On Tuesday, September 13, at 4 p.m. in the Chancellor’s Suite of the University Center, Dean Bartoli welcomed all Diplomacy students to campus for the start of a new year by laying out his vision for the School. In his remarks, he reminded students that at our professional school of diplomacy and international relations, their choices and actions are not irrelevant; each one matters, and we will benefit immediately and directly from our own contribution and the contributions of others. He continued by outlining three qualities, three strengths of the School that he would like to focus on: our United Nations alliance, our collective cooperation that transcends traditional hierarchy, and our professionalism. He encouraged students to hold him accountable to following through in these areas, and to partner with him to generate ideas and innovation.
The full transcript of his remarks can be found below.
Dean’s Welcome 2016
“Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Welcome. It is good to be together and it is great to have a moment in which the School comes together as a whole. Not just the students, not just the faculty, not just the administrators: together we are more.
Welcome to a great year. It will also be a challenging year because the world around us is challenging, but I am confident that we will continue to do well, and to do better actually, rising to serve wherever possible and good, defeating the illusion of irrelevance and the delusion of omnipotence. These are the two extremes of thinking, that whatever you do is irrelevant and that everything that you do is of paramount importance. Reality lies in between: there is a lot that we can do to make the world better, to make the School better, to engage diplomacy and do well for all and ourselves. Relevance is cumulative.
Today, I will share my vision for the School, to make it better together, make it clearer together, make it sharper together.
I would like you to hold me accountable to what I say and what I do. I want to use this occasion to say to each of you: “If you are at the School of Diplomacy today then you are leading it with me. Your choices count. Your participation in it makes a difference.”
We are all part of the School of Diplomacy and will benefit immediately and directly from our own contribution and the contributions of others.
Those who have heard me speak before know that I prefer to read an audience than to read a speech. I prefer to find the words in the eyes of those who are listening to me, rather than preparing them before on a sheet of paper (Has anyone taken a class with me?).
However, today I am reading. It’s a choice. It’s my choice. Not only am I reading, I have written my text before presenting it. Why would I do something that I don’t like? Why am I going against my habits?
To create new ones; to respond to feedback of others and to be clearer. These words will remain in written form. They can be shared more easily. They can be read again. I want to be ‘on record,’ because being intentional about our words and goals will help us to build the next 20 years of the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University.
This is an important, urgent and meaningful project. It has major implications for you, for all of us here, and for all alumni and everyone connected (family, friends, donors, supporters…), but also for victims, refugees, people oppressed and neglected everywhere.
Why am I saying this? Because our School was established as a place of learning not just for theory but for professional application, and our actions have an impact beyond the Seton Hall community.
I am writing because I take you seriously, because you are leading with me our School of Diplomacy, and because we must share a vision of the future that is coming.
What is the School that I see? It is a United Nations centered, cooperative, and professional School. We are already all three. The School of Diplomacy of the future cannot be something entirely different than what we already are.
During the first three years of my deanship the question for us has been: of the many characteristics of the School that have emerged in the first 20 years, which are the ones that we truly want to focus on? Which are the enduring strengths that we what to grow further?
Many of you are 20 years old or close. There are many experiences, many desires, many dreams that define you today. But which are the ones that you chose intentionally to focus on, to cultivate, to grow? The thought process is similar for the School.
Our connection to the United Nations system was the very fabric of the School from the beginning and is getting stronger by the day. In the last three years alone we created a Center on UN and Global Governance Studies, with a blog that has been seen and commented on by people in more than 160 countries and in all 50 states; we launched a certificate program in United Nations Studies, a new UN Field Seminar course for both undergraduate and graduate students to be held this spring at UN headquarters, and a UNA-USA chapter that was recognized as the best campus chapter in the country; and we engaged with the Global Action Against Mass Atrocity crimes (GAAMAC) as one of its founding institutional partners.
Our UN focus is strengthened and enhanced by our School’s open, engaging, cosmopolitan approach that is both familiar and at ease with many different cultures and countries. I believe that as humans we are meant to be differentiated and that we are all simultaneously unique and universal. We learn from one another.
Like the UN, we are better and stronger every day when we engage diversity and are not afraid of it. Our diversity can be seen in our faculty. The School has been rich in its faculty since the beginning. We have faculty coming from the United States, Argentina, China, Cyprus, Slovakia, Italy, Croatia, Iran, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Denmark, the list goes on.
Today a majority of the faculty came to the United States after being born in other countries.
Among the student body is the same trend.
We have students coming from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Philippines, Burkina Faso, Guinea Conakry, Brazil, Malaysia, Costa Rica, China, Canada, Australia, Slovakia, Korea, Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Georgia, Colombia and more from all over the world.
So there is an internal diversity and there is a commitment to multilateralism, to the understanding of the world in its systemic, complex functioning and interaction.
By embracing this diversity and building upon these activities and others, we became a better version of what we were already. We became stronger the way we wanted to be. Many people around us noticed. It is good to be recognized. I understand that. But we did not do it because of the recognition. We were not chasing someone else’s approval. Recognition is a collateral benefit. What we have been doing is being true to who we think we are, who we want to be. We have been consistently attentive to become who we want to become. We have been doing this because we recognize that if and when we do not invest significantly in our own destiny, it will be determined by others. If we do not take ourselves seriously, nobody will.
This is why – this is my second point- I want to be very careful, almost obsessive about cooperation among ourselves. We live in difficult times and we owe it to ourselves to use every day and every minute to try to make the world better, to make Seton Hall better, to make the Diplomacy student experience better; to contribute something, and to make contributions for the good of all, not just a few, not just ourselves, but everyone. So cooperation for us has taken –very specifically- the form of cooperation among faculty, students and administrators.
As students, you are partnering with faculty to research and propose post-conflict reconstruction strategies for the Basque Country and investigating public opinion of the UN. By sharing your ideas at our Town Hall meetings you have helped launch a committee at Seton Hall to improve foreign language study. You are joining together through DULCE with other Diplomacy students-graduate and undergraduate together- to plan events, build bridges and learn to lead.
Yet we can do better. We can always keep improving the School. I can testify that all significant leaps over the first 20 years have been the product of this cooperation among faculty, students and administrators. This cooperation was not just a fluke: it has become part of the culture of the School.
We made it happen and we used our “Goldilocks” (just right) size to pilot innovations that would have been very difficult in other settings. We are not too small and we are not too big. We can know each other. We can call each other by name. We can drop into offices and be recognized. We can write emails and be confident that the person on the other side will know who we are. We can have dreams and ambitions for one another. When this happens, when we recognize each other, when we take each other seriously, we move the School of Diplomacy to new heights together. So I want to challenge myself and all of us to reach for these new heights. We’ve been named Fulbright scholars, right? We can earn more awards. We’ve designed research projects, right? We can design more and even better projects. We have academic programs, right? We can have more and even better programs.
My third point is that the School of Diplomacy is already a professional school, and we are going to be a new kind of professional school. We are already a school that takes professionalism seriously, but when I came I heard the faculty loud and clear: you need to invest in professional services! This is why in addition to an internship director we now have a dedicated professional services director. In my view, a director is a starting point, and professional services is not something that only one person can do for everyone.
The truth is that we all must be very professional, professional all the time. At the beginning of my talk, I was speaking of the illusion of irrelevance, the idea that what we do doesn’t really matter. But this illusion has led to our consuming, polluting, and trashing the planet and its life. Every choice counts.
This is why I insist on accountability. Do you know Apple? It has become an icon of success through relentless feedback. We grow relevance cumulatively. All of us: faculty, students, administrators, alumni!
We all represent the School all the time, to one another and to those who visit and meet us for the first time. Students have been ambassadors when we host world leaders on campus, and many have represented us in external events. I think that –with the help of everyone- we will continue to see significant growth in this area especially if we take ourselves seriously.
Professionalism is more than preparing your resume for a job placement. The chances of getting and retaining a job are often connected to “professional” qualities of trustworthiness, dependability, creativity and enthusiasm that cannot be immediately quantified. We will grow these qualities internally; we will cultivate leadership skills and encourage an entrepreneurial spirit in the daily interactions between ourselves and in trying new things.
Think of the Syria fundraiser last spring organized by our undergraduate students with others. Think of the Journal of Diplomacy, of the Global Current, of the Diplomatic Envoy, of the Women in Diplomacy Leadership Program… professional development is not only what we –the administration-do for you, but it is also what you all do with each other.
We are going to take ourselves seriously and engage professionally, all of us, from day one. At the undergraduate level we will revive the Seton Hall chapter of Sigma Iota Rho- the honor society that promotes and rewards scholarship and service among students and professionals in international studies. Our undergraduate students continue to demonstrate academic excellence with 52% of them appearing on the University Dean’s List. We will build upon this. At the graduate level, the cornerstone will be specializations. For each of the 13 specializations we will create clusters, invite speakers, identify epistemic communities, read journals, speak with colleagues, attract talent and do research. We expect our students to strive and succeed in securing competitive scholarships and fellowships such as Fulbright, Pickering, Rhodes, Truman, Donald Payne International Development Fellowship, Gilman, Boren and more. Together we will contribute integrity and creativity to the conduct of world affairs.
Indeed, we are laying the groundwork for the new 20 years of the School of Diplomacy today. Be part of it. Lead it. Engage Diplomacy. Together we will be stronger and make the world better. #Diploforlife.”