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Senators Obama and McCain and “Service Nation”

the presidential forum on service and summit on national service
September 11–12, 2008

Reflections from Roger Nozaki,
Swearer Center Director and Associate Dean of the College

This past week I had the great privilege of attending the Presidential Forum on Service on September 11 in New York, featuring hour-long interviews with Senators Obama and McCain, followed by a day of sessions with a range of individuals including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, First Lady Laura Bush, Senators Hillary Clinton and Orrin Hatch…and of course Alicia Keys, Usher, and Jon Bon Jovi. This event, “Service Nation,” focused on launching the next wave in national and public service (http://www.bethechangeinc.org/servicenation).

My participation built on Brown’s heritage in the arena of national and public service, which many today may not fully know. President Howard Swearer and the Swearer Center’s founding director Susan Stroud played a key role in establishing the “modern era” of national service in the early 1990s. Susan, as a White House advisor on national service, was one of the architects of the National and Community Service Act of 1993 (http://www.nationalservice.gov/about/role_impact/history.asp) which established AmeriCorps and vastly expanded opportunities for service in the US and globally.

There is a range of opinions about the purposes, role, and challenges of “national service,” and we at the Swearer Center tend not to use the word “service” in describing our work. Nonetheless, I found conversations in New York hopeful in a number of ways:

  • Both Presidential candidates expressed a clear commitment to national service, with more commonality than difference. Both have signed on as co-sponsors of the ServeAmerica Act of 2008, introduced into the Senate on Friday by Senators Kennedy (MA) and Hatch (UT) with additional co-sponsors in Senators Clinton, Cochran (MS), and Dodd (CT). This bill would further expand opportunities for service, establish Corps focused on high priority issues, and support social entrepreneurship. (See http://thomas.loc.gov/home/thomas.html -- search for bills sponsored by Sen. Kennedy -- S.3487 in his list of proposed legislation. Text had not yet been posted at this writing.)
  • The event drew heavily on the legacy of 9-11 – but not the 9-11 of bitterness, divisiveness surrounding the wars that followed, and talk of a “squandered opportunity.” Beneath the radar of the media and national dialogue, 9-11 families and many others on the ground have continued working to capture and sustain the spirit of community that had emerged in its aftermath, to build connections and relationships without regard to the categories we usually use to define and separate ourselves.
  • We benefit from efforts that span all levels of work and influence. This kind of summit can engage new partners and leverage increased investment in the concerns we face. Several corporations and university presidents committed to major new initiatives at the summit.
  • Over and over, speakers cited examples of action, leadership, and impact from today’s students, the “Millennial Generation.” Several cited the mobilization they’ve seen as greater than anything since the Civil Rights movement.

The urgency of the issues that face our country – poverty, education, health care, the environment – is clear. “Volunteerism” and national service alone will not solve these problems. But they can serve as a means to engage larger numbers of people in these issues and corral and focus greater resources toward their solution – time, money, ideas, skills, awareness, and a sense of collective responsibility. The Swearer Center’s community programs, including our AmeriCorps programs, the College Advising Corps and Scholarships for Service, seek to do exactly that.

We have the privilege of working with committed community partners, students, faculty, and staff to do this work in Providence and around the world. While we at the Swearer Center have much work to do to strengthen and improve our efforts, we all can take pride in Brown’s historic and continued leadership on these issues at the national level.

September 13, 2008