To His Highness the Aga Khan
Your Highness,
Award-winning poet and acclaimed constitutional lawyer is an improbable combination of attributes to find in any one person. Frank Scott was both. He had eight volumes of his verse published over his lifetime, and he professed and practised law for many years, arguing several historic cases before the Supreme Court of Canada and serving as McGill University’s dean of law. To Scott, law and poetry were not antithetical. They were compatible. A good constitution is like a good poem, he remarked; both are concerned with the spirit of man. Scott’s life is an example of how great insight in seemingly disparate disciplines can be combined to generate revealing findings in those disciplines and in entirely different ones. In Scott’s case, he combined verse and law to shed light on Canadians and their country and, in that understanding, how they could change their country for the better.
A scholar wrote that the poet and lawyer live harmoniously together in Scott because each speaks with the same humanist voice. I consider your life and work an embodiment of that same kind of harmony. Born in Geneva, you are a citizen of the world. Your many international honours attest to this fact, including your honorary citizenship of Canada and your status as a companion of the Order of Canada. In this way, you abide by Scott’s ethos of humanitarianism: “The world is my country; the human race is my race.” You’re also a spiritual leader, yet you appreciate that the success and indeed survival of our increasingly interdependent world is based on people of many faiths, cultures, and values expressing tolerance, openness, and understanding toward others.
Your belief in the value of working across physical and spiritual borders illuminates our world. The Aga Khan Award for Architecture recognizes the creative design of public facilities and spaces in order to revitalize architecture in Islamic societies. The Aga Khan Development Network partners with a range of public and private organizations around the world to help improve the health, education, governments, and economies of people in developing nations. I think your Global Centre for Pluralism best expresses your understanding of the value of working as widely as possible across physical boundaries and borders of the mind to enhance people’s lives. This organization is housed fittingly in Ottawa, the capital of one of history’s great pluralist societies. Pluralism is the ultimate expression of working across borders because it recognizes that every person has something meaningful to share to improve the condition of all.
In your address to a convocation audience at the University of Ottawa, you described your way of thinking and acting as “sharing internationally in the hard work of intellectual inquiry.” I call your approach the diplomacy of knowledge – different words for the same technique. The diplomacy of knowledge is our willingness and ability to work across disciplinary boundaries and international borders to uncover, share, and refine knowledge. Thomas Jefferson’s brilliant metaphor of a burning candle is still, I think, the best way to illustrate the concept of the diplomacy of knowledge and its incredible power. The candle aflame symbolizes not only enlightenment but also the transmission of learning from one person or group of people to another. When I light my candle from the flame of yours, your light is not diminished. Just the opposite: the light from both our candles shines brighter on all around us. In physics, it’s called candlepower. The most skilled Western practitioner of working across disciplines is Leonardo da Vinci. A masterful painter, Leonardo’s many now iconic artistic works were informed by and express vividly his detailed knowledge of several fields of science: anatomy, botany, geology, engineering, and biomechanics. Conversely, his thousands of pages of notes on science and engineering are brought to life by detailed drawings that perfectly capture his observations, ideas, and designs. Many of these drawings are as striking and famous as his paintings. Leonardo recognized no separation between the arts and sciences. Indeed, he relied on the fusion of scientific theorizing and hypothesizing with artistic expression to interpret and reveal knowledge and thereby advance human understanding.
Few people today have the extraordinary insights and talents of Leonardo. Yet those in businesses, schools, governments, and non-profit groups can surely learn from his example and enhance what their organizations do by cultivating much closer contacts and interactions across disciplines. Two of the greatest incubators of innovation of all time are vivid physical manifestations of the value of interdisciplinary collaboration. At Bell Labs in New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from New York City, leaders were acutely conscious of the need to cultivate teams of specialists from a variety of fields. Some were obvious – physics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, electronics, and metallurgy. Others weren’t so plain – physiology, psychology, and meteorology – but were nonetheless necessary for success. In Silicon Valley, the process of interdisciplinary innovation has been more organic, as a critical mass of engineers, scientists, programmers, entrepreneurs, and investors gradually gravitated to northern California to create less an organization of innovation and more a geographic one – a modern-day, innovation-driven equivalent of Renaissance Florence. Closer to home, Wilder Penfield, one of the first companions of the Order of Canada when it was created on Canada’s 100th birthday in 1967 and founder of the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University (and colleague of Frank Scott coincidently), entitled his autobiography No Man Alone to illustrate that his early work in mapping the human brain required the weaving together of expertise from many sub-disciplines to see the mind whole. And our subsequent discoveries of how the brain works and how the mind learns have reinforced these interdisciplinary interdependent truths.
The diplomacy of knowledge also requires us to operate across borders. While such actions can be conducted locally, regionally, and nationally, they are most potent when we cross cultural and political borders to cultivate interactions among researchers, scientists, students, investors, and entrepreneurs from many national and cultural backgrounds. When we approach a question from many different cultural angles, we gain a much better sense of its true nature and therefore the best answer. I admire the way you conveyed this very point succinctly in two short sentences at the University of Ottawa convocation: “The affirmation of cultural identity is in no way inconsistent with the idea of encouraging intercultural cooperation. The two movements sustain each other.” I compare working across borders to a surveyor and how he or she uses instruments such as a level, transit, and theodolite to determine an unknown point based on known coordinates. The diplomacy of knowledge can be likened to that surveying device. It only makes sense that we take this kind of transnational and multicultural approach. The biggest challenges we face as individual nations are either global in origin or global in scale. Challenges such as ensuring all people can access quality health care services and adequate supplies of healthy food and clean water; guaranteeing people and industries in rapidly developing countries can obtain renewable sources of fuel; and making sure all nations can prosper economically and yet preserve their lands and waters, and mitigate the harmful effects of climate change. Our willingness and capacity to practise the diplomacy of knowledge will determine whether we can effectively tackle these challenges – some of the biggest that human civilization has ever faced.
I think I can say without arrogance that Canadians frequently make excellent partners when it comes to increasing the Jeffersonian concept of candlepower. We have three key qualities in our favour. First, we believe deeply in the intrinsic value of learning from one another and sharing knowledge widely. We came by this belief early and of necessity; the very survival of the first European settlers to Canada was wholly dependent on their willingness to learn from our country’s Aboriginal peoples. Second, we’ve made high-quality education widely accessible to all. By doing so, generations of Canadians have been able to overcome barriers that exist in all countries – racism, poverty, class immobility – and achieve their true potential as individuals. And third, we encourage new Canadians to retain and celebrate those aspects of their heritages that don’t conflict with the time-honoured values that have made our country such a success. This balanced approach enriches our country by incorporating the best that others bring. The fact that you decided to house the Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa persuades me that you agree with me.
The penchant of Canadians to practise the diplomacy of knowledge is clearly evident in the field of communications. Again, we came to this talent early and of necessity. Our country’s vast land mass and sparse population have prompted generations of Canadian engineers, entrepreneurs, and scholars to think deeply about and work closely together to overcome the challenges of communicating information and knowledge across sweeping distances. Sandford Fleming hit upon the idea of standard time to make communications of all kinds more consistent and reliable. Alexander Graham Bell’s signature creation set the stage for twentieth-century telephony and the twenty-first-century revolution in global communications. Mike Lazaridis spearheaded creation of the BlackBerry wireless mobile device, generations of which link ever-growing numbers of people throughout the world. And Marshall McLuhan’s concept of the global village enabled all the planet’s citizens to appreciate the consequences of the new world we’re building through our development and use of information and communications technologies. Yet Canada’s long-standing desire to be open to the influences and knowledge of the world is reflected most vividly in the human face of our country. We are of many colours, faiths, and backgrounds – as many as the world contains. We are also small in number – some 36 million at last count – spread across a land larger than any except Russia. Any success we have enjoyed as a sparse population living in a vast land is a direct result of our willingness to welcome the world’s people, ideas, and knowledge to our shores and to reach out in turn beyond our physical and mental borders.
I’ve tried to be a knowledge diplomat throughout my career. I started early. I studied at Harvard (as you did at almost the same time) and then at Cambridge as a Rotary Scholar. One of my duties as a scholarship recipient was to visit various chapters of the Rotary Club across Britain and talk about Canada. I continued to reach out across borders and disciplines soon after graduation. One of the first overseas visits I made as a professional was to China. It took place nearly thirty-five years ago – a time when few Canadians or even Westerners had the privilege of experiencing the vibrant life and historic culture of that remarkable land and people. As principal of McGill University, I went there in 1980 just after the Cultural Revolution to restore the Norman Bethune Medical Exchange between McGill and the Peking Medical College. Shortly thereafter we worked with a variety of Chinese professionals to set up a nationwide program in business management education. It was a remarkable success. Our initiative helped more than sixty schools of higher learning in that country develop graduate degree programs in business management. It also spawned forty-seven partnerships between universities in China and Canada. Since then, these programs and partnerships have helped thousands of Chinese men and women get a solid grounding in advanced principles and methods of modern management. This generation of managers has contributed mightily to the unprecedented economic success of China. The collaborations themselves have inspired these and many more schools to reach out across their borders and find many new ways for students, teachers, and researchers from a variety of academic and scientific disciplines to live, study, and work with their peers around the world. They have also enriched the educations of thousands of young Chinese and Canadian men and women, spurred the uncovering of new knowledge in an array of fields, and fostered greater understanding between our two countries.
As you know well, McGill also played a key role in developing your Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi, Pakistan. You may recall that we first met when it opened in 1981. The McGill team of epidemiology and public health, led by Walter Spitzer (an esteemed McGill epidemiologist), shared its community-medicine model to help the hospital deploy public health services outside the hospital itself. I remember then being struck by how bold your venture was, introducing the best of Western education and health care into a culture with vastly different customs and traditions. One of the most striking of these efforts was to open a school of nursing to educate girls to become nurse practitioners, start these regional clinics, and overcome traditional barriers to women health professionals treating boys and men. I realize now what a supreme exercise in the diplomacy of knowledge it was on the part of your hospital and McGill. You made the model work because you applied it while taking into account those customs and traditions. That’s the diplomacy of knowledge truly in action!
I often explain the power of the diplomacy of knowledge across cultures through international education – the healthy diversification of Canadian schools and colleges through the presence of international students and the “awakening” that occurs when young Canadians study, work, or volunteer abroad. I sometimes illustrate this with the personal example of my wife and my five daughters who began their international exchanges at age twelve. Four things happened to them: their natural curiosity – the question why, which is on children’s lips from when they begin to talk – is piqued. Second, their tolerance, in the best sense of the word, is broadened. They seek out and appreciate difference and they welcome change as a refresher. Third, their judgement is expanded. As the Book of Solomon says, they grow in wisdom and stature. They are slower to jump to conclusions; they look for the whole story; they are quicker to spot bigotry. Or as Saint-Exupéry writes in Le Petit Prince, “I am different from you, but because I am different, I don’t diminish you; I enhance you.” And fourth, something very human. They become more empathetic – not simply feeling the pain of another’s discomfort but being able to place themselves in the other person’s shoes.
During my time as governor general, I have seen – in dozens of countries on every continent – many other examples of the diplomacy of knowledge in action. Two prime examples of Canadians sharing and refining knowledge with others stand out. The first is the Mulheres Mil Program in Brazil. It involves the Colleges and Institutes Canada and Canada’s International Development Research Centre working with the local ministry of education to provide basic education and vocational training to one thousand women. In doing so, the program enables them to enter the labour market, removing them from a position of vulnerability and enhancing the quality of life of themselves, their families, and their communities. After nearly ten years, not only has it achieved its primary goal, but it has also given project directors knowledge to expand the program in Brazil and implement it elsewhere. Another great example is the College of the North Atlantic. The modest Newfoundland-based school won a competition to create a six-thousand-student college of applied arts and sciences in Qatar. The Qataris told me that the College of the North Atlantic was able to beat out some of the world’s leading educational institutions because, in their proposal, the Newfoundlanders showed themselves to be resilient, hard-working, and, most importantly, respectful of local conditions. (I like to think that another factor in the Newfoundlanders’ favour was the fact that the Qataris didn’t want their children speaking English with an Oxbridge accent!)
I have spent a good part of my tenure as Canada’s governor general taking insights like these and urging men and women from all walks of life – anthropologists and computer scientists, psychologists and engineers, historians and urban planners, poets and lawyers even – to be knowledge diplomats in their own lives and careers – to reach across borders and disciplines to uncover, test, and establish universal truths, and to spark innovative ideas and practices. I’ve emphasized the leading role students and teachers can play. I’ve called on students to choose careers that combine personal success and public service. And I’ve asked educators to increase the number of students learning foreign languages; to encourage more of their professors to take their sabbaticals in other countries; to link their research labs with those in other parts of the world; and to arrange accreditation and certification processes to make it possible for students to earn degrees by completing courses and fulfilling requirements at universities in different countries.
My time and travels as governor general make me excited about the future of the diplomacy of knowledge. I’ve seen how advanced technologies are making communications so quick and easy, and the opportunity to share knowledge ubiquitous and cheap. These twin developments mean ideas are being tested through action more quickly and therefore changes are coming faster than ever before. As ideas are tested and refined, and changes take place, we must be sure to promote and defend the practices that have served us well and also use the diplomacy of knowledge to broaden not only what but how we learn. The good news is, I think, that more and more people understand that the well-being of their countries is defined by how well they develop, share, and advance knowledge. Something you said in your convocation address at the University of Ottawa – that a country’s standing in our contemporary world is no longer recognized by what it can achieve for itself but by what it can do for others – leads me to believe we agree on this point. In fact, I’m sure we both speak with one voice when I say everyone must use the beauty and power of the diplomacy of knowledge – as Frank Scott did, as you do – to help secure for all peoples the peace, prosperity, and personal fulfillment that is their birthright and create the smarter, more caring world that is the dream of all humankind.
God bless you.
David
His Highness the Aga Khan is the forty-ninth hereditary leader of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims, a role he assumed in 1957, and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network, one of the world’s most successful development organizations. Born in Geneva, he spent his early childhood in Nairobi, Kenya, and then attended Le Rosey School in Switzerland for nine years. He graduated from Harvard University in 1959. Since then, he has received numerous awards, decorations, and honorary degrees in recognition of his work, including honorary citizenship of Canada and companion of the Order of Canada.