Department of Anthropology

As the sun shone down on the graduates and their families assembled on Healy Lawn, Commencement speaker Dr. Paul Farmer, who was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters for his work combating infectious disease in impoverished nations, gave the students words of advice for making global change. He asked that they “Try not to forget the broader social world around us, and the past upon which it is built.” Dr. Farmer learned this lesson when, as a recent college graduate, he traveled to Haiti and saw its complex social ills firsthand. In those months, he learned that no problem could be solved without understanding the many forces—social, natural, and political—that made up their causes.

“If humans have a wonderful ability to remember, we also have an unnerving ability to forget,” Dr. Farmer said. He asked that students begin to think “fractally, or on several scales at once” to understand that the world’s growing inequalities stem not just from unlucky natural disasters, but from social injustices like poverty, political instability, and lack of education. Students can make change by reflecting on the world’s challenges and choosing to serve others. “One of the chief lessons from my work as a physician is that we can do great things when we pull together, when we are connected.”

In her citation of his honorary degree, Associate Professor of Biology Heidi Elmendorf explained how Dr. Farmer and his organization, Partners in Health (PIH), provide a model for Georgetown students. “Partners in Health took a problem of staggering proportions and succeeded by doing the unthinkable: working with unstinting effort to save one person at a time,” Elmendorf explained. “And in doing so, Paul Farmer has lived a life true to Georgetown’s emphasis on the Jesuit value of ‘cura personalis,’ the principle of attending individually to meet the needs of others, respecting the circumstances and concerns of each person, and appreciating each for his or her particular gifts and insights.”

Source: http://college.georgetown.edu/219463.html

View the webcast of Dr. Farmer's speech here: http://www.iencode.net/Webcast/ListenPage/171/1106