for learning.
And I value the legendary scope of its interests.
I can recall, 21 years ago, jogging across the campus, past Olin and Uris libraries, past buildings dedicated to the widest spectrum of human curiosity: government, history, music, chemistry, physics, plant science, agronomy, genetics and with each turn a new and vital area of human exploration. Until finally, I jogged down a path, took a turn and stopped in my tracks. For there in front of me residing in what can only be described as their own, exquisite, petite hotel, were 6 of the cleanest pigs I had ever seen. "My goodness," I thought. "This place does have everything."
And that indelible first impression has been reinforced again and again. Just hold up a course catalogue and the different options seem endless.
But that when you step back to wider perspective, it becomes clear that what we share is more fundamental than the diverse subjects that seem to separate us. And it is what we share across disciplines and as a community, that will maintain the strength of Cornell in a world increasingly hostile to free and rational thought.
And this is one of the reasons I'm particularly glad to welcome you, David. Your range of interests and experience, and your belief in the unity of learning reinforce the understanding that the world today does not ultimately divide into the arts, the sciences, the humanities, the social sciences and so on, but into the aspiration for knowledge and self-expression on the one hand, and fear and ideology on the other.
So what do we share? A passion for learning. What else? Many things. Here are a few.
As a research university, Cornell is a citadel for the imagination. Every new idea, insight, formula, stratagem, creation is a reaffirmation of the freedom of the human imagination. Shakespeare like Yeats, used the word "fire" to characterize the heat needed to imagine. "Oh, for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention." Cornell is a place of invention and adventure and these are not values confined to one discipline.
To "invent" is to discover. To "adventure" suggests exploring into areas linked to hazard and even danger. Pushing to see the world beyond what we now know. Moving into undiscovered country.
Cornell is the ultimate creative community because, to paraphrase the artist Paul Klee, it "does not reproduce what we see, it makes us see".
We at Cornell are also connected by the belief that there are many paths to learning and so we teach in many ways, in many places. Our students learn from the earth, and the oceans and the heavens; from emotion as well as the intellect; through the body as well as the mind. And through questions as well as answers. I'm reminded of the young child who comes to the parent and asks:
Why is the earth round. And the parent replies, "I don't know."
How does electricity work?/I don't know.
Why is the sky blue?/I'm sorry, I don't know.The child, feeling somewhat taken aback asks, apologetically: I hope you don't mind me asking all these questions? And the parent replies with a smile: "Of course not, how else are you going to learn?"
"Never stop questioning" Einstein said.
This penchant for questioning makes Cornell a scrappy place, in seeming endless debate. And that's an achievement. Good for us! F. Scott Fitzgerald recognized it as an achievement. "The test of a first rate intelligence," he said, "is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." Well, we're still functioning. Cornell is a brain at work.
I also admire that Cornell is determined to be in the world. To be useful. But equally that we share the understanding that the future benefit of what we learn now may not be immediately obvious.
Not infrequently students have said the following to me: "I'd like to do more theatre at the Schwartz Center but my parents sent me to Cornell to study something useful." And that's when I tell them my story.
I was in professional theatre for 10 years before I decided to go to medical school. And the reason I made that decision was because I wanted to do something more grounded in society, something more "useful". During my emergency medicine residency, I began to write a play about the Tuskegee Study, an unethical, government medical experiment. That play became a movie and much to my surprise helped catalyze a presidential apology. So now it seems that by the time my life is done, the most "useful" thing I will have accomplished may be the act of writing a play that told a story.
Stories are useful. Stories have the power to push past incomprehension and chaos and promote understanding. Useful in all kinds of ways. In medicine, for example.
Often you might hear in the ER something like this: "The belly pain's in cubicle 1, the headache's in 2, and the foot‘s in 3." I'll go in and say: "Tell me about yourself," and I can assure you that it is the rare patient who will describe himself or herself as a "foot". Learning the patient's story makes that patient a whole person again and that's the first step in caring.
I value that Cornell understands that what's useful may not be immediately obvious. And that you can never be certain what course, what moment of learning, what phrase, what wisp of information or poetry or music or image-will stay with you through the years and be your salvation, or the salvation of others or of institutions or of values, when the time comes.
In addition to these shared values, I have chosen to stay at Cornell for 21 years because being here has taught me something unexpected about immortality.
When I began medical school, the dean of admissions stood up the first day and to tell us about ourselves. We had all been required to take the MMPI, a psychological profile test. "75% of you," he said, "want to fight death." And I thought, "Yes, that's right. That's why I'm here."
In the years since then, I've experienced the obvious: You can win that fight, but only for a while. But I have also discovered as a teacher here, at Cornell, other less obvious ways of "fighting death".
A number of years ago, a student advisee came in to speak with me distressed because the courses she thought she ought to take didn't include the course she wanted to take.
"What course do you want to take?" I asked.
"Biology," she answered.
At which point I applied all the wisdom of my years and said, "Why don't you take that?"
And she did.
Much to my surprise eight years later, I'm thumbing through a publication from our own Cayuga Medical Center and there's an interview with this former student. She recalled that long ago, little conversation that we had and described as a turning point in her life, the first step in her journey into medicine. She had now returned to Ithaca to become a physician here.
As former students progress in their own lives, to give back to the world, it's a great sense of privilege and satisfaction, as many here will attest, to learn that something you have said or taught or done has remained meaningful to these students and has helped make their lives more fulfilling. Deeper. Richer. That you have in some modest way, given them, more life and that they, perhaps without even knowing it, have returned that gift to you with interest.
Working in the area of creativity has also taught me about immortality.
For many years I've been fascinated by a simple question: can you teach someone to be more creative? I believe you can. It's a different kind of learning because the subject is you, yourself. But, therefore, you can carry the lessons with you to any discipline that values intuition and as Einstein put it, "the gift of fantasy". To watch a student experience his or her own creativity is an absolute joy.
"How did I do that?" is a typical response. "Where did that come from?"
It's difficult to learn to be more creative because after all the hard work, you must still learn to let go of the memory of past failures and fear of future judgment, you've got to forget the critic in your head, and live fully in the present moment.
And that's where the immortality comes in. The experience of living in the present feels timeless. And to paraphrase the philosopher, Wittgenstein:
"If we take eternity to mean…timelessness, the eternal life belongs to those who [can learn to] live in the present."
Cornell has offered me at least one other lesson about immortality: dedicate yourself to something of lasting consequence.
"Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth," Shakespeare tells us in a sonnet. But this Cornell, continues to flourish with the energy of youth. It is an idea that has traveled well. Ezra Cornell and A.D. White dedicated their lives to this creation and the result is an vision of lasting consequence. Today is an acknowledgment that the journey that they started is worthy of our energies and will continue and continue beyond our days.
And so that is what Cornell has come to mean to me. And that's why I've chosen to stay. Passion, connection with remarkable people (including students that are willing to continue conversations that we start), creativity, immortality. All of that and now another, new addition. Your arrival, Dr. Skorton. Continuing the story, written on a new page, at this inauguration, here, today.
When David called me, he modestly said that he wasn't sure if I knew who he was. But of course, I did. Ithaca was abuzz for weeks with the news that a new saxophone player with a great sense of humor had come to town. Welcome, David. Welcome, Robin. We're glad you're here. Thank you for coming.