Thomas Wolfe Was Right . . . Half Right

Student Address to Degree Recipients

by Stephen R. Silver, ALM '03

Stephen R. Silver, ALM '03

It was Thomas Wolfe who said you can't go home again. Well, maybe that's true, but nobody said you can't go back to school again!

Wolfe, of course, was saying that we can't relive our pasts, but to some extent, he was wrong. Thanks to the Extension School, I have been able to revisit days gone by--at least those from my student years. Harvard, you see, has been all about going back to school again, but this time for the sheer pleasure of it.

Picture, if you will, a scenario. It's one I bet you'll find familiar. Have you ever told a colleague or friend that you were about to embark on a new research paper only to be greeted by a shudder? I have. And more than once, I could see long-suppressed memories emerge as the person with whom I was speaking entertained hellish visions of all-nighters spent completing 20-page essays on some bizarre topic like Shakespeare's accountant. Then, after my interlocutor would regain his or her composure, I would hear the inevitable words, "Boy, I hated those papers. Am I glad I don't have to write those anymore!"

But I always begged to differ. Research papers were fun. I got to propose and then investigate topics of my own choosing. I remember writing a paper on the disestablishment of the Congregational Church in Massachusetts, one of the great church fights of American history, a memorable mix of religion, politics, and, yes, Harvard. Then there was the appreciation of the "Virgin and Child" by the Workshop of Botticelli in the Fogg Museum. There were others, too, on a variety of topics. But each gave me the opportunity to run wild, so to speak, through the Harvard libraries, to find ways of expressing myself and, in the end, to know something I didn't know just a few weeks earlier.

Some of us here today are receiving AAs, others ALBs, yet others ALMs. But while our degrees and areas of concentration may differ, we all share in common the fact that we have joined the great parade of men and women who have studied here at Harvard. This has been a special privilege for me because of what Harvard has come to mean to me over the years.

Harvard has been the place where I have worked these past seven years. It is the place where I have just earned a master's degree, courtesy of Harvard's Tuition Assistance Plan. And it is the place where I met my wife. And, Harvard is a place where I have had the privilege of meeting a lot of really interesting, smart people.

I remember sitting next to a retired Tufts dean in my first Extension School class. Since then, I have taken a course with an Arab newsman and a seminar with an animated fellow who each week traveled up from New York for class. I've had classes with lawyers and teachers, webmasters, and retirees, and even a woman training to be a midwife.

Regardless of whether the course was History of Islamic Theology and Philosophy, The History of Boston, or a course on Shakespeare and Chaucer, each week I could look forward to being stimulated by my classmates--and by my instructors. The thought of heading off to class after a long day's work wasn't dispiriting but liberating. Finally, after yet another 3-hour meeting, I could use my brain again!

A moment ago I mentioned running wild in the Harvard libraries. What a treat! I love books, and so have savored the opportunity to use Widener, the Fine Arts Library, and, most frequently, Andover-Harvard Theological Library at the Divinity School, as I worked on my thesis. The title of my thesis was "Toward a Hermeneutic of Prophetic Economics," a jargon-filled way of saying I wanted to demonstrate how the eighth-century bc Hebrew prophets had a lot to say that was applicable to our contemporary situation as individuals and a society. The thesis required considerable reading--commentaries, history, and more. Happily, when I needed a book, Harvard had it. I won't speak for you, but I often took that for granted.

My Extension School experience was made up of more than bright classmates and limitless supplies of books--it was also defined by the faculty. It was Paul Hanson's enthusiastic challenge to something I said in his The Bible and Politics course that got me thinking about the ideas that ultimately led to my thesis. But Professor Hanson wasn't the only faculty member I met who enjoyed provoking and engaging students--nor was he the only one to tell my classmates and me "You're Harvard students, you're smart, so you can handle the work!"

But that begs a question--why would you or I want to handle the work? Well, here's my story. Some years ago I picked up an MBA. I have also long been involved in my church. The place where religion and business intersect has long intrigued me. The way you and I and our nation use wealth has occupied my attention and concern. And the Extension School let me fashion a program that pulled together all of these interests, culminating in my thesis.

It's all too easy in today's hectic world to go home at the end of a long day and choose to sit in front of a television watching SportsCenter or to lose oneself in front of a computer monitor surfing the Net. But everybody here thought otherwise. Each of us chose to drive our cars to Cambridge, ride the Red Line or a bus to the Square, or walk over to campus at the end of the day for another 2 or 4 hours of study in the buildings in Harvard Yard when we could have simply headed home.

A colleague asked me the other day what I was going to do with all my free time now that I've completed my degree. It's a good question. I'll miss coming to class, doing my reading, writing my papers. But I'll find something to do. I'll definitely be back in the classroom and I may try to convert my thesis into a book. But whatever it is, I'm sure it will always involve learning something new. So, with all due respect to Mr. Wolfe, while you can't go home again, you can always go back to school.

Stephen R. Silver, Commencement Degree Speaker

This year, the Extension School's Commencement Speaker Prize went to Stephen Reid Silver, ALM '03. A concentrator in Religion, Silver graduated with a 3.87 grade-point average. While pursuing the ALM, he was employed as the Director of Estate and Planned Giving at the Harvard Law School.

Before settling in at the Law School, Silver earned a BA in politics from Brandeis in 1986 and an MBA in marketing and international management from Cornell in 1991. He then became an Annual Giving Officer at Brandeis and subsequently Associate Director of the Tufts Fund at Tufts University.

Needless to say, someone with this level of financial expertise was bound to discover Harvard's greatest bargain: the Extension School and the Tuition Assistance Program, which afforded him the opportunity to study with Harvard faculty and to use the Harvard library system. “I really enjoyed Paul Hanson's courses, The Bible and Politics and The Book of Isaiah. Hanson was filled with passion for his subject and the discussions were lively, to say the least. I also liked Mary-Ann Winkelmes' course, Religious Art and Architecture of Renaissance Italy--it was a blast to study churches I had visited and artwork I had seen. And, I can't imagine how anybody could earn a degree at the Extension School without taking at least one of Tom O'Connor's History of Boston courses,” Silver states.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about Steve Silver is the way in which he has managed to connect his financial background with his interest in the study of religion: “Though I have worked in the nonprofit sector since earning my MBA, I have remained keenly interested in developments in the world of business and in the way individuals and our society use wealth. At the same time, my religious faith is central to who I am and how I see the world. The Extension School allowed me to explore the intersection between these areas”--particularly in his ALM thesis project. Directed by Paul Hanson, Lamont Professor of Divinity, the thesis was titled “Toward a Hermeneutic of Prophetic Economics: An Exegesis of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah.” Silver argued that these prophets of ancient Judah and Israel were keen observers of wealth, its influences on both individuals and societies, and especially the ways in which it could corrupt its holders and enable abuses of power. Professor Hanson praised the thesis as “a beautifully formulated essay on a topic that has been surprisingly neglected in the scholarly literature. The thesis manifests careful and original readings of the biblical text and is one of the finest I have seen from the ALM Program.” As a result of his research, Silver came away with a profound appreciation for the insight of the Hebrew prophets and the versatility of the Bible: “The four prophets preached 2,800 years ago yet had a lot to say that is very applicable to twenty-first-century America and the way it relates to wealth.”

Committed to the continuation of his religious studies, Silver is now in his first semester as a student at the Harvard Divinity School, where he is pursuing the Master of Divinity degree. He states, “I became quite familiar with the faculty and library resources at the Divinity School during my time at the Extension School; making the move from one to the other seemed like the obvious thing to do.”