The poems read by Heather McHugh, rich in internal rhyme and word play, portray scientists struggling to bring order to a world that stubbornly resists. Staff photo by Justin Ide

Being a citizen of the world – cosmopolitanism – was the theme explored by Anthony Appiah in his talk Tuesday morning at the Phi Beta Kappa Literary Exercises held in Sanders Theatre.

According to Appiah, professor of Afro-American Studies and of Philosophy, cosmopolitanism, far from being a new idea, can be traced back to the stoic philosophers of the ancient world. Yet, as global communications and the global economy bring diverse cultures in closer proximity than ever before, cosmopolitanism is increasingly an idea for today, and one which provides a model for contemporary scholarship.

The Phi Beta Kappa Exercises also featured the reading of poems by Heather McHugh ’69, a faculty member in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and Milliman Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is the author of many books of poetry, her latest being Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993, which won both the Boston Book Review's Bingham Poetry Prize and the Pollack-Harvard Review Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Harvard’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, founded in 1781, is the oldest uninterrupted chapter of the organization in the nation. The Radcliffe chapter was founded in 1914, and the two were merged in 1995.

The invocation and benediction at Tuesday’s exercises were given by Swami Tyagananda of the Vedanta Society and a member of the Harvard United Ministry.

The Phi Beta Kappa Exercises have taken place in Sanders Theatre since 1876. The ceremony also featured the presentation of the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Awards, which were instituted in 1981.

Living with many loyalties

In his talk, Appiah spoke of his own family as an example of today’s cosmopolitan lifestyle. The son of a Ghanaian father and an English mother, Appiah grew up in a village in Ghana but feels connected to both sides of his family.

As a result of this background, he said, "It has never seemed to me hard to live with many loyalties."

In his address at the Phi Beta Kappa Literary Exercises, Anthony Appiah recounted the wanderings of different peoples over the face of the globe, resulting in the spread of religions, philosophies, arts, and technologies. Staff photo by Justin Ide

Appiah and his siblings now have homes in four different countries, and many of the friends with whom he grew up have since migrated to other lands.

"It is tempting to think of experiences such as ours as somehow especially modern, and, therefore, as raising new and special difficulties," he said. "But in trying to think about why living with these many over-lapping loyalties has been so natural and so easy, I have been reassured by the reflection that our little family experiment actually belongs to one of the oldest patterns of the species."

Appiah recounted the wanderings of different peoples over the face of the globe, resulting in the spread of religions, philosophies, arts, and technologies. These global diasporas, he said, suggest that "the nomadic urge is deep within us."

He contrasted this cosmopolitan outlook with tribal, ethnic, and national identity, in which the cohesiveness of a people depends on the shared sense of a national story. In this story, the nation itself is the hero, which frequently requires that other nations are seen as enemies.

The remedy for such hostilities is not the creation of a world government, Appiah said, but rather a "spiritual confraternity," in which it is possible to "display our concern for our fellow humans without demanding that they be like ourselves."

Appiah argued for a universalistic cosmopolitanism, a world in which people of different cultures could embrace difference and yet also embrace universal standards, a difficult goal but one worth struggling toward.

He ended his talk with a quote from Terence, the writer of Latin comedies who originally came to Rome as a slave from Africa.

"I am a human being," says a character in one of Terence’s plays. "Nothing human is alien to me."

"That would be a good motto for an American university," Appiah said, "almost as good a motto as ‘Veritas.’ "

Frustrated taxonomists

McHugh read two poems, which she titled collectively "Songs for Scientists." Rich in internal rhyme and word play, both poems portray scientists struggling to bring order to a world that stubbornly resists their efforts.

The first, "Brain Collector at Cornell," begins with a picture of seven human brains floating in jars of formaldehyde. The brains appear "immodestly exposed. But no,/they won’t give up their privacy."

Despite their reticence, the scientist "with shining head and glasses," persists in probing their secrets. "Do you/prod for God’s address? grope to learn/if love survives? hope to know if thunder’s/good?" the poet asks.

But the "skies" (an allusion to Dickinson’s "The brain is wider than the sky"?) "contain themselves,/their brainstorms dimly understood."

The second poem, "Ornithologue at Audubon," chides the writer of a bird watcher’s handbook for his fanciful and anthropomorphic approximations of birdsong. "Take/the goldfinch. What peculiar flight of fancy/made it say ‘Potato chips!’? Hadn’t it a higher sort/of calling to its name?"

PBK Teaching Awards

Teachers in three different areas received the 2000 Phi Beta Kappa awards for Excellence in Teaching.

The winners were Melissa Barry, assistant professor of philosophy; Anya Bernstein, lecturer on social studies; and Guido Guidotti, the Higgins Professor of Biochemistry.