I believe that the present status of Homeland Security issues bears a significant lesson for faculty and administrators of Harvey Mudd College. To be exact, Americans tend to rely on technological fixes for everything. The question that looms in our minds is what new technologies can be brought to bear against terrorists who may now be hiding explosives in their underwear. Solution --- subject everyone to virtual-image scans.

The sad thing about this American disposition is that it ignores the obvious needs to “be on the ground among people, to communicate and to understand.” This is something that experts in intelligence continually tell us --- about Iraq, about Afganistan, about Al Quaeda. What we need is less emphasis on sorting through digital information and more people in the field who actually know how to move among people and to communicate.

I am making these observations because I thought that this was what Harvey Mudd College was really all about --- approaching science and engineering with a kind of restraint tempered by an awareness of the human community in which we live. If we can only act out of our scientific and technical expertise, we are really “dead in the water.” We need young professionals educated in the Mudd tradition to be at the center of national policy construction as much as we need our graduates in development labs and other spheres of technological creation.

Note: While these remarks were addressed to HMC faculty, they may have some general interest.