Remarks by Jill A. Schuker '66

Thank you all for being here today and for honoring me with Skidmore's Distinguished Achievement Award. I know that my parents would have been especially proud to have witnessed this ceremony. On their behalf and mine, thank you for this recognition of my very fortunate career.

I remember distinctly when telling my parents about my decision to major in government that they had a somewhat skeptical look, wondering what that meant in terms of my future. It all began with my summer internship with Senator Robert F. Kennedy. It set so many things in motion for the rest of my professional life-colleagues, mentors, friends, passions, and goals. And I have been incredibly fortunate to have been more than a spectator at so many seminal moments in our recent history.

I was reminded recently of my own much more modest trajectory while watching the play Hamilton. Hamilton raps in the play: "When you got skin in the game, you stay in the game. But you don't win unless you play in the game." And that's part of the essential message that I want to share with you today. We all have a stake in this political puzzle that is our country today.

Our current zeitgeist of profound public dissatisfaction and anxiety, of promises made and promises broken, that has turned too many of us off instead of on to participation in our public life, is deeply troubling. Our current politics makes most of us want to turn over, pull the covers up, and take a very long nap.

This particular campaign season has created both confusion and a disheartening, even unprecedented vulnerability to those who promise quick and seemingly easy panaceas, along with schoolyard bravado, to very complex problems. This is not the formula we should be seeking or accepting for our country. Such appeals-be they to fear or scapegoating-demean and endanger our best traditions and values of openness and acceptance and change.
 
Those of us who grew up in the last half of the 20th century and the 21st know that no decade has been without real complexity and disruption, for good and for ill. We have lived through tremendously turbulent times at home and terrible events abroad.

America has been at the fulcrum of many if not all of these global events. We have prospered economically, and we have had the benefit of geography, a history of compromise (often imperfect but usually rational), a constitution that has stood the test of time, and general good fortune in our country's institutions and leaders.

These are essential elements in the strength of our democracy and have enabled us to be in the vanguard of demonstrating how constitutional and peaceful change can indeed work-and work well. Among our other gifts to ourselves is the right to vote, a privilege and obligation we too often take for granted, and one that didn't happen overnight-for women less than 100 years ago, and for many of our citizens of color in our lifetimes.

America is not the same place it was 50 years ago when I graduated from Skidmore, nor should we expect it to be. And as history moves on, so does our place in it. Our small globe is more than ever one interconnected neighborhood-even if not one community.

We need to accept and value that the complexion of this country is changing dramatically, and that this is part of the strength and success of America today, as it has been in our past. I remember vividly that one of the moments that motivated me most to want to be engaged in government was listening to President Kennedy's televised civil-rights speech 53 years ago. He said, in the wake of the University of Mississippi battle to admit its first black student, that we need to face certain truths-that this was one nation in its diversity, that as a people it was time to face a festering and testing moral crisis-"to fulfill [our nation's] promise"-and that we must do what needed to be done and do so through government action-legislation, policy, and law-if we were to be true to what our founding documents embodied in spirit as well as letter.

We are all in this time together, whatever our ages and backgrounds. Good governance means working day to day on our democracy-having skin in the game. Losing faith in our institutions, unless it is to improve and strengthen them, is a losing proposition as we face ever tougher challenges at home and abroad with no good, quick, or easy fixes.

We need to demand of ourselves that we walk the walk. Democracy can be perverted from inside just like every other system of government. We are not immune. We saw this most egregiously and with terrible global consequences in the 1930s German elections. It can happen here. And it is a chilling and cautionary tale for our time.

We should want our best selves to be seeking, not rejecting, public office. This begins with expecting the best from our candidates. It means leveling the playing field when it comes to our out-of-control money-raising system and the cynical expectations and quid pro quos that accompany it. It is my strong view that without public financing, these will continue.

We also need more from our media-more reality and less "reality show." More accountability and responsibility. More thoughtful dialogue and questioning. More vigilance. More tenacity. And more backbone. After all, a free press is our tribune … and our surrogate. While embracing the incredible power and effect of social media-its speed, its shorthand, its reach-we need to remember that our leaders need time to think and process life-altering decisions every day, and we need to allow ourselves to do the same.

And as a final thought: What about restoring civics to our classrooms and civility to our debate, and seriously considering whether there should be the expectation, even the requirement, of national service for all-civilian or military, men and women, at home or abroad. How about that as a gap-year focus?

So I offer these brief comments today as a message of shared concern, experience, passion, participation, citizen responsibility, challenge, opportunity, and practice. And with real faith in "the better angels of our nature" and in our shared future.

It is our time to make sure the "game" works as well as it can. We cannot afford to just be on the sidelines as silent, sullen observers.

Thank you very much for your attention. And thank you again for offering me this recognition.