Speeches
Inaugural Remarks and Introduction
Provost Carolyn A. (Biddy) Martin
September 7, 2006
Quadrangle of the Arts and Sciences
You have before you a collection of poems collected by Alice Fulton. Let me begin with a question. Why poetry? I quote the French writer, Hélène Cixous, from a 1980 speech entitled: “Poetry Is/And the Political.” “Why poetry,” she asked, “why songs when political desire comes first and requires all the forces?” Because “without the poetic approach, the political kills, and vice versa.”
David Skorton understands the importance of balance between the poetic and the political or transactional. He has spent his career developing ways of seeing and characterizing the heart, and has then used those tools to treat it. His books are addressed to those who produce images, those who analyze them, and those who depend on them to treat patients.
I have read the 1986 edition of “Cardiac Imaging and Image Processing.” I did not take the author’s advice to work through the mathematical formulas, but I did learn a lot, nonetheless. I learned that seeing into the heart is a difficult task, requiring sophisticated instrumentation and a range of analytic strategies. But technological enhancements of the image and more sophisticated human-computer interactions are not sufficient. What is needed is a certain “un-seeing,” a disengagement from the perceptions that come naturally to the eye or readily to mind. And Skorton shows the reader, step-by-step, how to correct for the tricks our eyes and brains can play on us, and opens the readers’ eyes to a less partial view of the heart.
He has other tools he uses to expand our view and our expression of the heart. Some of his most effective fall outside of the realm of science. In one of our early July meetings, we were engrossed in a discussion of the nutritional value of Fig Newtons. We began to lament that the chocolate chip cookies in the outer office were not quite the same. He interrupted suddenly with his characteristic “hey.” “Hey,” he said, “let’s split one of those cookies. By the way,” he continued, “did I tell you about the article in the New England Journal of Medicine that just announced some surprising news about diet and health?” “What?” I asked, not yet used to his comic tone and timing. “Well,” he said, “they claim none of us is gonna make it out of here alive.”
David Skorton is seriously funny. His quick figure-ground reversals show a mind that can handle tremendous complexity, and one that does not put up barriers to the heart. And, apparently, he has more irony than some physicians about what modern medicine will do to save us from the real bottom line.
He is also an amazing information processor, chewing up bits from a variety of media and modes with lightning speed, synthesizing huge amounts of data without losing sight of what matters.
David is fond of saying he wanted to be a professional jazz musician but was not good enough to make it. I don’t know that it was a question of talent, but I do know that music is another medium he uses to characterize the heart and to treat it.
These abilities to process, synthesize, and separate the important from the insignificant will be invaluable going forward, given the challenges we face.
Let me mention just a few of them: rising costs, the constraints on what tuition can or should provide to cover those costs, growing infrastructure needs and administrative expansion that can seem to dwarf the core academic mission, worries about access to education for students from all backgrounds, the federal government’s priorities and consequent limits on funding for research and education, our increasing dependence on private funds, both corporate and philanthropic, and the pressures that dependence can introduce. I would add the winner-take-all competition among institutions of higher learning, which drives up costs, drives pressure on children down into the cradle, and elevates image over substance.
We face these challenges against the backdrop of a growing tendency in parts of the culture, in very high places, to confuse belief with knowledge, to substitute mere assertion for evidence-based analysis, and to forfeit genuine consultation with those who have different perspectives -- and this, in a period of dizzying changes worldwide, in the midst of more than one war, in the face of an increasingly degraded physical environment, increasing inequality, abject poverty in so many places, ravaging diseases, and forms of information about all these things that make the world seem unsusceptible to rational analysis, let alone to change.
The public discussion of the issues is now so impoverished as to permit our politicians to use the equivalent of popular movie titles and slogans in place of argument and explanation. To make things worse, we hear a dangerous suspicion of disagreement and dissent, both at home and abroad, making academic freedom and vigorous debate seem the enemy, rather than the servant of the public good in a democracy.
In our approach to these problems at the university, we have to remain open to change and to criticism, foster genuine exchange and profound disagreements, and avoid knee-jerk, unthoughtful suspicion of authority. Above all, we have to do what we do best with integrity and quality – research and education.
The university has to meet the challenges of change without forfeiting important forms of autonomy. Trying to be all things to all people will not do, will put the institution at risk. Perhaps the university could be compared to the heart in relation to its healers: it has to be welcoming of help from its supporters, but depend for its well-being on the least invasive procedures.
Supporting the university and sustaining its values means loving idiosyncrasy as much as normativity, individuality as much as convention, a generative messiness as much as efficiency, and freedom as much as safety. We teach suspicion of easy answers and wariness of those who claim they can see the difference between good and evil. This is our gift to the world – that we hold open a space for learning and reflection, even when it means our internal clock beats to a rhythm other than the one controlled by computer standard time.
To lead the university in these times, a president has to embrace complexity, believe in the human being’s capacity to learn and change, delight in our likenesses and comings together, and in our differences and our goings apart. We have such a president.
David Skorton has lightning-quick intelligence, a remarkable sense of humor, and his eye on the ball. He permits himself to be many different ages, operates simultaneously in many different registers, respects the past and has already exploded into the future. He likes the knife’s edge of invention, but keeps an eye on the heart of the matter. Under his leadership, I believe, substance will guide image, critical thought and reflection will prevail over the tricks our eyes and our minds can play on us, and academic freedom over partisan or political constraint.
Join me in celebrating his leadership of this great institution as we look to the challenges and opportunities ahead.