University of Siena Commencement Address  

Rettore Francesco Frati, Sindaco Luigi de Mossi, Director-General Dongyu Qu of the Food and Agriculture Organization, Excellencies, faculty, my dear friend and colleague Angelo Riccaboni, founder of the Siena School of Sustainable Development, family, friends, and graduates of 2022, it Is breathtaking to be together today in the Piazza del Campo, joining the chain of humanity that stretches back across generations to the founding of this great university in 1240, and to the cultural triumphs of Siena and Italy dating back millennia before that. 

We are the blessed inheritors of great traditions, and the stewards in our time of the unmatched beauty of this place, and of the civilizational achievements that it represents.  The University of Siena stands as one of the founders and pillars of the network of great Italian Universities – Bologna, Padua, Naples, Siena, Macerata, Rome, Perugia, Firenze, Pisa, and others – that created the Renaissance, gave birth to modern science, reanimated the great philosophies and learning of antiquity, and shaped our modern ideas of politics and society.   

I am profoundly moved to receive the Laurea Honoris Causa in Economia dell’Ambiente e della Sostenibilità.  I would like to express my gratitude to the Rector, the Senate, and the School of Economics and Management of the University of Siena for the Laurea Magistrale.  For an academic as myself, it is a unique honor and joy to be welcomed into a community that one reveres and treasures. 

My dear friend Professor Riccaboni knows that this place holds a particular charm for me.  It is not only a place of exceptional beauty, and not only the site of the Palio, the civic tradition that transports us to the high Renaissance and epitomizes social capital.  It is also the home to one of the greatest artistic creations of all time, Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government, the three fresco panels in the Palazzo Publico that date back eight centuries to 1338. 

We may say that these frescoes are the Parable of the Sustainable Development Goals, although Lorenzetti painted them 677 years before the SDGs were adopted.   Good government, Lorenzetti shows us, is sustainable development.  There are ample crops.  Prosperous livelihoods – farmers, fishermen, craftsmen.  There is leisure time.  There is commerce and transport on urban infrastructure.  There are the arts, music and dancing, and there are the magistrates enforcing the rule of law.  Most importantly, there is justice and peace. 

Then Lorenzetti directs our attention to bad government.  We may say that this is the vivid depiction of unsustainability.  There are the sick lying in the streets, as if Covid has hit but vaccines are not properly distributed.  There is the collapse of infrastructure and crumbling of the buildings.  Commerce is shut down.  In the countryside, opposing armies confront each other, perhaps the Russian and Ukrainian troops battling in Donbas. 

And while good government is presided by the Siena Council and the virtue of Justice presiding over Fortitude, Prudence, Magnanimity, and Temperance, bad government is presided over by the cross-eyed Tyrammides (the Tyrant), and his cronies Cruelty, Deceit, Fraud, Fury, Division, and War.

Lorenzetti is telling us the most important lesson for our own time.  Earth can be a delight of prosperity, justice, and environmental sustainability – that is, a place of sustainable development – or Earth can be a kind of hell, governed by a tyranny of misrule, leading to the collapse of prosperity, unmet social needs, and worst of all, the march of armies across the countryside, laying waste to generations of investment and achievement.  Which it will be is a choice -- a human choice -- not a matter of scarcity, lack of technology, or the whims of nature.  Human destiny is in our hands.  We take that destiny into our hands not only through our individual efforts, but collectively as well, through governance.  Good governance clears the path to sustainable development. 

I like very much how President John F. Kennedy put this same point nearly 60 years ago, in his wondrous address to the American people on the possibilities of peace:

When we view Lorenzetti’s wonderful frescoes, we are also remined that the choice between good and bad government is not a once-for-all choice, but a choice of each generation, whether Lorenzetti’s, or JFK’s, or our own.  Actually, the idea that government may be either good or bad, and that the choice depends on our own efforts, predates Lorenzetti by around 1,700 years, to the writings of my favorite philosopher, Aristotle.  In The Politics, Aristotle list three good forms of government – Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Republic – and three bad forms of government – Tyranny, Oligarchy, and Populist Mob Rule. 

Aristotle’s moral theory, in the Nichomachean Ethics and The Politics, aimed to promote a virtuous circle in which good government fosters virtuous citizens through education and mentoring, and virtuous citizens foster good government through their active participation in public policy.  It is that difficult process of two-way feedback that still challenges us today.  Lorenzetti was directly drawing on Aristotle by depicting the role of the virtues in achieving good government. 

If we are to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, ladies and gentleman, we will need to foster the virtues of the world citizenry, and the benefits of good government.  I believe we can do so.  I always draw hope and inspiration from Italy in this regard.  Just last week, before arriving in Sienna, my wife and I stood in awe in two other glorious rooms to imbibe this country’s profound spirit of aspiration and optimism. 

The first is yet another room of breathtaking frescoes, the Stanza della Segnatura in the Stanze di Raffaelo of the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican.  No other artist before or since has depicted the human striving towards perfectibility as powerfully and wondrously as Raphael.  As you will recall, the room’s four frescoes are dedicated to Philosophy, Religion, the Arts, and the Cardinal Virtues, as the pillars of human aspiration.  Rafael’s tribute to philosophy, known to us today as the School of Athens, is the most joyous celebration of wisdom that I know – and again a harking back to Aristotle’s Ethics, which the philosopher holds in his hand in the center of the fresco as he converses with Plato.

The other room last week that profoundly inspired me is the meeting room of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Casina Pio IV, Vatican City.  The Pontifical Academy is another ancient institution with roots that date back to the Accademia dei Lincei of the first years of the seventeenth century.  The Accademia dei Lincei, with Galileo Galilei as a founding member, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences today, are based on the idea of bringing scientific knowledge together with the ethics of human dignity in the service of the common good.  Galileo, in fact, came to Sienna in 1633 directly after his trial in Rome, and lived very near the Piazza del Campo in the Palazzo Piccolomini, where he continued his studies.

I should note that Galileo overturned the cosmology of Aristotle (who viewed the heavens as circling the Earth).  Yet I am sure that Aristotle would have been delighted.  He was a scientist, a careful observer of nature, and most importantly a seeker of the truth.  In that way, Galileo confirmed Aristotle’s deepest principles, even as he overturned some of his conjectures. 

At last week’s gathering of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, the participants discussed how the war in Ukraine can be brought to a rapid end at the negotiating table – in order to stop the massive killing, devastating destruction of Ukrainian property, and the global tsunami of rising food and energy prices now suffered throughout the world.  The wonderful global leader in food and agriculture here with us today, Dr. Dongyu Qu, is making tremendous contributions around the world to help countries to feed themselves and face the shocks from the pandemic and the war.  Yet in my view, Peace should be the first step towards ending global hunger, providing the platform of global cooperation upon which Dr. Qu’s efforts can build.

In my view, the war in Ukraine can and should be stopped immediately, through negotiations, not on the battlefield, and based on a core compromise: that Ukraine would be rendered safe and secure through commitments by the UN Security Council, while Russia would withdraw, and the US would pledge that NATO will stop expanding eastward into the Black Sea region, in that way allaying Russia’s security concerns about the eastward enlargement of the US-led military alliance. 

Graduates of the class of 2022, thank you for listening to my musings today.  This is a day of celebration for you, and yet I have used it for a rather heavy romp through philosophy, public policy, and even war and peace.  On this bright day, we should perhaps simply celebrate your accomplishments and the beauty of this venue.  Yet I wanted to share these words with you because you are now heirs to the challenge faced by every generation to make good government. 

In closing, let us reflect on a remarkable fact.  This Piazza was completed in the year 1349, one year after the Black Death swept this region.  Imagine such beauty being created and completed in the aftermath of a pandemic.  That is a true inspiration, and a mark of Italy’s enduring energy, optimism, and genius. 

In exactly two weeks, this magnificent piazza will host the Palio, a grand occasion.  We can therefore reflect on one more point.  17 Contrade will be competing.  Why 17?  I’d like to think that the Sienese leaders, in all the brilliance, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, one for each Contrada! 

Dear graduates, you have been blessed with one of the greatest educations on the planet, in one of the most wondrous places on the planet.  Please use your new skills along with the virtues that Aristotle recommended – wisdom, fortitude, temperance and justice – and that Lorenzetti and Raphael celebrated. You will soon be the global leaders of sustainable development, and the challenges of war and peace will rest in your hands.  Build on your achievements at this glorious university, and please accept my warmest congratulations to you and your families, and my best wishes for the celebrations of this joyous day.