University graduations are moving occasions: times of celebration of achievement and hope. There will be time for disappointment and frustration, time for cynicism and loss of ideals. But not now, not at graduation. Now is the opening up of possibilities to make a difference. Perhaps that is why the Americans call the completion of University studies: commencement. In Sweden they call it promotion – my fortnight was bookended by graduations in Yale and Lund. In both cases, the University itself put on a grand occasion to honour their graduates – to celebrate scholarship. It is wonderful and moving, and a special interlude in the rhythms of what we do the rest of the time.
When
in Britain the previous government raised university fees, the arguments seemed
to be that lucky university students will gain economic benefit from a degree;
therefore, they should pay. And Universities are pushed to show that they
contribute to the economy. They do. But universities are about much more than
enhancing earning power for individuals and the nation. They are places of
scholarship and commitment, of morality and reason. And graduation is a time to
celebrate this higher calling.
I
was at Yale on 18 May for their graduation. I come with my inequality baggage
of course. Yet awareness that these Yale students, many of them, had enormous
privilege just to get to Yale, and accumulate even more being a graduate,
didn’t stop my enjoyment of the splendid occasion. In the School of Public
Health graduation ceremony, Jordan Emont, who spoke, brilliantly, on behalf of
the students said they were united in their desire to contribute to a healthier
future for the population, to confront the challenge of health inequalities. He
spoke not of increased earning power but of the special bond with his fellow
students and their joy of learning.
I was slightly disoriented. The academic procession, in full academic regalia, was accompanied by Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March. Shades of ‘Last Night of the Proms’, the BBC’s annual patriotic flag fest. Land of Hope and Glory, a British patriotic ode, in the US? The Dean, Paul Cleary, assured me that there was no political significance; they always played Elgar at Commencement. Paul was a great host and clearly a great dean as one graduating student after another hugged him. An oxytocin surge to warm up a formal afternoon.
Yale
awarded me the Centennial Winslow medal in commemoration of the Founder of Yale
School of Public Health in 1915. I quoted Winslow. In 1940 he wrote: In 1890
public health was an engineering science. In 1940, it is a medical science.
Tomorrow it may be a social science. We must “pay attention the social
environment that man has made for himself and in which he lives and moves and
has his being…” Not a bad description of social determinants of health. Thank
you, Charles-Edward Amery Winslow.
Winslow
understood relative inequality. He wrote: “the sense of inferiority due to
living in a substandard home is a far more serious menace to the health of our
children than all the in satinary plumbing in the United States.” Wish I’d said
that.
Some American politicians seem to be mired in pre-enlightenment thinking. Quoting Kant, I suggest to the graduating students that each of them “have the courage to use your own understanding”; and still moved by my meeting with him, I quoted Bernard Lown: Never whisper in the presence of wrong.
Could
you take someone seriously who looked like this?
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