Waterloo, Saturday, May 26, 2012

Thank you for inviting me to open this celebrated multidisciplinary congress. And thank you for giving me this opportunity to return to Waterloo. It’s wonderful to be back among so many cherished friends in a place where my family and I spent some marvellous years.

Today, I want to talk about a dream of mine—a true democracy of knowledge. What exactly is it?

To democratize something is to make it accessible to everyone. A democracy of knowledge, therefore, deepens and broadens knowledge so that it’s available to all citizens in a given society and, beyond them, to all societies throughout the world.

When I speak of knowledge, I speak about something specific. Knowledge is the next-to-highest state on the progressive spectrum that moves from data through information and knowledge to wisdom—with wisdom being the ultimate plateau from which knowledge is applied to govern all aspects of a society.

As scholars in Canada today, we’re privileged. This is the best time in history to be scholars—to be knowledge workers. Never before have the conditions for the democratization of knowledge been better nor the critical thinking of scholars more central to lives of Canadians and people throughout the world.

For the 46 years before my installation as governor general, I had the pleasure and the privilege of immersing myself in the world of academic scholarship, beginning as a law professor and then later as a university president.

As a scholar—a Canadian scholar—I believe we must reconsider the role of scholarship in how we apply our learning, in how we make knowledge more widely available to Canadians, and in how we further democratize knowledge for all people.

I use the words “Canadian scholar” deliberately. Canada has already played an impressive role in the democratization of knowledge, and continues to have much to offer the world. Yet as Canadians, we’re also humble about our accomplishments and vividly conscious of the work that remains to be done.

This gathering is a vital component of your work as Canadian scholars. Over the course of the next week, you will seek to uncover answers to a fundamental question: How do we redefine scholarship in our world to democratize knowledge further?

As governor general, I have often spoken of the importance of seeing things whole in our efforts to build a smarter, more caring nation. I want to consider the advantages of seeing things whole as we evolve our understanding of the kind of scholarship required in the 21st century.

I’ll start by drawing on the thinking of the late Ernest Boyer—long-time president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Two decades ago, Boyer published Scholarship Reconsidered—an influential report in which he highlighted the usefulness of the term “scholarship” to encompass a wide range of academic work—from pure and applied research to teaching and civic engagement.

He wrote:

“Surely, scholarship means engaging in original research. But the work of the scholar also means stepping back from one’s investigation, looking for connections, building bridges between theory and practice, and communicating one’s knowledge effectively to students.”

Boyer’s proposal was to craft a new definition of scholarship based on four distinct, yet interrelated, functions. Boyer proposed:

-  the scholarship of discovery, which enables us to create essential new knowledge through basic and applied research;

-  the scholarship of integration, which empowers us to recognize that the complex problems we face cannot be solved in isolation, that we have much to learn from each other;

-  the scholarship of application, through which we animate learning by putting theory into practice; and finally

-  the scholarship of teaching, through which we synthesize learning and transmit it for the benefit of all.

Boyer’s ideas about scholarship are by now familiar to most of us. They’ve become a foundation of our new, broader definition of the university’s role in society. Time and experience has proven their merit. As our world has become more globalized and complex, the relevance of this more holistic approach to postsecondary education has deepened.

Yet the rapid and profound changes we’re living through compel us to dig deeper into Boyer’s profound insights into scholarship. While it’s been only two decades since the publication of Scholarship Reconsidered, the context in which we learn today has changed considerably.

Let me start with developments in the first of Boyer’s four functions of scholarship—discovery.

As we all know, the speed, complexity and depth of our learning today are unprecedented. Over the course of the next 40 years, it’s estimated that science will create more knowledge than has been created in all of human history. The mind boggles.

New tools are powering our revolutionary advances in knowledge. To the telescope and microscope—which enable us to see far and to see small—we’ve added the computer and the Internet, which enable us to find, gather, store, relate and experiment with everything we know—in short, to see wide and deep. The mapping of the human genome, one of the single-most important scientific discoveries in history, was the result of the dynamic interaction of medicine and computer science—one of many new disciplinary hybrids in our smarter world.

Harnessed to the Internet, the computer has made it possible for us to share and store information to an extent never before imagined. An example within the humanities is found right here in Waterloo, when Open Text developed an online search engine for the Oxford English Dictionary to produce a second edition that marries digital data collection with software synthesis. The previous edition used handwritten index cards.

This remarkable resource eloquently demonstrates the power of new tools to extend our learning and increase our ability to share and access knowledge—in this case, the authoritative history and definition of every word in the English language.

The pace and scope of scientific discovery is greater than ever, and it will change but not diminish the fundamental role that social sciences and the humanities play in our lives. The many disciplines they comprise are vital in two ways: first, to place in context within our civilization this accumulation of discoveries; and second, to animate the cultures and souls of our respective societies that bring these discoveries to life.

This point naturally brings me to recent developments in the scholarship of integration.

The complex problems we face today cannot be solved in isolation. This was certainly true in Ernest Boyer’s day. Yet rapid globalization and the Internet have made interdisciplinary study and collaboration more essential than ever.

The work of University of Toronto urban theorist Richard Florida demonstrates the importance of fostering a diverse mixture of talent, technology and tolerance within our communities. When people achieve the right balance of creativity, communication and co-operation, scholarship is enhanced and healthier communities emerge.

A curious feature about increased connectivity is that it both enables and requires greater collaboration. Consider the fact that we now generate and store online 2.5 exabytes of computer data every day. That means that every two days we’re uploading more data than has been printed in all of human history.

Many of the implications of intense and expansive connectivity have yet to be seen. Yet what we can discern is the growing need for us to work together and learn one another’s disciplinary languages. Why? Because each advance in science and technology has a ripple effect on our culture and society.

Many people often under-appreciate this truth. The humanities and social sciences are essential in helping us avoid unintended consequences and innovate socially as we move from data to information to knowledge to wisdom.

Let’s consider the third element of scholarship—applying it in our communities and thus in our world.

The community-campus collaboration fostered by United Way-Centraide and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council isquite simply a superb initiative. It will help us ensure that social innovation is a key component of Canada’s innovation landscape. This initiative also provides us with a catalytic vehicle to apply knowledge and develop experiential learning.

I often fancy that the most practical thing in the world is a good general theory when it’s continually tested and refined against reality. The application of knowledge in our communities enables us to refine both theory and practice.

We can’t overstate the importance of testing our assumptions and showing humility in our scholarship. I recently had the privilege of presenting a Killam Prize to Western University’s John Whalley, who by several measures is Canada’s leading research economist and the top-ranked publishing economist in his field.

In his acceptance speech, Dr. Whalley spoke candidly about the failure of applied economics to foresee how excess leverage in the financial markets would make us vulnerable to financial collapse. The 2008 Wall Street crash was preventable and brought misery to multitudes. Economists are still struggling to find and articulate a workable solution to instability in the global economy and have reason for much humility.

Dr. Whalley’s remarks remind us of our duty as scholars to be mindful of the limitations of our knowledge. The social contract that exists between scholars and the public depends on trust and credibility. When the people lose their trust in us as scholars, it’s incredibly hard for us to regain it.

If any economists or social scientists in the room feel singled out by that comment, know that every discipline must abide by this social contract. I made a similar plea to my profession—the legal profession—in another of my speeches as governor general last year. Our inability to find the right balance between regulation and market freedom in our financial markets led directly to the collapse of our economies.

This ideal of balanced integration is also a focus of my own scholarly work. Two colleagues and I are working to unravel how we can integrate systemic risk in our national and international financial systems to deal with the “too-big-to-fail” syndrome in our banking institutions.

With my co-authors, I’m preparing the fifth edition of a book called Canadian Securities Regulation, which I first wrote in 1977. The legal framework attempts to preserve the equilibrium among efficient capital markets and consumer protection and trust in the use of other people’s money. This work “integrates” with another strand of my own scholarship. In 1968, I edited a book titled Computers and the Law, and later co-authored a book titled Communications Law in Canada.

About the same time, another colleague and I wrote two articles in the University of Toronto Law Journal Society about the “chequeless” and “certificateless” society, in which we attempted to establish a legal framework that would enable people to migrate from paper cheques and certificates to an electronic regime for the movement of money and wealth.

This was a case of ensuring that the law, i.e. form, followed the evolution of science and technology, i.e. function, in reasonable sequence. As it turned out, the international electronic movement of financial wealth has been so powerful and quick that the law lost its ability to oversee and constrain the most pernicious effects of that change.

I don’t have solutions to share with you today. I simply note that our scholarship in this area has become much more of a challenge. We must not only integrate economics, history, political science, psychology and law, but also recognize that all these disciplines now operate on a global scale. I hope I have enough time left to do a tenth edition of that book. Perhaps after ten tries, I’ll get it right.

But speaking of trial and error, the need to continually gauge our work by its effect on the world does not mean that research must always have direct and immediate application. As the history of medicine has proven, basic science for its own sake has proven over time to be fundamental to making new discoveries.

Yet while we must not hinder new discoveries by placing too much emphasis on immediate results, we must ensure that our learning is attuned to the greater good. Basic and applied research stand at two ends of a spectrum in which success in one leads to success in the other, beginning at either end.

And what of teaching in the 21st century, the fourth and final component in our redefinition of scholarship?

As I mentioned earlier, this is a daunting and exhilarating time to be a teacher. As in other spheres of knowledge, the communications revolution is leading to unimagined possibilities for teaching and the democratization of knowledge. That being said, our students often have better access to data—and some information—than do our teachers.

The recent decision of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to collaborate and offer free of charge thousands of these courses online to anyone with an Internet connection is a splendid example of the deliberate democratization of knowledge.

How awe-inspiring that these two neighbouring, world-leading educational institutions are leading the way in making knowledge public—for free.

Let us be inspired by that example and ask ourselves: How can we extend the reach and effectiveness of our teaching today? As a professor, I used to highlight innovations by the banking industry as an example of the transformative use of digital communications. In essence, the banks turned each of us into tellers, giving us the ability—and the responsibility—to manage our financial affairs online.

Will the communications revolution ultimately have a similar impact on our teaching? If so, how do we as teachers help our students manage their own learning journeys in the face of great complexity?

These are among the many questions that must inform our redefinition of teaching in the 21st century.

For all that is new, however, the central importance of teachers in our lives remains. Along with learning, a smart and caring society recognizes teaching and teachers as vitally important to our well-being. Teachers synthesize and transmit our knowledge and experience, and they guide and mentor us in varied and profound ways.

As I said precisely in my installation speech, if you remember only three words from my remarks today, let them be: cherish our teachers.

Let me close by returning to my original call for the deepening and broadening of knowledge so that it’s available to all citizens in a given society and to all societies throughout the world.

The current explosion of knowledge requires a parallel expansion in our ability to think critically and imaginatively as citizens. For at the core of democratic societies is the idea that people know enough to govern themselves. Education is the key.

Not that we all need to be experts in every field. Instead, we must work to build a society in which we view everything we do as learning, and everything we learn as something to be passed on to others. And remember that most precious Old Testament proverb: “Blessed is the man who plants a tree knowing he will not be there to enjoy its shade.”

Widening of the circle of knowledge is a quintessentially Canadian notion. We have worked hard in our country to build an education system that balances equality of opportunity and excellence. I’m confident that if any nation in the world can build a true democracy of knowledge, it’s Canada. And we, small country that we are, should be the Athens to the new Romes.

And in that same spirit, let me leave you with five questions that may be useful as you continue your discussions:

1. What must we do to rekindle the social contract we as scholars have with society in order to ensure we redefine our learning according to the four elements of scholarship that I mentioned?

2. With regard to discovery, how do we ensure we view the ever-expanding boundaries of discovery as a positive challenge and devise new methods, and refashion old ones, to make the most of discoveries to come?

3. With regard to integration, how do we make our learning global in scope and multidisciplinary in effect, educate our students to be citizens of the world as well as citizens of the mind, and ensure all people in the world enjoy that citizenry?

4. With regard to application, how do we apply the best advances of the revolution in communications?

5. And with regard to teaching, how do we not only extend the democratization of knowledge, but also work together to ensure Canadians play a catalytic role within it?

Thank you all for your time and attention. I’ve had much to say. And, as scholars, we have much to do if a true democracy of knowledge is our goal.

Let me leave you with two lines of my favourite poem from George Bernard Shaw:  “Some people see things as they are and wonder ‘Why?’ We dream of things that ought to be and ask, ‘Why not?’”