Depart to Serve How?

An imminent Harvard graduate, pondering what to do with the phase of life that starts with graduation and ends with death, might find the beginnings of guidance in the directive written atop Dexter Gate. Sure to be repeated ad nauseum in the coming weeks (its biweekly appearance in this column’s title was just the beginning), it reads, “Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.” Seeking further guidance, the graduate would find none; the instruction offers little insight into how, exactly, we are supposed to “serve better” once we depart.

Should we define such “service” broadly, as all actions that benefit others or society, whether they are direct or not, whether they are selfless or not? Or should we define it narrowly, as only those actions that help others directly and are performed selflessly? Can meaningful distinctions be made among the myriad forms and definitions of services that Harvard students and graduates will adopt?

For many, the notion of service permeates our undergraduate years, as we flock to Phillips Brooks House Association Programs, issue advocacy groups, partisan campaign trips, and Institute of Politics study groups, turning to each in the belief that we should enter Harvard not only to grow in our own wisdom, but to use the knowledge and skills we gain here to work for our vision of a better world.

Often, such involvement leads to a career working for non-profit firms, public schools, advocacy organizations, campaigns, or government offices, as graduates continue to try to serve the world by working directly to improve individual people’s lives or working indirectly to better the world by improving public policy.

Others do not pursue such directly-defined “service” pursuits during their college years, instead waiting to make their contribution to the outside world in their post-graduate work—work that often falls into the oft-maligned field of business, investment banking, or consulting.

A case can be made (a case that can confound and infuriate liberal do-gooders like myself) that by making the economy more efficient and moving money where it leads to higher profit margins and more jobs, investment banking and venture capital work are the most effective ways of serving the country. Perhaps, if approached with a system of priorities that truly places this ethos of service over short-term profits, an occasionally callous and avaricious profession can be turned to do true good.

In all of this, there lies a spectrum: At one end service in a form that is direct, local, and pure; at the other, service in a form that is indirect, broad, and clouded by questions of sincerity and ambition (direct service at one end, business at the other, with political work somewhere in between). The most direct service tends to be the least glamorous, the lowest paying, and the least pursued; the least direct tends to be the most glamorous, the highest paying, and the most widely applied for in the rush of fall recruiting season.

It’s easy to draw the simple distinction that direct, selfless service is good and that all else is bad; I’ve been guilty of drawing such distinctions myself. But as I prepare to enter the world I would hope to improve, I can’t deny that while the world needs labor organizers, it also needs businessmen who understand that well-paid workers with health care plans are productive workers, just as while the world needs public school teachers, it also needs politicians who will not sell out their constituents at the drop of a hat. The world needs our best, most talented, most caring, and most thoughtful people doing work that helps people directly, but we also need them everywhere else. When those who prioritize service first scoff at entire professions, they leave these professions open to those who place the notion of public service last.

Those who pursue politics and direct service might argue that this line of thinking lets those who choose business or finance careers over more obviously service-oriented careers off too easily. But letting them off too easily would be to expect nothing more of them than an unfeeling pursuit of the bottom line. Whether or not we are adequately serving our nation and world is not a question conclusively answered at the career fair; it’s a question that must be asked and answered every day in every career.

Those who pursue politics or direct service are not unquestionably virtuous (or, at any rate, not unquestionably successful in maximizing the good they can do), nor are those who pursue business unquestionably craven. When it comes to serving our country and our kind, what matters most may not be the paths we choose, but the principles to which we adhere.


Greg D. Schmidt ’06 is a social studies concentrator in Eliot House. His column appears regularly.