Gregory Mosher
Director, Arts Intiative at Columbia University
December 15, 2008
One aim of the Arts Initiative at Columbia University is to connect artistic expression with other ways of understanding - and acting in - the world. Dr. Oliver Sacks’ appointment as the first University Artist grew out of that idea, and was directly inspired by the residencies of two artists the Arts Initiative helped to welcome to Columbia, Peter Brook and Václav Havel. Their creative work has incorporated mythology, religion, psychology, neuroscience, political theory, anthropology and philosophy. Their far-ranging curiosity, no less than their extraordinary expertise, has sustained them, and enriched us, for decades.
Brook’s 2005 production of Tierno Bokar, and the related events engendered by it, focused on tolerance, specifically the price paid by those who practice it. Although Brook’s production was set in Mali in the early part of the twentieth century, we recognize tolerance, of course, as central to our concept of society. President Bollinger’s own scholarship (such as in The Tolerant Society) emphasizes that tolerance is at the heart of the First Amendment, and that tolerance empowers those who practice it. As it happened, the concept was being sorely tested at Columbia that year. One could not help but see that Tierno Bokar gave context to, and to some degree calmed, very raw feelings, and I was struck, as I have been throughout my years in the theatre, by the strange power of creative expression.
President/Playwright Havel’s visit linked the arts and citizenship. Guests including Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka and Bill Clinton came together to illuminate this connection. Havel was disinclined, indeed perhaps unable, to separate his life as a writer from his efforts to create a more civil world. This sent a potent message. Perhaps, we inferred, Czechoslovkia’s Soviet era ended in a peaceful Velvet Revolution because he could imagine that peaceful narrative. Perhaps, it occurred to us, it was his ability to literally stage a series of political events that prevented the surging energy of Fall 1989 from erupting into the chaos Tiananmen Square experienced a mere six months later. And perhaps there was a link between the classic definition of acting – living truthfully under imaginary circumstances – and Havel’s emphasis, both as dissident and President, on the value of simply and relentlessly telling the truth, both to and from power.
From these visits came the idea that individuals such as Havel and Brook should have a loose framework within which they could participate in Columbia’s intellectual life. It was a quick jump from the concept to Dr. Sacks. Writer, scientist, healer, musician, and more, Dr. Sacks experiences and expresses life from many interconnected perspectives. And as David Harrington points out in an adjoining essay, one goal of a Columbia education is the ability to do just that.
Many people, chief among them President Bollinger, Provost Brinkley and Dr. Eric Kandel, embraced the idea of the University Artist and welcomed Dr. Sacks as the first to hold that position. The Arts Initiative is grateful for the support of the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, which helped make it possible to bring Dr. Sacks to campus. Students and faculty across the University join us in that welcome, and look forward to learning from his knowledge and his example.
