WAMC Commentary January 23, 2009
Mary Schmidt Campbell
Chair, New York State Council on the Arts
Dean, Tisch School of the Arts
Customarily, at the start of the new semester as dean of the Tisch School of the Arts-- the hat I wear, in addition to serving as Chair of the New York State Council on the Arts--I usually write a welcome back statement to our students, faculty and staff, after the long winter break. The time for this year’s welcome message coincided with the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States. Somehow, starting the semester with the usual institutional news seemed pedestrian and parochial at such an epic moment. Our school, like much of the world on inauguration day, the day of our return, was captivated by the monumental events shifting our country in new directions. At viewing stations around the school, hundreds of members of the Tisch community watched the inauguration on big screens, while the overflow huddled in office doorways to watch desk top computer screens. Even after we all went back to work or back to class, we greeted each other all day long in the hallways and on the elevators with congratulations.
What exactly were we congratulating? For one, there was the miracle of the election itself. Who would have thought, two years ago, when campaign season was just beginning, that vision, the gift of language, and a sense of possibility would be enough to trump the familiarity of political brand names, and conventional wisdom? What this election made clear is that, after all is said and done, American politics is not closed; it need not depend on belonging to the right circles. Quite the contrary, American politics is still resilient enough to permit a relative unknown to invent new a circle, and make that circle large, open and embracing. We should all congratulate that.
No doubt, some of my colleagues were congratulating the country’s giant step toward racial maturation. Despite past racial tensions, the country elected an African American. Though only the most naïve among us would believe that we have completely left behind the old country of structural inequities based on race, few would argue with the fact that we have discovered new territory, cut new pathways through the wilderness of American race relations. We should all congratulate that as well.
The political worker bees among us congratulated ourselves and our fellow workers for having ignored everyone who said that our new president’s election was impossible. We are all still dazzled by the brilliance of his political strategies and national network of organized grass roots activism. We marveled at the way in which old fashioned door to door, telephone banking, get out the vote activism was married to social networking and new technology. We the people really felt power to the people.
In the past few days, there has been a great deal of speculation whizzing around the internet about what the election of Barack Obama will mean for the arts. Who will serve as the new chair of the national endowment for the Arts; will the chairmanship be elevated to a cabinet level post; will the new administration in its emphasis on job creation resurrect the old Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA), as it was called over 20 years ago? Who knows?
All of those policy issues are important for the cultural community. But as I think about a back to school message for my students, I believe that the lesson of this election is that it illustrates the potency of America the paradox. By that I mean, logically, there is nothing in our history which would have predicted the election of this president. At the same time, everything in the history of a country which invented itself out of sheer audacity and willful imagination made the election of this president not only possible but inevitable, a lesson for all of us. And, congratulations to that as well.
