Provost's Speeches

Provost Paul N. Courant's Remarks at the 80th Annual Honors Convocation "Responsible Citizenship"

We are here today to honor our best teachers and best students (and the distinction is subtle, because teachers learn and students teach. Indeed, that's what makes it so much fun to be a university professor.) The accomplishments of those who are gathered here are extraordinary—in scholarship, in the creative arts, in the classroom, in the broader world that is in some ways an extended classroom. This is a community in which at our best we learn and teach, and serve, in everything that we do.

This gathering is a special moment in the rhythm of our academic year. We start in September, get acquainted and reacquainted and organized. There are mid-terms in October, and we (students and faculty) get serious about finals and term projects and all of the other things that need to get done before our all-too-brief break that starts in mid-December. Then we do it again, this time in the mud and slush and unrelenting gray of the Ann Arbor winter. (Most places call it the Spring Semester. We speak truth here—it's winter semester.). The first harbinger of spring is this Honors convocation, which tells us that the next round of term projects and finals, this time capped by spring commencement and daffodils and tulips, is not too far away.

The theme of today's convocation is "responsible citizenship." Every day we see reasons to worry about the quality of citizenship: the demise of courtesy in everyday life, a lack of community spirit, questionable behavior among powerful leaders in politics and business, and most strikingly the cynicism and political disengagement among young adults. We are told that young adults don't have confidence in their government, or the political system more generally, to produce the lives that they want for themselves and others.

This University was founded in the belief that it could help to create a society of responsible citizens: Chiseled into the face of Angell Hall is the following quotation from the Northwest Territory Act of 1787: "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."

American universities are civic institutions that, from the very beginning, had strong public purposes. Many of American's first universities were active in building the new nation. Colleges and universities founded later, like the University of Michigan, joined the European emphasis on research with the American ideals of service, practical engagement, and democracy. We are not just knowledge producing entities or providers of instruction, but shapers of identity, shapers of citizenship.

We believe that every student should experience interdependence with one another, the challenge of constructive debate with those whose values differ, and the satisfaction of persuasive participation in a democratic process while they are here. The best students leave us willing and able to assume public responsibilities in the nation and the world. We aspire to have each of our students create work of lasting civic value: work that builds and sustains our public goods and collective resources, work that may be paid or voluntary, but work that matters to people whose interests and backgrounds may be quite different than one's own.

We know that our best students are also willing to run the risk of being wrong, of being unpopular, of being alone. Excellent scholarship and responsible citizenship require great individual skill and dedication in the context of a diverse, noisy, vibrant and often confusing environment. In the university, this is how we learn and teach. In the world, this is also how we learn and teach and it enables us to contribute to the societies in which we live.

One often hears of the community of scholars—a community of which all who we honor today are citizens. It is a community that cherishes disagreement and that supports the risk of failure that is inherent in the possibility of success. At its best, the University is a place where people can learn from each other easily, and teach each other easily, even though learning and teaching are invariably hard work. The more different are our initial points of view, the more different our backgrounds and expertise, the harder is the work, and the more there is to learn from each other. As citizens of this community, we create the environment—individually and collectively—that allows us to succeed. This is exactly the lesson that we take the broader world.

The most vital act of responsible citizenship is the creation of a society in which responsible citizens will thrive; The students and teachers whose accomplishments we celebrate today have shown that they are up to that difficult task.