1999 Induction Ceremony
"Challenges of the New Century" was the theme of the 1999 National
Induction Ceremony, held in Cambridge on Saturday, October 2, Some 350 members
and guests gathered at the House of the Academy to honor newly elected Fellows
and Foreign Honorary Members. The evening ceremony was preceded by an
orientation session that introduced new members to the history and current
programs of The Academy.
Regional inductions were held at the Field Museum in Chicago on
October 23 and at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla on
November 6. In total, some 157 Fellows and 27 Foreign Honorary Members were
elected to the Academy in 1999.
The National Induction Ceremony opened with a concert by the Boston
Trio, the Academy's chamber ensemble in residence. Over the past two years,
Academy members have enjoyed several of their performances in the House, as
well as at venues in the Boston area, where their concerts have met with wide
acclaim. For this year's induction, violinist Lucia Lin, cellist Andrew Pierce,
and pianist Heng-Jin Park Ellsworth played Beethoven's Trio in D, op. 70, no. 1
("The Ghost Trio"). Violinist Kazuko Matsusaka joined the Boston Trio for the
second piece: Faure's Quartet for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello no. 1 in C
Minor, op. 15.
At the reception that followed, new members greeted friends and
colleagues and engaged in informal conversation with Academy officers,
councilors, and members of the Strategic Planning Committee. Presiding over the
ceremony and Stated Meeting, President Daniel Tosteson welcomed new Fellows and
Foreign Honorary Members representing 21 states, 8 foreign countries, and over
80 universities, research institutes, and corporations, as well as the arts and
public affairs, Reflecting on both the history and promise of the Academy, he
observed that "by electing you to membership, the Academy honors you, but in
turn you honor the Academy by sustaining and enhancing its commitment to
overcome disciplinary boundaries and focus its rich intellectual resources on
those issues that affect all of us." He urged newly elected members to become
actively involved in the Academy's work by participating in studies and
projects, the membership election process, and Stated Meetings and informal
gatherings held throughout the country.
President Tosteson then called on Communications Secretary Leon
Eisenberg to provide a glimpse into the Academy's past by tracing the history
and meaning of the Academy seal; the origin of such phrases as "Stated Meeting;
the significance of the first Academy prize (and one of the first scientific
awards in this country), the Rumford Premium; and the debate surrounding the
election of women members.
Adding her words of welcome, Chief Executive Officer Leslie Berlowitz
reminded the audience that this year, the Academy celebrates the 20th
anniversary of the groundbreaking of its House on Cambridge, and next year, its
220th year of service to the intellectual community and the larger
society. "There is no more appropriate time for the Academy to reassert its
founders' belief that 'individuals united together and frequently meeting for
the purpose of advancing the sciences, the arts, agriculture, manufactures, and
commerce may oftentimes suggest such hints to one another as may be improved to
important ends,'" she said. "As the Academy moves forward, we hope that the
interests and concerns of its newest members will help us to shape and define
its future."
The Secretary of the Academy, Emilio Bizzi, introduced the newly
elected members individually, calling each of them forward to accept the
greetings of the President and their class representative and to sign the
Members' Book. The respondents invited to speak on behalf of their classes were
introduced by Vice President Patricia A. Graham. They were asked to offer their
views on the challenges facing society at the onset of the millennium and the
need for concerted thinking and action to address those issues.
The first two speakers, Bill joy and Eric Lander, focused on the
impact of advances in science and technology. Representing the mathematical and
physical sciences, Mr. Joy, founder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems,
emphasized that in the twenty-first century, the development of computers a
million times more powerful than today's personal computers, coupled with the
technology to catalogue human genes and to construct material at the atomic
level, "will allow us to determine the fate of our species." However, since
these technologies are likely to be small and portable, they will be extremely
difficult to control. "We must think for the long term in an age with an
incredibly short-term focus...Science is providing possibilities but no useful
limits...Our choices should come from our spiritual, artistic, and ethical
values."
Speaking on behalf of the biological sciences, Mr. Lander, Director
of the Whitehead Institute / MIT Human Genome Project, observed that "the
founders of the Academy, notably John Adams, were extraordinary revolutionaries
who recognized that the promise of their revolution would require intellectual
and social dialogue of the broadest sort." The need for such dialogue is, he
noted, critically important today as we confront the far-reaching implications
of the modern revolution in genetics and genomics. A table of the building
blocks of biology, comparable to chemistry's periodic table, holds within it
the potential for curing cancer, illuminating human differences, even creating
a human being with specific properties. Mr. Lander emphasized that in order to
understand the implications of human genetic diversity and to determine whether
we should take a direct hand in the creation of a human being, society will
need to draw on the full range of knowledge represented by the members of the
Academy.
Connecticut College president Claire L. Gaudiani, representing the
social sciences, noted that in the new millennium, the challenges posed by
science and technology will be matched by severe social problems that have
persisted for decades or even centuries in this country and throughout the
world. Citing William E. B. DuBois's characterization of the "color line" as
the problem of the twentieth century, she contended that the problem we face
today is "still the color line and the extension of the color line: the gap
between the rich and the poor." She warned that if things have not changed in
another twenty years, "we who represent the most privileged DNA on this
planet... will be the genesis of the defeat of this species." As an example of
what can be done by educated individuals from diverse backgrounds, Ms. Gaudiani
cited the work of a group of concerned citizens in New London, Connecticut, who
raised more than $700 million in new investments and created 4,000 jobs in a
city with 70 percent of its children on welfare. By fulfilling the Academy's
historic mission to serve the public good, its members can become "transforming
citizens" in the effort to lessen—and, perhaps by the beginning of the
next century, to end—the problem of the color line.
The issue of inequality of opportunity, "a problem that has gone
largely unnoticed in the self-congratulatory public world of American today,
was the theme of the respondent for the humanities, Alan Brinkley, Allan Nevins
Professor of History at Columbia University. The barriers to opportunity are
higher than they have ever been in all but a few periods of history, and they
are evident in all aspects of society—from job structures to housing and
health care. But for members of the intellectual community, who fully recognize
the crucial link between knowledge and success, the problem is particularly
acute in the area of education. Millions of children are illiterate, and
millions have virtually no exposure to science; moreover, "the differences
between the best American schools and the worst are now not just differences in
degree but also, increasingly, differences in kind." Members of the Academy
from every field have long been involved in the struggle to defend artistic and
intellectual freedom; in Mr. Brinkley's view, "those of us who treasure and
benefit from the unfettered pursuit of knowledge and free expression should be
equally committed to ensuring that the things we value and fight to defend are
available to everyone."
The evening concluded with a poetry reading by Lucille Clifton,
Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at St. Mary's College, Maryland, and
chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In selecting poems by William
Stafford, Robert Frost, and Stanley Kunitz, along with one of her own, she
reminded the audience that "we read poetry not out of what we do—what is
actually our job—but out of our humanness" and demonstrated that poetry
brings together "scholars of the mind, scholars of the heart, and scholars of
the spirit." As she observed, "Remembering all three is very important to me
and, perhaps, to the world."
Earlier in the afternoon, new members listened to a number of
presentations on current Academy projects and on the Academy's flagship
publication, Daedalus. Howard Hiatt (senior physician, Brigham and
Women's Hospital), director of the Academy's Initiatives for Children program,
explained that the Initiatives seek to improve the lives and futures of
America's children by providing research results that are directly relevant to
policy concerns. In efforts ranging from a center for evaluation of educational
and social policy research to an intergenerational literacy tutoring project
and a study of the role of universities in K-12 mathematics and science
education, the program, now in its eighth year, recruits scholars to design and
implement projects in partnership with individuals working actively with
children in the community.
Steven Marcus (George Delacorte Professor of the Humanities at
Columbia University), cochair of the Academy's Initiative for Humanities and
Culture, described this new program as part of a continuing Academy effort to
support research in the humanities and the arts—an effort that has
included several Academy projects and numerous
Daedalus issues, as well as the Academy's central role in the
establishment of the National Humanities Center. Not only does the Initiative
build on what the Academy has accomplished in the past; it also recognizes the
important work now being carried out in the arts and humanities by numerous
centers throughout the country. Its purpose is to amplify, integrate, and
expand on those activities; to establish a framework for data collection in the
humanities and arts; to design and carry out scholarly and policy studies in
those areas; and to bring the results of its work to the widest possible
audience.
The Academy conducts two major international programs through its
Committee on international Security Studies (CISS) and the
US Committee on the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
(IIASA). Tracing the origins of CISS to the path-breaking 1960 Daedalus
issue on "Arms Control", CISS chair Carl Kaysen (David W. Skinner Professor of
Political Economy emeritus, MIT) outlined the Committee's efforts to continue
its study of traditional international security issues, such as conventional
arms reduction, while expanding the definition of the field to include analyses
of new security threats, from environmental degradation to civil strife. CISS
often works in collaboration with the Midwest Consortium on International
Security Studies, while the Academy continues to sponsor the US Pugwash
Committee and also serves as the institutional base for the International
Pugwash Committee.
Harvey Brooks, former president of the Academy and a long-term
member of the US IIASA Committee, spoke on behalf of the Committee's chair, M.
Gordon Wolman (Johns Hopkins University). The Academy serves as one of 15
non-governmental bodies that represent their nations in determining the overall
design of the IIASA program and in advancing research on IIASA's three central
themes: energy and technology, population and society, and natural resources
and the environment. As Mr. Brooks explained, IIASA uses quantitative modeling
and computational technologies to explore possible futures, but relies on
natural and social scientists to define problems and assess results. He also
reported that the US Committee is initiating a program of workshops and
seminars to disseminate IIASA's work throughout the US academic, policy, and
industrial communities and to increase the visibility of IIASA's Young
Scientists Summer Program.
Turning to an issue of both national and international
importance—the future of the city—Elmer Johnson (partner, Kirkland
and Ellis, Chicago) described a recently completed study of metropolitan
America, using Chicago as a case study. "Chicago
Metropolis 2020," a joint project of the Academy and the Commercial
Club of Chicago, presents a plan to enhance the region's economy and the lives
of its citizens by examining the interplay of several factors, including
economic interdependency (the availability of transportation, the productivity
of a growing minority population, the need for diverse occupational skills, and
the strength of the downtown area); environmental integrity; access to
cultural, educational, and medical facilities; and the physical and social
isolation of poor minorities. In developing their recommendations, the
participants directed their attention to three major obstacles that threaten
the plan's success: the failure to provide all sectors of the population with
equal access to good health care and a high-quality education; the bias in the
governance and tax framework that encourages dispersed and stratified spatial
patterns with inadequate transportation; and the high levels of concentrated
poverty and racial and social segregation in the metropolis. The result is a
model for thinking about the future of metropolitan areas, both in this country
and abroad.
Finally, the editor of Daedalus, Stephen Graubard, presented
an overview of several issues to be published in the coming year. He emphasized
that in its forthcoming issues, as in those of the past, Daedalus seeks
to address issues of real and immediate importance while treating themes that
will demand attention far into the future. He joined with other officers of the
Academy and with project leaders in encouraging new members to submit their
ideas for projects and publications.
The induction ceremonies in Cambridge, Chicago, and La Jolla not
only honored the Academy's newest members but also celebrated its special role
in fostering objective analysis and informed action. As Eric Lander observed in
his presentation, "John Adams recognized that small sparks can ignite
revolutions of unimaginable proportions. This Academy was one of his
generation's legacies, to serve as a continuing forum for intellectual exchange
about burning questions that cut across boundaries. It seems to me a function
that is no less vital today."
January / February 2000 Bulletin
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