DEAN'S LETTER

Let me start with some report of ways the Institute is flourishing. Class 13 will be starting December 5, 2003. We have a stellar mentor. Sarah Oelberg has committed for the three years and will draw upon other members of the adjunct faculty. If you know of persons who should be in this class, please get them in touch with Kristin Wintermute for more information and applications.

The Institute's adjunct faculty will be focusing on "Democracy--its problems and its challengers" for the 2004 Colloquium, Never in my lifetime has this topic been so necessary; never since 1865 has democracy been so threatened!

All of us need words to describe ourselves and our culture. But we often fall into verbal traps that obscure rather than illuminate. Think of "information society." We are indeed overwhelmed by bits of information. But how to organize them? Once one could try to distinguish "winds of doctrine" from "hot air." Not so easy now. Start with the sad fact that most US citizens only get whatever news they have via TV. Add the fact that the major channels are controlled by a small group of corporations driven by advertising revenues rather than any journalistic ambitions. It is no wonder that half of the citizenry still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Alternative information is available, but not very readily. It requires subscriptions, the web, and lots of time and patience.

Let me specifically address US readers now. We are indeed a hyper-power, and imperial power. And this carries enormous responsibilities. We can all-too-easily destroy the UN, abrogate treaties, alienate allies, and invade countries that we dislike. If they are too strong (China), we speak somewhat more engagingly. If they are smaller but nuclear (North Korea), we try to get their neighbors to push them. If we have had continuing bad relations (Iran), we bluster. If they differ with us (Germany and France), we insult. If they support our positions (England, or at least Tony Blair), we exploit and undercut. If they serve us military (Pakistan), we bribe and coddle. If they fail to support (Turkey), we cut aid. If they question our timetables (the UN), we bypass. If they fail to enthuse (Canada), we ignore them. If they push older agendas (Mexico), we turn our back. If they are without "strategic" usefulness (Rwanda, Liberia), we fail to hear their pleas. And if they fail to hail us as liberators (Somalia), we abandon them. If opposing sides share the same Christian (if not varietal) religious umbrella and have US partisans (Northern Ireland; Croatia and Serbia), we opt out. Note that this dismal list of failures is only contemporary. Add to it a string of botches since we created the Monroe Doctrine and the list becomes staggering.

Experiences such as these should have taught us the limitations of military power. Utility destruction seems a specialty of "smart bombs." Human murder is easy ("collateral damage") and invisible if all the journalists are "embedded." Regime change has been easy with weak regimes (although Mullah Omar, Osama Bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein seem still alive--somewhere). Culture destruction (Baghdad's library and museum) is quite easy.

Nation rebuilding, however, calls on different skills, more resources, different knowledges, and much, much more time. Our track record here is miserable, and almost none of our military interventions have brought democracy to the conquered. When our political leaders cannot understand the complexities of Islam or Christianity, we can hardly expect more from teenaged military personnel. We fund the military-industrial complex generously while essentially ignoring police functions, the Peace Corp, AmeriCorps and similar constructive forces.

What we need is a re-emphasis upon the continuing themes of Enlightenment thought, with special stress upon the articulation then of universal values. Of course humans--not embedded in nature or divine's wills, make values. Of course they often conflict, and continual re-ordering is necessary. The abiding concern of humanism has been the creation of human societies that will maximize the flourishing of all the planet's citizenry. This is not an abstract task but one fought out "on the slaughter bench of history" (Hegel's apt phrase). Humanists must always be correcting the accounts of history in their societies--never ignoring the negatives as they work to expand the positives.

The US is now being smothered under rhetoric of "patriotism," an assumption of unity that distorts history and masks major economic and political realignments. The dominant ideology has accelerated the inequality of wealth and almost destroyed the commitment to a common good. The slogans that conceal these processes are drawn from a kind of libertarian individualism that is the very opposite of humanism's vision of universal values in a world community of persons of equal dignity, a world committed to the advancement of knowledge that benefits all.

The critics of Humanist Manifesto I (1933) were shocked by its abandonment of supernaturalism. But for some, its "anti-capitalism" was the real shocker. The fact is that the Great Depression had re-taught those perceptive humanists the wisdom of Adam Smith and other Enlightenment thinkers. No human activity can improve society unless there is an underlying value of commonwealth--a shared space where education and the arts are supported because they are the engines of human happiness. What religions at their best might have aspired to accomplish, liberated persons could indeed accomplish this more effectively for themselves.

We humanists need to see that US history is understood and taught honestly. Competing visions have clashed from our beginnings. Jefferson's experiment in democracy required continual nurture since it had no cosmic supports and relied on human efforts. Madison relied on "reason and conscience" to generate the best decisions within the new democratic society. Rejecting appeals to tradition or to religious and political authority, these founders-- along with Washington, Mason, Franklin, and Adams--produced a secular Constitution in both the literal sense and, more importantly, in substance. They were fully aware of the clashing interests in their own time and in the human future, and of the human responsibility to learn from the compromising of these clashes. Call this "the human and experimental" strand in US history.

More "traditional" citizens relied on selected authority points for their visions of truths that could remain fixed and eternal--Geneva, Canterbury, Wittenberg, Rome. What the federal government could not constitutionally do, the traditionalists did at state and local levels. Lincoln's theologizing of the experimental view of history ("the almost-chosen nation," "the last best hope" society) articulated the more encompassing, national vision. In the twentieth century, the courts began to apply the federal vision to the states. The present Supreme Court has begun reversing this evolution, using "states rights" as a slogan.

Think of the essentially innovative additions to planetary history occurring since the Civil War--public education, organizing rights for workers, regulation of monopolies, votes for women, progressive taxation, child labor regulation, civil rights for ethnic minorities, freedom and privacy for reproductive rights and sexual orientation. None of these have been fully implemented, none are without challenge, none are secure from setbacks.

Critics will say that all of these progressive concepts make up modernity. In US history, the more "established" churches adapted to this modern world, however grudgingly and gingerly. A variety of fundamentalist religions, rejecting this modernization, have split off. Precisely because of freedom of religion in this society, they have been able to flourish, attract financial support, and achieve political power. The recent invasion of Iraq illustrates this. President Bush used a very religious rhetoric to defend his belligerence, but only two major religious groups supported him (Southern Baptists and Missouri Synod Lutherans). He, in fact, refused to discuss the morality issue with the National Council of Churches or with representatives of his own Methodist denomination. Yet obviously his unique private religiosity resonated with many citizens.

Why this enormous success of fundamentalism? Most scholars agree that a rejection of modernity is central. Obviously this does not mean technology. But it does mean the pace of social change, and the progress of science--both of which bypass conservative religions. And fundamentalism also needs an enemy--unbelievers, communists, liberals. Many US fundamentalists cherish a "victim" status, but seek to transform it by moves toward theocracy where their beliefs and moral stances could be required.

Can this anomalous influence be reduced? The older analysis that traced fundamentalism to lower economic status no longer explains. How about "improving education"? If the training is simply in technology or many of the sciences, that won't work. Nor will traditional basic education. Only when education seriously explores alternatives and consequences are students led to make choices for themselves. We need to be teaching comparative politics, comparative economics, and comparative religions. But improving education has been reduced to political toss ball, and equalizing educational opportunities faces enormous political and corporate resistance. The current levels of citizen apathy, apparent in every election, haven't emerged by chance. They serve too many interests all too well.

Pushing educational reform in these directions may be less glamorous for humanists than some of their customary causes. But the times are too serious for the luxury of restricting our concerns to traditional humanist causes. And there would be many allies.

Robert B. Tapp