Dr. Paul Loeb

To lead a life of social commitment despite many social and global obstacles, one must act with conviction, said author, researcher, and lecturer Dr. Paul Loeb in his address to doctoral students at the Walden University academic residency in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 25.

According to Loeb, “To change this culture and this country and address the global crisis that we face, it’s going to take a broad spectrum of ordinary citizens acting—not only the specialists.”

“Part of the challenge is to be able to help people recognize that even if they are not as eloquent as Martin Luther King and saintly as Gandhi … that they still can act,” he said. Loeb delivered the residency plenary address, sharing reflections on what makes some people choose lives of social commitment while others abstain.

He is the author of Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time (St. Martin's Griffin, 1999) and The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear (Basic Books, 2004), which won the 2005 Nautilus Book Award in the social change category.

Taking Risks to Create Change
Loeb stressed to the Walden community that timidity and a lack of expertise are empty reasons for not pushing for important change. “How do we as ordinary human beings have an impact on the future of this country and this planet? It’s often very easy and very tempting to give up in the face of just seemingly huge global issues,” he said.

Yet, “It has to be ordinary citizens who by their nature are not specialists in [an] area, who essentially are doing things like in the case of climate science, trusting the judgment of the international scientific community and saying, ‘We are indeed in some serious trouble. These are the things that they suggest to do; we[’d] better heed them.’”

Loeb has spent more than 30 years researching and writing about issues related to citizen responsibility and empowerment. In addition to five books, he has written for a range of publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA TODAY, the Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Psychology Today and Parents Magazine.

He pointed to historic figures like Dr. King and Rosa Parks, who worked ploddingly with community members to build change and who at times were unsure whether to take risks.

Example: The Civil Rights Movement
Rosa Parks, the secretary of the NAACP chapter in Montgomery, Ala., was calling people to come to meetings long before her historic arrest on a bus. “Rosa Parks is stuffing envelopes to get people to a meeting or handing out fliers,” Loeb said. “The kinds of humble things that people do that actually make history, you didn’t have the network news [covering them]. She wasn’t a global figure at that point. She had helped create, with others, a community.”

Loeb urged, “When any of us act for change, or any people who we bring in … act for change, it always is part of the community. It’s never alone, if you’re going to be effective.”

Loeb described how after Parks’ arrest in Montgomery, Ala., when she refused to move to the back of a bus during the time of segregation, it was the head of the local union of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters who got the young and extremely hesitant King involved.
Loeb wants individuals to look beyond the broad historic strokes: The civil rights movement was built on small steps and staid commitment.

Gratifying Work
Whether one embraces working on such issues as climate change, the economic crisis, epidemics, wars, or how humans will impact the planet’s future, change takes ordinary efforts that are driven by persistence.

“We can basically recognize that, yeah, this is hard work sometimes and it is frustrating and it is long-term, and yet, it also can be the most profoundly satisfying work of anything we do in the course of our lives,” Loeb said. “And we integrate it with our vocations, [we] integrate it with our families, we integrate it with everything we do, and when we act and we join together with others to act, we find out two things: the power that we have and fundamentally why we’re here on this planet.”

“Perspectives on the World” Series
The plenary session was part of Walden’s “Perspectives on the World” series that brings diverse global views to the Walden community. Past speakers include Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic and former correspondent for The New Yorker, who shared views on the possibility for reconciliation in the Middle East at Walden’s April 2008 academic residency in Lansdowne, Va.

More Information
Learn more about residencies by watching Academic Residencies for Doctoral Students.

November Ponder front page

More Walden news