Verified by 
One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People's Republic of China in the 1970s. When asked his opinion of the impact of the 1789 French Revolution, he remarked, "It is too soon to say."
I have much the same reaction to the Fall 2010 LSA Theme Semester at the University of Michigan, about which I have previously written. The focus of the semester was on the question, "What Makes Life Worth Living?" The semester is coming to an end, and I promised an update in my previous blog entry. So here is the update, although it is too soon to say anything about its lasting impact on our campus. From the get-go, those of us who sponsored the theme semester said we wanted to plant the question and not provide a definitive answer. Rather, we wanted to suggest as many possible answers as possible and to encourage students and other members of the university community to find their own answer, in a process that might well take a lifetime.
That said, I think the theme semester was a success, to judge by the attendance at the 100+ events we sponsored and the buzz on campus. The events included not only scholarly talks about the good life but also workshops that tried to show people how to live better, from drawing classes to swing dance lessons to social service projects.
And we called the attention of the community to sources of inspiration all around us. We celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps. We gathered donations for US troops stationed in Afghanistan as well as for Afghanistan school children. We heard talks by people who walk the walk of a life worth living, like Charlie Frank of Zingerman's Chocolate Factory and Dr. Denis Mukwege of the Congo.
Back in September, at the very beginning of the semester, an opinion column in the student newspaper made fun of the theme semester. Last week, another opinion column (by a different writer) contained these thoughts:
By posing a question to students, [the theme semester] reaches out and grabs at our cores as conscious, rational beings. Mere comprehension of the question makes us vulnerable to its power - the source of which is the possibility that we won't be able to answer it. This semester's theme, unlike any other, pulls us into an existential debate with ourselves, even if just for a moment.
The answers to the semester's theme "What makes life worth living?" are as important to discover as they are elusive. The answer depends on the individual, making it imperative that each person works to discover the meaning of her or his own life so as never to forget that such a meaning exists.
Something had happened from September to December, and perhaps it was the richness of the theme semester. Like this season's Michigan football games, victories or defeats, one cannot judge how something is going to end by how it begins.
During this past semester, I have been contacted by people from several other colleges and universities who want to have a similar theme semester on their own campuses. That's cool. That's humbling. That's what makes my own life worth living.
Last Thursday, we had the 110th event of the theme semester, a lecture by Sister Helen Prejean from New Orleans, the death penalty opponent featured in the film Dead Man Walking. Her lecture was - simply put - the best lecture I have ever heard in my life. It was passionate, informed, and inspiring, moving the audience to tears and also to laughter. The message and the messenger provided powerful examples of what makes life worth living, and one did not need to agree with everything Sister Helen said to recognize this.
Before her lecture, I asked her to sign one of her books for me. I chattered away as I often do and explained to her that her lecture was to be the 110th event of the theme semester. And I apologized for the cold weather in Ann Arbor. She smiled and said, "But I've had a warm welcome. What more do I need?"
Later that evening, I looked at what she had written in the book, and I noted her signature, under which she had written #110.
During her lecture, I sat next to two of my female graduate students, both of whom happen to be Jewish. When the talk was done, one of them leaned over to me and whispered, "How am I going to explain to my mother that I am seriously thinking about becoming a nun?" And then the other student said, "That's easy. How am I going to explain to my fiancé that I'm thinking the same thing?"
I assume that they were teasing, but maybe not. It is too soon to say.
