Phi Beta Kappa Initiation Luncheon and Ceremony Remarks
Cheryl Greenberg, Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of History
May 20, 2023
Rabbi Bunim, who lived in Poland in the nineteenth century, taught that everyone should have two pockets in their coats. In one, you should keep a slip of paper with Abraham’s words from Genesis: “I am but dust and ashes.” In the other, you should keep a slip of paper with words from the Talmud, the body of Jewish laws, reflecting on the importance of every human life: “For my sake was the world created.”
Here you are, about to graduate—Phi Beta Kappa, no less—to start the next phase of your life. I thought the two pockets metaphor could be useful. And, by the way, it’s the day before the next stage of my life, too—I am retiring after being at Trinity for 37 years. So, I am also speaking to myself here.
OK, so you/we are poised on the brink of something big. A liberal arts education, especially at a school like Trinity, especially with grades good enough to earn Phi Beta Kappa, means you have learned to read thoughtfully, to write clearly, and to think critically, whatever your major or field is. You have skills. You have knowledge. You have had good practice learning to think. You are a unique individual with something to add to the world that no one else has. And the possibilities are endless. My fellow history majors have become doctors, musicians, and diplomats; I have STEM-major friends who became preschool teachers, journalists, and farmers. That’s what your education has given you—opportunities to pursue whatever you want. “For my sake was the world created.” Time to embrace the next step in your life’s journey. How heady!
But so much of the world is a mess, and it’s scary out there. Political polarization. Climate change. An ever-shifting economy with no job security for anyone or even any skill. Frightening acts of random violence. The rise of white nationalism. And what can you do in the face of that? Your friends are scattering. Maybe you’ll be living in a totally new place, without a lot of the support systems you have relied on this far. You’ll have health challenges or familial challenges or unexpected setbacks. And as my dissertation adviser said to me when I started my job, “You got this far on potential. Now you have to actually do it.” You are but dust and ashes. How terrifying!
But before you freak out completely, let me shift that paradigm of the two pockets around a little, see if we can take this lesson and reframe it. You are on your way. Maybe you have a job. Maybe you know what you want. Maybe you know what your passion is. Maybe you have connections or skills or direction. That’s great. But rather than simply embracing that, that the world was made for your sake, I urge you to have humility—you are only dust. That is to say, you do not know where you will end up, and too much certainty can derail you from where you truly need to be. This next step is only a step—be open to the many places it could lead. Be open to the randomness of the universe and the opportunities that may present. You don’t know what the future holds or even what your interests will be or what your path will be.
When I graduated from college, I wanted to work for a political nonprofit group that addressed human rights issues in the U.S. My college major was history, focusing on Europe. Being me, I figured I had better learn more about American history before I looked for a job, to understand how we got to where we were and how best to move forward. So . . . I got a Ph.D. in American history. I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t—I was meant to be an academic. Who gets a Ph.D. to prepare for a job in politics?
I had had no intention of being a professor. As a shy person, I was so terrified of speaking in front of people that I wrote out every word of my first lecture, and my friend scrawled in various places on it “breathe here.” (And, in fact, I still write out my lectures—see?) But a professor got me a job grading AP exams, which got me a gig teaching AP U.S. history at a high school, and, slowly, I got the idea maybe being a professor would, in fact, be cool. I could write and teach about all the issues I cared about. I could still be active alongside my academic work. I did not plan it. I discovered that I vote with my feet—I figure out what I want to do when I suddenly realize I’m doing it. Even when I can’t tell you where I want to go, I look down and discover I am already heading in that direction.
I didn’t plan my field either. I thought I wanted to do American ethnic history—back when that meant Jews, Italians, the Irish. But I took a grad school course on slavery and suddenly I thought, OMG, racism, discrimination, resistance—this is what I need to study. And I became a scholar of African American history.
That same voting with my feet brought me to every research project and book I’ve ever undertaken. I was at Columbia, so I studied Harlem. I am a nice Jewish girl who does Black history, so I wrote a book on Black-Jewish relations. Etc. I read about a bunch of issues, I am asked to talk on a bunch of topics, and one of them always turns into a book project I hadn’t actually planned on.
To be honest, many of these opportunities came because other things I had tried for did not work out. I’m at Trinity because I didn’t get the job at Brandeis and, because I was single, didn’t want to be in the tiny town in Ohio where Kenyon College is. My point here isn’t to tell you how wonderful I am but how random it was. I had to be open to possibilities I hadn’t considered. I had the skills, I was smart enough—but things did not always go as planned, and I didn’t know where I’d land.
But the point is I did land. Very happily. If I could go back and tell my younger self—you—anything, I’d say, “Don’t worry so much. You will find your place.” It may not be the place you thought it would be, it may not even be the place you wanted it to be. But you will be able to succeed, to find meaning wherever you end up, because you have the skills to be resilient. It’s not exactly that the world was made for you but that the world is the kind of place that you can make a place for yourself.
But you can only do that by remembering that you are only dust—you are not always in control and have to be ready to take what life offers and turn it into something meaningful. Shit will happen. You don’t always know the answers. It’s a question of what you do with what you have. Some of it is luck, some of it is being smart—and all of it is being open to everything, knowing that whatever happens, you know how to learn, you know how to think. You are resilient. It’s what we have spent these past years training you for.
And you’ve done it at least once already—think of yourself that first day at Trinity. And now here you are—maybe not where you thought you’d be, but somewhere cool just the same. Think of it as surfing, or skiing, or for all you other N.Y.C. lovers out there, riding the subway without holding on. You need to always be rebalancing and shifting in order to stay upright. And if you don’t, you will fall. The metaphor of the two pockets is a way to remind us to move through the ups in our lives with humility and openness to whatever comes and to move through the downs in our lives with purpose and self-assurance. I am but dust and ashes; for my sake was the world created.
Let me end with a different metaphor—the cosmos. I taught a course on Star Trek, so I can’t help myself. We are each tiny specks on a single blue dot in an infinite universe. That should lead us to awe and to humility—we are a miniscule part of an incomprehensively greater whole. At the same time, we are each of us singular beings of staggering complexity—we are atoms that formed from imploding stars billions of years ago, we are chemicals, DNA base pairs, microbial environments, powerful brains with conscious self-awareness. That should lead us to awe of a different kind—I constitute a world, I am a unique part of the universe’s complexity and beauty. Dust, yes. But we are, quite literally, stardust.
Live long and prosper.
