Janice Stein
Dr Janice SteinConvocation Address
November, 2005
Eminent Chancellor Newell, Madam President Samarasekera, Chair of the Board of Governors, fellow graduates, parents, and friends.
This is a very special day for all of you, the culmination of years of hard work. I want to congratulate all of you and express a word of gratitude to your families that have provided so much support and encouragement along the way.
As I think about you, I think about young people in London and Paris. In the last several months, young people, more or less your age, bombed the subways of London and set the suburbs of French cities on fire. In Europe, it is not "they" that are burning cars, buses, and schools, but "we" who are doing this to "ourselves." It was British citizens, born in England, who firebombed the subways and the buses. It was French citizens, the children of immigrants, born in France, who set cars and schools in their own communities across the country ablaze. Terror and violence were not bred over there, but here, at home. In a deep sense, "they" are "us" and "we" are "they."
Despite the similarities, the stories of London and Paris are very different. England prides itself on being a diverse, multi-ethnic community, open to different religious and cultural traditions, but some of its young citizens turned against their government and, to protest against their government's foreign policy, killed their own. It seems that the sense of shared community was not closely enough woven, was not strong enough to overcome the anger against what their government was doing abroad. A closer look explains why the shared sense of community was not resilient enough: in Britain, communities often live apart; at best, they live side by side, rarely meeting one another. When one community becomes a semi-permanent underclass, its young men are recruits waiting to commit acts of violence.
The official rhetoric in France could not be more different. We are all one, French leaders insist, irrespective of religion or race. No hijabs or crosses in public schools, s'il vous plaξt. Yet young Frenchmen living in squalid suburbs tell a very different story. "We may be French citizens", they insist, "but we are not given the same opportunities as those who have lived in France for generations. If our family name is African, or we are recognizably Muslim, we don't get the job. We are not enrolled in universities." Those young people setting cars on fire are not demonstrating against French foreign policy in the Middle East or insisting on the right to recognition of their cultural or religious differences. On the contrary, they want the same opportunities given to other young Frenchmen. They want to be French not only in name, but also in experience.
What do these two quite different stories about young people tell us? It seems that the neither the rhetoric of multiculturalism nor of unicultural secularism is violent proof against unemployment and dreariness. Squalid high-rise housing with no sports fields, no public squares, and no cafes breeds frustration, fear, and violence. Although our multiculturalism in Canada is much deeper than in Britain or France, we can ill afford to be smug and self-righteous. It is not difficult to imagine an underclass a few kilometres away, around the corner, in our biggest cities.
What can we in Canada learn from the violence of the last six months in Europe's capitals? We celebrate our diversity, our multilingualism, our knowledge of different cultures and histories, our taste for all kinds of cuisines. In this sense, we are deeply postmodern, interested in everything and judging when we presume to judge at all everything we encounter within its own framework and on its own merits.
This kind of shallow multiculturalism is no longer enough, if it ever was. With luck, it has taken us this far in building Canadian society but it cannot take us much further. Young people who retain their cultural heritage but cannot find jobs, a career, a place to live, a future, and an experience of fairness will become angry and, sooner or later, violent. As tomorrow's leaders, what are the challenges you will face? And what can you do?
The world into which you are graduating is more and more diverse, less and less structured, and globally younger and younger, even if here in Canada and in Europe we are getting older and older. Young people are the face of the new world. In this young world, we must face and avoid the traps of multiculturalism. London and Paris have shown us two of these traps.
We will need to watch carefully that we fulfill our promises, that multiculturalism does not remain rhetoric with which we cover deepening socio-economic differences. We will also need to watch carefully that our commitment to multiculturalism does not paralyze our capacity to make judgments. We must be much clearer about our values, about what our societies permit, and what we exclude as unacceptable. We are moving beyond food and film in our national discussion of multiculturalism to speak plainly about the values we share as citizens and what we collectively reject as a betrayal of our values. We are starting a conversation again about shared public space.
You are among the world's most privileged young people. You have worked very hard, listened to your parents and faculty, and learned so much in such a short time. Now, I offer you one last piece of advice: don't listen too much to your parents or to your faculty any longer. Now is the time to take intelligent risks and live your dreams.
Joan Didion, the wonderful essayist, put it better than I ever could when she spoke to a graduating class at the University of California at Riverside more than 40 years ago:
"I'm not telling you to make the world better. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it."