(Photo by Duy Trinh ’14)
On November 13, President Jeffrey Herbst took the stage at the Palace Theater to profile Nelson Mandela. Recounting the South African leader’s life and political legacy, Herbst stood next to Mandela’s portrait — one of 29 canvases in the Great Minds exhibition, sponsored by Dick Resnick ’61, P’90.
President Herbst, in his own words:
Mandela, in the end, succeeded in a lifelong commitment to end racial rule. He was the essential man. Few people in history could say that they were so essential in delivering freedom to tens of millions of human beings. He did so because of his own intellect, integrity, and personal commitment, and because the time was right. And he had an opponent and collaborator who was willing to make important sacrifices.
He did not leave a standing body of thought for others to follow. What we can learn from him is that a leader who has an overarching commitment to a goal can make sacrifices in the short term — not only sacrifices on his own side, but sacrifices that actually empower his opponent — which can lead to the greater good. That is not a way of thinking that is common in human affairs. It is something from which even wise leaders often recoil. And I think it’s Mandela’s fundamental insight that almost everything could be sacrificed in order to get to the final result that you so greatly desire.
It would not have been obvious to him during those decades in prison on Robben Island that this vision was the right one. He must have wondered, coming out already as an old man, if he had made a mistake, but he had the conviction of his own beliefs to understand that what he said in the early 1960s was still true in the early 1990s. He acted accordingly. And that was brilliance of a particular type from which his country and the entire world benefited.