Part of the job of the University Chaplain is to be a prophet. Just over sixteen years ago I preached my first sermon in Tufts' Goddard Chapel. On Wednesday of this week I preached my last sermon from the same pulpit. In both cases I used a scriptural text from the Hebrew prophet Isaiah. In brief it says: "Seek justice, rescue the oppressed."
On that day in September of 1984 I spoke about establishing an ever more just and loving human community at Tufts, as well as relating effectively through social service and action to the larger world beyond Tufts. A lot has happened in this last decade and a half that has been very exciting. We now have national recognition that was unimagined back then. We are getting better and better students each year and our academic excellence keeps transcending. There are spectacular new buildings and resources and programs. Fund-raising has been terrific. Wonderful people have been working their hearts out for this institution and the world beyond - often far beyond the call of duty - in all parts of the University on all of our campuses. I am very grateful to have had the privilege of working here in these times.
What about that prophetic voice, though? Despite all of our successes, what could be said about Tufts now in the spirit of Isaiah? First, I think we should be working very hard to get back to the needs-blind admissions standard we abandoned in the early 1990's. Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor, wrote in last September's Chronicle of Higher Education that "almost all the increase in the proportion if 18-24 year olds in post secondary institutions in recent years is attributable to children from middle and upper income families... less than 30 percent of children from families in the bottom quarter [of income are] enrolled in post secondary education - a percentage that has been dropping since 1993, even as college enrollments among more affluent students have been rising."
Tufts is part of this trend. I believe, along with Reich, that the rush toward selectivity and exclusivity in higher education, without adequate financial aid to support the needy, is exactly the wrong direction to take for a society that is already becoming less equal, where the income gap between the top and bottom ten percent of earners is wider now than at any time since the 1920s, according to the US Census Bureau. I have some hope that Tufts' stated commitment to increase financial aid dramatically will lead back toward needs-blind admissions and creative recruiting of low-income student rather than simply toward competition with other colleges to raise offers for a known pool of high school stars.
Another prophetic challenge to Tufts is directed to students here now, especially to those students - rich, poor, and in-between - who are most concerned about social inequality: Seek justice, not just charity. As advisor to the Leonard Carmichael Society, I have written and spoken to its members and leaders about the UCLA surveys which show that incoming freshmen nationwide are more interested in community service now than at any time since the surveys began in the 1960s, but disturbingly, that same research shows that students these days have the lowest political awareness ever. That means they don't understand the social and institutional conditions that lie behind the poverty, hunger, homelessness, malnutrition, faltering public education, and other problems that the Leonard Carmichael Society addresses. There's a real danger that current LCS volunteers are largely treating symptoms without looking at causes. I must say that I've been thrilled to see the upsurge in student political activism on campus this semester, from rallies on the library roof to the actions taking in and around the admissions building last week by nondiscrimination advocates. I was particularly impressed to see how well TSAD had done its homework in the 14-page press packet it distributed.
Another target for prophetic challenge is the trend toward seeing higher education solely as a business. I've been a lecturer at the Harvard Business School for the last decade, and I certainly don't have anything against business per se. Yet, it's dangerous when we begin to apply a pure bottom-line business model to all of our public institutions in all that they do, including universities, social service organizations, hospitals, and churches, not to mention government. Of course non-profits should be held as strictly accountable for the money they raise and spend as for-profits are, and there are many functions within such institutions - like accounting - which need to follow traditional business principles. But students are not just consumers and faculty and staff are not just selling services.
To be a community of scholars advancing knowledge together requires a kind of freedom of inquiry on the one hand and a mutual respect on the other which are quite different from the normal business environment. And universities are not just training students to be productive economic units in the workforce, but also to be good parents in families, effective citizens in a body politic, aesthetically sensitive people who appreciate culture, and even spiritually aware participants in communities of faith and interfaith dialogue.
There's much more to say about the prophetic challenge to the Tufts of the 21st century - like how to claim to be a family, as we do, in an era of outsourcing long-tern employees, and how to invest our endowment portfolio consonant with the core values of the University. Yet, I was taught in Preaching 101 that three points are enough, and I'll assume that's true for a swan-song, too. So, I leave you with my hopes and dreams for a Tufts equally accessible to rich and poor, a Tufts promoting global citizenship which is justice-oriented rather than charity-oriented, and a Tufts which remembers to be business-like where appropriate but crystal-clear that it's not a business.
I've loved my years here. I thank you for each and every one of those years and I wish you each true fulfillment.
Reverend Scotty McLennan is University Chaplain of Tufts.
