Forum on Higher Education for Women and Minorities

Opening Remarks

F. C. Genovese, Graduate Dean Emeritus, Babson College

Welcome to the Forum on Higher Education of Women and Minorities in India

Sponsored by the Resources & Environment Group, Inc. which has actively engaged in founding and supporting the Mrs. Helena Kaushik College for Women of Malsisar, Rajasthan, India.

As Chairman of the US Advisory Board to the College I wish to express a warm welcome to you all from the Board and to thank Dr. Kaushik for giving me the privilege of opening this useful meeting of distinguished speakers. Today we shall hear from the conference chairman, the Honorable Richard L. Ottinger who is a former member of Congress and Dean Emeritus of the Law School of Pace University, and from Dr. Kaushik, the Founder of the College and the other distinguished and knowledgeable speakers. These include Dr. K. L. Kamal, the Honorable Dr. Girija Vyas, the Honorable B. P. Singh, the Honorable Preeta D. Bansal, the Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman, and the Honorable Nita M. Lowey.

On behalf of the College, its staff and students and the speakers here assembled I wish to thank the members of the audience for attending this Forum and welcome their thoughts, interest and help towards forwarding the goals of the educational activities that will be described and discussed today.

I first met Dr. Kaushik as a colleague at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Later he was a contributor to the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, which my wife and I edited for several years. I now acknowledge him as a remarkable educational entrepreneur. He created and directed the International Banking Institute at Pace University that gets worldwide publicity about its meetings on important topics. A few short years ago he created the Helena Kaushik College for Women. The College is named for his bright and talented wife and, to my practical economist mind, it is on a par with, if not a step ahead of another great creative act of love of an Indian man for his wife, the Taj Mahal.

The seeds planted by the education provided will blossom into plants that produce more seeds in ever increasing abundance. There is no greater factor in the development of human capital than that provided by the education of women.As a young faculty member I first thought that I was in search of truth. Experience and progressive enrichment, wonderment and disillusionment now lead me to the conclusion that I seek only better and better suspicions. After all, Einstein gave us the speed of light, as the great constant and now scientist have been able to vary its speed. Then again, the very word “atom” is from the Greek meaning not divisible, and yet it has been split. It is worth noting that the first person to be awarded the Nobel Prize twice was Madame Curie. Was it not somehow in the cards that her daughter would also win one? Madame Curie may be an apt choice as an example since she named one of her great discoveries “polonium” after her native land and this was also the land of Mrs. Kaushik’s ancestors.

I said I was interested in suspicions. On this basis I think a very reasonable suspicion is that everyone here today had a mother. Another very reasonable suspicion is that she, and other female relatives, contributed mightily to the development of each of us. A final suspicion is that the contributions they made were highly proportional to their educations.

In a recent column in the New York Times entitled “The Veiled Resource” Nicholas D. Kristof wrote as follows:

History has repeatedly shown the economic advantage of education and autonomy for women, and indeed the West pulled ahead of the rest of the world beginning in the 1400’s partly because it was educating more girls. David S. Landes, the economic historian at Harvard, argues in his magisterial “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” “The best clue to a nation’s growth and development potential is the status and role of women.”

Kristof also commented that “Afghanistan has one resource of far greater economic value than oil or diamonds: the half of the population that has been largely excluded from economic life.” We can expect that in delaying marriage and taking up careers, the College’s women graduates will avoid some of the “functionless fertility” of which demographers despair, the bearing of many undernourished and undereducated children many of whom do not reach maturity. They will produce fewer and healthier and more educated offspring. We can also expect the economic efforts and results of graduates and siblings will be more productive for themselves and the Nation than otherwise.

A “Health and Nutrition” release from the International Food Policy Research Institute says:

A healthy and nutritionally well-fed population is indispensable for economic growth and development. Health and nutritional status affect the capacity to learn which is turn determines productivity and economic growth.

The Institute then goes on to relate these characteristics to health, ill health, and longevity.

The productivity returns from female work is not sufficiently understood even in the United States where the percentage of the workforce made up of women has been rising for many many years. One noteworthy place where the use of women is far below what it should be, is in space exploration. The amount of fuel saved by using women who weigh and eat less than men is enormous. And there is no heavy lifting in space!

I now wish to turn you over to scholars and doers, who have immediate experience with all these matters and from whom we can all learn. Our Forum Chairman, the Honorable Richard L. Ottinger, another scholar and man of action, will introduce them.

Dean Ottinger has been involved for over forty-five years in a variety of international issues that affect the United States and indeed, the whole world. He was a key person in the setting up of the Peace Corps under President Kennedy and served in the United States Congress with great distinction for sixteen years. He was Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy, Conservation and Power. He was a founding staff member of the Peace Corps and was also an Associate in the law firm of Clearly, Gottlieb, Friendly & Hamilton. He is a member of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law and Chair of its [FCG1] C limate and Working Group. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Cornell University.

He has dedicated his life to making our world better, cleaner, safer and

sustainable. His support of women’s education at the Pace Law School and now at Mrs. Helena Kaushik Women’s College is of great significance in terms of the crucial matter of expanding women’s higher education. Without further ado please welcome the Honorable Richard Ottinger, our Conference Chairman.

[FCG1]Ate and Working Group