Dr. Amy Gutmann became the eighth president of the University of Pennsylvania on July 1, 2004. In her inaugural address, Gutmann launched the Penn Compact, her vision for making Penn[…]
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people
The 20th century, Gutmann believes, will be remembered as the age of global awakening.
Amy Gutmann: I am an optimist by nature. I would call myself a pragmatic optimist. And I am pessimistic today, right now, about the way the world is headed in the very near future. I see no good way forward in Iraq. I see a lot of opportunity that was open in this country being closed. I see a lot of the rule of law being violated. So I’m not optimistic about the near term; but I am optimistic about the future because we are a great constitutional democracy, and the world looks at us as a great constitutional democracy. And we have as much reason as the world to be disappointed in what’s happening today, but we’ll turn it around. I know we will.
▸
3 min
—
with
