Ruth Simmons is the President of Brown University. I had a chance to hear her speak and then joined her for a dinner yesterday. In the speech, she described her path from a small, East-Texas town where she was the twelfth child of sharecroppers to the presidency of an Ivy League university. I was particularly interested in her description of Houston in the 1950s. She said that a tight network of very talented Black teachers and ministers, plus a few lawyers and doctors, led the community and collaborated closely to help young people–they raised money for college tuition, picked out students’ clothes, taught and counselled them. Because of segregation, these adults had no options other than to hold a few professional jobs within the Black community. This restriction was deeply unfair, but it meant that children who came from deep poverty had access to skilled and charismatic people in their own neighborhoods.

Dr. Simmons’ parents were suspicious of schooling and constantly told her to take her nose out of books. She suggested three reasons for this attitude: her parents worked with their hands and distrusted “idleness”; they were afraid that Ruth might question racial injustice and be killed; and they worried that she might lose touch with (and respect for) her own family. A final reason could have been a kind of “bargain with reality.” Since other opportunities had always been closed for African Americans, especially in rural East Texas, sharecroppers developed a pride in manual labor and a hostility to books to help validate their own lives. But Simmons was also exposed to community leaders for whom education was a route to freedom. Despite centuries of oppression, her teachers and other professionals prepared youth to become leaders in the hope that better opportunities would arise. I suspect that their hope was an essential precondition of the Civil Rights Movement.

I just met a group of Midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy who are looking for research projects on political participation (for their poli.-sci. seminar). Most of them will look at big data sets like the National Election Study and try to figure out relationships and trends. That’s fine, but I encouraged some of them to consider interviewing service people who had done “nation-building” work in Iraq. During the discussion, someone mentioned an officer (probably in the Army rather than the Navy or Marines) who had become the de facto mayor of a Bagdhad neighborhood. I’m curious about what skills and instincts for political work people in his position feel they possess. They may have gained good skills and instincts from growing up in the US or from their formal military training. But I’d also like to know what they feel they’re missing, and what they are learning from their service in Iraq. Do they think that they can use the political and civic skills they acquire “over there” after they get back home?

The Midshipmen I met today are not ideally placed to conduct this research, although a few seemed game to try. I may also try to persuade some Maryland undergraduates to interview people at the National Guard’s 352nd Civil Affairs Command, located near our campus. This is a specialist unit that?s been assigned to Iraq. I believe at least one officer has also been an elected official in Prince George’s County, MD. Whatever we think of the invasion and occupation, it should create opportunities to learn how to build communities and democracies.

Last December, some colleagues and I held focus groups for 66 undergraduates at the University of Maryland. I thought their views of campus diversity were interesting and would generalize to other institutions.

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It’s easy to criticize the man who gave the Inaugural Address yesterday?for his hypocrisy in not promoting human rights and freedom in allied countries that happen to be tyrannies, for his incompetence in the effort to develop democracy in Iraq, or for his failure to protect civil rights in the United States. However, the speech itself was a ringing endorsement of traditional American liberalism: internationalist, committed to human rights, ecumenical, and respectful of pluralism. There was not a conservative word in the speech, for better or worse.

I think it?s important to take statements as well as people seriously?and then to hold the speakers to what they say. Thus I applaud the speech (hear! hear!), but I hope we can remember which countries need the most attention if we are really going to make it “the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” According to FreedomHouse (pdf), political liberties are least available in: Burma, Cuba, Haiti, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe. Civil liberties are most absent in: Burma, Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Turkmenistan. Note the mixture of nations on the Bush enemies list (Cuba, North Korea, Syria), countries that are rarely mentioned by the US government or press (Swaziland, Turkmenistan), and countries that collaborate with us closely in military matters (Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia). Our good friend Pakistan just barely misses the FreedomHouse list of worst offenders. What’s the plan for Pakistan?