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In the third decade of the Bonner Program we must seek inspiration.  I can think of no better to place to seek inspiration than a 1948 graduate of Morehouse College, Martin Luther King, Jr.  Dr. King said, “This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. The saving of our world from pending doom will come not from the action of a conforming majority, but from the creative maladjustment of a transformed minority.”

As we imagine directions for the next ten years, I would venture to say that the unfinished agenda that stands before is to consider formulating our future path in terms of four imperatives, things we must do to be true to the Bonner legacy and our own historic institutions. We must be and become ever more pragmatic, therapeutic, ethical, and global; all of these aiming toward the end of healing a fractured nation and mending a broken world

First, the pragmatic imperative. Bonner Scholars should be on the front lines among America college students leading change and healing our fractured nation of the deep wounds we now experience by fault of race and ethnic difference; growing economic and wealth inequality; discrepancies and discrimination based on gender; religious polarization; and culture conflict around sexual orientation. These are the ugly, bubbling, belching realities that are the context within all of the communities where Bonner Scholars serve. After the social analysis has occurred, after students understand who benefits from the status quo and the long and sordid local histories of oppression and exclusion, they must also apprehend that systems are at work to empower and to disenfranchise certain groups, narratives, and practices. In other words, we wrestle not simply against flesh and blood — a few bad men — but against a network of global and engrossing systems that have the power to make injustice seem legitimate, even God’s will.

Second, the ethical imperative. Twenty years of learning tell us that Bonner Scholars have been equipped, in varying measures, to move beyond direct service delivery to public advocacy for change, policy analysis and mobilization of community powers for their own transformation. Ethics is the science or study of what is right and wrong, good and bad, praiseworthy and blameworthy. It seeks to understand the nature of the good life and the just community.

Higher education in our fractured world must produce more leaders who understand and teach others to believe in the language of “the common good.” And, the ultimate purpose of education with a moral purpose is to enable citizens to understand and work for the common good. The pragmatic work of naming the social demons in our midst should lead to framing the ethical agenda of where we must go in order to become a beloved community.

This brings us to Dr. King’s “dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists.” These are the women and men who have engaged theory, developed skill, and practiced what I would call a “social therapeutic.”

Third, the therapeutic imperative. In contrast to personal therapy and individual, couples or family counseling, social therapy aims to undermine the intellectual and moral legitimacy of social evil and institutions, policies, and practices that harm people. We must move from asking what makes for human flourishing to enabling people, all people, to become whole and healed. Dr. King was a social therapist as were Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, Frederick Douglass, Mother Theresa, Pope John Paul II, Mahatma Gandhi, and Thich Nhat Hanh. These were leaders who recognized that service delivery, charity and counseling cannot accomplish the large and abiding change this nation and the world require. Sometimes the healing comes from seeing the world anew — having the scales fall from afflicted eyes.

German social ethicist Jurgen Habermas says that every social system must have a “legitimating myth,” a set of assumptions, beliefs and practices that that “underwrite” our social reality and make it seem normal. But, we know that oppression, and exclusion, and harm are not normal. These myths of superiority and inferiority, the myth of difference as morally significant have worked their way into our consciousness for so long, we can hardly recognize them. We need some combination of shock therapy, brain surgery and heart transplant to liberate us to new possibilities.  We need the therapeutic of Bonner Programs and experiences to move us beyond accepting the status quo to transforming it.

That leads to the global imperative. Perhaps in the next decade, Bonner Scholars can become more attentive to the global context of our local action. Global economics, global sustainability, global politics, global ethical discourse should become a more explicit part of the learning agenda. Dr. King would insist that we recognize the interrelatedness of all life. Our work locally cannot have meaning if we do not take account of and relate it to what is transpiring in Pyongyang, Kandahar, and Johannesburg.

Four imperatives for going forward — more pragmatic, ethical, therapeutic, and global.

Rabbi Hillel said, “The world is equally balanced between good and evil, your next act will tip the scale.”