For the last 2 years, I’ve been President of Kenyon College’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. (This is an august and notable position reached by being the last person to look at their shoes when the previous president announces they’re done.)
According to the script for our initiation ceremony, the President is supposed to offer brief remarks on PBK’s values of Friendship, Morality, and Literature. This year I think I got enough of it to share. One of the parents actually asked if he could get a copy, so that’s a good sign. (I handed him the copy I read from.)
Plus, in terms of blog-as-memory-aid, just in case I’m slow to look at my feet in some future year, I may want to be able to find this.
The script says that the president will now offer “brief remarks” on the Society’s values of Friendship, Morality, and Literature. I am aware that our new initiates are on their feet behind me… in my blind spot… so I will try to be concise.
What does it mean to learn in the company of friends? I think we mean the kind of discussion that is based not in being right, but in discovering together what is right. Not the kind of debate based on who can say the most the fastest with the best witty soundbites, but in honest exploration of the productive tension between different experiences, perspectives, and values. I think friendship is always based in a true care for the growth of the other… not ever in treating them as an other.
By morality, we can start by saying tell the truth. Tell it in all its messy, limited, nuanced, contextual glory, and note the differences between truths, judgments, and opinions. I think we also refer to the morality of citation. Give credit where it is due and take it where it is yours. Recognize your collaborators, your supporters, your inspiration, and be glad to hold those roles for others. This has never been easy, but I fear that it is becoming more complex as we outsource more of our thinking and expression to the people who run generative AI tools. Perhaps we can figure it out together, as friends.
And by literature, of course we mean poetry and literary novels, but also the scholarly literature, the literature in a good dataset, popular fiction and nonfiction, journalism, plays and movies and television, music, dance… TikTok and groupchat. Everywhere, where a human being has said “I was here! I saw some stuff and did some stuff and learned and felt some stuff and I want to share it with you.” Simone Weil wrote that “every being cries out silently to be read differently” and I hope your liberal arts education, here at Kenyon and before and after it, will equip you to read broadly, critically, and differently, always.
Better cite that image, huh? It’s from Wikipedia. A user called Sreejith K made this version by cropping and changing the format of an original by a user called Avraham.
