Rudenstine cites Marshall Plan as inspiration for new initiatives

President Neil L. Rudenstine delivered the following address during Afternoon Exercises on Commencement Day:

Good afternoon. I want to welcome all of you, most warmly, back to Harvard for these moving festival rites.

More than any other event, the ceremonies of Commencement Day remind us of the unity of this great university. They show, vividly, the collective strength of all of you who are present and, through you, the dedication of countless alumni and friends around the world. We are bound together by ties that stretch across generations and continents. And we share a spirit of determination to settle for nothing less than the best that can be achieved in education, in research, and in the creation of humane communities, on this campus and beyond -- communities where people can have the opportunity to flourish, while sharing the responsibility to help others do the same.

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Today we mark the 50th anniversary of General George Marshall's address to the Harvard community: his initial, and surprisingly brief, sketch of what came to be called the Marshall Plan, intended to ensure nothing less than the postwar economic and societal recovery of Europe. It is a special honor on this occasion to welcome to Harvard our present Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, whose exceptional talents, personal courage, and vision for the future embody so much of what the Marshall Plan aspired to make possible.

It's worth remembering for a moment how revolutionary that plan really was. From time immemorial, the aftermath of major wars had almost invariably led to vindictiveness and revenge, to acquiring ever more territory and booty, and often to the demand for huge reparations. This was true -- disastrously so -- after the First World War, in spite of strong warnings that the proposed sanctions would devastate the economy and the lives of the German people, as well as many others.

The point that General Marshall saw so clearly, at the time, was that while justice and firmness were essential to an enduring peace, vindictiveness was virtually certain to be destructive and indeed catastrophic -- for the victors, as well as the vanquished.

Marshall's own conviction and his great standing were crucial to the success of the plan. So too was the support of President Truman, Averill Harriman, and others. But it's also true that many of the arguments that ultimately made the plan persuasive emerged from a deep and sophisticated understanding of the economic, political, and historical realities of international affairs. That level of understanding was developed slowly, over time, but it was well-enough grounded by the 1940s to help clarify the real choices after World War II. A great deal of the analysis and research that provided the rationale for the Marshall Plan was carried out by some of the best minds at a number of our great universities. In other words, exceptional research, intelligent policy analysis, and courageous political leadership came together, at that moment, in an extraordinary way -- and all three elements were essential.

Now, half a century later, we face a very different world situation, one that calls for new initiatives on the part of our universities, as well as from other parts of society. Technological advances -- especially the recent explosion of activity and innovation in modern information technologies, including the Internet -- have once again caused the globe to shrink significantly and rapidly. The volume of instantaneous communications around the world grows by the hour. The capacity to export information, ideas, and opinions -- from any one place to any other place -- is on its way toward making the whole concept of an "iron curtain" obsolete.

In addition, major political, economic, social, and other changes have obviously transformed the international landscape. Some of these developments have been positive, others less so. They include the breakdown of the former Soviet Union; the establishment of more democratic governments in Latin America, South Africa, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere; the shift toward market-oriented economies and to economic competition on a broad international scale; the resurgence of age-old ethnic, religious, tribal, and cultural conflicts in many regions of the world; the interaction of political and religious movements -- often fundamentalist in nature -- that have swept across national and continental boundaries; and the migration of large populations, often refugees, across increasingly permeable borders.

These and other developments have, in a few brief years, created a world that is more open, more fluid, more interconnected in certain ways -- and yet also very fragmented, unpredictable, and more vulnerable to strong and sometimes violent assertions of nationalism or similar forces.

This transformation of the global scene, along with the revolution in communications and information technology, is already having a major impact on the way in which Harvard is creating its future agenda in international studies. It is this important, emerging agenda -- at this unusual moment in history -- that I now want to talk about briefly. What are some of the main steps that we should be planning for the years ahead? What would we like to achieve?

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Let me start by saying that we are an American university, with traditions, history, and values that are rooted in those of this country. Indeed, one of the reasons that students and scholars come to Harvard from abroad is precisely because we are an American university -- an institution within a society that has a distinctive national identity and a deep commitment to openness and freedom, in education and more broadly. As we think about the future, there is no question that we will, in significant ways, become an institution whose activities and reach are more "international." But we will do so within the context of our own powerfully established values and traditions. With that in mind, let me outline several priorities for us to consider for the years ahead.

First, we have an unprecedented opportunity -- one that has only recently opened up -- to consult archives, databases, and other research materials that are far more accessible to us than ever before: in Russia, parts of Asia, Eastern Europe, several Latin American countries, and elsewhere. These materials will help us to understand major episodes in recent, and not-so-recent, history: the history of societies that have long been closed. Students and scholars also have a much greater opportunity to interview ordinary people, as well as officials, in these societies, in the search to discover and interpret the past in greater depth, and to understand the present more clearly.

Without better understanding, we are much less likely to create or sustain long-term positive working relationships with other countries, or to know what are the most sensible public policies to pursue. We now know, for instance, that for some considerable time before the collapse of the Soviet Union, we continued to operate on the assumption that it remained a powerful, essentially monolithic rival empire -- when in fact, at least toward the end of that period, it was on a path toward swift and spectacular disintegration. We may not be able to say precisely what we would have done if we had known the actual reality of that situation in 1970, or 1980, or later; but at the very least, we would have begun planning in a more informed way for the dramatically different situation in which we now find ourselves.

So, we must do all we can to understand the realities of the current world, and to do that we will have to invest much more substantially in research abroad, and in curricular change at home. Our nation has not made such a concentrated investment for many years, and there is no sign that it will do so in the immediate future. But then we -- our universities and all of us who care deeply about education -- must do so, because we simply cannot risk the heavy costs of moving ahead in ignorance.

Next, we need to create stronger connections among our various fields of international study -- across disciplines and across different parts of the university. We need to create more opportunities to bring together faculty and students from a wide range of academic fields, so that they can address subjects or problems that demand different perspectives if we want to understand them not only partially, but much more as a whole.

This approach is absolutely vital when we begin to look for solutions to some of the world's most pressing and difficult problems. For instance, we know a modest amount about the causes of ethnic and racial strife in certain areas of the world -- although there is far more to learn about the characteristics and causes of specific situations. In addition, however, there is a great need for studies that reach beyond individual situations, in order to compare the structural elements and historical circumstances that emerge when we look carefully across a range of examples. Why do some ethnic and racial groups manage to live together with a greater degree of harmony than others? Are there general patterns that we can discover -- patterns that might guide us toward a broader understanding of ethnic and racial strife, so that we can build a more promising basis for addressing new, as well as age-old, situations of this kind?

To undertake such studies, we need people who know the relevant languages and cultures; we need historians, ethnographers, and anthropologists; we need students of sociology and politics and other fields. In fact, in so many different areas -- whether the subject is environmental protection, or the spread of deadly infectious diseases, or the implications of an increasingly global economy, or the effects on society of the media and of modern information networks -- we will make serious progress only if we are willing to adopt an international and interdisciplinary perspective: only if we bring together people from different professions, different scholarly fields, and different parts of the world. Harvard can make critical contributions to this effort; but to do so, we will have to continue to strengthen the links among our various programs of study, while also working collaboratively with people outside the university -- in government, in the world of practice, and in other universities.

Third, we must expand the opportunities for international exchange, bringing together faculty and students from different nations and regions on our own campus, as well as affording more opportunity for our own students to travel, study, or work (primarily as interns) abroad. Nothing -- absolutely nothing -- can replace the kind of learning that happens when individuals are able to have direct contact, for a considerable period of time, with people from different cultures and backgrounds.

That is how genuine discussion and debate about international issues often start -- how friendships, professional relationships, and other forms of mutual understanding among people from different nations can be created. That is how new insights, knowledge, and important human values are conveyed and shared. And when this process, which is a reciprocal one, continues year after year, among unusually talented students and others who are likely to become leaders in their societies, we increase immeasurably the prospects for building on those relationships over decades -- and for bridging the inevitable gaps that so often arise in international affairs.

It is very expensive to create opportunities of this kind, both for faculty and students to go abroad, and for individuals from around the world to come here. In addition, there is a great deal of ambivalence in our own nation on the subject of keeping the doors of our universities open to scholars and professionals from other countries. But we cannot give up in this effort. In fact, we need to do better -- much better. If we fail to do so, it is not clear how we will advance beyond our present inadequate understanding of other societies, or how we will avoid the dangers that can arise when we have only a superficial or drastically oversimplified view of other cultures and other peoples.

The final point I want to make follows from my last one, but is slightly broader. It relates to the present state of higher education and research around the globe, and the unusual position that our American system of higher education now occupies. As I have suggested, we ourselves have much to learn about other nations, and about the dynamics of international affairs. At the same time -- at this moment in history -- we can play a significant role in helping individuals from abroad, especially practitioners in mid-career, gain the essential knowledge that they and their countries need in order to prosper in the coming years.

Very few nations in the world have well-developed systems of higher education, and only a small handful of countries have professional schools of high quality. Yet, around the world, dozens of nations are in an uncertain state of rapid transition -- politically, economically, and in other ways. Many of these nations simply do not have the resources to create and sustain major systems of higher education, at least not in the present stage of their development.

One of the major comparative advantages of our leading American universities is their clear capacity to offer exceptional education and training to people from abroad: especially people who are assuming, or have already assumed, leadership positions in their societies, but who also feel the need for additional intensive work, at an advanced level, in their respective fields.

Far too many countries have much too small a supply of well-trained people to help develop stable, sound institutions -- whether in health care or government, business or law, education or environmental planning. Harvard and other American universities have the capacity to offer this assistance, especially through mid-career and executive education programs that already exist, or through others that are waiting to be created. Even now, thousands of individuals (from more than one hundred countries) flow through our programs from year to year. We ourselves learn an extraordinary amount from the many visitors who come to our campus from abroad; and we in turn are able to make a substantial contribution, not only to the individuals, but -- through them -- to the societies to which they return.

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In short, although the world situation we face today differs greatly from the one that followed World War II, we are nonetheless confronted by deeply serious and complex problems that cannot be safely ignored or neglected. And while many of the needs that exist now are similar to those addressed by the Marshall Plan 50 years ago, the long-term needs lie not only in the realm of tangible goods -- food, supplies, and similar kinds of help -- but at least equally in the realm of knowledge: of education and research, especially at advanced levels.

Over time, only those societies that can count on having a flow of significant new ideas and of humane and skilled leaders -- in all walks of life -- are likely to sustain themselves in this increasingly internationalized, competitive, and demanding new world which we have all entered. So, if there is a Marshall Plan for today or tomorrow, it must be one that includes among its main elements the effort to create greater human capital -- and deeper forms of mutual understanding -- through education, research, and the training of advanced practitioners. It must affirm the capacity of the United States, through its leading universities, to make a timely and significant contribution to nations that are in transition; that do not yet have well-established systems of higher education, especially in the professions; and that are themselves actively interested in the kinds of special advanced education that Harvard and other institutions can offer.

When Winston Churchill made a secret visit to Harvard in 1944, while the war was still raging, he was awarded an honorary degree in an extraordinary, historic ceremony. He also gave an address in Sanders Theatre, and said at one point: "The empires of the future will be empires of the mind."

Now, half a century later, that future has arrived. Empires of the mind are precisely what we are now creating. As we do so, let us do our utmost to ensure that they are humane empires, characterized by openness, inquiry, learning, and real-world effectiveness: empires dedicated to the freedom and prosperity of all people, everywhere.

Education and research, alone, cannot create those empires. But the willingness of universities like Harvard to play a creative and constructive role -- using our institutional capacities wisely, energetically, and well -- can make a major difference in the years to come. This effort will take careful planning and hard work. It will require substantial investments. But it will be immensely important if we hope to accomplish, over the next 50 years, something approaching what the Marshall Plan has achieved in the 50 years before now.