Partnership Initiative
Chancellor College (Malawi)
and UMass Amherst

October 21, 2001
Remarks for Launching

I am delighted today to welcome Dr. David Rubadiri to our campus—and to our campus family.

In America, we typically think of family in a narrow sense—the people who live in the same house or share a common name. One of the things I’ve learned in Africa is that family is something much larger and more flexible. It contains many people with whom we feel kinship, some who have gone before, some who have just arrived in this world.

I consider the University community to be a family. And in a family, we each have something to contribute to the common good. We are much more, and much better, together, than any of us are individually.

Although we’ve never met before, I feel a special kinship with Dr. Rubadiri. We share a passion for interesting literature, for excellence in higher education, and for Africa. I’ve visited Africa several times in recent years, and with each visit, I’ve felt my sense of family expanding, my sense of being at home deepening.

The ties between this campus—the family I live with on a daily basis—and my South African family keep growing. Last year the University granted an honorary degree to Ahmed Kathrada. He spent many years in prison alongside Nelson Mandela and others in the long struggle for freedom in South Africa; some of you may be familiar with his book, Letters from Robbin Island. He introduced me to other people who have found a new family in South Africa, Linda and Peter Biehl. The Biehls are the parents of Amy Biehl, an American Fulbright scholar killed in Cape Town in 1993. They’ll be here in early November, sharing stories about the daughter they lost and the larger family they’ve gained through their dedication to human enablement in the black townships of Cape Town, as they carry on the work that Amy lived and prepared them to live.

The University of Massachusetts shares kinship with all that have dedicated themselves to reaching out toward others and creating new knowledge for the common good. The Advanced Degree Activity we officially launch today exemplifies those values of outreach and integration. It builds on the University’s tradition of global engagement, and specifically, our prior partnership with Bunda College of Agriculture in Malawi. Also, one of our UMass graduates, Matthew Matemba, was recently named the Director of the Malawi National Examinations Board. I’m sure there are other connections we will discover as we learn more about each other; it always amazes me to learn how big and diverse our family truly is.

As a family, we know that we matter to each other. More than ever, after the events of September, the University understands that it has a moral vocation to reach out in service to others, and the responsibility to create community at a global level. One of our campus leaders in this effort is the Center for International Education. For over 30 years, CIE has been working in the developing world on literacy, teacher training, and other community projects that enable communities better to help themselves. The essence of enablement, I believe, is just that: working to make our own presence unnecessary. We do well when the people we care about no longer need us—and that’s true as parents, as teachers, and as professionals dedicated to community development. I have often talked about how difficult it is to make one’s self not necessary—to provide over our own declining purposes: parents succeed when their children are able to manage in the world independent of the parent; teachers succeed when their students become independent learners; and doctors succeed when their patients become well and assume responsibility for their own well-being.

At the same time as CIE has been enabling communities globally, it has also enriched our lives on campus by bringing scholars and practitioners from around the world into our classrooms. Alongside global outreach, this University affirms the importance of integrative learning.

The more I know about our new partnership with Malawi, the more I appreciate the integrative approach to learning it represents: the integration of theoretical study in Amherst with application and reflection at home; the integration of American and African perspectives; the integration of testing technique with the values of social justice—all embedded in a partnership among several institutions learning from each other.

Integrative learning will be a hallmark of quality education for the future, throughout the world. We are beginning to appreciate how much we need to learn from each other, and how the barriers around different areas of life are artificial. As Dr. Rubadiri knows through his own experience in leading an integrative life, drama and diplomacy are complementary; poetry and leadership are complementary; excellence and diversity are complementary, as are global citizenship and care for one’s immediate home.

Integration is hard work, especially in a fragmented world. One of the goals of the ADA program is supporting the development of post-graduate programs in educational planning and leadership in Malawi. When we think of educational planning, especially in difficult times, it is tempting to rely exclusively on criteria such as efficiency or the financial "bottom line" to make our decisions. While these are important criteria, no doubt, they must stand alongside other criteria that speak to our deep understanding of what education is for and how it can help us, working together, to build the kind of country we want to live in, the kind of world that we want our children to live in.

I want to thank you today—Dr. Rubadiri, Dean Jackson, Professors Rossman and Evans, Professor Emeritus Foster and all our new friends from Malawi—for your vision and dedication to shaping this outstanding program and bringing us together today.

And I also want to challenge you, in your endeavor, to work toward building the kind of educational training in Malawi that is large-minded and large-hearted enough to bring forth the genius of a new generation of teachers, who, in turn, will nurture the poets and diplomats of tomorrow.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our grandchildren or great-grandchildren were to meet each other on this campus—or on the campus of Chancellor College—in the year 2030, to reflect on the impact of the program that we launch today?

It is wonderful to know that the program has an advocate and mentor in Dr. Rubadiri whose life has much to offer as a model of outreach and integration. I am confident this program has found the right family at CIE and the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership in the School of Education.

We have much to learn from each other.