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Key points
- The American experience, experiment, and civilization were a response to unique challenges.
- Many Americans developed a can-do spirit and a self-reliant philosophy to respond to those challenges.
- Newly arrived immigrants can leverage the power of a liberal arts education to achieve the American dream.
In The American Experience: An Interpretation of the History and Civilization of the American People, the late NYU historian Henry Parkes declared that America is not just a physical geographical place; instead, it is a state of mind developed in response to the environmental conditions that the early Europeans faced upon their arrival to America.
Parkes believed that harsh environmental, social, and political conditions created novel problems and challenges that required particular character traits to overcome. The "American character," often characterized by rampant individualism, a can-do spirit, and a self-reliant philosophy (articulated by philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others) developed in response to these challenges. In essence, Parkes argued, Americans either had to develop these traits or perish. Thus, the concept of the "American character" was born, and the same traits continue to characterize many Americans today.
But the question then becomes: How should newly arrived immigrants respond to the challenges they face in America? How can they overcome them? Can they, and should they, cultivate the same can-do spirit and self-reliant philosophy?
In my view, CNN host and author Fareed Zakaria provides interesting answers to these questions, both in his writing and in his own life. Zakaria is Muslim, a person of color, a first-generation immigrant, and a first-generation college student, attending both Yale and Harvard. Although Zakaria is religiously Muslim and ethnically Indian, the combination of which often leads people to marry within groups, he married Paula Throckmorton, a journalist who also attended Harvard.
Zakaria immigrated to the United States to pursue his education and then, instead of staying limited by the myriad challenges that immigrants often face, he achieved what could be described as the "American dream"—herein defined as the ability to come from anywhere and climb the social ladder through hard work and diligence—and reached the highest educational institutions in the United States. How did he do it?
In his book In Defense of a Liberal Education, Zakaria defines liberal arts education as that which teaches students how to think, how to write, and how to learn. Zakaria argued that such skills are absent in his own country of India. It is at Yale and Harvard that Zakaria learned liberal arts education—the tradition of reason and evidence.
His liberal education, he believes, served as a pathway for him to achieve the American dream. Contrary to some increasingly common beliefs, liberal arts education tends to generate more salary for its recipients than degrees in any other trade and craft, as Zakaria vigorously argued in his book.
On a personal level, I am inspired by both the personal life and professional career of Zakaria. I have spent most of my time in the U.S. at higher education institutions, where I was exposed to what it means to be a student, what it means to have a safe space for discussion on campus, and the importance of liberal arts education not only as a way to succeed in America but as a way forward for the progress of humanity.
Michael Roth, a historian and the current president of Wesleyan University, is an indefatigable author and formidable scholar. In The Student: A Short History, Roth outlines three types of students: the follower, disciple, and interlocutor. Roth argues that students coming from the Confucius tradition are more likely to be in the follower groups, but most American universities operate on the principle of the Socratic method, which presumes the interlocutor role for students.
In Safe Enough Spaces: A Pragmatist's Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, and Political Correctness on College Campuses, Roth argued that we do not need a "safe enough" space on campus but rather a common space on which we discuss and explore our differences. We need a space to challenge our thinking—to let old ideas die and to give birth to new ones. In Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters, Roth made the argument that liberal education matters not just within the university but also beyond the university, where they put forward their visions of the world.
If America is indeed not just a place but also a state of mind, as Parkes argued, I believe that newly arrived immigrants ought to cultivate the American character to respond to American challenges. Liberal arts education—the concept of using reason and evidence to determine the truthfulness of knowledge—can help them develop the ability to succeed despite, or even because of, challenges. At its core, the best American universities are founded on the ideals of liberal arts, as Roth has argued.
This is the kind of education that Zakaria received at Yale, which enabled him to reach the highest echelons of American society, even as a person of color, an immigrant, and a Muslim man from India. Such is the power of a liberal arts education. As an immigrant myself, a person of color, and a zero-generation aspiring scholar, I strongly believe that liberal arts education can be an effective pathway to address all the challenges of newly arrived immigrants, thereby enabling them to achieve the American dream however they define it.
