Susan Hockfield Letter Session Overview

Former MIT President Susan Hockfield's
Video Introduction on the Seminar XXI 25th Anniversary

August 2010

Seminar XXI is renowned for both the quality of its content and the fierce loyalty of its alumni — so let me start with warm congratulations for everyone who has contributed to the success of this legendary program, from the instructors to the participants. Together, you’ve created a remarkable community of fellow learners, focused on issues that could not be more vital to the nation and the world.

When Jake Stewart, Mitzi Wertheim and Suzanne Berger helped launch Seminar XXI twenty-five years ago — three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall — they recognized an urgent need to help American military and civilian leaders assess and respond to the complex, unpredictable geopolitics of the day. They took as their premise that by learning to view the world through an array of different economic, political and cultural lenses, participants would be equipped to ask unexpected questions about the facts before them — and would gain powerful new tools for diagnosis and strategy. 

Twenty-five years later — in a world even more complex — the need for such nimble, nuanced analysis remains urgent. And it’s a testament to the exceptional intellectual power and resilience of this multi-lens approach that Seminar XXI has never been more relevant, nor more oversubscribed.

As one lieutenant colonel from the Marine Corps explained, through Seminar XXI, he became “sensitive to the presence and pitfalls of a purely ‘American’ point of view. Just assimilating and internalizing the notion that other lenses on the same set of facts yield different conclusions [was] worth the price of admission.”

Seminar XXI now boasts 1,652 alumni; I’m told that you can find those telltale “black cubes” on desks and book cases throughout the US Armed Forces, the federal government, the defense industry and the private sector. Your graduates even include four current members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It’s no wonder that many participants view the opportunity to connect with and learn from one another as one of the program’s many benefits.

MIT has a proud tradition of national service, from inventing technology to framing policy. I am very proud that, through MIT’s Center for International Studies, we continue this legacy through a program as enduring and effective as Seminar XXI. Congratulations on your 25th anniversary.

Susan Hockfield
Former President of MIT