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  • I'm kind of overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed by the generosity of the college to make this possible,

  • I'm overwhelmed by the generosity of my colleagues, especially Andrew and Katherine,

  • who must have essentially had a whole other job. When this started it was kind of like

  • the Mickey Rooney movie Let's Get Together and Put On A Play, and the presumption was

  • in five minutes we would have the product and that turned out not to be quite true.

  • And no matter what burden arose, no matter what obstacle appeared, they found ways to

  • solve every problem with great cheer and good grace to make this day possible, and I really

  • just can't put into words what it has meant to me. In addition, it has been a Rashomon-like

  • day, do you all know what I'm referring to? Even those of you who haven't started shaving

  • yet? So Rashomon is this movie about different people who all witness the same scene, and

  • see very different scenes. Well what I have heard today depicted is pieces of my life

  • that I find close to unrecognizable, because even though they all happened, my interpretation

  • of them is dramatically different from the interpretations that you have been given.

  • You've been given the impression from everybody that I somehow had this incredible influence

  • on the work and life of the people with whom I have collaborated. I've been the teacher.

  • My own take on these collaborations, and I mean this with complete sincerity, is exactly

  • the reverse. All I can see in these interactions is the ways in which each of these people

  • have taught me things that I didn't already know. I came to Swarthmore remarkably ignorant,

  • although I didn't think I was, and the interactions I've had with colleagues, many of whom you've

  • heard, have educated me. And I feel like I have learned a lot more from them than I've

  • taught them, so I think basically they've been telling you a lie, and I'm going to try

  • to sort of straighten that out. But actually, occasions like this encourage people to look

  • back, nostalgia is a nice thing if indulged in in extremely small doses, sort of like

  • hallucinogens, so I think I have permission to indulge a little bit of nostalgia. But

  • I'm going to do it because I want to make a point. I don't have a low opinion of myself,

  • I really don't, but as I look back on the most impactful, formative, meaningful, and

  • rewarding experiences of my career, almost all of them without exception were the result

  • of extraordinary good fortune. I made the most of my opportunities, but I had little

  • or nothing to do with creating any of those opportunities. They smacked me in the face,

  • and I take credit for recognizing that they were opportunities, but not for creating the

  • conditions that made those opportunities possible. It's apparent to me that - I teach classes

  • in decision-making, where ostensibly part of the point is to teach people how to make

  • good decisions, and wisdom, which essentially, part of the point of which is to teach people

  • how to make good decisions, but it's apparent to me that virtually none of the important

  • decisions that I have made in my life conform to any idea at all about what is rational

  • or what is wise. And I'm going to sort of give you a quick summary of why that's true,

  • and then try to connect it to something that I think is actually more significant than

  • just my idiosyncratic history. I moved to Yonkers from the Bronx in the 7th grade, Yonkers is

  • just north of the Bronx, the Bronx is just north of Manhattan, which is where I thought

  • civilization began. I thought it ended in Brooklyn, apparently that's changed. So I

  • moved in 7th grade and almost immediately I met Myrna, you have heard Myrna mentioned

  • several times, many of you know her, not all of you do, I would like it if Myrna and also

  • our older daughter Alison and our oldest granddaughter Ruby stood up and face the crowd. They differ

  • principally on the basis of age and height. So I met Myrna almost immediately and she

  • essentially immediately became my best friend. Then she became my girlfriend, which took

  • a lot of work on my part, and then she became my wife and the mother of my children. She's

  • always been my toughest and my most sympathetic critic. Every time I give her something to

  • read, her aim is to find a way to help me make it better, to find a way to help me say

  • what she know's I'm trying to say, that the first pass hasn't been eloquent enough to

  • make clear, and this is true even when she disagrees with me. Sometimes. So she's always

  • been my sounding board with the exception of this talk. And that actually scares the

  • crap out of me. So anyway, she became my best friend and the question is why? Was it because

  • I was a rational decision maker? Did I see how intelligent she was? Did I see how empathetic

  • she was? Did I see how kind she was? Did I see the fierce moral core that kind of defined

  • her existence in the world? The answer is no. No to all of those things. I was attracted

  • to her, this is the God's honest truth, because she was the first girl I had ever met who

  • loved baseball. And more specifically, loved the New York Yankees. So, the one marriage

  • that everyone is bragging about, that I have had - and, you know, I'm willing to take credit,

  • that's a real achievement - but I had it because she liked the damn Yankees, she liked Mickey

  • Mantle. What kind of reason is that to form a life partnership? So we went through school

  • together and I applied to college, I applied to six colleges, I assure you I applied on

  • the basis of zero information. The school I was dying to go to was Columbia because

  • I went to a gathering of high school newspaper editors there and completely fell in love,

  • it was my romantic image of what a college should be, I knew nothing about what it was

  • actually like to be a student there. I applied to six colleges, and I got into one. It's

  • true. The only place that took me was NYU, which had a little Swarthmore-like campus

  • in the Bronx, and so I cleverly decided to go. I'm willing to take a fair amount of credit

  • for that decision. So I took psychology as a freshman, and I didn't have any idea what

  • psychology was. I don't even mean that I thought psychology was Freud. If I had known that

  • much, I would have been sophisticated. I knew nothing about what psychology was. It fit

  • into my schedule. I know that no Swarthmore student would ever choose a course for that

  • reason. So anyway, my Psych 1 teacher was a guy named Phil Zimbardo, you've heard his

  • name mentioned already once. Those of you who don't know about him, he's a legendary

  • Psych 1 teacher, probably a third of the students he taught ended up wanting to do something

  • connected to psychology, and he completely captivated me. And so I went from being a

  • complete ignoramus about psychology to being a huge fan of psychology, but that wasn't

  • enough. My aspiration still was to be a writer. And I took another course that used to be

  • required, Freshman English Composition, which was designed to teach you how to write, and

  • the first papers I turned in in this course I got Ds. This is sort of the drill, they

  • give you low grades at the beginning to basically humiliate you so that you think you actually

  • still have something to learn, and gradually your grades go up even if your writing doesn't

  • get any better. But I didn't know that, so what did I learn? I learned psychology is

  • incredibly exciting and I don't have what it takes to be a writer. And if I hadn't had

  • both of those experiences, the odds are pretty good I would not have pursued psychology.

  • So I don't think I deserve a whole lot of credit for that. These were the circumstances

  • that confronted me. So I started taking psychology and Zimbardo's not the only star. There's

  • another star in the department, some of you may be familiar with him, his name is Alan

  • Schneider. He taught me psychology. He taught Myrna psychology. Myrna spent two years working

  • in his lab, and then we recruited him to come to Swarthmore when the NYU campus that he

  • taught at, and I studied at, closed. So that's how I became a psychology major. Time came

  • to go to graduate school, I only applied to two, and I had no interest in one of them.

  • So I got into the other one, and I went to the other one, and it happened to be Penn.

  • I chose Penn for the wrong reasons. I won't tell you what the reasons were because I don't

  • want to insult people, but I chose Penn on the basis of bad reasons but it turned out

  • it was a spectacularly good decision. Because of the unbelievably vibrant, alive, big question-oriented

  • atmosphere that was present there when I started. Psychology was in a period of turmoil in the

  • late '60s and early '70s, there were these received truths that psychologists thought

  • they understood and all of them were being turned upside down and everyone there was

  • open to changing their view of what was important, what was interesting, and what knowledge counted

  • as. This was a tiny window of time. Psychology was closed-minded before, psychology has become

  • awfully closed-minded after, but in the period in the early 1970s it seemed as though everything

  • was possible. And I happened to be at the most intellectually engaged institution in

  • the country at exactly the moment when the people there were as intellectually engaged

  • as it was possible to be. None of this had anything to do with any rational decision

  • I made. I was smart enough to appreciate it, I was certainly not smart enough to make it

  • happen. Nonetheless, even though Penn was exciting, I was doing this ridiculous work

  • teaching pigeons how to do stuff in little boxes. And for those of you who aren't aware

  • of it, the world was falling apart in the 1960s, or at least it seemed to be, and there

  • was some hope that the next world would be a lot better, and I decided that I was really

  • doing something that was essentially akin to intellectual masturbation when I could

  • be out there doing something that improved the world. So I decided to go to law school.

  • And I talked to the folks at Penn about starting law school part-time while I finished my Ph.D.,

  • and at the end of two year's I'd have a year's worth of law school and I'd have my Ph.D.

  • done, but the plan was to get a law degree and then go defend political radicals from

  • oppression by the police and other oppressive agents of the state. That was the plan. But

  • Penn said, "full-time or nothing," and so I said to myself, "all right, I will rush

  • and finish my Ph.D. and then start law school full time." And that's what I did and that

  • was the plan and in that year, as has been mentioned, I TA'd in a Psych 1 class taught

  • by Marty Seligman. And I discovered something that I had been completely oblivious to while

  • being in graduate school, which is that a significant part of what one can do as an

  • academic is teaching. And even if putting animals in boxes is frivolous beyond belief,

  • teaching students is anything but frivolous. And it transformed my aspirations for myself

  • when I appreciated that I could conceivably have some hand in changing the world by continuing

  • on the path that I was on. I wish I could say that I knew in advance that this was possible.

  • I didn't, it was an accidental discovery that I was clever enough to appreciate when it

  • smacked me in the face. But my good fortune doesn't end there. Myrna was a graduate student

  • a little bit behind me in progress, we were going to have the two-body problem if I applied

  • for jobs. And it turned out that a good friend of mine named Joe Bernheim, who taught at

  • Swarthmore College, decided that he also couldn't stand spending his life putting animals in

  • boxes and watching them do silly things for food, so he quit to go to medical school.

  • He quit Swarthmore to go to medical school, and the job opened up. When did the job open

  • up? Exactly when I was ready to apply for it. And so I applied for the job. Did I think

  • it was the best possible job? I didn't think. What I kind of thought was "it is a good enough

  • job. Swarthmore is a good place." I knew that it was a good place, it was such a good place

  • that I didn't apply because I knew I would never get in. So I applied for this job and

  • only this job and I got it. And so it is true not only that this is the only job I've ever

  • had, it's the only job I have ever applied for. And that probably makes me close to unique.

  • So it was only several years after I was there that I discovered, not that Swarthmore was

  • a good gig, but that for me it was the perfect gig. It was the perfect job, it was the job

  • designed with me in mind. I sure as hell didn't know this in advance, but I was clever enough

  • to see it when it became apparent to me. I, as you've heard various people exaggerate,

  • I'm a lover of ideas, I'm more an experimental philosopher than I am an experimental psychologist,

  • as my colleagues in the psychology department will almost certainly tell you. And Swarthmore

  • not only allowed that, it encouraged it. It encouraged me to talk, to operate, at a level

  • of idea and abstraction and not only at a level of empirical laboratory detail. So I

  • was able to cultivate what was, for me, the natural and fulfilling approach to studying

  • the things that I was interested in. There's virtually no place else in the country that

  • I could have done this kind of work in this kind of way without paying a very significant

  • price. At Swarthmore, not only do you not pay a price, you actually get all kinds of

  • accolades showered on you for seeing the big, as opposed to the small, picture. But in addition,

  • as Schuldenfrei told you earlier, I was teaching a class on Skinner and Schuldenfrei was teaching

  • a class on Skinner, mine was actually based on what Skinner actually said, Schuldenfrei's

  • was based on what Skinner would have said if Skinner had been a little bit more consistent

  • and self-aware than he was. But there were these two students, these two wonderful, interested,

  • and interesting students, Kathy Purcell and Nancy Sato and they were taking both of our

  • classes and they would go to his class and hear X, and they would go to my class and

  • hear not X, and then they'd go to his class and hear Y, and they'd go to mine and hear

  • not Y, and they couldn't stand it anymore. And they finally said "listen, you two have

  • to talk to each other." And we did. And it began a conversation that's now 45 years old.

  • It has been thrilling all the way through, and occasionally not only thrilling but also

  • productive. I think that - I don't mean this facetiously - I think that the sort of deep

  • approach that I have taken to my work in the last 35 years is more influenced by the interactions

  • that I've had with Richie and Hugh Lacey than pretty much anything else. Ken Sharpe described

  • some of this in detail and so did Hazel Markus. The idea that human nature is something that

  • is shaped, not essential, came out of my interactions with Schuldenfrei and Lacey, and they got

  • it largely from their reading of Marx. So it transformed my life to be able to work

  • with these people but it happened only because there were two aggressive, interested, and

  • interesting students who demanded that we leave our damn offices once in awhile and

  • talk to one another. Several years later I was on sabbatical at Harvard, and I was taking

  • classes in economics, and evolutionary biology, and my plan was just to teach a course in

  • this stuff. That was my only plan, I had no grander aspirations. And Dan Reisberg, who

  • you've heard from this morning, invited me to give a talk at the New School. I'm sure

  • Dan doesn't remember this - maybe Dan does. And I decided that instead of giving my usual

  • talk about pigeons and boxes, I would actually sit down and think about what I'd been studying

  • this year and give a talk about the relation between economics, psychology, and evolutionary

  • biology. So I started sort of organizing my notes, and when I was done, it was a hundred

  • and fifty pages long. So I did not give a hundred-and-fifty-page colloquium, but I did

  • decide maybe this should be a book. It had never occurred to me to write a book on this,

  • but I had basically written two-thirds of a book, so I submitted it to my publisher

  • and that became The Battle for Human Nature. It was certainly not anything I designed and

  • once again I was clever enough to recognize the opportunity when it smacked me in the

  • face. It was the first real book I write. I don't count textbooks as books. Marty Seligman

  • invited me to this gathering of young and less-young people to launch positive psychology

  • in Mexico, and we took turns talking about some of the things we were working on, and

  • I gave a talk about choice and the downside of too much choice. And Marty made a casual

  • remark that I'm sure he doesn't remember having made. He said, "I'll bet that's not true of

  • everybody." It had never occurred to me to ask myself that question. It launched what

  • became the research that Andrew and John and Sonya and Darren and I did, identifying people

  • who want the best versus people who want "good enough," and making the argument that the

  • choice problem is really only a problem for people who have these absurdly high standards

  • and always need to get the best out of every decision. A casual remark made by Marty is what launched

  • that whole line of work. I didn't plan it. I didn't engineer it. I didn't rationally

  • construct it. All I did was take advantage of a good idea when somebody smacked me in

  • the face with it. So that's how my life has gone. I gave a talk about this work at some

  • small conference in New York, a guy came up to me afterwards and said "I run a conference

  • called TED, would you like to come and talk at TED?" And I said, "What's TED?" And he

  • told me what it was, and I said "what the Hell, that sounds like fun," so I went and

  • gave a talk and nobody knew what it was back then. And then a few months later they launched

  • this website, and YouTube got born, and all of a sudden everybody on the planet has seen

  • me wearing embarrassing shorts and a T-shirt. By the way, I just want to - this is a digression

  • - I was invited back a few years later to give a talk on wisdom, and this time everybody

  • knew what TED was, including me. And Myrna, bless her heart, gave me one piece of advice,

  • and that was "don't you dare go there looking the way you did the last time." So I actually

  • went there looking more like this. You don't know what kind of effort it takes for me to

  • dress like this. And so I gave my talk, and afterwards, I don't know, twenty-five people

  • came up to me and said "I was so disappointed you weren't wearing shorts!" They thought

  • this was a kind of right-on, power-to-the-people statement. I guess one of the things it shows

  • you is that you can't win. So, you know, my life has really been one fortunate opportunity

  • after another. People who have known me for a long time, if you ask them, I think that

  • if they are being honest with themselves they will tell you that the brief narrative I have

  • given you is really the truth. I'm not trying to be falsely modest, I have been incredibly

  • lucky and smart enough to take advantage of good luck when it has come my way. And this

  • has made me an extremely happy person. And it's made me an extremely happy person for

  • reasons that some of you might not appreciate. And that is - there's a wonderful paper that

  • was published about three years ago, asking what happiness means at different points in

  • history and in different cultures. And the astonishing finding, it certainly astonished

  • me, is that historically, happiness means good fortune. It doesn't mean that it is the

  • emotional response to having good fortune, it means good fortune itself. A happy person

  • is a lucky person. You understand the difference, it's not "lucky people are happy," it is "what

  • it means to be happy is that you're lucky." This was the dominant definition pretty much

  • everywhere and what's happened in recent times is that in cultures like ours, this definition

  • has obviously been replaced by one that is very agentic, one that focuses entirely on

  • sort of subjective understanding of what it feels like to be you, and not what the objective

  • circumstances of your life have been. But even now, in dictionaries that capture the

  • language of many countries, you still see happiness as good luck as a secondary or,

  • at worst, tertiary definition. And in some countries it is still the primary definition.

  • And so I'm a happy person in the sense that I have been the beneficiary of an enormous

  • amount of good fortune. I'm also a happy person in the sense that I appreciate that and I

  • tend to walk around most of the time with a smile on my face. So that's my history,

  • but I'm not telling you my history just because it's what you're supposed to do on an occasion

  • like this, I'm telling you this because I wanted to make a point. And my point is that

  • I want to talk to you a little bit about justice. Somebody has already alluded to this idea,

  • too, but, I'm sorry, you're going to hear it again. What do we mean by justice? This

  • has been studied. This is not the philosopher's question, "what should one mean by justice?"

  • It is "what do ordinary people mean by justice when you ask ordinary people what they think

  • justice means?" And ordinary people think justice means equity. In studies done tapping

  • the sense of justice in well over a hundred thousand people, they think that justice is

  • equity. Does that tell you what justice means? Do you know what that means, that justice

  • is equity? It doesn't tell me enough. This is true of liberals, it's true of conservatives.

  • It doesn't seem to distinguish on the basis of political orientation. But what does "equity"

  • mean? I think equity means these two sentences: that people should deserve what they get,

  • and that people should get what they deserve. Equity is when you deserve the good things

  • that come to you, and when you get the good things that your activity in the world warrants.

  • This is not saying much more than that - when we say that people should deserve what they

  • get, we're saying that success in life should be meritocratic, we should earn our successes. It shouldn't

  • be who you know that determines success, but what you know and what you do. It's unjust

  • to get good seats at a concert because your brother-in-law is a concert promoter, although

  • you'll probably take them. It's unjust to get into Yale because your mother is an alum

  • or your grandfather made a big contribution. It's unjust to get a government contract because

  • you made a big donation in an electoral campaign or because your best friend's the guy who

  • awards the contract. This standard of justice is kind of a no-brainer. It's hard even to

  • imagine a justification for violations of this standard. Of course the world doesn't

  • work this way, but this sentence is kind of a useful guide when we seek to make whatever

  • system we work in a little more just. Can we make this sentence a little more true?

  • It guides us to identify what's wrong, and to come up with procedures to correct the

  • injustices. What about the second sentence? Should people get what they deserve? There

  • are a lot of concerns these days about economic inequality in the US, and partly what people

  • are talking about is folks who have done the right thing - the expression you hear again

  • and again is these are people who have quote "worked hard and played by the rules," only

  • to fall further and further behind. So this is a complaint that people are not getting

  • what they deserve. The problem with this second sentence is that it establishes a standard

  • of justice that simply can't be achieved. Not - students, close your ears - not every

  • well-trained computer engineer will get a job at Microsoft, Google, or Facebook. Not

  • every high-achieving high school senior will get into Harvard, Princeton, or Swarthmore.

  • There is just not enough room at the top. So justice, in this sense, is not possible.

  • So I've spent a fair amount of time, for various reasons, thinking about the justice and equity

  • associated with college admissions, as you've heard. So how do we do, when it comes to college

  • admissions? It is true of Harvard and Princeton and Swarthmore, I think, that mostly, people

  • deserve what they get. With a few caveats, like legacy admissions, I think it's true

  • that people who get into these places deserve to get into these places. I think the careful

  • screening that comes when you can admit less than ten percent of the already self-selected

  • group who apply almost guarantees that every student you admit will merit admission. So

  • we have solved that problem. But does everyone get what they deserve? Well, you know the

  • answer to that as well as I do. Those of you who are walking around with little T-shirts

  • in your heads that say "Swarthmore, but my first choice was Yale" know that not everyone

  • can get what they deserve. A portion of the applicants to Stanford, Harvard, Princeton,

  • Yale, Amherst, and Swarthmore probably lack the qualifications to be admitted, but many

  • applicants, probably the majority of applicants, do deserve to be admitted. It's unjust that

  • - is it unjust that so many qualified applicants don't get in? Yes it is. But what the Hell

  • is a school supposed to do? What ends up happening, as you all know, is that the standards for

  • admission keep ratcheting up in an effort to be fair to the applicants, and, at the

  • same time, to keep institutions from exploding in size. Under these conditions, what it means

  • to deserve to get into Swarthmore is no longer that you're an excellent student, but that

  • you are a more excellent student than the competition. Admissions officers have the

  • unenviable task of making distinctions among candidates where no real distinctions exist.

  • In doing so, they preserve the veneer of justice in college admissions. My good friend Schuldenfrei

  • once interviewed an applicant to the college as a favor to a friend - I think usually you

  • stay out of admissions stuff - and was incredibly impressed with this young person, and sent

  • the dean of admissions a note saying what a wonderful person this was, and this student

  • did not get in. And Schuldenfrei, curious, sent a note saying "how come?" And the dean

  • of admissions said, quote, "no reason." And Schuldenfrei said, quote, "what do you mean,

  • 'no reason?'" I did the accent as best I could. What the dean of admissions said is "look,

  • there is no reason to take this person and not this person, we're trying to make distinctions

  • that are not makeable. We do the best we can." And I think they do do the best they can.

  • (offstage) He also told me not to tell anybody. So the good news is that this was thirty-one

  • years ago, so it's no longer relevant, and you didn't tell anybody. You just told me.

  • And, as I think you know, and as I think is becoming clear in more and more affluent,

  • privileged communities around the country, this escalation of admissions standards has

  • not been benign. It induces students or their parents to try to game the system. Taking

  • and re-taking SATs, spending a fortune on SAT prep classes, having pros edit college

  • essays, signing up for extracurricular activities that they have no interest in. All told an

  • enormous commitment of resources in money, time, and effort, for no purpose other than

  • to get into these select schools. Admissions officers are confident that they can see through

  • these ruses, and no doubt they sometimes can. But I think they will be fooled much more

  • often than they think. So these are the practices that get encouraged - I can't give a talk

  • without cartoons. So this is a real problem, we seem to be stuck, how else can we pursue

  • justice except by raising standards? I think there is a way. You've already heard it mentioned

  • and people who have been in my classes have heard me talk about it until they're absolutely

  • nauseous at the thought of hearing about it again, too bad for you. I've been arguing

  • for this for a decade, nobody, nobody, nobody takes me seriously. The solution to this problem

  • is a lottery. Every applicant who is good enough, a standard that will vary from school

  • to school, gets his or her name put into a hat, and then the winners are chosen at random.

  • If selective schools were honest about what it takes for a student to succeed, they will

  • have standards of "good enough" that are high, but not unreasonable. And if they use a lottery,

  • the pressure balloon that is engulfing high school kids and destroying them will be punctured

  • just like that. Instead of having to be better than anyone else in Palo Alto, all they will

  • have to be is good enough and lucky. Anyone who is good enough gets her name thrown into

  • the hat, and has the same chance of admission as anyone else with a name in the hat. This

  • is the right thing to do, both because we really need to relieve pressure on high-achieving

  • students and because it is a fairer representation of what the admissions process actually currently

  • is. There is a principle called "the principle of the flat maximum." We are at a region of

  • the distribution - and places like Swarthmore and Yale and Princeton and so on - we are

  • at a region of the distribution, way at the right tip of the distribution, where the differences

  • among the people being measured are smaller than the errors in the tools that are being

  • used to measure. And as long as that's true, it is in effect a lottery, whether you try

  • to convince yourself otherwise or not. If you made it a lottery, people wouldn't beat

  • themselves up so much for not getting in, and they wouldn't drive themselves crazy trying

  • to figure out what little extra edge they could negotiate in competition with their

  • peers. A lottery like this won't correct the injustice that is inherent in a pyramidal

  • system in which not everyone can rise to the top, and nothing will, but here's what I think

  • it will do. It will reveal this injustice for what it is, instead of pretending otherwise.

  • Arguably, it will be more just than the current system, since people with financial resources

  • are much more likely to try to game the system and succeed, in the current system, than people

  • without resources. And the data that I see suggest that the income inequality among students

  • at institutions like this is much worse than the income inequality across the nation as

  • a whole. Selective institutions magnify income inequality rather than reducing it, despite

  • what we say our intentions are. Under a lottery, reasons to game the system would largely evaporate.

  • Will this decrease the quality of the students we teach? Actually, I think not. The dean

  • of admissions at Harvard was once quoted as saying about twelve or so years ago that if

  • they went through standard admissions and they took all the people they admitted and

  • threw them out and then started again, nobody who teaches the students at Harvard would

  • have any idea that they had done that. That there's no real difference between the top

  • batch of students and the second tier of students. A case can be made that a lottery would improve

  • the quality of students, and this speaks to the point that Amy made in her talk. When

  • we instrumentalize what students do in high school, it makes them worse students. A lottery

  • will make the instrumentalization of high school education much less significant than

  • it currently is. And this will probably mean students cultivate their interests and passions

  • to a much greater degree, and as a result are more interesting and better students than

  • the kind we're getting now, although I have no complaints about them. So why is it that

  • nobody takes this blatantly obviously good idea seriously? My guess about why is that

  • people think it is unjust for really important life outcomes to be decided by chance. No

  • matter how high the standards get, people can enter the process convinced that applicants

  • will get what they deserve. Who wants your future determined by a roll of the dice? I

  • understand this sentiment, but I think it is doubly mistaken. It's mistaken because,

  • despite what admissions people think and say, admissions already is determined by a roll

  • of the dice, or worse, by system gaming. And it's mistaken because I think a lottery will

  • force people to acknowledge the importance of good fortune in virtually all life outcomes.

  • The reason that I did this embarrassing description of my own life was to try to convince you

  • that good fortune is a significant piece of the story of success and failure in almost

  • all of our lives, I just chose myself as an example since I seem to be the principal topic

  • of conversation today. But this notion that it's all meritocracy leads people to believe

  • that nothing is a matter of chance, everything is earned, and this leads people to be remarkably

  • unsympathetic to other people in society who have not succeeded. If my success is because

  • of my effort and achievement, their failure must be because of their lack of effort and

  • their lack of achievement. So what ends up happening is you create a society - and this

  • also speaks to Hazel's point earlier - you create a society that is almost devoid of

  • empathy and devoid of perspective-taking, a society of people who think "since everybody

  • gets what they deserve, my success is deserved, why should I worry at all about the people

  • who have failed? Their failure is also deserved." I think admitting the importance of good fortune

  • might encourage institutions themselves to be more explicit about the importance of things

  • like empathy, compassion, and stuff, and worry a little bit less about where they rank in

  • the U.S. News and World Report, and a little bit more about where they rank when it comes

  • to nurturing good people. And what applies to academic success applies to success more

  • generally. Does everybody deserve what they get? No. But I think actually in a competitive

  • world economy, more people who succeed who deserve to succeed than used to be true. I

  • think the world is actually getting better in that regard. But, does everybody get what

  • they deserve? No, absolutely, unequivocally not. Working hard and playing by the rules

  • is no guarantee of anything, nor can it be. You can be doing your job, your company can

  • be doing its job, and all can be well, and then someone - some twelve-year-old - will

  • come up with a better, cheaper, faster way to do what you do and you'll be out of a job.

  • That's how markets work. Just as "deserving to get into Harvard" has come to mean "better

  • than all the other students," "deserving to succeed in the economy" has come to mean "better

  • than all the other employees or all the other firms." Robert Frank describes this as a winner-take-all

  • society. I think this is a pretty accurate description. Appreciating the inevitability

  • of injustice and the centrality of good fortune might get us to ask ourselves what responsibilities

  • we have to people who do not get what they deserve. What responsibilities do we have

  • to stakeholders, and not just shareholders, when a town's dominant employer is threatening

  • to move offshore? What responsibilities do we have to families who seem to be doing everything

  • right, only to be thrown into chaos by a serious illness? I think it's easier for us to ask

  • these questions in an open-hearted way when we appreciate that financial success in life

  • has much in common with admission to Harvard - that lots of deserving people will fail.

  • And just as we want to assure a soft landing for teenagers whose envelopes from admissions

  • offices are thin, we want to assure them the possibility of an excellent education somewhere

  • else, so, too, we want to assure people who lose the market competition that they will

  • still be able to lead decent lives. The more we appreciate how much our own success in

  • life is a result of good fortune, the more open I think we'll be towards supporting people

  • who have not been quite as fortunate as we've been. Behind what philosopher John Rawls called

  • a "veil of ignorance," where you don't know how lucky you or your children will be, you

  • might be a bit more enthusiastic about policies that redistribute resources to favor the unlucky.

  • So what I'm trying to suggest is that an appreciation of how most people's lives, like my life,

  • have been a series of unplanned and uncontrollable opportunities that you may or may not take

  • advantage of, will make us more sympathetic to the role of luck in life, and thus more

  • sympathetic to people whose luck has been bad. What we don't want is to create a generation

  • of people who, to quote Molly Ivens about a president I won't name, who were born on

  • third base and thought they hit a triple. So I take my own life as an example of two

  • things. I deserve most of the good things that have happened to me. However, I did not

  • deserve the good fortune that gave me the opportunities that I was clever enough to

  • make the most of. Thank you so, so much for coming.

I'm kind of overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed by the generosity of the college to make this possible,

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