Commencement Address

Dr. Gabriel Campbell

This is the full text of Dr. Campbell's address.

Standing here in Parker Hall, where I stood 41 years ago at my own graduation and my father stood 71 years ago at his, almost makes me feel like time has stood still-at least until I look at the grey in my beard. I even wonder, if I open the hymnals, will some of the scribbled poems, so proudly and furtively written in the back flaps by an unnamed Alter and myself, still be there? Hopefully, they were long ago recycled as peanut and channa envelope rolls.

It's good for Woodstock to have alumni-which now includes you-who remember some of the naughty things we did as students here. It increases the guilt factor when it comes to alumni fund-raising drives. I suspect I will be paying for my damaging scribbles and for the time we brought a cow into the classrooms the rest of my life. We had thought a little fresh gobar on the floors would add a little purity, as it does on floors of mud houses in the villages of South Asia-but the administration somehow didn't see it that way.

I am still afraid Mrs. Saroj Kapadia will spot me doing something wrong and never invite me for tea again. Fortunately, I'm sure none of you did anything naughty, so you can morph into good alumni for all the right reasons-for all the wonderful reasons we celebrate being Woodstock alumni: abiding gratitude for the superb education we have received; immense thankfulness for the insight, guidance, caring, and commitment given to us by remarkable Woodstock teachers and staff who have forever shaped our lives; deep attachment to a place so stunningly beautiful, so unique, that it reappears in our dreams long after we have left here, and, perhaps most important; help in developing core values, an inner compass, and a spiritual appreciation that will help us steer through the good and the bad times ahead.

Last Friday, I was in Kathmandu, witnessing two to three lakh Maoist rebels and onlookers converge on a city with one of the highest internet café densities anywhere. Some of them had never been to a city before, had not been exposed to electricity or even to automobiles and vehicles before they were herded onto buses. Some of them could have been from the eighteenth or nineteenth century, espousing a Marxist ideology long ago abandoned by China, trying to overthrow a monarchy that itself is anchored in past centuries. But in Kathmandu, they also found a world of global television, instant SMSs, Skype and blogs, UN human rights observers, and styles of talk and interaction far removed from the village.

Living and traveling in the Himalaya, I am still not sure what year it is: the year 1124 as celebrated by the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley? 2006 of the Gregorian calendar, or 2067 of the official Vikram Sambat calendar? And in what decade of what century will the Nepali people shape their immediate future-dictatorship of the proletariat, return to absolute monarchy, liberal democracy, or on-going insurgency? We don't know yet, but we do know that this convergence of ideologies and centuries provides a whole new cauldron for which those from only one decade and century can have little understanding.

This time travel and the lessons it imparts are part of an extra gift Woodstock gives to each of us that even the best of most other schools cannot provide. With the privilege of living and being educated here in the Himalaya has also come the opportunity to live in multiple time zones at once-the chance for time travel that others can only see in movies.

In far western Nepal, people greet each other on the trail with the question, "Kharcha khayo?" or "Bhat khanubayo?" Not namaste, but, "Have you eaten?" The Himalaya and even areas within short walking distance of Woodstock confront us with the basics: food; the ways in which it is grown, harvested, milked, and grazed; the ways in which it is processed and cooked; the ways in which human labor has produced livelihoods for centuries-all more than evident around us. As we walk back into the hills, we walk back in time. Just as when we walk into town and later into our future college environments, we walk into a world that seems like the future to villagers here. Woodstock's unique educational setting will, and already has, transformed your lives and given you an ability to empathize and appreciate people from vastly different cultures and time zones.

The West's fearful responses to the events of 9-11 demonstrate why the world so desperately needs global citizens-such as yourselves-who can understand that even if people are different, they deserve to be given the respect and dignity that are the rights of all humans. Psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan proclaimed that the purpose of psychology and education was to enable us to understand behavior that seems crazy or different and turn it into something we understand as human-and thus respond to that behavior in empathetic, human terms.

In my case, I credit my career in anthropology and development to my admiration and curiosity over the charcoal carriers who used to carry charcoal into Landour and Mussoorie from down near the Aglar. How could they carry over 100 kilograms? What were their lives like at home? What did they think about us privileged kids in Mussoorie schools?

This led me to doing research in Himachal Pradesh and in Jumla, far northwestern Nepal, where the road head was a ten days' walk away-and has still not reached the villages. Poverty was deeply etched in their lives; most of them could only survive by spending many months working as coolies here in Mussoorie and in other places in India. You have seen them-black clothes, faces darkened by work in the sun.

And yes, that poverty has had huge consequences. Women yelled at each other from rooftops over a handful of buckwheat or rice. Abandoned wives pleaded with the shamans to put divine pressure on their husbands to give them at least one cotton sari. The youth and excluded social groups welcomed the Maoist rebels and their facile ideology.

But, there were also delightful surprises. The Jumlis have the richest love song culture in all South Asia. Underneath their poverty and traditional caste structure, they share an understanding of all humans as being equal in love, equal before the Divine. One of their songs goes,

Patanka pallo patti
bhedile bhya garyo;
hitta milyo, citta milyo,
jatle ke garyo

On the far side of the high meadow
the sheep are baa-ing;
if hearts meet, if minds meet,
what difference does caste make?

Down deep, people everywhere understand that despite our huge differences, our mixture of identities, cultures, languages, religions, and all that divides us, we share fundamental commonalities. But that does not mean that these differences-even the differences between generations-are not a source of anxiety even in our own lives.

My grandfather, the one from the small town in Ohio rather than the one who lived in India, startled his whole family at the age of 90 by suddenly venturing outside the United States for the first time in his life to visit my mother in Delhi and my wife and me in Kathmandu. Our old friend, eminent anthropologist Dr. Prayag Raj Sharma, asked if he could interview him. I said, "Of course, can I sit in?"

Like any good interviewer, he first established rapport by finding commonalities-in agricultural implements that were the same as in the states a century ago and the like. He then came to his main question:

"I know you have lived through major changes in social values in your own country-from the time when young people followed mostly in their parents' footsteps, asked parents for permission to marry, and so on, to modern periods when young people are exposed to levels of sex, drugs, disco, and other behavior that we find disturbing and even shocking. Many U.S. college dorms are even coed. We in Nepal are also just starting to go through these changes and are very worried for our children. What should we do?"

My grandfather, a simple man from a small town, said, "You are right. As each new generation has come along and changed the limits of their behavior, I have worried for them. The dangers of getting lost, addicted, or off track are much higher than we faced. But then, I always asked myself, 'Would I rather have been born now, with higher risks and higher freedom to choose who I want to become, or born back in my days when life was so much more controlled?' And I always realized that I would rather be born now."

The greater freedom to choose and define your own careers, lives, and identities rather than be confined by those handed to you by tradition has greater risks-and the societies in which you will be living are more fluid and scary-but I suspect most of you are like my grandfather and value this freedom to choose.

As Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen* has helped us understand, lack of freedom is poverty. Freedom comes from having "capabilities" or power to act, or as Sen says it, the "freedom to do and be." Basic capabilities are the ability to earn daily food and shelter, but beyond that there are increasing levels of capabilities that increase one's freedom to do and be. One of the biggest is education, and you have been fortunate to get the best. Regardless of your economic status, this is true freedom from poverty, a true passport for life. I know you will use it well.

As fellow international paharis, as proud graduates of Woodstock School, I know that each of you will treasure your freedom, your diversity, and your opportunity to continue having fun! That is also a big freedom you have earned, and I hope you had a great party!

Woodstock zindabad! Class of 2006 zindabad! Go Intrepid!

Thank you for this opportunity to join you today.

*In 1998, Amartya Sen, professor of economics at Trinity College, Cambridge, won the Nobel Prize for his contributions to welfare economics. He was born in 1933 in Santiniketan, (now Bangladesh), and educated at St. Gregory's School, Dhaka; Rabindranath Tagore's school, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan; Presidency College, Calcutta; and Trinity College, Cambridge. Before returning to Cambridge, he taught at the London School of Economics, Oxford, and Harvard.