One Question for Honors Day

Roderick P. Hart
University of Texas
April 12, 2008

I sat where you’re sitting in 1968. I attended a pleasant ceremony surrounded by several hundred better-than-average students. I don’t remember who spoke that day but I’m sure what he said was profound.

Having been born in 1945, I have lived in many interesting years but few of my years have been more interesting than 1968. Let me recall some ancient history for you:

January 5, 1968: Dr. Benjamin Spock, America’s beloved baby doctor, is indicted on conspiracy to encourage draft law violations and later found guilty.

February 18: The U.S. State Department announces the highest U.S. casualty toll of the Vietnam War.

March 31: President Lyndon Johnson shocks the nation by announcing his decision not to seek reelection.

April 4: Martin Luther King Jr. is shot with one round from a 30.06 rifle and declared dead one hour later at St. Joseph's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

June 5: Robert Kennedy is shot to death by 24-year old Sirhan Sirhan, a Jordanian living in Los Angeles, California.

August 28: At the direction of the mayor, Chicago police forcibly confront demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention.

September 7: Women's Liberation groups target the Miss America Beauty Pageant in Atlantic City, an event featuring the first known symbolic bra-burning.

October 18: Tommie Smith and John Carlos, U.S. Olympic athletes, disrupt their medal ceremony by performing the black power salute during the "Star-Spangled Banner."

October 31: President Johnson announces a total halt to U.S. bombing in North Vietnam.

November 5: Election Day. Richard Nixon wins 43.4 percent of the total compared to Hubert Humphrey’s 42.7 percent.

December 21: The launching of Apollo 8 begins the first U.S. mission to orbit the Moon.

1968. If you’ve ever wondered why your parents turned out so weird, there’s your answer: 1968. To be sure, lots of normal things happened in 1968 too. Babies were born, young people graduated from college, old folks died. To nobody’s surprise, UCLA won the NCAA basketball championship. Nine months later, Ohio State took the football crown.

But why should you care about this? You don’t live in 1968. You live in 2008. 1968 had no Internet, no cell phones, no artificial hearts. Scientific research in 1968 was primitive by today’s standards, as were econometric theories and the concepts undergirding molecular mathematics.

Most of you in this room were not yet born in 1968, which means you never had to suffer the indignities of wearing tie-dyed shirts and bell-bottoms. That’s a good thing. But here’s a bad thing: By not being alive in 1968, you didn’t have to deal with the important questions of that age: What is the role of the university in society? What sort of knowledge is worth having? How can learning be made socially beneficial? Questions like these had been asked before but they had a special poignancy in 1968, accompanied as they were by a boiling cauldron of racial, gender, class and international politics.

I am a different person today because I went to school in 1968. No matter how old I get, I seem unable to throw off the concerns of that era. I teach differently because of it and I write differently because of it. No matter where I go, no matter what I do, 1968 beckons. And here is its best question: Sure you’re smart; but are you good?

That’s my question for you today: Sure you’re smart, but are you good? I warn you now that this question can haunt you. It can affect where you work, whom you marry, how you raise your kids, what sort of media you consume, how you vote. The main academic question of 1968–sure you’re smart, but are you good?–can infect you to the core of your being.

Perhaps that seems like a strange question to you. College, after all, is a place for making people smart. You go elsewhere–to church, to the Boy Scouts, to your parents, to a guru–to learn about being good. In 1968, however, things were different. From Physics to Psychology, from Botany to Architecture, that question was asked in a thousand venues. And the results were often not pretty. Petroleum engineers were asked to confront environmental degradation. Picketers showed up at nuclear labs on the nation’s campuses. Business professors were accused of selling their souls when consulting for corporate America. Literary critics were said to be antediluvian for reverencing the great, white, male authors of times past.

Personally, I spent most of 1968 confused. I could tell that something was changing in the classes I took and I sensed that knowing for the sake of knowing was no longer good enough. Today, I want to encourage you to wrestle with these issues as well. For example, if you’re a business major, you should learn cost accountancy but you should also learn about good and bad or you’ll only be fit to head-up Enron. If you’re a historian, you need to learn some names and dates but you also need to learn how to be good lest you become a popular historian cum plagiarist. If you’re a political scientist, you must learn Rousseau and Hobbes but you also need to learn about goodness or you’ll go directly from the House of Representatives to the House of Corrections. And if you’re going to be a geneticist or a civil engineer or an attorney or a physician, you’ll want to learn about good and bad or you’ll have nothing to say about cloning or kickbacks or campaign finance or health insurance. Sure, you can ignore such matters but, if you do, will your life be worth living?

Perhaps you think you can avoid these questions by refusing to read philosophy books. Don’t be so sure. You may be able to fake it for twenty years or so, but if you’re like many of my former students, you’ll ultimately come face-to-face with questions of Purpose. And you may not like what you find. Life has a way of flooding you with such questions when you turn fifty and your boat can get swamped if you aren’t prepared. Sure, you can paddle around for awhile by grabbing onto a better brand of scotch or a better brand of blonde, but ultimately you’ll find that you can’t cheat Purpose. Someone or something, somehow and somewhere, will ask you: “Sure you’re smart and by now you’re rich. But are you good? Well, are you?”

You have every reason to be proud this afternoon of what you’ve achieved at U.T. You’ve gone beyond the assigned readings, actively responded in class, learned to use the library, spent fewer Thursday nights at the bars than your peers. So take satisfaction in what you’ve done and go out on the town tonight. You’ve earned it. And when you wake up tomorrow, grab some aspirin and then ask yourself this question: “Sure I’m smart, but am I good?” And never stop asking it.