Good afternoon and welcome to Convocation. I want to thank Preyas for his eloquent and funny remarks, and congratulate again each of you who were recognized with awards. Your efforts and achievements stand as symbols for the potential, promise, and goodness that resides in each and every student here this afternoon.
Let me begin with a definition. Jeremiad: after the Biblical prophet Jeremiah and derived from the Book of Jeremiah: a lamentation, usually in prose, denouncing the present state of society and contrasting it with an idealized past. Jeremiads are usually delivered by someone old and cranky, and they often turn on a denunciation of the failings of a younger generation.
I do not plan on making that mistake. I have unbounded faith in you—and your generation— but I will admit: There is a bit of the jeremiad in what I wish to say to you today.
This summer I came across the following sentence and it’s lodged in my mind: “Education [is] civil defense against media fallout.” That’s a provocative claim, so let me read it again: “Education [is] civil defense against media fallout.” That’s from the great Canadian philosopher and media critic Marshall McLuhan and his book Understanding Media.
You will notice that there are actually two claims in that sentence, or rather, two metaphors. The first metaphor is about the media, which McLuhan implies is a kind of “fallout.” That word had a particular resonance in 1964 when McLuhan published Understanding Media. He was writing in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and not along after the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world close to global, nuclear catastrophe. So, it is a striking comparison: McLuhan likens the media to a toxic, radioactive cloud. Pervasive. Inescapable. And potentially lethal.
McLuhan was writing mainly about pre-digital forms of media, such as television, but—and here comes the lamentation part of my jeremiad—his metaphor is an even more apt description of the media environment we inhabit today.
You are, as one scholar notes, the first generation in history to move through childhood with a “portal” in your pocket that transports you into alternate digital universes. That sounds amazing: a bit like Star Trek. And in many ways, it is. I don’t mean to discount the potential of these new digital technologies to improve lives and enhance human flourishing. That is one of the tasks that awaits you: to figure out how to bend these new technologies, including new and emerging forms of generative artificial intelligence, in support of human ends and aspirations.
But the downsides—the fallout, as it were—from these new technologies are now clear. Studies have shown that young people spend between five and a half and seven hours a day of leisure time online, aside from time spent online for school and homework. Almost a quarter of those young people report that they are online almost constantly. The media environment we inhabit today is relentless, inescapable, seductive, and some evidence suggests, addictive, and it is designed to be so. Next to our families, these new digital media may constitute the most powerful influencing force in our lives. And not always to the good. They have—and the research on this is now abundant and clear—fragmented and dispersed our attention, left us more isolated and alone, and damaged our ability to sleep, to think, and to connect with others. And what is true generally of all age groups, appears to be particularly true for young people. For you.
How are we to think about Deerfield, and about the meaning and purpose of our own educations, at such a moment and amidst this powerful and encompassing media environment?
The answer to this question is found in McLuhan’s second metaphor: the idea of school as civil defense. For McLuhan, education—and schools, in particular—has an important and powerful role to play in safe-guarding our well-being, fostering attitudes and habits of scholarship, and protecting our public commons.
Last spring a member of the faculty forwarded to me an article, written by Molly Worthen, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, with the title: “Why Universities Should Be More like Monasteries.” That may not be a very enticing idea to you, but Professor Worthen’s analogy is not to be taken as exact and literal; she’s not suggesting that we wear cassocks, drink ale for breakfast, and observe vows of silence and poverty. What she meant is that schools are—and should be—places apart, and that we should organize them around pre-digital commitments and values: deep literacy, slow thinking, human connection, and spiritual quest. Schools, that is, schools like Deerfield, offer meaningful and necessary alternatives to the dominant media culture and the biases that define that culture: distraction, fragmentation, superficiality, sensationalism, coarseness, incivility, and, sometimes, meanness and cruelty.
That idea—school as an extended counter-argument to prevailing media norms—explains a lot of what we do here and why we do it. It explains some of our core values: face-to-face interactions, shared experiences, connection to the natural beauty of this valley, the pursuit of mastery. It explains why we enjoy meals together at sit-down, connecting with others with whom we might not otherwise connect, serving one another and contributing—albeit in a small way—to the collective work that keeps this place going (and perhaps we should have a greater share of that work). It explains our commitment to formality of dress in the classroom: properly understood, this commitment is neither conformist nor retrograde, but a way to distinguish the classroom as a space of scholarship and intellectual seriousness, distinct from all other spaces (keeping in mind that playfulness, imagination, and joy are essential dimensions of that seriousness). And, of course, it explains our approach to cell phones, which is our collective effort to still the unceasing din of our digital lives and to create—and hold—for ourselves and one another, a space for connection and attention. Together, we should seek to deepen those commitments.
This does not mean, as Professor Worthen’s analogy might suggest, that we retreat from the world. One of the reasons we decided to shape the Deerfield Forum this year around the United States Constitution, and stage a yearlong conversation about its past, present, and future—if indeed it has a future—is that we want to foster deep engagement on questions of civic and public concern, and we want that engagement to be of a particular kind: sustained, thoughtful, scholarly.
So, one of the things we do today is reaffirm—and recommit to—those scholarly commitments: to the virtues of slow, careful, deliberate thinking—what Professor Worthen calls “cognitive endurance”—and to the exploration of enduring questions. At our opening faculty meeting, Mr. Correa noted that we often lack time and opportunity to reflect on the questions that matter most: What does it mean to live a full, meaningful life, given our limited time on this earth? How do we best contribute to our communities and fulfill our obligations to others? Where do we find meaning and value and purpose? I would suggest to you that you’re probably not going to find answers to those questions on your phones.
Where, you might ask, will I find those?
I can’t answer that question for you. As Professor Worthen points out at the end of her essay, the point of school “is to help students become independent humans who can choose the gods they serve.”
But I can say this: I hope that your great quest will begin here, at Deerfield, in this community, and with this faculty and the challenges they will set for you.
Which, finally, brings me to this year’s recipient of the Greer Chair: Mr. Jan Flaska. I have been fortunate to have worked with Mr. Flaska both in Jordan and here at Deerfield. As much as anyone I know, Mr. Flaska embodies that idea of spiritual quest, and he epitomizes the very best of this faculty. Mr. Flaska is always on the move. Always planning that next adventure. Always thinking of others. Kind. Generous. Famous for his thank-you notes; I have a desk drawer full of them! A student of the world’s great religious faiths and ethical creeds, and an exceptionally caring teacher, mentor, and coach. As one of his students said about him: “The thing about Mr. Flaska, he’s all in!”
(Please help me in welcoming Mr. Flaska to the podium.)