Historian Eric Foner delivers baccalaureate address

Historian Eric Foner delivered a message on moral courage Sunday at the 2015 Baccalaureate Service in Packer Memorial Church, urging Lehigh graduates to dedicate themselves to keeping alive what he called the most cherished inheritance of their education – “respect for the life of the mind."

“Today, this is not an easy task,” said Foner, a prolific author, Pulitzer Prize winner and expert on American race relations. “In the last generation, the values of the market have come to permeate every corner of our society. The notion that the public good may be measured in other than economic terms has pretty much been abandoned.”

Though the study of history may not contribute much to the nation’s economic efficiency, he said, it’s essential to a democratic society.

“For the study of history instills the very quality so lacking among policymakers today and often more broadly, the value of critical inquiry, of subjecting all beliefs to the test of reason and experience, of questioning dogmas, whether religious, political or economic, that demand uniformity of thought,” said Foner, the Dewitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University.

In identifying people in American history who possessed moral courage, Foner pointed to his own father, Jack Foner, a pioneer in black studies who became a victim of blacklisting in the McCarthy era; President Abraham Lincoln, who steered the country through slavery and the Civil War; abolitionists, who faced ostracism and sometimes violence as they tried to disseminate their ideas against slavery, and a forgotten freed slave named Louis Napoleon, who helped other slaves to freedom in the 1800s.

Foner said his father, who was willing to stand up for his own principles, did not pity himself when he lost his livelihood nor try to save his own career by informing on others. He made a living instead as a freelance lecturer. Listening to his father’s talks, Foner said, he came to appreciate how present-day concerns can be illuminated by studying the past, such as how the McCarthy era recalled the days of the Alien and Sedition Acts, when bills that purported to strengthen national security were signed into law but roundly criticized as attempts to quash those who disagreed with the Federalist Party.

Lincoln’s greatness was rooted in his capacity for intellectual growth and his ability to think for himself, Foner said. Lincoln hated slavery but was not an abolitionist. Still, on issue after issue, he said, he came to hold positions that abolitionists had first held.

“Lincoln was always learning,” Foner said. “He didn’t mind criticism. In fact, he thrived on it. Today a politician who changes his mind is a flip-flopper. Lincoln was a flip-flopper. He understood, as he said in one of his speeches, that in a crisis like the Civil War the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.”

Lincoln’s “most remarkable transition” came on the issue of race in America, not slavery itself, Foner said. Prior to the Civil War, Lincoln shared some of the racial prejudices of his time, suggesting that slaves, once freed, emigrate to Africa or another country. But after issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, Foner said, he began to think seriously about the United States as a bi-racial society.

The abolitionists, in their efforts to abolish slavery, gave “new meaning” to basic American values such as liberty and citizen rights, Foner said. “And at a time when all the states, north and south, severely restricted the rights of black Americans, free or slave, abolitionists invented the concept of an American citizenship open to all and grounded in equality before the law regardless of race.”

Napoleon, whose story Foner recovered while researching his latest book, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad, had been born to a slave mother but freed under the New York emancipation. Though illiterate, Foner said, he went to court and got writs of habeus corpus to help runaway slaves in their journeys to freedom.

In learning of Napoleon and others, Foner said he became “more and more impressed by how individuals whose names are mostly lost to history can bring about social change. “

Students speak about their faiths

The hour-long baccalaureate service was attended by graduating seniors, their families and friends. The service opened with music from the South Side Brass and the Concord Chamber Singers.

Students from four religious traditions spoke about their faiths:

• Zachary Cahn ’15, who dual majored in finance and marketing and earned his Bachelor of Science in Business and Economics, represented Judaism. He is currently working as a financial analyst with Marus & Millichap in New York while pursuing a Masters of Engineering in Technical Entrepreneurship at Lehigh.
• Sonali Shah '15, a chemical engineering major, represented Hinduism. After graduation, she will be working for DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware.
• Will Reiser, graduate student coordinator for the Newman Association, represented Christianity. He received his Master of Engineering in Structural Engineering.  He will seek work as a structural engineer in Colorado.
• Heba Elsayed '15, who received her Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, represented Islam. She will continue her education in graduate school at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Also participating in the service were Rabbi Danielle Stillman, director of Jewish Student Life, and Father Allen Hoffa, Newman Center director.

The Rev. Lloyd Steffen, university chaplain and director of the Lehigh Center for Dialogue, Ethics and Spirituality, introduced Foner, who won the Pulitizer Prize for History and the Bancroft Prize for his 2010 book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.

Though The Fiery Trial was a high point in Foner’s career, Steffen said, Foner also received recognition for other books, his teaching and a host of professional achievements. He said Foner believes that successful teaching rests on a genuine concern for students and on the ability to convey a love of history to them.

Foner “keeps looking for those opportunities to illuminate the present, reminding us that the most important things in history come as complete surprises," Steffen said.

Learning from the past

Much of Foner’s writings concern a pivotal era in the nation’s history – the struggle over slavery and the Civil War – and the Reconstruction period that followed. He said he has been particularly interested in “how social change takes place and how small groups of courageous people, black and white, male and female, worked for decades to challenge the assumptions of a society whose political and economic systems rested in large measure on slavery. In ways  we probably don’t fully realize, the world we live in today was shaped by the struggle against slavery.”

Foner also noted that, unfortunately, moral courage is sometimes not enough. Though civil rights were extended to former slaves, the move prompted a violent counterrevolution in the South and a retreat in the North in enforcement of the Constitution.

“But it seems to me that the pivotal era that shaped my career as a scholar can teach us something about today: First, that the vitality of our democracy depends on active participation by ordinary citizens," he said. "So let us not leave the political arena to wealthy donors who now seem to dominate campaigns, or the TV pundits offering pre-packaged over-simplifications or even the politicians of whatever party.

“We should be inspired by the examples of Americans who in the 19th century mobilized to abolish slavery and tried to make the country live up to the creed of equality for all. “

Foner noted that history does not move in a straight line, that rights can be won then lost.  Referencing Thomas Jefferson, he said liberty requires constant vigilance and an engaged citizenry.

“So in ways both good and bad,” said Foner, “this history 150 years ago is part of our world today, which is why understanding it is essential if we hope to make this a better, more just and more equal society.”

Foner received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters at Lehigh’s 147th commencement ceremony Monday.

Photos by Christa Neu