It has been a long journey from Senator John Warner to Karl Rove to Headmaster Shanahan and now to Jeffrey Sachs. In the end, Mr. Shanahan has made the right choice for the Class of 2008 commencement speaker. The News applauds Mr. Shanahan for unselfishly giving up the opportunity to give the commencement remarks to a person who is the epitome of unselfishness—Jeffrey D. Sachs.
At Choate we pride ourselves in living by our great school’s motto: fidelitas et integritas. A glance at Jeffrey Sach’s past will suggest that he shows fidelity not only to our great country, but to the world. Sachs is an academic powerhouse, with a career spanning Harvard and Columbia, making him an even better choice to uphold the morals and beliefs of our institution than Senator Warner and certainly Karl Rove. But even more importantly, Sachs is a global citizen—he has dedicated his life to the betterment of the world. As well as directing the “Earth Institute,” Sachs has helped to save Bolivia’s poor from a deepening economic crisis during a time when inflation had reached 40,000 percent per year. In 1990, he urged Poland’s first non-communist government to privatize and liberalize its economy. And now, as more than 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa try to subsist on less than one dollar a day, Sachs has created a plan to eradicate extreme poverty.
Although even Sach’s plan is not perfect and has recently received some criticism, it is the movement he started that makes him such an admirable figure. Since Sachs wrote his catalytic book The End of Poverty, other scholars have responded, engaging in a debate, no longer about whether or not the developing world can be saved, but about how to go about saving it.
Sachs argues that Americans and those in other rich nations are currently too skeptical, too afraid to take a risk for real progress to be made. The world wants to take baby steps; Sachs argues that we cannot afford to take baby steps or to focus on one small issue at a time—the developing world’s problems are too many and too intertwined. We must act big. However, any action is relative, for although Sach’s proposal would greatly benefit developing countries, the cost for industrialized nations is minimal. According to Sachs, it would mean the U.S. raising foreign aid from just 0.14 percent of our GNP to 0.7 percent. Is that really so much to ask?
We are the future leaders of the world. In an age of globalization and technology, it is time to take some leaps off the conventional path. Mr. Shanahan could not have picked a more appropriate commencement speaker. As our seniors get ready to make their way in the world, who better to send them off than the only academic to have been repeatedly chosen as one of Time Magazine’s Most Influential People? Who better than a man who did not let his youth delay his aspirations and who was invited to join the Harvard Society of Fellows while still a Harvard undergraduate? In 2007, Sachs was awarded with the Padma Bhushan, India’s third highest civilian honor. Currently heading the Millennium Project for the United Nations, Sachs is truly a humanitarian and a global citizen.
In a few months, sixth formers will leave Choate behind, and although the thought can be tough to accept, we must break away from what is comfortable. We must look at ourselves not just as Choate students, or even as Americans, but as global citizens—citizens who can change the world. We believe Sachs embodies that dream and serves as an inspiration for those of us moving on to bigger and better things this June. We sincerely look forward to his kind words to the Class of 2008 on June 8th.
