Skidmore graduates largest class ever

	Janet Lucas Whitman '59 Chair, Board of Trustees
	President Philip A. Glotzbach Remarks
	Carter F. Bales Remarks
	Fred Wilso Remarks
	Raymond Sultan '09 President of the Senior Class Remarks
	Jacqueline Shydlowski and Rachel Roderman Senior Gift Chairs
	Gautam Dasgupta, professor of theater Remarks

In a ceremony Saturday that started in radiant sunshine and was threatened by rain but spared, the College sent into the world Saturday more than 640 members of the Class of 2009 – its largest class ever.

It was the College's 98th Commencement, held at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Thirty-five students in the College's University Without Walls program also were awarded degrees, as were 18 who received master's degrees through the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program.

Honorary degrees were awarded to Carter F. Bales, an emeritus director of McKinsey & Co., a past vice chairman of the Nature Conservancy who is a leading expert on the issue of climate change and cost-effective approaches to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and Fred Wilson, an artist who is widely recognized for the site-specific installations he has created to explore issues of racial bias, gender, class, politics and aesthetics.

Following the call to celebration by MALS graduate Jill Rafferty-Weinisch and Board of Trustee Chair Janet Whitman's "official welcome to the wide world," President Philip A. Glotzbach reminded the class of their collective reading of Seamus Heaney's translation of Sophocles' Antigone in their freshman year.

"One of the questions this play poses to us today is whether such deep-seated oppositions can admit of compromise or at least some other resolution short of tragic destruction of one or both sides," he noted. "The Palestinian-Israeli or the Sunni-Shiite conflicts come immediately to mind, but of course there are many others much closer to home – for example, between economic development and environmental responsibility." Understanding the logic of a conflict is one thing, Glotzbach said.

"Turning that understanding into a workable solution is quite another. And unfortunately, our inability to craft those solutions often leads to many more burials. So where does this leave us?" The best preparation one could have for approaching such conflicts is a liberal arts undergraduate education – one that sensitizes "you to the complexity of such human dilemmas" and "lets you explore ways of creatively rethinking them to see if, in a given case, there might be a way of untieing the Gordian knot."

"My hope is that you will retain your appreciation of complexity and always look to articulate the assumptions that underpin a given conflict," he continued. "Then look further to see how the assumptions on each side might interrelate and possibly even light a way forward toward agreement.  Finally, ask 'Who is best positioned to effect a solution?'  In most cases, the side with the most power should be prepared to make the first move toward compromise. 

"In real life, such work is always messy, complicated, and frustrating.  But if you persist, perhaps you can reframe a problem that previously looked insolubile and so create a resolution that avoids the path to destruction walked so inexorbly by Creon and Antigone.  In real life – as opposed to art – sometimes 'no drama' can be a pretty good idea."

Bales provided an overview of forces that are "driving the destruction of the natural world," painting a bleak picture of humanity's future if the world fails to agree on strong carbon emissions caps, continues to "burn coal as the cheapest form of energy, and world forests continue to be cut down for lack of economic incentives to keep them standing and growing."

"Under this scenario, you can hide out in Canada or Russia for a while, but global weirding will eventually get you," he said.  "Say goodbye to life on earth as we know it." "We should not rely on a rising consciousness of environmentalism or the actions of intelligent government," Bales argued. "Instead, we should engineer the economics to incent private behavior – corporate behavior – to align more closely with the public interest."

This can be done by four broadly linked initiatives, he said: committing to a declining cap on carbon emissions, getting serious about energy efficiency, doubling energy R&D spending and investing seriously in deployment of new technologies, and "tackling the uncapped sectors of forests, grasslands and agriculture to stop deforestation, promote reforestation, renaturalize grasslands, and introduce smarter farming practices to sequester carbon."

Reflecting warmly on the three years he spent at Skidmore with support from a Henry Luce Foundation grant from 2003 to 2006, Wilson called the College a "campus of the curious" and praised the Tang Museum as a "laboratory of ideas." He told the graduates that the three key qualities for success in any field are curiosity, creativity and compassion.

"Creative thought matters," he noted, "but now that you have graduated, creative action matters even more."

Selected by the graduating class to speak on the faculty's behalf, Gautam Dasgupta, professor of theater, discussed the "just and manifest satisfactions of a liberal arts education," a species of "useless knowledge" that is "not beholden to an agenda, an ideology, a hastily prescribed career path, or an overwrought professionalism."

"It is knowledge to be savored for its intrinsic claims to a life of the mind," he said. "Now is your time to dream, to imagine indeterminable horizons, to relish the rewards of indescribable sensations. Live your lives, if you can, in a state of becoming, buffeted by waves of perpetual exaltation. And live your lives, you must, always, as if each day is an increment on the day before." 

"I wish for you to be alert and wise to the iniquities and duplicities that shatter bonds between fellow human beings, between nations, between cultures, between religions," he continued. "Be on guard against rabid demagoguery and the humbuggery of false messiahs. Be not deluded by specious claims or meretricious demands on what you think is justly right and good. Be responsible custodians of our planet and its resources, for therein lies your nourishment. Be exemplary public citizens, keenly engaged and attuned to the welfare of society. And most important of all, be humble as you conduct your experiments with truth, be generous with your loving, and be kind to the weakest and the least privileged of those amongst you."

Tags: fred wilson, carter f. bales, gautam dasgupta, philip a. glotzbach, commencement, janet whitman