On this occasion, I feel moved to speak about a problem that the distinguished members of this group can address with great power. It is a problem that, if not faced, will defeat our societydespite all the knowledge carried by people in this room and by the people with whom we work across the country and across the world.
"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line," William E. B. DuBois said one hundred years ago. Today, as we look forward to the beginning of the twenty-first century, the problem we face is still the color line and the extension of the color line: the gap between the rich and the poor.
But I want to talk about the solution. A major part of the solution is in this room and in rooms where people like Academy Fellows live and work. And we are less involved in solving the problem than we were thirty years ago because we are increasingly intellectual specialists; because we are busy; because we are sought out for our specific knowledge and must focus on that special knowledge; and because we are afraid to venture forth and appear naive, afraid even to appear hopeful for change.
It was not always so. When I read the history of this Academy's membership, I read about people who were specialists, like us, and who also had busy lives, as we do. Yet they were willing to move themselves to a level of participation in the body politic that many of us today find we simply cannot afford to pursue. If, twenty years from now, things have not changed in our lives, we who represent the most privileged DNA on this planet, with the fullest access to all that our species has developed over these many generationswe will be the genesis of the defeat of this species.
We do not have the privilege not to participate in the communities around us. When I say participate, I do not mean merely by giving a lecture in our field; I mean by being willing to participate as an educated citizen on a town council, a citizen board, or a planning and zoning commission. In earlier times, in this great democracy, people with our kind of privileged education and access to the most advanced science and technology were involved in building communities and making change. There has been progress in the last centuryprogress of which my colleagues have spoken so wisely, and progress that I think W. E. B. DuBois would be pleased to see. But what will happen as more and more educated people focus more and more on their own specialties? What will happen as more and more of us see how large the problems of society are and hesitate to become involved?
Our forebears in the Academy chose not to leave society's work to others, and we can make the same choice. In the city of New London, Dr. George Milne, an extraordinary biochemist who heads the Pfizer Corporation's Central Research Facility, has stepped forward with a set of other well-educated people. We all are working, in a way that none of us ever thought we would be called to do, to try to transform a whole city in which 70 percent of the children are on federal assistance. In a very short time, it has been possible to effect real change, using not only our specific knowledge but, more important, the expertise that people like you and I can call upon- using our experience in making contemporary processes work for our own organizations and our own children. With these three assetsour knowledge, our access to expertise, and our understanding of how to make the processes of contemporary America workwe were able, within four months, to generate economic development that has grown, over the past two years, into $715 million of new investments In a city with a tax base of $900 million.
This team includes a wide range of citizens: a chauffeur, bankers, a librarian, a college president, and Dr. Milne, who runs an almost $3 billion operation for Pfizer. This little team, working with the city council, the state, Pfizer, and Connecticut College, has been able to create more than 4,000 jobs in this city of 25,000 people. What I am telling you with these few statistics is that we, as educated people, have the power to be transforming assets-and not only in the academic disciplines in which we have gained expertise over the decades. We have the capacity to be transforming citizens in this country and, insofar as this country's aspirational documents affect the rest of the world, yes, in the rest of the world as well. We have the capacity to make a difference by being citizens who step forward and participate with fellow citizens, as members of this Academy have done throughout its great past.
In our time, the problem of the color line has become the problem of the separation of the rich and the poor, with its heavy color influence. We will continue to face that problem in the twenty-first century. The people who can address that problem most powerfully are the people sitting in this room and people like us across the country. We need to step up and work together with fellow citizens whose life opportunities have not given them what we have been able to derive from our lives in this great country. it is time for us to rededicate ourselves to the commitment to knowledge and practical service that this Academy calls us to make in a most special way, so that a hundred years from now, at our successors' induction, a celebration can occur that recognizes the end of the problem of the color line.
Communication © 1999, Claire L. Gaudiani.