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Lown Lecture

Text-Only Version

Dr. Bernard Lown '42, 1985 Nobel Peace Prize Winner: "What I've learned during this long struggle is that we still live in the Columbian era. Columbia--Columbus--left a legacy. A legacy marked with shame, where great wealth was plundered, when indiginous cultures were destroyed and uprooted, and entire native populations were subjected to genocide. Your American affluence rests, in my mind, in no small measure, under poverty inflicted on the third world. We're still living in the Columbian era--otherwise the current politics makes no sense--neither Iraq nor Vietnam makes sense--until you begin to see what the struggle is all about. The transfer of wealth from rich to poor is not ceased. The claims of luxury are pitted against the claims of subsistence. The third world lives outside us in their own home, excluded from social priviledge and bereft of political control. There is a division of labor wherein the South provides resources cheap while the North sells its technology deals. A world so structured is a world unstable, a world that already, 20 years ago, began to warn that terrorism was inevitable. And I'm not a political scientist, I'm not a politician. I just look at history and the cold-blooded view the way a doctor would look for a diagnosis."