“Gotta Have A Code”

“Gotta Have A Code”1

by Warren G. Frisina May 19, 2018 Good evening everyone. Let me begin by formally congratulating all of the students in the room and of course their family members who share in this extraordinary day. We are here to celebrate all of you. And, in HUHC that always involves good food and conversation. Some of you came into our orbit by attending a banquet at the Cradle of Aviation four plus years ago, and as you can see, we are closing the circle by sending you out into the world with a full stomach and happy memories of time well spent with your friends, family and teachers.

It may not surprise you to learn that I go to a lot of graduations. It’s part of my job as Dean. Luckily, I really love graduations. They are truly the only ceremony invented by humans where everyone is happy throughout. Think about it.

You students are happy, and deservedly so. You’ve done something extraordinary. Even here in the United States, one of the richest countries in the world, only about 1/3 of Americans earn a bachelor degree.

Parents are happy, and for two reasons. First, and obviously, there are no more tuition bills! But far more importantly, they know that when their child walks across the stage they will be experiencing one of life’s greatest thrills. I’ve never summited Mount Everest or parachuted out of a plane, but I would put my children’s graduations right up next to either of those experiences. There’s nothing like it.

1 Original quote: “Man’s gotta have a code.” Spoken by a modern day Robin Hood figure named Omar in The Wire while attempting to explain to a police officer the reason for his benevolent behavior, despite his violent occupation.

2 Your faculty are happy too: we are so proud to know we contributed to helping you and your families arrive at this blessed moment.

So everyone at graduation is generally in a very good mood.

Last week I attended a graduation at Hofstra that had all the usual parts, but that added a step you don’t typically see. Three times during the Hofstra Medical School graduation they stopped the proceedings to recite a pledge. The first came right after awarding Ph.D’s to several medical researchers. After receiving their degrees the 4 newly minted scientists stood and recited the “Oath of the Scientist” in unison. The oath included, among other things a commitment to pursue truth, and remain open to new discoveries; it also included the lovely line: “I will apply my scientific skills and principles to benefit society. . . .”

Moments later, an ROTC student who was bringing his MD with him into the military was on the stage. He was being commissioned as an officer and he took an oath too, in uniform, with his wife and baby by his side. You know how that one goes: “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States. . . .”

It is profoundly moving to watch someone take an oath to protect all of us knowing the kinds of sacrifices that person might be asked to make.

Once that was over, the medical school dean Lawrence Smith awarded all the MD degrees. Each new doctor had a traditional moment on stage. And then, all of the doctors in the room, both the new graduates but also the parents and friends who happened to be doctors too, stood up together to recite the “Oath of the Physician.” It had many parts, but the line that made the biggest impression on me was:

3 “I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illnesses may affect not only the person but a family and a community.”

There is so much packed into that line. I definitely want my doctor to be the kind of person who would take what it says to heart.

So, maybe you can see where this is going. By the end of Dean Larry Smith’s medical school graduation I was suffering from a disease only a dean can catch. I guess I’d call it “Oath Envy.” These were such beautiful touching moments, I wanted my graduation ceremonies to have a code or an oath that we could all recite together.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you all to stand and take an oath today. After a moment’s thought I knew it would be presumptuous of me to write an oath for you. After all, our community includes students who majored in all the different fields Hofstra offers. We don’t have a shared profession that binds us together. If we were to have a code, it would have to be something more general than a scientist’s or a soldier’s or a doctor’s pledge. This led me to ruminate a bit on what it is you have in common. I asked myself what are you bringing into the world in terms of skills and knowledge that you’ve acquired during your years as students, but most importantly as Honors College students?

If I think back on when I first met many of you, it isn’t hard to identify several such things. We knew when we invited you to join HUHC that you were very bright. Exceedingly bright. But if you, and your parents, and the faculty thought you were great then, or at least destined for greatness, well, look at you now. You read complicated texts with sensitivity and nuance. Your scientific instincts are honed, your lab skills polished. You can take what’s in your heart and put it down on paper in clear persuasive prose, the kind of prose that changes minds.

When you speak, we marvel at your competency and your confidence. You’ve all come into your

4 own, so to speak. And as you’ve done so, you’ve also cultivated an extraordinary set of internal transformations: wisdom, maturity of judgment, and ever-increasing empathy, all of which you brought out in yourselves and in each other over these last few years working with us. These things won’t show up in a social media flipbook, but we know they are in you because they are evident in how you carry yourselves, in what you commit to, and the kinds of causes you support.

So, it’s with your striking capacity for critical thought and mature compassion in mind that I started to construct a code that I’d like to offer for your consideration, a starting point for your own reflections on what your own code might eventually include. My version of such a code begins with a commitment to doing what we can to be healers in our world. Why healing?

Well, quite simply, healers promote human flourishing, and I would like all of us to use the skills we gathered in college and beyond to do what we can to leave our world a better place for those who come after us. On first blush this might sound like just the kind of overly broad, head-in-the-clouds platitude that you’d expect to get from a philosopher, which is my identity within the academy. But let’s think for a moment about what is implicit in pledging to be healers, and do so with our world’s current circumstances in mind.

First of all, any doctor will tell you the first step in being a medical healer is listening to and observing patients so you respond to actual problems rather than imagined ones. Our world clearly has too many people who think they know what our problems are but who are unable to see or hear anything that doesn’t fit within the assumptions they bring to the table.

This inability to just listen, to attend long enough to others so that we can begin to see at least in outline form the basis for our problems has brought us to the point of political paralysis; it

5 has made us bystanders as a host of horrifying human crises play themselves out before our very eyes. Thus, healers of all kinds must be listeners first.

Secondly, a healer begins with the assumption that she doesn’t always know how to fix a problem and is therefore open to other opinions on what to do. Listening is not just for gathering evidence about what the problem is. It’s also crucial for uncovering ideas about how to address those issues. By now I hope you are all impressed with the breadth of wisdom you’ve acquired. But if you want to be healers you need to be equally impressed with the limits of that wisdom. No one knows everything, no one has a sole handle on the truth. We are all like the four blindfolded men with our hands on different parts of the elephant. We need each others’ ideas to get a handle on how to go forward.

Thirdly, a healer has an aversion to suffering in all of its forms. Surprisingly, I’ve found over the years that given the chance it is often those who have suffered the most who are capable of feeling keenly the suffering in others. But whether you are on top or at the bottom, if you pledge to be a healer you are committing to attuning yourself to others’ needs. It’s not good enough to solve the problems that are right in front of you; to be a healer you must be ready to extend yourself broadly, to see beyond your personal, familial and societal borders.

This doesn’t mean you are responsible for fixing all human problems. Far from it. But, if you want to be a healer, you can’t just limit yourself to tending your own garden and ignoring the needs of those around you.

Finally, healers are protectors who instinctively move to assist the weak and who reserve their anger for anyone who would use their power to impose themselves on others. This attunement to power is part of the diagnostic process associated with healing. It’s just a fact

6 that suffering comes in varying degrees and with varying levels of importance. I can be very pained about not having enough time to do everything I would like to do. But that just doesn’t measure up next to the pain associated with someone who has been evicted from their home for want of a few hundred dollars. Learning to prioritize and direct your attention toward those who need you most is as important as anything else you might do as a healer.

Now people are making graduation speeches all over the country this week. I’ve heard all kinds of things being suggested to students. Tim Cook of Apple told a bunch of graduates to be brave and you can change the world. Others are telling students to “find their passion” and never let go. I considered both of those things when thinking about what I’d want in a code to be recited at our graduation. But bravery not tempered by the urge to heal can lead directly to fanaticism. And passion without a commitment to assisting others may produce a kind of greatness, but at a cost to you and those around you that never gets acknowledged in graduation speeches that simply tell you to “go for it.”

In closing then, I leave hoping that as you reflect on your code, as you think about what you would want to stand up and pledge to if we were to have such a moment at your graduation, consider the goal of becoming a healer. There can be no doubt that we are in desperate need of healers.

As I look around this room I can’t help but be taken by the extraordinary power that would be unleashed were you to commit yourselves to such a goal. We already know what you are capable of. We’ve seen you discover and pursue your passions. We’ve seen you be brave in the face of difficult moments. But most of all, we’ve witnessed the many ways, both large and small, that you’ve already acted as healers while you were with us. Thus, we can send you out

7 into the world with great hope, and most importantly with good reason to hope that you will do much to promote human flourishing. And as that happens, we ask only that you stay in touch with us so that we can see in your good works an extension of ours. You are the reason there is a Hofstra University, and your impact on the world will be our legacy.

Thank you.