{"id":4842,"date":"2017-05-05T09:50:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-05T13:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/?p=4842"},"modified":"2025-08-13T19:34:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T23:34:01","slug":"an-insiders-guide-to-changing-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/2017\/05\/05\/an-insiders-guide-to-changing-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"An Insider\u2019s Guide to Changing the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nWhen I was a kid growing up in Massachusetts during the 1970s, we spent a lot of our classroom time under our desks. \u00a0This wasn\u2019t some sort of insipid punishment for bad behavior in which we had to look for petrified chunks of gum and candy to scrape clean. Rather it was survival training in the case of nuclear attack\u2014or any other form of mass destruction. \u00a0We lived under a constant threat of such attack. \u00a0That threat manifested itself–overtly as well as indirectly–in nightly news broadcasts and political speeches as well as the entertainment industry, from cinema to popular music to children\u2019s programming such as Mr. Roger\u2019s Neighborhood. \u00a0This was simply reality for those of us growing up in the United States at the time. \u00a0It was one that didn\u2019t truly start to change until Glasnost, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the (unofficial) end of the Cold War in 1989. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I cannot tell you how fortunate I feel that the generations born from the mid-1980s through the present day have not had to live under those same levels of constant anxiety. \u00a0The fact that I have to explain to my 6-year-old daughter that a Cold War isn\u2019t about temperature and what it was like to live through mandatory emergency drills signified by firehouse klaxons going off each Friday at noon gives me great relief\u2014but also some pause for reflection.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Because as difficult and anxiety-filled as that childhood was, it also shaped my generation\u2019s sense of engagement with politics and government and reinforced a truly global experience. \u00a0We grew up, after all, realizing that the actions of a single person in a single nation could affect\u2014even to the point of annihilation\u2014all humans everywhere. \u00a0Politics wasn\u2019t simply local or national\u2014it was <\/span>global<\/b>.<\/span><\/i> \u00a0(No film is better at depicting this than Stanley Kubrick\u2019s \u201cDoctor Strangelove\u201d (1964), which I first watched with my dad in the late 1970s and would view with fellow undergraduates throughout the 1980s straight through the 1990s and graduate school.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It was precisely the recognition that each of us bore some piece of responsibility for the fate of us all–the entire human race–that propelled the world into one of the greatest moments in modern history: 1989. \u00a0A year that saw the fall of the Berlin Wall; Poland\u2019s first free elections in over 40 years; protests for democracy across the world, including in China, Georgia, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania; concluding with Presidents H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev (USSR) declaring the end of the Cold War. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My point is that an entire generation of individuals–East and West and North and South–felt compelled to become involved within their political, social and cultural world\u2014to become agents of change within their societies. \u00a0And the results were, quite literally, revolutionary.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There is a great deal of talk today about \u201coutsiders\u201d and the argument that today\u2019s world can only be changed by these \u201coutsiders.\u201d \u00a0Social media sites, both Left and Right, establishment and anti-establishment, are replete with such arguments. \u00a0Yascha Mounk, writing for Slate.com, makes a good point about this all in concluding: \u201cBut if we are to respond to the effects of social media on our political system, we must start by understanding its nature: Neither wholly good nor wholly bad, social media favor the outsider over the insider, and the forces of instability over the defenders of the status quo.\u201d (<\/span>http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/the_good_fight\/2017\/02\/social_media_isn_t_bad_or_good_it_favors_outsiders_regardless_of_their_aims.html<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My point, though, is that social change\u2014the drive to create a more just and civil and equitable society\u2014comes not from \u201coutsiders\u201d who impose their will upon a \u201cbroken system\u201d or the dreaded \u201cstatus quo.\u201d \u00a0Rather, it comes from the great majority of us who work within that system and are dedicated to making a better world than that within which we first found ourselves. \u00a0The fear of nuclear war, of near-instant annihilation, didn\u2019t lead millions of people in 1989 to lose hope\u2014it led them to take action. \u00a0(Or, as one of the lines in one of my favorite recent films goes: \u201cRebellions are built on hope.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s why days like this past Sunday\u2014our Academic Awards ceremony at UMPI\u2014are so important. \u00a0Because the recipients of those awards–teachers and mentors and students and scholars and educators–are those of us who work, day in and day out, in ways both large and small, to make a better and more hopeful world for all of us. \u00a0They are truly <\/span>insider<\/b>s<\/span><\/i>\u2014individuals who work hard to succeed and inspire and create and who, as a collective, make this both a remarkable institution and a remarkable corner of this world. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My thanks to all of you, to those who teach and those who learn (and what learners are not also teachers and vice versa?), to those who are graduating and those who (thank you!!!) are returning to our university next year, for having the continued courage to make change from the inside. \u00a0To engage the university, your friends and families, your local communities and, yes, even your political leaders. \u00a0To quote Martin Luther King, \u201cIf I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.\u201d \u00a0And it\u2019s the small things, in 2017 just like in 1989, that collectively lead to great change. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid growing up in Massachusetts during the 1970s, we spent a lot of our classroom time under our desks. \u00a0This wasn\u2019t some sort of insipid punishment for bad behavior in which we had to look for petrified chunks of gum and candy to scrape clean. Rather it was survival training in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8828,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4842\/revisions\/8828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}