March 24, 2023
President Robert W. Iuliano
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
As Delivered.
Welcome, everyone, to one of the most special celebrations that takes place in an academic community. There are many paths to a robust Gettysburg education, but few speak to the core mission of the College more than your commitment to academic excellence. Your election into PBK is something for which you should feel rightly proud.
There is something extra special being part of this class, on the 100th anniversary of the College’s chapter being recognized by the national PBK organization.
And so, I extend my heartiest congratulations to each and every one of you for a truly remarkable achievement. Because I consider myself a member of your class, having joined the College with you nearly four years ago, I take particular pride in recognizing your accomplishments tonight.
Congratulations!
I want to now look ahead, but do so by first looking back, to one of our first days in our Gettysburg journey. I don’t know how many of you joined me on the blistering hot September afternoon when I was being formally installed as the College’s 15th president. If you were there, you would have heard me quote Alvin Toffler, who said this:
The “illiterate of the 21st century will not be of those who cannot read and write, but of those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Now, I’m guessing most of you have never heard of Alvin Toffler. He was writer who reflected on how the future would be changed by technology. I’ve heard him described as Futurologist, whatever that may be.
Before I arrived at Gettysburg, I was gifted a small package from a dear friend. I unwrapped the gift with anticipation, only to discover it was a miniature crystal ball. After a good laugh together, my friend assured me that I’d certainly need it given my life in higher education. It now sits at the corner of my desk in Penn Hall.
Boy, was my friend right. The purpose of a crystal ball is, of course, to help one see into the future. Students, during our first few years on campus, I more than once threatened to return the crystal ball when it failed to accurately predict the twists and turns brought about by the pandemic. I suspect everyone in this room can relate to that!
Anyway, my point is this: It is very hard to predict the future, even with a crystal ball and even if you are a Futurologist. And yet, I believe that Toffler—even writing as he did in 1970—spoke powerfully to what matters in today’s world, with his focus on learning, unlearning, and relearning.
Now, you may be wondering, how does all this bear on tonight and your induction into PBK?
You have demonstrated superior academic skills and the mastery of a range of subjects across disciplines. The knowledge you have acquired over the course of your four years will serve you well throughout your life. You will draw on this knowledge to make sense of an increasingly complex world, and, yes, a world whose complexity is being amplified by the type of technological change that so fascinated Toffler.
But you will have graduated with something that is perhaps yet more valuable—a set of enduring skills, starting with the ability to learn. It’s the skill that unlocks nearly every other door. It’s the skill that permits you to acquire new knowledge, to broaden your horizons, to see nuance when others rush to black and white.
And yet, I want you to take equally seriously Toffler’s emphasis on unlearning. Knowledge is not static, and our understanding of the world continues to evolve. It is far too easy to get locked into an orthodoxy, to treat accepted wisdom as truth. Your education has given you the tools of discernment; apply those tools not only to the world that you see, but also to the assumptions you make about that world.
But here is where Toffler’s future orientation rings most true for me, and I’ll bring this back to your futures. Whatever Toffler thought in 1970, we know that technological change will likely profoundly disrupt how we live and how we work.
With my job, I give more talks than I can count. In part for that reason, I was intrigued by ChatGPT—and last weekend, I thought I’d see what would emerge if I asked it to write a speech on how the Gettysburg Address has influenced the values of Gettysburg College. While I wouldn’t have delivered what was produced—and, just to be clear, I can assure you that my comments tonight are all mine, in case you were worried about a possible honor code violation—what emerged was passable. And this is from a fairly primitive version of a technology that will get ever more sophisticated in the coming years.
When AI can generate its own art, when it can create integrative prose, it promises to disrupt the world of work in ways we haven’t seen since the Industrial Revolution. And there will be real consequences.
Here’s one form of that disruption. Not long ago, I attended a conference of fellow LASC presidents on the future of work. Focusing on the disruption that globalization and technology will have on jobs, the speaker estimated that the average student graduating from college today will change jobs 17 times and change industries five times over the course of their lifetimes.
Seventeen job changes; five industry changes. Pause on that for a moment.
Your education has given you the tools to succeed in such a world. The ability to collaborate, to communicate, to lead, to think creatively, to harness the power of diversity. The ability to adapt to change by learning, yes, but also by unlearning and relearning. What you have shown in your time at the College leaves no doubt in my mind about your ability to navigate a world marked by change.
I also want to leave you with a call to action. An acknowledgment that with your education comes a set of responsibilities with distinctive importance at this moment in time. If I am right in my belief that technology is likely to profoundly reshape the structure of society—how we live, how we work, even who we are—we need thoughtful people to help shape that future…with an eye toward core human values.
You have spent the last four years at a campus deeply influenced by Lincoln’s call to advance the unfinished work. We have encouraged you to get involved in the issues that matter to you, and you all have repeatedly responded to that urging.
Take what you’ve learned here, take the orientation to engagement that you’ve honed here, and work to shape the future in ways that serve the common good. Your induction to PBK demonstrates that you have what it takes to do precisely that. And, armed with Toffler’s skills and in response to the seismic shifts ahead, society will certainly need that from you.
Again, my hearty congratulations on your wonderful achievement.