PBK Induction Ceremony Talk 2018

1 Phi Beta Kappa Talk May 2, 2018 Warren G. Frisina Thank you for that introduction, and more importantly thank you for the invitation to speak to this year’s Phi Beta Kappa inductees. Congratulations to all of you. You and your families should be very proud. Election to PBK is a high honor. As we’ve heard, only the top 10% of schools have PBK chapters and only the top 10% of students at those schools are eligible for election as members. So, you are the top 10% of the top 10%. I don’t have a math degree, but I think that means that election to PBK identifies you as 1%ers. What does this mean? Among other things, it means that when it comes to the intellectual appetite, work ethic, and imagination required to find life-long satisfaction in a career—or perhaps in multiple different careers—that you find engaging and fulfilling, you are in a much better position than most. Well done!

Of course, it is a rare privilege to be invited to address such a distinguished group of students, and I am honored to have been chosen. I’ve always admired PBK’s history and mission, and especially its dedication to the liberal arts. Most specifically, I value its origin as a group founded to discuss the crucial issues of the day. They began by discussing economics, political philosophy and ultimately, revolution. I can only assume there were vigorous disagreements on such contentious issues. The remarks I’ve prepared today are in that spirit, as you will see shortly.

Truth be told, my own college didn’t have a PBK chapter. Heck, we didn’t even have grades. My B.A. in philosophy came from SUNY Purchase way back in 1976. All these years later it’s hard to overstate the gratitude I feel toward my teachers and the institution that gave

2 me the tools I needed to navigate a world whose details were way beyond my youthful imagination; a world that was just beginning to come into focus for me. Some of you will be graduating in just a few weeks while others will graduate next year. I hope that as your lives and careers unfold you too look back and see in the classes you took, the books you read, and the papers you wrote, that you were acquiring the same tools Purchase gave me; tools that will help you navigate a world you only knew in outline form before you arrived on Hofstra’s campus.

I have drawn your attention to 1976, however, for more than nostalgic reasons. You see, I think we share something other than the skills we’ve gained through our training in the liberal arts. Like you, I came of age during “turbulent times.” As I was leaving college American social and political institutions seemed unstable. During my elementary and high school years we’d had 4 assassinations (John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy). There was racial violence in the South that included lynching, beatings and mobs that attacked civil rights marchers. In the North we had urban riots prompted by awful living conditions, poor employment options, and a breakdown in the relationship between police and the people they served. The country was involved in an excruciating war that ultimately did not advance the national values that were cited as a basis for its initiation. And of course, during my college years President Nixon resigned in disgrace after attempting to thwart an inquiry by his own Justice Department.

That was the world I graduated into. Needless to say a lot of us thought we were reaching the end of the line. Apocalyptic literature seemed the only appropriate response to our situation. The future? It wasn’t clear we could expect there to be much of a future at all.

And yet there was one—and thank god, because it’s brought us you.

3 Ironically enough, however, there seems to be in the air at this moment something of the same anxiety among you and many of your peers. These too are turbulent times. There is good reason, some argue, to believe that our most cherished institutions are running up against their limits. The country’s divided politically to the point where we seem almost incapable of engaging in political discourse. Racial violence, the direct consequence of America’s original sin, continues to haunt us in ways both large and small. The breakdown in communication between police and the people they serve is again painfully visible, and with excruciating results for all.

Our legal and judicial systems continue to penalize the poor and people of color severely while dealing with whites and the well off much more leniently. Moreover, migration trends and refugee crises have awakened levels of xenophobia across the United States and in Europe the likes of which have not been seen since the days when Fascism was on the march. And, to top it all off, at this moment income and wealth inequality in the U.S. have reached disparities not experienced since just before the Great Depression.

In addition, your generation is facing something that mine did not have to handle.

Changes in technology and the rise of social media have made it so much more difficult for an ordinary person to sort fact from fiction. Propaganda and misinformation are certainly not new.

But the internet has made it possible to spread a lie quickly when highly partisan websites publish unsourced, unverified stories as if they were news. Eventually, the fact that others are talking about an untrue story—what politicians call the “big lie”—becomes a story that mainstream news outlets feel obliged to report, and soon everyone is taking seriously something that never happened.

4 Wow, this is getting pretty depressing, right? To lift us up a bit, let’s make use of some of that learning in the liberal arts that you’ve been absorbing while you were with us.

I want to start by looking for a moment at what science has taught us about the human brain. Evolutionary biologists tell us that our brains evolved in stages. For example, consider the amygdala, one of the oldest structures within the brain. It plays several different roles but above all it processes fear. Fear is a very useful evolutionary device, right? When activated, the amygdala forces organisms to do whatever it takes to protect and preserve themselves. If you run into a bear or a poisonous snake, the amygdala incites the flight or fight response. There’s no thinking involved. No deliberation. No reflection. No considering pro’s and con’s, or weighing the evidence. It basically says: do x now, or die. Left hemisphere, right hemisphere, frontal cortex, the places where all deliberation happens, they just sit back and wait till it’s safe to do their thing.

Why is this interesting? Well, we’ve just noticed something that is important when it comes to motivating people. Fear works. Terrifying fear works best. Physical frights are easiest to imagine, but consider too situations that don’t involve physical danger – jealousy, feeling cheated, road rage, feeling disrespected. In all of these cases, the self feels threatened either physically or emotionally. And in those moments just about all thinking stops. That urge to lash out at the person who cut you off, the righteous indignation generated when you feel disrespected, those things do not spring from deliberation. They spring from the fight or flight response that the amygdala is so good at producing.

The American philosopher John Dewey noticed there are actually two situations when humans act without thinking: moments of absolute fear of the kind I’ve been describing, but

5 also moments when we feel absolutely certain about the information before us. “Thinking,” according to Dewey, involves actively weighing pro’s and con’s on the way to making a choice among an ambiguous group of options. When we are certain we don’t do any of that. We just act – literally without thinking.

Now some politicians, advertisers, and others who hope to shape our behavior are aware of these facts about the way our brains work. To get us to do what they want the easiest route is to activate the amygdala. Generate fear. Fear that your lifestyle or community is threatened; fear that someone else is getting an unfair advantage over you; fear that someone is coming to take something from you; fear at being left out or left behind – these are the tools of their trade and our non-thinking responses to that fear are “the product.”

Their other tool is certainty. If they can generate in us the sense that all relevant information has been considered, if they can eliminate the natural human capacity to see complicated things from many different sides, if they can shut down our ability to deliberate, as Dewey explained, it is much easier to get people to do what they want.

If you don’t think I’m right on this, go home and scroll through your Facebook feed. Take note of the extent to which the postings involving political issues are framed to frighten or polarize you. You’ve seen them. You’ve liked them. You’ve shared them. They come from both sides. Through this framing we are being trained by our social media platforms to shut down the very skills that Hofstra worked so hard to help you cultivate. There’s no weighing of multiple perspectives, no consideration, no research: we just click on a like button, and then refresh to see if anyone else has joined us.

6 I’d like to move now to one specific example of a contemporary crisis that requires all the deliberation, all the careful thought, and all the bravery you can muster. I’m talking about current attitudes across the world involving the global refugee crises.

At this moment there are 65 million people who have been displaced from their homes, 22.5 million are refugees, fleeing war or other political crises 1. Many are herded into miserable camps and left to struggle to sustain themselves while waiting till the nightmare at home is over.

Others, after making their way to national borders, are turned away by countries as “national security threats.” They are then forced to wander in the shadows, stateless, in countries who as signatories to the United Nations’ 1951 “Convention Relating to Refugees” promised that refugees would be provided legal status and the ability to work, travel, and fend for themselves.

Formulated in the shadow of WWII, the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocols, which were adopted by the U.S. in 1968, promises we will not turn our backs on those who are forced from their homes for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. In fulfillment of that promise we set up procedures and policies that allow refugees to present themselves at our borders to apply for asylum. Once verified as refugees, we guaranteed we would make a place for them by providing access to travel documents, work opportunities, and basic civil rights.

You might ask what could have motivated the U.S. and other countries to make such a generous promise? Well, the answer is complicated, of course, but I’d point to two things. First, shame. Looking back at the way the U.S. and others turned away Jewish refugees during WWII made many feel complicit in the Holocaust. We were ashamed to know that flimsy arguments 1United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-aglance.html, 4.28.2018.

7 regarding “national security” led us to send so many to their deaths The second thing that made it possible to ratify that treaty was diminishment of fear. With the war behind us people were able to think again. They could enter into discussion and deliberate over how best to handle refugees in the future. Ultimately, we established standards, set up protocols and made promises to future sufferers that we would not repeat the mistakes made during WWII. Never again is what we said.

And yet, here we are in the 21st century with refugee crises surpassing what they were during WWII. And once again we find ourselves vulnerable to those who would manipulate our fear and use polarization to turn us away from the better selves we aspired to be back in 1968.

This is not a political question. Once that treaty was signed and ratified by the Congress, our representatives made a commitment on our behalf that we would treat anyone who qualifies as refugees in specific ways. Citizens across the political spectrum together must live up to that commitment. What we ought to be discussing is not whether we have such a commitment but are we truly doing all we can to meet our obligations. There’s room for deliberation, debate, and argument there, along with compassion—and that’s the point.

Why bring this up at a celebration of your remarkable achievements? As I’ve said, PBK was founded as a society dedicated to the deliberation and discussion of contemporary issues facing the nation. Moreover, at a time when our capacity to engage in critical reflection and deliberation are threatened why not turn to those newly initiated into the craft? And, regarding the refugee crisis in particular, if not now when so many are at our gates hoping to redeem the promises we made in 1968, then when?

8 You have all worked very hard and deserve high praise for what you’ve achieved. But let’s be clear about what we are praising today. We are celebrating your achievements in the liberal arts because we are convinced they help prepare you to take up your responsibilities as leaders in this troubled time. You may not have been aware of it at the time, but when you accepted our invitation to be educated in the liberal arts, you were simultaneously agreeing you would put the skills that Hofstra cultivated in you to good use. (It was in the fine print at the end of the webpage.) We had faith in you then. And given how well you’ve performed we can see that our faith was well placed. We also have faith in the tools you have acquired.

As I look across this room I see individuals who have developed the tools required to take back what was bestowed upon us by the founders of this experiment in democratic selfgovernance. You have spent time learning to see below the surface of any situation. You have acquired the capacity as writers to communicate what is in your heart to others. Your creative imaginations have been stimulated by the arts, music, drama and dance. You’ve learned from the sciences, both natural and social, that claims without evidence are dangerous. All of these things convince me you will not willingly surrender your capacity to engage in deliberation and the thoughtful consideration of the issues that we face. These things give me hope that though the limits of our institutions are being tested in this historical moment, we will emerge on the other side a stronger, more engaged and intellectually richer community.

Those tools will always be with you. It’s your turn now. We’re proud of you, and inspired by you. Please use them well. Thank you.

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