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Last night I gave a little welcoming pep talk (the program listed it as a "challenge") to our Honors College's new Buchanan Fellows (class of 2030). They're the twenty lucky recipients of the annual Full Ride scholarship endowed by MTSU's most famous (or infamous) alum, the libertarian Nobelist champion of "public choice" political economics James M. Buchanan.
My own belief is that his views, fully and consistently applied, would devastate our school and others like it. I hinted at that in my remarks. But my main mission was to encourage our "new and young" charges to make the most of their good fortune, and do their part to renew what Hannah Arendt called our "common world." In academia we take our financial support where we find it, and usually look elsewhere for our wisdom.
Welcome, Buchanan Scholars!
Good evening. It's a pleasure to speak with the newest class of Buchanan Fellows (and some of your greatest fans, and families whose financial and emotional investment in your success should also be recognized ). Are you really the class of 2030. Can that be right?! It sounds, to an older ear like mine, like a date out of science fiction. Tempus fugit, indeed!
But note and heed, kids, as we did in Philosophy class just the other day, the wisdom of the old Roman stoic Seneca: our problem is not that life is short but that we squander so much of it. (And he didn’t have the distraction of our internet and social media.)
The fact that you’ve been tabbed for this honor likely indicates, though,, that you’ve already devised some smart time-management skills and strategies and are receptive to learning more about that… and most everything else. You’re curious, motivated, eager to step up and begin preparing yourselves to accept the mantle of responsibility that a later philosopher, Hannah Arendt, considered the very point of education. Back in 1954 she said
“Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.” The Crisis in Education
So I am happy to report that we the staff and faculty of MTSU’s Honors College will not, if we can possibly help it, expel you or leave you to your own devices. In fact, I’ve already told you to put your devices away during class. (Sorry, sometimes the dad jokes just can’t be denied.)
But seriously, you are here because we have the greatest confidence in your potential to help renew our world. And our world desperately needs you, and your distinctive & unique contribution of something new and unforeseen by us. We don’t know how you’re going to pull it off, but we do believe in you. We believe you’ll come up with a pleasing answer to the question I’ve posted in caricature form just outside my office door. It depicts the great American philosopher/educator William James pausing from a hike to muse, on a rock beside beautiful Lake and Mount Chocorua at his summer getaway in New Hampshire, on “the really vital question for us all: What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?” And we’ll welcome your response the sooner the better, please.
James Buchanan graduated from this university — then Middle Tennessee State Teachers College — in 1940, before going on to a PhD from the University of Chicago and a stellar academic career at the University of Virginia and UCLA among others. He came from a farm family that felt the same financial strain as most of rural Middle Tennessee in the 1930s, and he paid his own way through school doing farm work. Asked later why he pursued higher education at all, he was blunt: he said it was "better than plowing." A professor helped arrange a graduate fellowship for him, and without that one fortuitous personal act of generosity, he always said, he'd probably have ended up teaching high school or working at a bank. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) Instead, that fellowship carried him to a PhD, and eventually to Stockholm, Sweden in 1986 to accept his Nobel Prize in economics.
Buchanan's own terse description of his theory: “politics without romance.” If you want government or any other public institution to work well, he said, don't count on its executors being angels or saints. We’re all human. Sometimes we’re all too human.
True, that. But we can reasonably insist on politicians and educators being responsible to their public trust and the common good, and we can fund them adequately to do it. This, frankly, is where I must acknowledge that Buchanan has been a controversial figure in the crossfire of polemical debates around his economic views and their political application. Duke historian Nancy MacLean came to our campus a few years ago to discuss her book Democracy in Chains, itself also controversial, which alleges that Buchanan’s work provided intellectual cover for efforts to insulate policy — and public institutions like this one — from democratic accountability and public investment. We can’t begin to settle that here, nor in any case is this an appropriate occasion to try. Let’s just admit that it’s complicated, and that MTSU and institutions like it exist because taxpayers long ago decided that an ambitious but financially challenged rural middle Tennessee farm boy's education, for example, is well worth subsidizing. Buchanan’s own family, and so many others through the years, likely could not have afforded the expense of higher education without it.
Whatever any of us may finally think of Buchanan's economic and political philosophy, his generosity toward this university and our Honors College is indisputable and we are grateful. For years during his life, he personally funded what became the Buchanan Fellows program. And when he died in 2013 at ninety-three, a bountiful gift in the millions and his actual Nobel medal came our way. He never forgot where he came from, or the public institution that propelled his ascent. He understood the power of renewal, and he too believed in you– “the new and the young.”
Very few of us, looking at American politics right now, would call the current generation of officeholders romantic heroes — let alone saints. We don't expect you to be saints either. We do expect you to rise above mean-spirited petty partisanship, and to recognize an obligation to make and support responsible public choices that serve not only yourselves, but the public you're part of.
As Theodore Roosevelt famously reminded us, credit belongs to the man or woman “in the arena.” Being bold in the pursuit of truth and ideals means accepting that you will make mistakes along the way. But as William James wisely observed, our errors are usually not such awfully solemn things; they are, in fact, our lifelong instructors if we remain willing to learn from hard experience and display the integrity of lifelong learners.
Integrity. That word is chiseled into the stone of our Honors building, alongside others like curiosity, creativity, commitment, faith, character, discipline, and of course, honor. So there’s your charge: go and be curious, creative, committed, faithful, disciplined. Ask lots of questions. Listen to your teachers and to your peers. Build characters of integrity and honor. Help renew our common world. And have fun doing it.
Your time at MTSU can and should (and if we have something to say about it, will) be so much more than vocational training and networking. The university is more than just another voracious mouth at the public trough. It can be the life-altering source and sustenance of your most positive, promising, and rewarding lifelong devotion, a devotion to the perennial pursuit of knowledge and wisdom… which is also the lifeblood of a functional democracy. That can endure only when peopled by an educated, engaged, empathic, public-spirited citizenry.
We’ve heard a lot lately about the debilitating and addictive snares of social media and the internet, and the potential pitfalls of AI. But there are positive addictions too. As one recent philosopher of education has written,
“A [good] student has a study habit she cannot shake. She needs to study, wants to study, cannot stop (and doesn’t want to). A student is bound up with study and studies not from calculation but because of an almost overpowering bond or commitment.”*
Addiction to study, learning, and personal growth is something you can take with you in 2030, along with that coveted credential and diploma. We’ll all be better for it if you do.
Have a great semester and a terrific TrueBlue tenure at what our longtime but soon-retirting University president McPhee always calls this great institution. We’re glad you’re here. Again, welcome and thanks for coming.
==*What Could a University Be?: Revolutionary Ideas for the Future (On Campus) by Robert B. Gibbs
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