Enduring Messages to America’s Students
In October 1948, Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote an inspiring open letter to America’s students. As president of Columbia University, he’d received many letters from young people asking Shall I keep on with school? Or shall I plunge right off into “life”? His general answer remains as pertinent today as it was the month it was penned, when I was barely three years old. (Note: For emphasis, Eisenhower put key points in italics.)
“Dear Jack—or Margaret,” Eisenhower began. “The decisions we make as young people affect not only our whole life, but collectively affect the life of the entire country.” Having grown up 40 years earlier in a small Kansas town, Eisenhower felt fortunate to have come from stock that “set the school on the same plane as the home and church.” Back then, many youth left school early knowing that except for those few who could afford to pick a profession, most would likely end up working on the farm, a local store, creamery, or grain elevator.
Eisenhower’s role as Supreme Commander of Allied Expeditionary Forces in World War II, had given him an expanded worldview. “Today,” he wrote in 1948, “the business of living is far more complex than it was in my boyhood. No one of us can hope to comprehend all its complexity, even in a lifetime of study. But each day profitably spent in school will help you to understand better your personal relationship to country and world.”
He then cautioned, “If your generation fails to understand that the human individual is still the center of the universe and is still the sole reason for the existence of all man-made institutions, then complexity will become chaos.”
To develop fully your own character, you must know our country’s character. “It is to your practical advantage to learn America’s character and problems, in the broadest possible way, and to help to bring those problems to their solutions.” While America is a country where personal liberty is cherished as a fundamental right, Eisenhower called for “untiring alertness.” Liberty is easily lost.
“When America consists of one leader and a population of followers,” Eisenhower cautioned, “it will no longer be America.” Truly American leadership is not of any one man. It is of multitudes of men--and women. It was so in war, he wrote, “and you will find it so in the fields of peace.”
America’s true strength, he believed, was not in the superiority of our machines, “but in the inquisitive, inventive, indomitable souls of our people.” Every American boy and girl, he wrote, has an opportunity to be that kind of soul. “To be a good American, is a lifetime career, stimulating, sometimes exhausting, always satisfying to those who do their best.” It is the one kind of career that America cannot live without.
“Start now,” Eisenhower advised, “being a good member of your community, helping those who need your help, striving for a sympathetic understanding of those who oppose you, doing each new day’s job a little better than the previous day’s, placing the common good before personal profit. If the dignity and rights of your fellow men guide you in your daily conduct of life, you will be a good American.”
Eisenhower assured America’s students that they were not too young to make a difference. He reminded them that Alexander Hamilton had been a 17-year-old student attending what was then King’s College when he spoke passionately before crowds of New Yorkers on the political problems of the American Revolution. “Loyalty to principle, readiness to give of one’s talents to the common good, acceptance of responsibility—these are the measure of a good American, not his age in years.”
Eisenhower’s enduring message to America’s students on the value of the human individual and obtaining an education is as pertinent in 2022 as it was in 1948—perhaps even more so given today’s toxic political divide and the global nature of today’s complex and chaotic world.
In this month that marks the graduations of students around the country, one extraordinary keynote speech deserves special mention. New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern delivered her address at the first Harvard Yard Commencement since 2019. She opened with this warning. “When facts and fiction have become a matter of opinion and the trust that underlies democracies is being eroded, blind faith in the resilience of democratic governance is shortsighted.”
Ardern continues, “It ignores the fact that the foundation of a strong democracy includes trust in institutions, experts, and government—and that this can be built up over decades but torn down in mere years. It ignores what happens when, regardless of how long your democracy has been tried and tested…. It ignores the reality of what we are now being confronted by every single day.” Regarding social media, she cautions students that how they choose “to engage with information, deal with conflict and confront debate…all matters…. We have it within us to ensure this doesn’t mean we fracture.” And she concludes, “Be kind.”
Read Ardern’s Speech
Ardern’s forceful reminder: Democracies can die