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Unlike most of you, I have spent the past few years far from the halls of academe, in the tumultuous and often grim world of US foreign policy. Days that I ordinarily would have spent writing and teaching, I have spent instead visiting refugee camps, consoling political prisoners and families of the disappeared, and fighting endless diplomatic and bureaucratic battles. From this different vantage point, I was touched to read of the noble and inspirational purposes of this Çï¿ûÊÓƵ: "to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people." I emphasize the word free because a tre-mendous challenge to this institution in the new millennium will be guiding the process of globalization-not just the obvious globalization of ideas, finance, commerce, and technology that already preoccupies so much of the Çï¿ûÊÓƵ, but also the globalization of human freedom, which to my mind marks the most profound social revolution of our time.
Only three decades ago there were fewer than thirty democracies in the world. Today some 120 of the world's 190-plus countries qualify, in form if not in substance, as governments with stated commitments to the preservation of freedom and democratic self-governance. Yet every day, in dealing with governments that nominally embrace the democratic path, I find that freedom has proved to be a distinctly double-edged sword for most of the world's peoples.
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On the one hand, the collapse of the iron curtain, the decline of dictatorship across Latin America, the rise of African continental awareness, and the retreat on Asian values have left millions newly free to vote, to form political parties, to march in the streets, and to express their most primal and heartfelt desires. On the other hand, the lifting of governmental controls has also unleashed for millions the "freedom" to be victims of corruption and has led to increased trafficking in drugs and human beings, the spread of disease and environmental damage, and the most terrifying forms of terrorism, ethnic and communal violence.
In just the past few days, through the miracle of the global media, we have witnessed again these two faces of the globalization of freedom. From our own living rooms we have simultaneously watched both at work: on the one hand, the extraordinary lust of the Serbian people for self-government; on the other, the tragic downward spiral of retaliatory violence in the Middle East. And even as we marvel at Kim Dae Jung's Nobel Prize and contemplate the end of more than half a century of division in my parents' homeland, we must wonder as well-as the thirty-eighth parallel recedes from political prominence-which face of global freedom will ultimately emerge on that peninsula.
To guide this headlong rush to global freedom, what role do we in the Çï¿ûÊÓƵ-particularly those of us in the social sciences-have to play? My time in the government has confirmed my worst fears: that in the world of foreign policy, those with influence have too little time to think, and those with time to think have too little influence. To be sure, part of the blame properly falls on the bureaucrats and the politicians-but much, I fear, falls on us as well. Too often we speak only to safe audiences, to one another, or to our students, in lecture halls far from the refugee camps, in books and journals whose readership we already know intimately, and at academic conferences in serene places far from the misery whose alleviation is ostensibly the object of our scholarly inquiry. Too rarely do we speak directly and bluntly to the policymakers who are actively seeking answers to the world's most vexing problems, but who lack the energy or time to find the best answers or to seek us out. The irony is this: our commitment to truth and our insulation from politics give us unique freedom and independence to speak truth to power, but the hard-won privilege of choosing our audiences may lead us unwittingly to squander that freedom in the name of not getting our hands dirty.
When the cold war ended, the academic community built an impressive array of nongovernmental institutions to help educate newly free peoples on the responsibilities and opportunities posed by their newfound freedom. University centers, research institutes, and entire schools were built to advance the study of democracy. Those institutions have made outstanding contributions, and the need for individuals committed to their mission has only accelerated in the past few years. As members of an august body dedicated not just to the advancement of knowledge and the truth but also, more fundamentally, to the promotion of human freedom and human happiness, we collectively have so much yet to give. This institution has devoted more than two centuries to the building of a free and independent people. Perhaps we can use this occasion to recommit ourselves to the task of using our privileged position to teach others how to build and perpetuate their new and frightening freedom through the construction of wise restraints, the teaching of cultural understanding and tolerance, the development of self-sustaining social, political, and economic institutions, and the acceptance of human dignity and human rights as genuinely universal values.