The Fletcher School

Remarks at Fletcher GMAP Commencement
July 24, 2004
Jamshed Bharucha

It is my great privilege to be here today to congratulate you, the 4th graduating class of GMAP, and to welcome your family and friends. I want to thank the faculty who make this wonderful program possible, and I want to thank Dean Deborah Nutter for her outstanding leadership of this program.

GMAP is without a doubt one of the most powerfully innovative programs in higher education today. It combines the intimacy of a residency with the global reach of technology. It brings together several academic disciplines in the service of understanding international affairs. It provides a marvelous opportunity for mid-career development and reflection. It is often said that education is wasted on the youth - not that you are not still young. Work experience gives you the cognitive reference points around which your brains can learn more efficiently, more contextually, more consequentially. I have had the pleasure of getting to know a few of you, and I can tell from the testimonials that GMAP has challenged you in ways that will make a difference to your professional work.

Education does not accomplish anything if it does not stretch your mind, if it does not force you to think about things in different ways, if it does not challenge you to examine some of your assumptions. This is particularly important in the international arena. We fail to understand other cultures at our peril. The notion that leaders sitting in one capital can know the thoughts and feelings of their allies and enemies without a nuanced knowledge of the other’s culture, language, history and politics is absurd. And yet we see this happen again and again in history. Knowledge without leadership leads to an ineffectual ivory tower. But leadership without knowledge is dangerous. As a University committed to internationalism, we have a more important role to play now than ever before, in preparing leaders with a rich and textured understanding of the world in all its complexity and diversity.

It was perhaps fitting that GMAP was launched at the dawn of the millennium. International understanding or misunderstanding, and the globalizing benefits or dangers of advanced communications and weapons technology, can be an explosive mix for good or ill. We are pinning our hopes on you – our graduates – to lead knowledgeably, to integrate knowledge with leadership wisely and maturely.

So – congratulations! This may be a gloomy day weather-wise. But it’s a sunny day in terms of hope, because we know that our graduates will go out and save the world.