VERITAS

Today is my 50^th college reunion.  I won’t be able to attend, which is a shame, because Al Gore will be the Class Speaker, Mr. Tick Tock the Climate Clock himself.  I'd love to have gone.  I haven't seen Cambridge for years, and it would have been a revelation to reconnect face-to-face with some of my classmates.   So as the next best thing,  I'm going to take a fantasy flight across the Atlantic and share with you the personal statement I wrote just a year ago for our Class of ’69 50^th Anniversary Report.  My theme was, “What did I learn at Harvard?”

Here it is.

The first thing I note as I sit down at my computer to write this personal statement for the 50^th Anniversary Report is that I had no computer 50 years ago.  None of us did.  So some things have changed dramatically.  Many of these changed things are technological in nature and their development is (mostly) for the good.  Some other things have not changed dramatically in the past 50 years.  Many of these unchanged things are sociopolitical in nature and their stagnation is (mostly) for the bad. 

 

While I would like to claim the broad, sweeping, over-arching, and time-insensitive point of view of the narrator, I know from my Harvard education that historical context is all.  So I must note that I write this essay during the Brett Kavanaugh SCOTUS confirmation hearings.  And what is that historical context?  Well, it’s deja’ vu all over again.  In 1969 it was the anti-Vietnam War protests.  Today it’s #MeToo.  But it’s still Us vs. Them, regardless of the camp with which one aligns, and the rancorous disrespect seems even stronger today than it was 50 years ago.  We are still talking past each other, closing our minds to what doesn’t fit with what we think we know.  And in the end, I fear we have learned little to create community and kindness; we have learned mostly how to recognize those who appear to be like us and those who appear to be different.  In 1969, we could blame that black-and-white, simplistic world view on lack of experience.  In 2019, we cannot in good conscience do so.  We own our shortcomings.  We are our education.  

And what of that education?  By most measures, personal and societal, my liberal arts education has brought great value.  Indeed, it has gifted me many tangible and intangible riches.  My years at Harvard opened a vast landscape lush with literature, music, art, architecture, history, science, sociology, and philosophy.  This landscape was animated by wonderful, intelligent, creative, sometimes quirky professors and classmates whose paths I would never have crossed were it not for Harvard.  For that I am most grateful. 

I grew up in a small, blue collar town in northern New Jersey, the first in my family to go to a college other than a state teachers’ college.  I am keenly aware of and humbled by the privilege bestowed on me by my Harvard degree.  It has opened many doors in my life, and I hope I was deserving of each advantage given and that I took none without merit. 

My horizons were widened in Cambridge and propelled me forward, sometimes pin balling from one decision to another.  I was almost a journalist, then tried architecture, and ultimately settled on a career in law.  Post-retirement, I managed a modern/contemporary art gallery—the most fun job of all.  I lived in Berkeley, Chicago, Athens, Pavia, Oakland, San Francisco, Castiglion Fiorentino, Palermo, and now Berlin, where my husband of 35 years and I plan to stay put with our three cats.  I admire Berliners.  They know a lot about looking unflinchingly at their past, and they are willing to be held accountable for their dramatic and deadly mistakes.  This is my continuing education, and I am grateful to Harvard for encouraging me to seek out and seize opportunities for personal growth.

But perhaps Harvard’s most indelible and enduring gift is encapsulated in its motto, Veritas, because without Truth we have nothing, really.  While we as students 50 years ago engaged in lively philosophical arguments about whether Truth is ever knowable as an objective reality, or whether we are constrained to experience it only subjectively as shadows in Plato’s cave, for me Truth has been the guiding light in my life.  It is the beacon that illuminates the way forward while revealing the path traveled.  Without Truth, all is barren and doomed. 

Today, as Truth is under assault, much as it was 50 years ago, but even more viciously; when journalists are mocked, vilified, and even murdered; when opinion is dressed up as fact in an obscene masquerade; and when politicians promulgate propaganda for personal and party gain, I cling to Veritas, because my life depends on it.  This is what I learned at Harvard.  This is what I know.  

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

Keep it veritas!

Marilyn