An Optimistic Heart: What Great Universities Can Give Their Students...and the World
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Description
Jeffrey Sean Lehman used his voice as Cornell University's eleventh president to stimulate reflection on deeply important issues. Whether speaking to students and parents, to his faculty colleagues, or to alumni, he asked his listeners to join him in a shared exploration of questions without clear answers. This volume presents some of President Lehman's most thought-provoking speeches in a three-part collection. The first set of speeches addresses students, either as they begin college or as they graduate. Drawing on resources as varied as The Big Lebowski, Sophocles, John Keats, Kurt Vonnegut, and "The Simpsons," Lehman guides his listeners to engage with one another and with the moral dilemmas of modern life. The second set of speeches concerns Cornell itself. Lehman calls upon his listeners to engage in the project of renewing their "revolutionary and beloved" university. He builds on their response to that call to formulate an agenda through which Cornell might most effectively deploy its distinctive intellectual resources. The third set of speeches addresses Cornell's response to several difficult challenges confronting humanity in the twenty-first century. The subjects are daunting: integration, globalization, life in the age of the genome, wisdom in the age of digital information, and sustainability in the age of development. In each case, however, one encounters Lehman's characteristic humor, his optimism, and his enduring faith in the power of humanism and science working together. In a concluding chapter, President Lehman reflects on the speeches in this volume -- what worked and what didn't -- and on the more general question of how to prepare a speech that holds an audience's attention as it explores a complex subject.
Publication Date
2008
Recommended Citation
Lehman, Jeffrey S., "An Optimistic Heart: What Great Universities Can Give Their Students...and the World" (2008). Faculty Books & Edited Works. 442.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-books-edited-works/442
