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Answer the Call

SPEAK UP—PRESIDENT LEHMAN IS LISTENING

aFTER READING THE INAUGURATION REPORT IN OUR last issue, a Harvardian dropped me a note that said: "[Harvard President Lawrence] Summers in his inaugural laid out all the answers to the questions that interested him, and has pretty much pursued that agenda; Lehman appears to be asking questions and opening up to the community."

Indeed he is. President Jeffrey Lehman's Call to Engagement has been broadcast across the Cornell community, and he has already met with faculty, students, staff, and alumni to encourage responses. As my friend in Cambridge noted, this sort of openness is hardly the rule among college presidents.

There has been some confusion about what Lehman '77 expects and how it should be presented. Some members of the community have found the length and complexity of Lehman's questions rather daunting. "To answer all these questions," one alumnus said to me, "I'd have to write a thesis." That's not what the president expects. "I don't want people to feel a duty to engage all the questions," Lehman told the Cornell Chronicle. "Deeper responses to fewer questions will be more valuable than shallow responses to more questions."

That's the key: find the question or questions that you feel strongly about, organize your thoughts, and send them off in an e-mail or letter. Lehman has said in several recent addresses that he wants "everyone who loves Cornell" to respond. That could make for a lot of mail, but he's ready to handle the onslaught. His staff is putting the incoming material into loose-leaf binders, preparing one set with the responses in chronological order and another sorted by subject.

At the January meeting of the Cornell Alumni Federation Board, we broke up into small groups to discuss the Call. My group was moderated by Trustee Denise Meridith '73, and we considered questions 1 ("What should we be teaching our students?") and 5 ("What does our land-grant mission mean today?"). Despite the complexity of these issues, all of us were quickly engaged and some really thought-provoking ideas came forth. To name just one: it was suggested that because the revolution in the life sciences is going to have such a profound effect on the future of human society, all undergraduates, regardless of college or major, should be required to be "scientifically literate" in order to better understand the issues.

The give-and-take we had at this meeting is a superb way to approach these questions, and I hope other alumni groups will engage in such discussions and submit their ideas. A few skeptics have concluded that the Call is a public relations gesture and probably won't have much effect on Lehman's agenda, but I don't think that's true. There's every indication that his desire to hear from all of his constituents—and his fellow alumni are certainly one of the most important groups—is deep and genuine. He wants our input, directly, without having it filtered and diluted by the Big Red bureaucracy. Don't miss this chance to shape the future of the university. It's a rare opportunity—and perhaps one that could happen only at Cornell.

— Jim Roberts

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