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Remarks at Founders’ Day Convocation

Delivered in Wait Chapel on Feb. 17, 2022. Remarks as prepared. View Full Video

This is my first Founders’ Day on campus, as it may be for many of you, and I’m delighted we can meet together in person.

Like many of our newest students, I’m still learning about Wake Forest — learning what makes this place so special and how we can contribute in our own way to the University’s distinctive story.

Today is a celebration but also a convocation — a calling together. That is, we are gathered to solemnly reflect upon our past and how it relates to our current moment, and to our future.

Part of any honest reflection on the past requires honoring the parts that fill us with pride and critically analyzing where we have fallen short.

We do this not to sully the good but to empower ourselves to continually strive forward.

As a scientist, I’m accustomed to asking lots of questions, but my own way of thinking about Founder’s Day centers on one question in particular: What does it mean to be a founder?

For obvious reasons, we think of the year 1834 when we think of the founding of Wake Forest.

It was 187 years ago this month that the Wake Forest Manual Labor Institute was founded about 100 miles east of here.

And while we clearly would not be here today if not for our opening in 1834, we cannot deny that our history – like that of our state and indeed our nation – is tied up with slavery, segregation, and America’s other injustices.

We shouldn’t shy away from these aspects of our past. Instead, we should confront them. And, most importantly — as an educational institution with knowledge creation at our core — we must learn from them.

That’s why I’m proud of the important work being done by Wake Forest’s Slavery, Race, and Memory Project and particularly proud of our membership in the Universities Studying Slavery consortium. Along with 87 other universities, we are working together to share best practices and guiding principles about truth-telling projects that address injustice in our histories.

This is part of how we recognize that traditions — like people — need to grow, evolve, and expand to welcome more people into our unfolding story.

We also need to recognize that not everything about Wake Forest was founded in the antebellum period. For example, in 1894, our law school was founded. In 1902, our medical school. In 1923, the Demon Deacons burst onto the scene. In 1942, women were finally admitted to the College. And then in 1956, we relocated to this beautiful campus here in Winston-Salem.

My point is that Wake Forest is a place where many things have begun, where the act of founding is continuous. “Found” is a verb, an action, not a single, set moment in some distant past. Wake Forest University does not rest on a rigid slab foundation but on a growing number of piers and beams that together hold us up and expand our footprint.

We are here today and we are who we are today because of many foundings and many founders. Together, they – and we – help define Wake Forest’s story.

Consider the year 1962 – sixty years ago.

This was the year that the Board of Trustees finally voted to admit African American students. It was the year that Ed Reynolds became the first full-time black student to enroll at Wake Forest. And it was the year that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke in this very chapel.

Something incredibly important happened that year, 1962. Something new and beautiful was founded here.

But it wasn’t easy. Student and faculty activism played a vital role in desegregation initiatives.

Many on campus simply wanted to get on with their work and studies. They didn’t want the necessity of distraction and controversy that often accompanies the march of justice.

But ultimately, this community worked together to create the foundation from which a more diverse, equitable and inclusive Wake Forest could be built — one we continually strive to build today.

There are other examples of more inclusive foundings that form all the parts of the Wake Forest story.

In 2000, Susan Parker and Wendy Scott were married here in Wait Chapel. This was after a three-year battle, where Wake Forest students played a leading role in efforts to overturn the ban on same-sex marriage ceremonies on campus.

Furthermore, this year we celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the founding of the LGBTQ+ Center on campus.

These milestones are points of pride, but also events that we should think about deeply as we consider our own contributions to Wake Forest today.

What is it that we will found?

Being a founder means being a fearless advocate. It means pushing for positive change, not settling for simply getting on with our work and studies. It means engaging in radical collaboration with others.

It means cultivating a respectful and open dialogue with those with whom we may disagree. It means persistently and peacefully striving on.

And it means embodying our motto, Pro Humanitate.

These traits are critical if we are to be great founders. And we are a university that is – and strives to be – great in all we do.

So today, I want to call us to all be founders for the future and to engage in the hard work needed to accomplish great things. We were founded in 1834 as a manual labor college — and there is much work for all of us to do.

In a moment, Professor Erica Still is going to speak to us about one of our most renowned and beloved Wake Foresters — Maya Angelou. Dr. Angelou founded so much good on our campus. She is rightly part of our celebration today.

She is also being honored nationally this year, having been chosen to grace a new edition of the U.S. quarter. This is a proud moment for the campus she called home for over 30 years.

In 2011, she said “I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. But I’m a person of the moment.”

Two years later in 2013, not long before she died, she said, “Heritage is so complex … we have to be simple, consider ourselves global. This takes a lot of courage, but humans are more alike than we are unalike.”

So today, I leave you with those wise words.

Here at Wake Forest, we know our heritage is complex, and we have great respect for the complexity of our past. After all, without it, we would not be where we are today.

But we are also an institution constantly looking for ways to expand the narrative. Which is why we must also be globally minded people of the moment.

Moving forward, I very much look forward to what we can found together.

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Office of the President

Founder’s day speech.

“UMBC at 50: Reflections and Aspirations”

Freeman A. Hrabowski III President, UMBC

Founder’s Day September 19, 2016

Good Afternoon!

Welcome to all – alumni, students, faculty, staff, and friends! This is such a special moment for UMBC, one of twelve institutions in the University System of Maryland, which is led by Chancellor Robert Caret and the Board of Regents, chaired by James Brady. I invite you to read Professor George LaNoue’s new book, entitled Improbable Excellence: The Saga of UMBC, which discusses our 50-year history and has many excellent observations about where we are today and about the challenges we will face in the future.

The Maryland General Assembly authorized a new campus for Baltimore County in 1963, and it was 50 years ago today that UMBC opened in 1966 on what had recently been 432 acres of farmland. That day we had 750 students, 45 faculty members, 35 support staff, 3 new buildings, and 500 parking spaces. It was the first day of classes for those students and faculty. Staff had literally been sweeping floors and assembling desks the night before students arrived.

Albin O. Kuhn – the University of Maryland’s Vice President for Baltimore Campuses, and later UMBC’s first Chancellor—called opening day his most personally satisfying experience. “It worked,” he said. “We opened on the day we were supposed to, right on schedule. Buildings were ready to be occupied; sidewalks were installed; the faculty was here. There were blackboards and even chalk.”

This is a moment that allows us to consider what our aspirations have been over the years; reflect on 50 years of growth, grit and greatness; celebrate all that we have achieved together; and aspire yet again – as success is never final.

UMBC in the National Context

We can better understand UMBC’s growth over the past half-century if we consider the national context in which our campus was founded and subsequently grew.

Most people today are surprised when they learn that in 1940, on the brink of World War II, just 5% of whites and only 1% of blacks in America had earned a college degree. Given the stature today of our nation’s research enterprise, most would also be astonished to learn that at that time the most prestigious universities in the world were in Europe and that there was just a “handful” of American universities that could be called “research universities.” The federal government was not yet a player in higher education, nor was it a major funder of research – most research on American campuses was funded by private philanthropy.

After WWII, all of this changed, quite dramatically. In the decade or so after WWII, the GI Bill provided the opportunity for many young people—mainly white men—to go to college. Strong bipartisan support then further expanded higher education in the US. Following Sputnik, the National Defense Education Act of 1958–which provided the federal funding for students in the sciences, area studies, and foreign languages–was enacted under Eisenhower. The Higher Education Act of 1965, a key piece of Great Society legislation, was passed under Johnson, expanding federal postsecondary support. The Pell Grant program, which today provides extensive need-based federal student aid, was created in the Higher Education Act Amendments of 1972 under Nixon. All of these bills expanded access and support. The percentage of Americans with a college degree increased to 6 percent in 1950, and then to about 10 percent by the mid-1960s when UMBC was founded.

At the same time, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case of Brown v Board of Education of Topeka and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964–again under Johnson–helped ensure that the expansion of access could be inclusive, extending beyond just whites to African Americans and other minorities.

And so, with federal higher education and civil rights legislation, the percentage of Americans 25 or older who had earned a bachelor’s degree increased from 9.8 to 32.5 percent between 1966, when we were founded, and 2015. White attainment was at 10.4 percent in 1977 and the percentage of non-Hispanic whites over 25 with a college degree in 2015 was 36.2 percent. The increase for African Americans over this period was from 3.8 to 22.5 percent. As of 2015, more than half of Asians over 25 and about 15 percent each of Hispanics and Native Americans have earned a college degree.

UMBC was, therefore, founded at a time of great expansion in access to higher education, and we were expected to play a key role in facilitating that growth in Maryland. Moreover, we had a special place in this expansion. We were the first university in Maryland that welcomed students of all races and backgrounds when we opened our doors.

On a parallel track, the federal-university partnership—with funding from such new agencies as NSF, NIH, and NASA—grew significantly. Clark Kerr once summarized this development when he wrote, “At the end of World War II, perhaps six American universities could be called research universities, in the sense the research was the dominant faculty activity … By the early 1960s, there were about 20, and they received half of all federal research and development funds going to higher education. In the year 2000, there were at least 100 and many more aspiring to this status.”

With more than $80 million in training and research grants, UMBC has solidified its place among our nation’s research universities as Carnegie has classified our institution as a Doctoral University with Higher Research activity.

As a nation, we have much more work to do. Just 56% of students who start a bachelor’s degree in this country complete within six years. Strengthening pre-K through 12 education, and improving teaching and learning, advising and mentoring, and student support on our campuses can elevate this rate and improve overall student success. What is even more challenging is that while more than half of students from families in the highest income quartile earn a bachelor’s degree by age 24, only about one in 10 of those from the lowest income quartile do. America is failing these lower-income students; we must continue to elevate not just college readiness but the work we do on campuses to ensure these students succeed when they get here.

The good news is that more people of every race, ethnic group, and gender are educated today than ever before. And UMBC is widely regarded as a national model for inclusive excellence in a research university.

UMBC: Reflections on 50 years

How did we become an institution that others are seeking to emulate?

In the early 1960s, the case for a new campus in Maryland was growing. It was clear that the State needed more capacity for high-achieving students. And the case for putting that campus in the Baltimore region was growing as well. More than half of the state’s population then lived in the Baltimore metropolitan area. And Baltimore needed another public research university that would play a role in the region’s economic growth and civic life.

In 1963, the General Assembly authorized a new campus in Baltimore County.

Aspirations

At our opening in 1966 Albin Kuhn said, “Just like a youngster, we don’t have all the answers, but we do want to develop our own personality and become part of the Baltimore metropolitan area.” Over the next 20 years, after Dr. Kuhn had laid a solid foundation, the campus was steered through a challenging period of growth by Calvin Lee, UMBC’s second chancellor; Louis Kaplan, interim chancellor; and John Dorsey, third chancellor.

Michael Hooker began to expand UMBC’s aspirations at his installation as fourth chancellor in 1986 when he said, “My [vision] …is for UMBC to be a model university for the twenty-first century, and to be the best public university of its size in the country.” Hooker argued that to capitalize on the university’s potential and make this vision a reality, the campus should: • Be progressive – forward looking • Be responsive – embracing our community and its needs • Be selective—realizing that it would not be realistic to try to be all things, excellently, to all people, but that it could grow selectively to be excellent in key areas • Be metropolitan—be a partner for the region, a force for addressing its social problems and economic development needs.

At my own installation in 1993, I remarked that at the founding of Stanford University or even at its 25th anniversary, no one could have envisioned what it would one day become. Its transformation lay in the future during WWII, the Cold War, and the tech boom in Silicon Valley.

Similarly, at our founding no one could then have fully envisioned what we one day could become. My point was that we needed to set our sights high. “We are a university on the move. We know what we want to become and how to get there. We will work to become one of the best research universities of our size in the world, and we are determined that our dream will not be deferred.”

Today, I am here to tell you that we still embrace this goal and that, along with such great universities as Stanford, MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, Arizona State, Georgia Tech, and the University of Michigan, we are on a list of the most innovative national universities in the nation! UMBC, since its founding, has been a place for people of all backgrounds to participate equally in higher education, preparing them for meaningful lives and careers, working to solve the problems of humanity.

Our emergence as a model research university can be traced to many factors. We have an inclusive notion of leadership and shared governance—and many of our administrators today were once leaders in our senates. We also have a community based on shared values. Most of all, we believe in hard, sustained work for student success. It has taken grit to achieve our goals.

For our first twenty years, UMBC played its original allotted role as an institution whose students were primarily commuters. It was a wise bargain for a new university: commuters saved their money by living at home; the state saved money by forgoing the cost of residence halls. Only a small number of students lived on campus. (Until the 1980s, the diplomas of our graduates did not yet say “University of Maryland, Baltimore County,” but just “University of Maryland,” reflecting a particular mindset about who we were.)

Yet as the campus matured, it was clear that we could become an even more valuable asset to the State of Maryland and the nation. And so, since the mid-1980s, we have become something else – an inclusive, student-focused, residential, research university. In the video just shown, you saw how our numbers have grown for enrollment, degrees, programs, research, buildings, budget, and endowment. Let me talk here about the meaning of this growth.

Where we are today

We have just completed our self-study for the upcoming Middle State Accreditation and we are implementing our new strategic plan (greater detail about my comments can be found in those two documents). Our recommendations reflect our willingness to be honest with ourselves. For example, we know we must continue our work to develop a more diverse faculty and staff—particularly African Americans, Hispanics, and women—in selected areas.

Capital Projects • The aerial photos in the video showed how our campus has grown physically over time. • In our earliest years we built out the academic core, completed the Albin O. Kuhn Library, built the RAC, and began construction of our first dorms. • The State of Maryland and other sources have generously provided almost three-quarters of a billion dollars in developing and building state-of-the-art facilities for instruction, research, and student life for the 20-year period from 2000 to 2020. These facilities include the following. o The Commons (2002); Information Technology and Engineering (2003); Public Policy (2004), and state-of-the-art Performing Arts and Humanities Building (2012 and 2014). This last building is critically important to advancing those fields on our campus, and we thank Maryland’s public officials and its citizens for supporting its construction. o We have become a highly residential campus, with new and renovated residence halls and the Apartment Community Center (2013). o We have completed our new Campus Gateway providing a more attractive welcoming entrance to the campus. o We celebrate the establishment of bwtech, our research park, which serves as an economic development link between campus and the Baltimore-Washington corridor. The park hosts more than 130 companies and provides more than 2,500 direct and indirect jobs with associated annual income of $165 million. Sage Policy Group estimates, “The state business community generates $340 million in additional revenues because of the operations of bwtech and it tenants.” o Going forward, we have broken ground on the new Events Center, and we are in the planning stages for the new Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Center, which will be important for teaching and research in the life sciences and for innovation supporting Maryland’s biotech industry.

Information Technology • Our infrastructure now includes, in addition to our buildings, an investment in information technology (IT). • As we celebrate our 50th anniversary, it is important to recognize how far we have come over the past 25 years with regard to information technology on campus. In 1991, we had four separate offices that reported to three different leaders providing support for technology. We had two incompatible networks and two email systems that made it difficult to communicate between academic and administrative staff. All our administrative work was done via paper, and even the most basic level of data analysis was difficult and time consuming. Now we have integrated those four offices into the Division of Information Technology. • UMBC’s IT operations are now regarded as a model of innovation in higher education. We were among the first 75 institutions to connect to the Internet at 100 Gigabits/second, and UMBC finds itself among the best in the nation in student analytics – the use of technology in teaching, computer security, and research computing. • We are now developing a systematic, integrated approach to using analytics in decision-making.

Enrollment: • We have just welcomed 2,800 new students to campus this fall, including 1,550 new freshmen. • As we saw in the video, we have grown significantly over the years, from 750 students on this day on 1966, to almost 14,000 students – 11,000 undergraduates and approaching 3,000 graduates—today. • With an increase of 24 percent in applications over the past five years, we have become more selective. • We anticipate that, with winter, spring, and summer enrollments, as well as students in UMBC Training Centers, we will serve a total of more than 20,000 students in the coming academic year. • We will be increasing enrollment as we attract more resources to hire needed faculty and staff. It is encouraging that recent legislation calls for multi-year increases to our base budget to make this possible.

Academic Programs and Success • Today we have 1,020 faculty (527 FT and 298 PT instructional) and 158 FT and 37 PT non-instructional) and 1,288 staff. • For each of us, academic success is at the core of our mission. • We have been changing attitudes about who can succeed as we continue focusing on improving undergraduate teaching. • The key point is that more students are succeeding today than ever. • We now have prestigious scholars programs in addition to Meyerhoff that address a range of key areas: Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars; Humanities Scholars; Linehan Artist Scholars; Sherman STEM Teachers Scholars, Cyber Scholars; and CWIT Scholars. • We are helping to change the culture of STEM education in the nation from “weeding out” students to supporting success for all students. With support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), we are replicating our approaches at Pennsylvania State University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. • Through an $18 million BUILD grant from the National Institutes of Health, we are extending best practices from our scholar programs to the entire student population. • As always, we are embracing and emphasizing the power of grit: high expectations and hard work. • And, at the same time, we have become more international, both in our student body and faculty and in our teaching, research, and engagement. o We have students from more than 100 countries—although the majority of our students are from Maryland. o We offer programs in Ancient Studies, Africana Studies, Asian Studies, Global Studies, and Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communications. o Many of our students—including those in the Humanities Scholars Program—spend at least a semester in study abroad. o Global dimensions are hallmarks of many other departments and programs, ranging from economics to philosophy to visual arts to engineering. Faculty are using technology to teach across borders from Portugal to India. o Engineers without Borders extends what we learn on campus to those in need around the world.

You can see the progress we are making in our numbers. o The latest one-year retention rate for full-time, first-time freshmen from the first to the second year is the highest ever at 87.2 percent—with little variation among racial/ethnic groups. o The six-year graduation rate has exceeded 60 percent for the third year in a row; the rate for the 2009 cohort of full-time, first-time freshmen was 62.3 percent. o Indeed, we can report that for the 2009 cohort, after six years: ♣ 67 percent graduated from UMBC or another four-year institution in Maryland; ♣ 75 percent earned a postsecondary degree; and 15 percent are still enrolled. ♣ So, six years after matriculating, 90 percent of students in the 2009 cohort had earned a postsecondary degree or were still enrolled in college. o During the 2015-2106 academic year, we awarded the most degrees ever in our history, with 3,429 total degrees awarded, an increase of almost 10 percent over the past two years, and 2,521 bachelor’s degrees awarded, an increase of 12 percent over the past two years.

Research, Scholarship, and Creative Achievement • As we celebrate, we can look back at significant achievements and tremendous growth in our capacity to conduct meaningful research across our entire campus community. • From modest beginnings, we have solidified our place as a Doctoral University with Higher Research Activity, as designated by the current Carnegie Classification. • We had just $4 million in research in the late 1970s and $22 million at the end of the 1980s. Our social science research productivity, though, was much greater than would be reflected in the dollar amount when taking into account the number of publications per faculty member. We were in the top the top 20 nationally in research in these fields. • In FY 2016, UMBC secured $82.3 million in extramural awards, an increase of 12% above the prior year. According to current data from NSF, UMBC ranks #151 in federal research and development expenditures — out of more than 3,000 four-year colleges or universities. We are among the top 20 universities receiving NASA funding. • We now have 15 major research centers on campus that report to either the provost or the vice president for research, and another 10 established by our colleges and departments. These are key assets for our research, scholarship and creative achievement. • We are looking to build on these strengths with key research priorities—well-aligned with state and national priorities—in environment, health, national security, education, and public policy. • Our research motto, “Innovation That Matters” reflects the fact that our faculty and students are particularly strong in translational and applied research areas. We want to ensure that our work has direct impact—on the scientific and engineering fields, on our students, and on the many communities that we touch. • We have a strong national reputation for integrating undergraduates in mentored research. • Our most successful and impactful research efforts are frequently interdisciplinary and based on successful collaborations across the campus, with other academic institutions, and with external partners.

Partnerships • Our partnerships have deepened and matured over the decades. o With UMB, our strongest partnership, we continue to develop research collaborations through the seed grant program. We share equipment, our faculty are developing joint proposals to NIH, we administer a joint MD-PhD program, and we send large numbers of students to professional schools –social work, law, medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy. o With College Park, we are collaborating (with MITRE) on the state’s Cybersecurity FFRDC, (with funding from NASA) on the Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology, and (with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities) on Baltimore Stories: Narratives and the Life of an American City,” which seeks to use humanities scholarship to produce print and digital materials that help frame and contextualize narratives of race in American cities. o Along with UMB and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, we jointly operate the Institute for Marine and Environmental Technology. We have a growing partnership with Bowie State in cybersecurity and with UMES in the alliance for minority participation in science. o We have a new and growing partnership with the Naval Academy, in cybersecurity research. We have many international partnerships, such as those with Kyushu University in Japan and Kassel University in Germany. o We have partnerships with a number of public school systems and community colleges that address student and community needs. o We have substantive partnerships with Federal agencies that provide students experiential learning through internships, lead to jobs and careers, and provide partnerships. o We have corporate partners such as Mitre, Northrop Grumman, and IBM that allow us to advance education and research in cybersecurity and with Medimmune which facilitates key work in biomedical research. These partnerships are important to the Maryland economy and the health and defense of our nation. o We have partnerships with generous philanthropists and such foundations as Gates, HHMI, Sloan, and Mellon that have made a critical contribution to our efforts to improve student success.

Budget and Endowment • For FY 2017, we have our largest budget ever – $440 million, a net increase of $10 million over the previous year. • Of that $440 million, almost $250 million comes from the State of Maryland or tuition and fees. • From just $1 million in the early 1990s, our endowment has grown in value to more than $77 million today, with almost $14 million raised this past year. That amount includes substantial contributions from faculty, staff, and alumni. All of these gifts will be counting toward the capital campaign we will officially launch next year. • Under current market conditions, with current gifts and pledges, we anticipate the endowment will reach $100 million by 2020. We are in the quiet phase of the capital campaign now, and we will launch the public phase for $150 million in the spring. • The additional budget funding and income from our endowment allow us to hire new faculty and staff as enrollments grow, expand academic programs, better support our students through increased financial aid, and grow our health and wellness initiatives for the campus.

Accolades and Achievements

What have been our top achievements? • We have been recognized by national media for excellence. o Most recently, an article in yesterday’s New York Times provides more national exposure to our academic strengths (in research and teaching) than ever before. o The Chronicle of Higher Education has ranked us as a “Great Place to Work” seven years in a row. o US News has ranked as #5 on its list of most innovative national universities and among the top 20 in undergraduate teaching. o Times Higher Education has ranked UMBC in the Top 100 of its Global “150 Under 50” Universities – a ranking we no longer qualify for as of today! o Princeton Review named us a “College that Pays You Back” and Kiplinger’s named us a “Best Value College for 2016.” o CBS featured UMBC and the Meyerhoff Scholars Program on 60 Minutes, noting the significance of what we have achieved as a place focused on student success.

These accolades are backed up by solid achievements. Let me give a few examples. o This spring, Michael Summers, Robert E. Meyerhoff Chair for Excellence in Research and Mentoring, University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Howard Hughes Investigator, was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. His doctoral student and postdoctoral fellow, Victoria D’Souza, was granted tenure as full professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Harvard University. o Our faculty across disciplines have won a range of impressive awards. For example, Kate Brown, professor of History, won seven prestigious national and international awards for her book, Plutopia, and has recently been named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, a Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute, and a fellowship with the American Academy in Berlin. o Our alumni now lead such institutions as the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and Clemson University, and chair the Department of Neurosurgery at Vanderbilt University. o We now have more than 70,000 alumni who are working in Maryland and beyond as artists, social workers, policy analysts, doctors, and dentists, healthcare workers, teachers, lawyers, engineers, and computer scientists. We have educated more than one-quarter of the IT graduates in Maryland. We have 2,000 alumni working for the Navy and another 1,000 at NSA. We have just launched the first Naval ROTC program in Maryland, with special support from Senator Mikulski. Our alumni have a strong impact. They are representative of the creative class in the State of Maryland. o In the past year, our alumni were recognized for outstanding teaching. Corey Carter ’08, biological sciences, ’10 M.A.T., was selected as the Baltimore County Teacher of the year and Shalonda Holt ’07, biological sciences, teaching certificate in education, was recognized by the Washington Post as Teacher of the Year after previously being selected as the Howard County Teacher of the year. o We are sending our students to the most prestigious graduate and professional programs in the country and our doctoral graduates hold faculty positions at research and comprehensive universities across the nation. o We are an institution that can place teams in the top four nationally in men’s soccer, chess, game development, and mini-Baja racing, all in one year!

Looking to the Future: Imagine what’s next

The 50th anniversary—along with our parallel process of strategic planning and Middle States Accreditation—have given us a chance to reflect on our growth, where we are today, and our aspirations for the future. We are not yet done. Success is never final. However good you are, you can always improve. We are now building on the foundation laid by our founding generation.

As we move forward we are looking in the mirror, asking questions: What are our challenges? What are our goals? How can we address the great issues of our day?

Despite our growth, accolades, and achievements, we do face important challenges as a campus, including our funding per student given our mission, the expensive nature of some of our programs, other campuses recruiting away our faculty; the need to deepen the diversity of our faculty, and the unevenness of progress across all disciplines in improving teaching and learning – a key component of our ongoing effort to improve student success.

And we have important strategic questions related to our goals for supporting students, for the life of our community, and extending our engagement with our communities:

• For our academic programs: o How high do we want to go with enrollment? With what resources? o How high can we go with degree completion? With what initiatives? o Can we extend to all students the benefits of practice pioneered in our scholars programs? o How can we provide experiential learning and greater cultural and global competence for all students? o How can we deepen our innovation in teaching and learning, improve advising and mentoring, and more fully capitalize on student analytics and assessment? o How do we best invest in faculty and staff to increase our capacity in multidisciplinary research, scholarship, and creative activity?

• For the life of our campus: o Can we imagine a mixed use development on campus, with residential, commercial, entertainment and other amenities that would be co-located to enliven our campus experience? o Might we go the way of some other campuses that have welcomed alumni, especially older and retired alums, to live on campus to enjoy campus resources and to lend their time and talents to enrich the campus community? o Can we imagine student apartments, along with a coffeehouse, a convenience store, a dry cleaners, or other desirable commercial services, to serve the campus of the future well? o How can we develop closer connections with Catonsville and Arbutus and create a college town atmosphere? o What should our long-term thinking be with regard to the neighboring Spring Grove campus? How can the development of this tract support the work we do for students, research, and the community?

• For our broader engagement: o How can we become the anchor institution for the region? ♣ Building relationships from Baltimore to Washington? ♣ Building off of improved transportation in the Baltimore-Washington corridor? ♣ Advancing our role and reputation as a vital stakeholder in Maryland’s innovation economy? o How can we continue to build our partnerships with other research universities, within the system and beyond?

When we look ahead we are also inspired in two essential ways.

First, we seek to expand our work as a national model for others on approaches to helping students succeed, in not just a few disciplines but across the board, and to do so in ways that will impact the real world.

We will continue to innovate in the classroom and on campus generally. We are providing academic initiatives, student affiliation opportunities, transfer student support, assistance for near-completers, and opportunities for the kind of real-world connections afforded through the Shriver Center, BreakingGround, and the Alex Brown Center for Entrepreneurship. BreakingGround achieved the following milestones in its fourth year: 34 courses to-date created or redesigned to foster civic agency; 24 projects producing social contributions beyond episodic service; 270+ stories and reflections shared on the BreakingGround blog, attracting more than 110,000 views. Meanwhile, more than 70 courses across all our colleges have been infused with an entrepreneurial emphasis, and the minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation currently has 120 students enrolled. These initiatives and programs are designed to ensure that students learn and make significant progress toward completion. They are working.

Second, using our research capacity we will tackle critical challenges faced by society and all of humanity in general. The National Academies, in Research Universities and the Future of America, argued that it is the role of these institutions to produce the new knowledge and educated citizens who will “drive innovation—advances in ideas, products, and processes that create new industries and jobs, contribute to our nation’s health and security, and support a high standard of living.” And so I think, for example, of the important research we are doing to increase understanding of AIDS, develop anti-cancer strategies, improve the aquaculture industry, environmental research, and contribute in such areas as the digital humanities, imaging and digital arts, and public policy.

The National Academy of Engineering has outlined 14 “Grand Challenges” for engineering in the 21st century. These challenges focus our work on carbon sequestration, improved solar energy, access to clean water, modernizing urban infrastructure, reverse engineering the brain, preventing nuclear terror, and the development of advanced personal learning. And so I think of the way we have embraced these challenges and joined NAE’s Grand Challenges Scholars Program, preparing students to tackle them.

America still faces major social challenges from economic inequality and the issues that divide us—race, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality—to criminal justice reform and heath disparities. Following the tragic death of Freddie Gray, we looked in the mirror to assess what we as a campus could do to reach out to Baltimore City. We have now created more than 140 programs, initiatives, partnerships, and organizations in which our students, faculty, and staff connect to the City and its residents. We celebrate this energy and are working to support and expand it. Meanwhile, we are addressing issues involving social justice, equality, race, gender, sexuality, and religion through a diverse range of courses, as well other research, community engagement, and learning opportunities. For example, our Humanities and Social Sciences Forums explore key issues in our society.

Across the university—across all of our colleges—we seek to educate our students and advance research in areas that meet national and global needs. We continue to build an entrepreneurial climate for economic development. Four out of the last nine awards under the Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) went to UMBC faculty. We continue to work with children to find ways of closing the achievement gap among students of different racial and ethnic groups. We are contributing key research to help understand climate change and the ways it can be addressed. Our campus has become a leader in cybersecurity—a key tool for our nation’s security—with work ranging from information technology to ethics. We are addressing health disparities in work ranging from biomedical research on diseases that affect underserved populations, to statistical modeling in public policy to understand the causes of persistent differences in health status among disadvantaged populations such as African Americans, Hispanics and American Indians, and to identify interventions to close the gaps.

Over the past fifty years, as our nation has grown its higher education enterprise, many more Americans went to college and earned bachelor’s degrees, access to our postsecondary institutions was widened to people of all groups, and the federal government expanded its investments in university research.

During this time, UMBC has been in the midst of it all — a 50-year experiment in higher education here in Catonsville. UMBC is now an inclusive, selective, highly residential research university. We are forward-looking and responsive. We have a strong focus on inclusive excellence—teaching students how to live and work with people different from themselves. We believe in high expectations and have a passion for learning. We are seeking ways to advance knowledge and educate our students to make a difference in our society and our world. And, most of all, we still believe in hard work.

I often quote Aristotle: “Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intentions, sincere effort, and intelligent execution. It represents the wisest choice of many alternatives—choice not chance, determines your destiny.”

It takes grit to achieve greatness!

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January 19, 2021

Winter Convocation is also Founders Day, an occasion to reflect upon the people whose vision, leadership, and hard work gave rise to this university, in which we take pride and to which we now devote our own energy. 

We also reflect upon the purposes and the values that abide as the common thread connecting the members of this community across decades and centuries during which so much else has changed.  And we reflect upon our motto — non incautus futuri, not unmindful of the future — which expresses our commitment to honor the past, not from a desire to remain frozen in time, but rather as a source of inspiration to direct our own efforts for the benefit of those who will follow us in the decades and centuries to come.

At the heart of Washington and Lee University lies the conviction that the future is best served by education.  From that conviction grows the communal ethos to devote ourselves to cultivating the considerable potential of our students, so that they in turn may contribute powerfully to making the world a better place. 

The two men for whom our school is named exemplified this ethos, as have thousands of other individuals who have sustained the quality, character, and success of this university over the 272 years of its existence.

Today, our mission is to provide a liberal arts education that prepares our students for lives of responsible leadership, service to others, and engaged citizenship in a global and diverse society. That mission has never been more essential than at this moment in our nation’s history.  Every four years Founders Day is held within days, sometimes hours, of the inauguration of this country’s president.  The 46th president of the United States will be inaugurated tomorrow at noon.  The peaceful transition of power is a hallmark of American democracy.  But recent days have shown us not to take it for granted.  Democracy requires vigilance. And it requires education.

In 1749, Benjamin Franklin wrote “the good Education of Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in all Ages, as the surest Foundation of the Happiness both of private Families and of Commonwealths.”

George Washington concurred, asserting in his presidential address to Congress in 1790 that the security of a free Constitution depends upon an educated citizenry. “Knowledge,” he said, “is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.”

At W&L, we are dedicated to preparing our students for responsible, engaged, democratic citizenship.  The investments of time, resources, and love that our faculty and staff make in our students are paid forward by the positive differences that they make on our campus, in our community and to our democracy.

It is now my pleasure to introduce our distinguished speaker, Dr. Michael J. Barsanti.

In 1731, Benjamin Franklin and several fellow members of a discussion club called the Junto (who-n-toe) founded the Library Company of Philadelphia to provide its members with ready access to books that they could not afford to purchase individually but could afford to purchase collectively. It became America’s first successful lending library and its oldest cultural institution.

Today the Library Company is an independent research library concentrating on American society and culture from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Its extensive non-circulating collection includes more than 2,000 items that once belonged to Mr. Franklin.

Michael Barsanti became the 30th individual to lead the Library Company in January 2017.

Dr. Barsanti holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Williams College, a master’s degree in English from the University of Miami, and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania, where he specialized in the works of James Joyce.

He has led a distinguished career in the Philadelphia cultural community holding positions at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, and the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation prior to being named to his current position. He has taught Arts Administration at Drexel University and has served on the Boards of several nonprofits, including Pig Iron Theatre, Independence Charter School, and the Abraham Lincoln Foundation of the Union League of Philadelphia.

While at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, he curated the 1998 exhibition, “Ulysses in Hand: The Rosenbach Manuscript,” which was presented at the Chester Beatty [beety] Library in Dublin and marked the first time any part of Joyce’s manuscript was seen in his native city.

Dr. Barsanti is also an entrepreneur, having founded Throwaway Horse, a small software startup company that produces online, mobile-optimized comics that are based on literary works. The flagship project of Throwaway Horse was ULYSSES “SEEN,” a graphic novel adaption of Ulysses.

Franklin’s mission for the The Library Company was to improve the community through the sharing of knowledge.  Under Barsanti’s leadership, the Library Company aims to advance this mission by bringing innovation to the practice of American history and by reimagining history’s place in the making of informed American citizens.  His address this evening -- “Friendship, Franklin, and the Future of Democracy” – is a contribution to this timely project, which is wholly in keeping with our own mission and efforts at Washington and Lee.

Please join me in welcoming Michael Barsanti.

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Bennett College Founders Day

October 8, 2006 Remarks by William H. Gates Sr., co-chair Thank you, sisters and brothers. Sisters and brothers—Johnnetta taught me how to say that. 

I am very happy to be here today. It is a pleasure to address young women under Johnnetta’s tutelage, though I don’t know what I can add to the considerable wisdom she has already imparted to you. 

When she became chair of the United Way board that I served on, I learned quickly that she provides a kind of leadership we need more of in this country. She is not just somebody who knows how to win an election or give the impression of being in charge. She seeks out the toughest problems and then solves them, and that is what a leader should do.

I am especially honored to be asked to help you celebrate Founders’ Day here at Bennett College. When I reflect on the challenges your founders faced, I am in awe. They certainly understood the meaning of leadership. I have tried to imagine their moment in history: Millions of African Americans were starting brand new lives as free people, and with limited resources they had to make choices about what their community would need most over the decades to come. 

They wanted to build an institution that would last, and that would make the biggest difference for men and women who had been born into slavery. They decided that, ultimately, learning and literacy were the keys to freedom.

Today, we have much to learn from your founders and their vision of what constituted a good life. We have lost that focus on long-term thinking. Listen to our politicians. Are they grappling with our impending energy crisis? Are they concentrating on the fact that our federal deficit threatens to force the country into bankruptcy? Watch the cable news. Instead of honest debate, we get empty promises. Instead of tomorrow’s solutions, we hear about yesterday’s scandals. 

As you go through your years at Bennett and think about your futures, I hope you learn to look beyond tomorrow, next week, and next year. I hope you ask yourself what you can do over the 50 years of your working lives to make the problems that plague our world a little bit better. This is what I’d like to talk about today.

I am a proud father because my children have asked themselves that question. My son, the other Bill Gates, and his wife, Melinda, started their foundation because they believe what you believe: that every life has equal value—that every person, no matter where he or she lives, deserves the opportunity to lead a healthy, productive life. They also know they’ve been extremely fortunate, and they feel a responsibility to share that good fortune.

Because they are serious business-like people, they insist that their investments get the best return possible. In philanthropy, getting the best return means doing the most good for the most people.

That is why the foundation focuses tightly on a few neglected problems. That way, we can learn what works and what doesn’t, and our interventions will have more impact over the long term.

Around the world, we see the greatest need in health. So we focus on making sure sick people in poor countries have access to the same lifesaving vaccines and treatments that people in rich countries do. And we concentrate on driving research and development on diseases that kill millions in the developing world but don’t get much attention here. 

For instance, every year, malaria alone kills more than a million people, virtually all of them in poor countries. That’s like wiping out Charlotte, Raleigh, and Greensboro—every year. But malaria can be prevented with a simple net, which keeps away the mosquitoes that carry the disease. 

The fact that we let anyone—let alone 2,000 children every day—die for want of a $3 mosquito net is a disgraceful reflection of our problem with short-sightedness.

We’re proud to be part of the fight against that kind of senseless death. But we also know that it doesn’t do much good to save a child from malaria if she is doomed to die of malnutrition just a few years later.

So if we want to do the most good for the most people, and if we’re thinking long-term, we have to tackle not just health problems, but hunger and poverty, too.

The numbers are staggering. One billion people live on less than $1 per day. One in eight people suffers from chronic hunger, which means their daily diets don’t provide enough calories to sustain a healthy life. 

As those of you in the Global Studies program may know, sub-Saharan Africa is the only place in the world where people have less food year after year. Today, farmers in the region are forced to contend with problems their parents never dreamed of.

As the population grows, they have no choice but to cultivate their land more intensively, which takes nutrients out of the soil, making their crops more vulnerable to disease and infestation. Add increasingly volatile weather to the equation, and tens of millions of Africans are now living on the edge of starvation.

Sixteen of the 18 most under-nourished countries in the world are in Africa.

These are deeply entrenched problems, with no quick fixes. And yet we have learned from organizations that have been working in these fields for years that there are solutions, if we are willing to face facts and respond boldly. 

In the 1940s, the Rockefeller Foundation went to Mexico to help farmers there grow more food. It took a long time—50 years—but a “Green Revolution” eventually spread over most of Latin America and Asia, and farmers there doubled their crop yields. But the Green Revolution passed Africa by. Our goal is to help spur one now. 

The idea is to take a comprehensive approach to improving agriculture, starting with the seeds farmers plant and ending with the markets where they sell surplus crops. 

In the end, we expect that small farmers will have more to eat—and more food left over, which they can sell. 

This is the kind of long-term, lasting change that could help millions of people escape hunger and desperate poverty.

In the United States, we believe that the best way to help people improve their lives is through education. Yet more than a century after Bennett’s founding, we still don’t have a public school system that builds on the great promise of a free education for all people. This is one of the country’s greatest failures of long-term thinking.

I know many of you in the audience worked very hard to get where you are today. But you are the lucky ones. A third of the young people who started ninth grade this year won’t graduate from high school. Another third will graduate but won’t be ready for what comes next—college or a good job. And the odds are even worse for African Americans and Hispanics. Only about half will graduate from high school. Public schools should be an engine of social justice, but too often they help perpetuate injustice.

These statistics are shocking, but they’re not exactly news. We haven’t been ignoring the education crisis in this country. In fact, it’s been near the top of the public agenda for almost 20 years. But change on the scale that’s needed in our schools doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen in a decade or two. Again, we need to think long-term.

The civil rights movement offers a good lesson. For decades before Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954, activists and lawyers had been laying the groundwork for that landmark ruling. And after Brown, it took 10 years of marches and protests by millions of ordinary citizens—and the sit-ins that started with college students right here in Greensboro—before Congress passed the most basic civil rights legislation. And in the 40 years since then, we’ve been trying to make sure that we as a nation live up to the promise of justice for all our citizens.

In many ways, the education movement we’re building is the continuation of that movement. In fact, Bob Moses, the great civil rights activist in Mississippi who later started an organization called the Algebra Project, has said that “transforming math education in our schools is as urgent in today’s world as was winning the right to vote in the Jim Crow South in the early 1960s.”

Bob Moses knows something about what your founders were thinking 133 years ago, when they decided that what newly free African Americans needed most was a school.

So where are we in our education movement? Back in the mid-1980s, when most of you were born, the Department of Education said we were a nation in crisis, with almost no strategy for solving that crisis.

As you were growing up, the states started launching initiatives to improve their schools. They set standards for what students should be learning, developed tests designed to measure whether they were meeting those standards, and started thinking about how to hold schools accountable for their results.

But our goal in this country is not merely to have standards. Our goal is to help all students get ready for college, work, and citizenship. The standards are a tool, and our challenge is to use the tool to help students reach their goals.

We are starting to get a better sense of just how difficult it is going to be, and how long it is going to take.

Our foundation has been working on education issues for six years now. That means we are just getting started, and we are still trying to get it right. We are confident we have the correct objective: preparing all kids—not just a few—for bright futures. But we are still searching for the best ways to get there. 

At the foundation, we’ve found that the most successful schools around the country—schools that get every student ready for college and work—all have three things in common. We call them the new 3 R’s: rigor, relevance, and relationships.

Courses that challenge all children, not just the honors students. Motivating curricula that relate to students’ lives and aspirations. One-on-one relationships with caring adults.

Think back to your high schools. The teachers who meant the most to you were the ones who expected you to work hard and do well, made the material interesting, and showed you that they cared about how you fared and they gave you the support you needed. Well, what if all schools could give that experience to all students all of the time?

It might sound simple, but it’s not—it takes a whole new way of thinking. Great schools take concrete action to make the new 3 R’s part of students’ everyday experience.

They create small learning environments where students meet with the same advisors every day. They insist that every graduate pass a rigorous college-preparatory curriculum—that they master advanced math and English skills. And they get students excited about learning by giving them more than textbooks and workbooks.

There is a right way and a wrong way to bring these three R’s to every child in the country.

The short-term solutions would be to spend a lot of money quickly, build new schools, and declare victory. It sounds appealing, because our schools are in crisis and we want to do as much as we can as soon as we can.

But to make reform work for every child—and to make sure its benefits last—we have to take a long-term approach. For us as a foundation, that means working with partners who share our priorities and bring their own expertise to the effort.

We can only be a small part of the solution to the education crisis. Consider that the cost of running the schools in one large state—California—for one year is greater than all the assets of the Gates Foundation. If we spent every penny we have, we’d still be short 49 states, and the next year, California would be back where it started.

So we have worked with individual schools, teachers, administrators, school districts, education organizations, and state governments on everything from how schools are built, to what goes on inside the classroom.   North Carolina is a leader in this kind of collaborative school reform. Smart Start, your early childhood education program, is a partnership between the government and private funders, and it has been a model for other states around the country. 

In fact, Smart Start helped inspire us and many other funders in Washington state to develop Thrive by Five, a program for children under the age of five that we hope will emulate what you all have created here in North Carolina.

Our foundation is also working with something called the New Schools Project, which is redesigning 75 schools throughout your state. At the same time, Governor Mike Easley has launched the Learn and Earn effort, which will create another 75 new schools.

Over the next few years, these initiatives will give tens of thousands of kids in this state a chance at a better education.

Whatever you choose to do—whether you become an educator, a doctor, a nurse, a journalist, or an engineer—you will be a leader. As a steward of your community, the greatest service you can offer is forthright, farsighted thinking.

If you are a teacher or a principal, you can take a risk by rejecting business as usual and imagining what a really great school might look like.

If you’re a doctor or a nurse, you can live by the principle that in our world, our neighbors are no longer just the family next door or people across town.  They are AIDS sufferers in Senegal.  They are hungry children in Bangladesh. They are human beings all over the world, and billions of your neighbors need your help.

If you’re a journalist, you can cover real news about the inequities in our country and our world. You can force your readers to confront the suffering in their midst, and you can help them do something about it.

If you’re an engineer, you can help rebuild places that have been destroyed by disaster and neglect. You can build bridges in Thailand. You can build levees in New Orleans. 

Today, as you reflect on your founders—and on the success Bennett College has become—I hope you will remember what made them so extraordinary.

At a time of great hardship and great hope, they had the courage to seek out hard problems and the fortitude to try to solve them. They were leaders, and if you follow their example, then you can help make a world where hope triumphs over hardship, and where peace and justice are the order of the day.

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Best Speech on Founder’s Day or School Foundation Day 2023

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Best Speech on Founder’s Day or School Foundation Day 2023

Note :This Speech is Common for All School College University Foundation Day

School is the most inspiring place for all to lean and grow. And today we are celebrating that we are blessed with such beautiful surroundings and wonderful facilities, we are celebrating the growth and success of our school.

We are celebrating the proud history of the school community because 13 April (Your School Foundation Date) is a designated date on which celebrations marks the founding of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (Your School Name) . A very hearty morning to the Honorable Chairman Sir, Respected Principal Sir, Teachers and my fellow students. It has been said and believed since long that for any great work to be done, it is important to have the right foundation. And today our school entered another successful year. Let me first wish you all a very Happy Foundation Day . This day is the time to remember those that have helped to shape who we are, This day is an opportunity to praise the memories of this wonderful school and this time is to reflect on the school past..

Let we first thank the founder Shri Shri Shri Rajieev Gandhi Ji, The Founder of Navodaya Vidyalaya’s , the foundation staff who have been at our school from the very beginning. Just look around you, all the students and teachers gathered over here and such atmosphere of celebration giving us immense pleasure. We are thankful for our school has assisted us in exploring a multitude of skills and activities. Our teachers help us finding what we are passionate about, pushed us to seek new experiences, and altered our personality.

The most important thing we lean here is that anything can be achieve with focus perseverance and confidence. Thank you to all for being outstanding educators in the world. May you be an inspiration to use forever.

Once again congratulations to all of us ! Hope we will have lots of fun and knuckle down with our studies. And we wish we will have a great years ahead.

Thank you..

On My Side Thanks to All Beloved Readers.

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Harvard graduates this week will hear from two high-profile leaders, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Thursday and Sunday. Ahead of the ceremonies, we look back at Commencement addresses from recent years.

“My philosophy is very simple. When you see something that’s not right, not fair, not just, stand up, say something, and speak out.”

U.S. Rep. John Lewis

2018 The Civil Rights icon delivers a powerful message on the importance of truth, justice, and equality at a time when those values have come under assault.

Thank you so much for those kind words of introduction. I must tell you that I’m delighted, very pleased and really happy to be here. You look good! The weather is good, rain stayed away. I’m happy. It’s good to see each and every one of you. Fellows of Harvard University, members of the Board of Overseers, members of the alumni board, distinguished deans, guests, faculty and all of the students, all of the wonderful graduates, and madam president, thank you. Thank you for your leadership, thank you for getting in good trouble! Necessary trouble. To lead this great University.

I want to take just a moment to honor the tenure of a great leader, who, through her courage and vision, worked to lead this historic university to even higher heights. Madam president, thank you for being a friend, but more importantly, thank you for using your office to move Harvard toward a more all-inclusive institution. Somewhere along the way, you realized that the brilliant mind is not confined to one discipline or one way of thinking.

In fact, true genius sees connections and relationships across barriers, to build a new understanding of the world around us. Creating one Harvard is much like the work I dedicated my life to. Ever since as a young girl you wrote a letter to President Eisenhower as a little girl, you have been responding to the cry for human dignity that rings out in our world. You used your vision and your talent, you used the great resources of this university to respond to that call, and I thank you. Thank you for your contribution to human unity in our world.

Today I say to each and every one of you who graduated from this University, you must lead. You’re never too young to lead, you’re never too old to lead! We need your leadership now more than ever before. We need it! We must save our country! We must save it! We must save our democracy. There are forces in America today and around the world trying to take us to some other place. Our foremothers and forefathers brought us to this place. Maybe our foremothers and our forefathers all came to this great land in different ships but as the late great A. Philip Randolph said “we are all in the same boat now” and we must look out for each other and care for each other. You’re never too young or too old to lead! To speak up! Speak out! And get in good trouble, necessary trouble. You cannot afford to stand on the sidelines.

Another generation of young people and people not so young are inspired to get in the way. Students from Harvard, Dr. Cole, who I have been knowing for many years came to Mississippi, came to the South and gave everything you had. During the 63 young men that I knew, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwermer, and James Chaney gave their very lives while they were helping people to register to vote. The vote is precious. It’s almost sacred. It is the most powerful, nonviolent instrument or tool we have in a democratic society and we must use t if we fail to use it, we will lose it.

So during this election year, I urge you, I plead with you to do what you can to save and rescue America. To do what you can to save the planet! Save this spaceship we call earth and leave it a little cleaner, a little greener, and a little more peaceful. For generations yet unborn. We have a mission and a mandate to go out there, play a role and play it so well as Dr. King would say, that no one else can play it any better. Some of you have heard me say from time to time that I grew up in rural Alabama on a farm, picking cotton, gathering peanuts, gathering corn. Sometimes I would be out there working and my mother would say, “boy, you’re falling behind! You need to catch up.” And I would say “this is hard work.” And she said “hard work never killed anybody.” And I said “well it’s about to kill me!” We need to work hard! There is work to be done. These smart graduates will lead us. High school students lead us, and guys, I say to you, if you’re not mindful, the women are going to lead us! It is my belief, it is my feeling as a traveler of America that the women and young. People, high school students, elementary school students and College students will lead us as part of a nonviolent revolution. We will create an America that is better, a little more humane and no one, but no one can deny us of that.

I just want to say one or two words to the graduates. Take a deep breath and take it all in. But tomorrow, I hope you roll up your sleeves, because the world is waiting for talented men and women to lead it to a better place. During the 60s, people literally put their bodies on the line! Many came from this University, came from Cambridge, from Boston, throughout the state and throughout America. Just think a few short years ago that Black people and white people couldn’t be seated together on a Greyhound business or trailway bus, leaving Washington, D.C., to travel through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi. We were on our way to New Orleans to test a decision of the United States Supreme Court. We were beaten, arrested, and more than 400 of us were jailed. My seatmate was a young white gentleman from Connecticut. We arrived in a small town in South Carolina. We were beaten, left bloody. But many years later, and this was May 1961, same year that Barack Obama was born, but many years later, one of the guys that beat us came to my office in Washington. He got information from a local reporter. He was in his 70s, his son came with him in his 40s. He said, “Mr. Lewis, I’m one of the people that beat you. Beat your seatmate. I’ve been a member of the Klan.” He said “will you forgive me? I want to apologize. Will you accept my apology? Will you forgive me?” His son started crying, he started crying and I said, “I forgive you. I accept your apology.” They hugged me, I hugged them back, and I cried with them. It is the power of the way of peace, the power of love, it is the power of the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. We need to create a society where we can be reconciled and lay down the burden of hath for hate is too heavy of a burden to bear.

Fifty years ago the man that I admired, the man that was like a brother, Martin Luther King Jr., was taken from us. When we heard that Dr. King had been assassinated I was in Indianapolis, Indiana, campaigning with Bobby Kennedy. I cried. Stopped crying and I said to myself “we still have bobby.” Two months later Bobby Kennedy was gone. And I cried some more. Today we’ve got to get rid of our are tears and not be down. And not get lost in the sea of despair. We’ve got to be hopeful and keep the faith and turn the ship around. We can do it and we must do it!

Here at Harvard you’ve been well trained. You must lead. You must get out there and as Dr. King would say, be a headlight, not a taillight! It’s your time, it’s your calling. During the 60s I got arrested a few times, 40 times! And since I’ve been in Congress another five times! And I’m probably going to get arrested again! My philosophy is very simple, when you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, stand up! Say something! Speak up and speak out!

When I was growing up as a young boy in rural Alabama, 50 miles from Montgomery, I had an aunt by the name of Seneva and my aunt lived in a shotgun house. Here at Harvard you never seen a shotgun house, you don’t even know what I’m talking about. One way in, one way out. What is a shotgun house? Old house, dirt yard. Sometimes my aunt Seneva would go out on the weekend, Friday or Saturday, and take a brush broom made from dogwood branches and sweep the yard very clean. One Saturday afternoon few of my brothers and sisters, cousins, about 15 of us young children were playing in her dirt yard. And an unbelievable storm came up. The wind started blowing, the thunder started rolling and the lightning started flashing and she told us to come in. We went in. The wind continued to blow, the thunder continued to roll, the lightning continued to flash, and the rain continued to beat on this old tin roof of the shotgun house. And we cried and cried. And in one corner of the old house appeared to be lifting up. And my aunt walked over to that side to hold the house down with her body. When the other corner appeared to be lifting she had us walk to that corner, we were children walking with the wind, but we never, ever left the house! I say to each of you, each and every one of us, the wind may blow, the thunder may roll, the lightning may flash, and the rain may beat down on an old house. Call it a house of Harvard, call it a house of Cambridge, call it a house of Boston, call it the house of Washington, or Alabama or Georgia, we all live in the same house. We all must hold our little house down. So I say to you: Walk with the wind. Let the spirit of history be your guide.

Thank you very much.

“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

J.K. Rowling

2008 Drawing from her own life story, the “Harry Potter” author urges graduates not to fear failure but to learn from it and emphasized the power of empathy and imagination.

Read the speech.

“If we break down the walls that hem us in, if we step out into the open and have the courage to embrace new beginnings, everything is possible.”

Angela Merkel

2019 Like the Berlin Wall, “anything that seems set in stone or inalterable can indeed change,” Germany’s first woman chancellor said.

Herman Hesse wrote, “In all beginnings dwells a magic force for guarding us and helping us to live.” These words by Herman Hesse inspired me when I completed my physics degree at the age of 24. That was back in 1978. The world was divided into east and west, and it was in the grips of the Cold War. I grew up in East Germany, in the GDR, the part of my country which was not free at that time, in a dictatorship. People were oppressed and under state surveillance. Political dissidents were persecuted. The East German government was afraid that the people would flee to freedom. And that’s why it built the Berlin Wall, a wall made of concrete and steel. Anyone caught trying to overcome it was arrested or shot dead. This wall, which cut Berlin in half, divided a people and it divided families. My family was also divided.My first job after college was as a physicist at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin. I lived near the Berlin Wall. I walked towards it every day on my way home from my institute. Behind it lay West Berlin, freedom. And every day, when I was very close to the wall, I had to turn away at the last minute in order to head towards my apartment. Every day, I had to turn away from freedom at the last minute. I don’t know how often I thought that I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was so frustrating.

Now, I was not a dissident. I didn’t run up and bang against the wall. Nor, however, did I deny its existence, for I didn’t want to lie to myself. The Berlin Wall limited my opportunities. It quite literally stood in my way. However, there was one thing which this wall couldn’t do during all those years. It couldn’t impose limits on my inner thoughts. My personality, my imagination, my dreams and desires, prohibitions or coercion couldn’t limit any of that. Then came 1989. A common desire for freedom unleashed incredible forces throughout Europe. In Poland, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, as well as in East Germany, hundreds of thousands of people dared to take to the streets. The people demonstrated and brought down the wall. Something which many people, including myself, would not have believed possible became reality. Where there was once only a dark wall, a door suddenly opened. For me, too, the moment had come to walk through that door. I no longer had to turn away from freedom at the last minute. I was able to cross this border and venture out into the great wide open.

During these months, 30 years ago, I experienced firsthand that nothing has to stay the way it is. This experience, dear graduates, is the first thought I want to share with you today for your future. Anything that seems to be set in stone or inalterable can, indeed, change. In matters both large and small, it holds true that every change begins in the mind. My parents’ generation discovered this in a most painful way. My father and mother were born in 1926 and 1928.

When they weren’t as old as most of you here today, the betrayal of all civilized well values that was the Shoah and World War II had just ended. My country, Germany, had brought unimaginable suffering on Europe and the world. The victors and the defeated could easily have remained irreconcilable for many years, but instead, Europe overcame centuries old conflicts. A peaceful order based on common values rather than suppose at national strength emerged. Despite all the discussions and temporary setbacks, I firmly believe that we Europeans have United for the better. And the relationship between Germans and Americans, too, demonstrates how former wartime enemies can become friends.

It was George Marshall who gave a crucial contribution to this for the plan he announced at the commencement ceremonies in 1947 in this very place. The transatlantic partnership based on values, such as democracy and human rights, has given us an era of peace and prosperity of benefit to all sides, which has lasted for more than 70 years now. And today, it will not be long now before the politicians of my generation are no longer the subject of the exercising leadership program, and at most will be dealt with in leadership in history. Harvard class of 2019, your generation will be faced with the challenges of the 21st century in the coming decades. You are among those who will lead us into the future.

Protectionism and trade conflicts, jeopardize free international trade, and thus the very foundations of our prosperity. The digital transformation affects all facets of our lives, wars and terrorism lead to displacement and forced migration, climate change poses a threat to our planet’s natural resources, it and the resulting crises are caused by humans. Therefore, we can and must do everything humanly possible to truly master this challenge to humankind. It’s still possible. However, each and every one of us must play our part. And I say this with a measure of self criticism, get better. I will therefore do everything in my power to ensure that Germany, my country, will achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Changes for the better are possible if we tackle them together. If we were to go it alone, we could not achieve much. The second thought I want to share with you is therefore, more than ever our way of thinking and our actions have to be multilateral rather than unilateral, global rather than national, outward looking rather than isolationists. In short, we have to work together rather than alone.

You, dear graduates, will have quite different opportunities to do this in future than my generation did. After all, your smartphone probably has considerably more processing power than the copy of an IBM mainframe computer manufactured in the Soviet Union, which I was allowed to use for my dissertation in East Germany in 1986.

Today we use artificial intelligence, for example, to search through millions of images for symptoms of diseases.In order, among other things, to better diagnose cancer. In future, empathetic robots could help doctors and nurses to focus on the individual needs of patients. We cannot predict today which applications will be possible. However, the opportunities it brings are truly breathtaking.

Class of 2019, how we use these opportunities will be largely up to you as graduates. You are the ones who will be involved in deciding how our approach to how we work, communicate, get about, indeed, our entire way of life will develop. As federal chancellor, I often have to ask myself, “Am I doing the right thing?” “Am I doing something? Because it isn’t right? Or simply because it is possible.” That is something you two need to keep asking yourselves. And that is the third thought I wish to share with you today.

Are we laying down the rules for technology or is technology dictating how we interact? Do we prioritize people as individuals with their human dignity and all their many facets? Or do we see in them merely consumers, data sources, objects of surveyance. These are difficult questions.

I have learned that we can find good answers even to difficult questions if we always try to view the world through the eyes of others. If we respect other people’s history, traditions, religion, and identity. If we hold fast to our inalienable values and act in accordance with them. And if we don’t always act on our first impulses, even when there is pressure to make a snap decision.

But instead take a moment to stop. Be still. Think. Pause. Granted, that certainly takes courage. Above all it calls for truthfulness in our attitude towards others. And perhaps most importantly, it calls for us to be honest with ourselves.

What better place to begin to do so than here, in this place, where so many young people from all over the world come to learn, research, and discuss the issues of our time under the maxim of truth. That requires us not to describe lies as truth and truth as lies. It requires us not to accept shortcomings as our normality. Yet what, dear graduates, could stop you? What could stop us from doing that?

Once again, the answer is walls.

Walls in people’s minds. Walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They exist between family members, as well as between groups within the society, between people of different skin colors, nations, and religions. I would like us to break down these walls. Walls that keep preventing us from envisioning the world in which, together, we want to live.

Whether we manage to do that is up to us. That’s why my full thought for you, dear graduates, to consider is this. Nothing can be taken for granted. Our individual liberties are not givens. Democracy is not something we can take for granted. Neither is peace and neither is prosperity.

But if we break down… If we break down the walls that hem us in, if we step out into the open and have the courage to embrace new beginnings, everything is possible. Walls can collapse. Dictatorships can disappear. We can halt global warming. We can eradicate starvation. We can eliminate diseases. We can give people, especially girls, access to education. We can fight the causes of displacement and forced migration. We can do all of that. Let’s not start by asking what isn’t possible, or focusing on what has always been that way. Let’s start by asking what is possible and looking for things that have never been done like that before. This is exactly what I said to the Bundestag, the German Parliament, in 2005 in my first policy statement as newly elected Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and the first woman to hold this office. I want to use precisely these words to share with you my fifth thought. Let us surprise ourselves by showing what is possible. Let us surprise ourselves by showing what we are capable of. In my own life, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall that allowed me almost 30 years ago to step out into the open. At that point, I left my work as a scientist behind me and entered politics. That was an exciting and magical time, just as your lives will be exciting and magical.

I also experienced moments of doubt and worry, for at that time, we all knew what lay behind us, but not what might lie ahead. Perhaps that reflects a little how you, too, are feeling today, amidst all the joy of this occasion.

The six thought I also want to share with you is this. The moment when you step out into the open is also a moment of risk-taking. Letting go of the old is part of a new beginning. There is no beginning without an end, no day without night, no life without death. Our whole life consists of the difference, the space between beginning and ending.

It is what lies in between that we call life and experience. I believe at time and time again, we need to be prepared to keep bringing things to an end in order to feel the magic of new beginnings and to make the most of opportunities. That was what I learned as a student, and it is what I now in politics. Who knows what life will bring after my time as a politician? That, too, is completely open. Only one thing is clear. It will again be something different and something new.

That’s why I want to leave this wish with you. Tear down walls of ignorance and narrow mindedness for nothing has to stay as it is.

It’s six things. Take joint action in the interest of the moderate lateral global world. Keep asking yourselves, “Am I doing something because it is right, or simply because it’s possible?” Don’t forget that freedom is never something that can be taken for granted. Surprise yourself with what is possible. Remember that openness always involves risks. Letting go of the old is part of the new beginning. Above all, nothing can be taken for granted. Everything is possible. Thank you.

“In a two-hour movie, you get a handful of character-defining moments, but in real life, you face them every day. Life is one strong, long string of character-defining moments.”

Steven Spielberg

2016 Don’t shy away from the world’s pain, the filmmaker urged grads. Instead, examine it, challenge it and, while you’re at it, find “a villain to vanquish.”

Thank you, thank you, President Faust, and Paul Choi, thank you so much.

It’s an honor and a thrill to address this group of distinguished alumni and supportive friends and kvelling parents. We’ve all gathered to share in the joy of this day, so please join me in congratulating Harvard’s Class of 2016.

I can remember my own college graduation, which is easy, since it was only 14 years ago. How many of you took 37 years to graduate? Because, like most of you, I began college in my teens, but sophomore year, I was offered my dream job at Universal Studios, so I dropped out. I told my parents if my movie career didn’t go well, I’d re-enroll. It went all right.But eventually, I returned for one big reason. Most people go to college for an education, and some go for their parents, but I went for my kids. I’m the father of seven, and I kept insisting on the importance of going to college, but I hadn’t walked the walk. So, in my fifties, I re-enrolled at Cal State — Long Beach, and I earned my degree.I just have to add: It helped that they gave me course credit in paleontology for the work I did on Jurassic Park. That’s three units for Jurassic Park, thank you. Well I left college because I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and some of you know, too — but some of you don’t. Or maybe you thought you knew but are now questioning that choice. Maybe you’re sitting there trying to figure out how to tell your parents that you want to be a doctor and not a comedy writer.

Well, what you choose to do next is what we call in the movies the “character-defining moment.” Now, these are moments you’re very familiar with, like in the last “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” when Rey realizes the force is with her. Or Indiana Jones choosing mission over fear by jumping over a pile of snakes. Now in a two-hour movie, you get a handful of character-defining moments, but in real life, you face them every day. Life is one strong, long string of character-defining moments. And I was lucky that at 18 I knew what I exactly wanted to do. But I didn’t know who I was. How could I? And how could any of us? Because for the first 25 years of our lives, we are trained to listen to voices that are not our own. Parents and professors fill our heads with wisdom and information, and then employers and mentors take their place and explain how this world really works. And usually these voices of authority make sense, but sometimes, doubt starts to creep into our heads and into our hearts. And even when we think, “that’s not quite how I see the world,” it’s kind of easier to just to nod in agreement and go along, and for a while, I let that going along define my character. Because I was repressing my own point of view, because like in that Nilsson song, “Everybody was talkin’ at me, so I couldn’t hear the echoes of my mind.” And at first, the internal voice I needed to listen to was hardly audible, and it was hardly noticeable — kind of like me in high school.

But then I started paying more attention, and my intuition kicked in. And I want to be clear that your intuition is different from your conscience. They work in tandem, but here’s the distinction: Your conscience shouts, “here’s what you should do,” while your intuition whispers, “here’s what you could do.” Listen to that voice that tells you what you could do. Nothing will define your character more than that. Because once I turned to my intuition, and I tuned into it, certain projects began to pull me into them, and others, I turned away from. And up until the 1980s, my movies were mostly, I guess what you could call “escapist.” And I don’t dismiss any of these movies — not even 1941. Not even that one. And many of these early films reflected the values that I cared deeply about, and I still do. But I was in a celluloid bubble, because I’d cut my education short, my worldview was limited to what I could dream up in my head, not what the world could teach me.

But then I directed “The Color Purple.” And this one film opened my eyes to experiences that I never could have imagined, and yet were all too real. This story was filled with deep pain and deeper truths, like when Shug Avery says, “Everything wants to be loved.” My gut, which was my intuition, told me that more people needed to meet these characters and experience these truths. And while making that film, I realized that a movie could also be a mission. I hope all of you find that sense of mission. Don’t turn away from what’s painful. Examine it. Challenge it. My job is to create a world that lasts two hours. Your job is to create a world that lasts forever. You are the future innovators, motivators, leaders and caretakers. And the way you create a better future is by studying the past.

“Jurassic Park” writer Michael Crichton, who graduated from both this college and this medical school, liked to quote a favorite professor of his who said that if you didn’t know history, you didn’t know anything. You were a leaf that didn’t know it was part of a tree. So history majors: Good choice, you’re in great shape…Not in the job market, but culturally. The rest of us have to make a little effort. Social media that we’re inundated and swarmed with is about the here and now. But I’ve been fighting and fighting inside my own family to get all my kids to look behind them, to look at what already has happened. Because to understand who they are is to understand who we were, and who their grandparents were, and then, what this country was like when they emigrated here. We are a nation of immigrants at least for now.

So to me, this means we all have to tell our own stories. We have so many stories to tell. Talk to your parents and your grandparents, if you can, and ask them about their stories. And I promise you, like I have promised my kids, you will not be bored. And that’s why I so often make movies based on real-life events. I look to history not to be didactic, cause that’s just a bonus, but I look because the past is filled with the greatest stories that have ever been told. Heroes and villains are not literary constructs, but they’re at the heart of all history.

And again, this is why it’s so important to listen to your internal whisper. It’s the same one that compelled Abraham Lincoln and Oskar Schindler to make the correct moral choices. In your defining moments, do not let your morals be swayed by convenience or expediency. Sticking to your character requires a lot of courage. And to be courageous, you’re going to need a lot of support.And if you’re lucky, you have parents like mine. I consider my mom my lucky charm. And when I was 12 years old, my father handed me a movie camera, the tool that allowed me to make sense of this world. And I am so grateful to him for that. And I am grateful that he’s here at Harvard, sitting right down there. My dad is 99 years old, which means he’s only one year younger than Widener Library. But unlike Widener, he’s had zero cosmetic work. And dad, there’s a lady behind you, also 99, and I’ll introduce you after this is over, okay? But look, if your family’s not always available, there’s backup. Near the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life” — you remember that movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life”? Clarence the Angel inscribes a book with this: “No man is a failure who has friends.” And I hope you hang on to the friendships you’ve made here at Harvard. And among your friends, I hope you find someone you want to share your life with.

I imagine some of you in this yard may be a tad cynical, but I want to be unapologetically sentimental. I spoke about the importance of intuition and how there’s no greater voice to follow. That is, until you meet the love of your life. And this is what happened when I met and married Kate, and that became the greatest character-defining moment of my life.Love, support, courage, intuition. All of these things are in your hero’s quiver, but still, a hero needs one more thing: A hero needs a villain to vanquish. And you’re all in luck. This world is full of monsters. And there’s racism, homophobia, ethnic hatred, class hatred, there’s political hatred, and there’s religious hatred.As a kid, I was bullied — for being Jewish. This was upsetting, but compared to what my parents and grandparents had faced, it felt tame. Because we truly believed that anti-Semitism was fading. And we were wrong. Over the last two years, nearly 20,000 Jews have left Europe to find higher ground. And earlier this year, I was at the Israeli embassy when President Obama stated the sad truth. He said: “We must confront the reality that around the world, anti-Semitism is on the rise. We cannot deny it.”

My own desire to confront that reality compelled me to start, in 1994, the Shoah Foundation. And since then, we’ve spoken to over 53,000 Holocaust survivors and witnesses in 63 countries and taken all their video testimonies. And we’re now gathering testimonies from genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, Armenia and Nanking. Because we must never forget that the inconceivable doesn’t happen — it happens frequently. Atrocities are happening right now. And so we wonder not just, “When will this hatred end?” but, “How did it begin?”

Now, I don’t have to tell a crowd of Red Sox fans that we are wired for tribalism. But beyond rooting for the home team, tribalism has a much darker side. Instinctively and maybe even genetically, we divide the world into “us” and “them.” So the burning question must be: How do all of us together find the “we?” How do we do that? There’s still so much work to be done, and sometimes I feel the work hasn’t even begun. And it’s not just anti-Semitism that’s surging — Islamophobia’s on the rise, too. Because there’s no difference between anyone who is discriminated against, whether it’s the Muslims, or the Jews, or minorities on the border states, or the LGBT community — it is all big one hate.

And to me, and, I think, to all of you, the only answer to more hate is more humanity. We gotta repair — we have to replace fear with curiosity. “Us” and “them” — we’ll find the “we” by connecting with each other. And by believing that we’re members of the same tribe. And by feeling empathy for every soul — even Yalies.

My son graduated from Yale, thank you …

But make sure this empathy isn’t just something that you feel. Make it something you act upon. That means vote. Peaceably protest. Speak up for those who can’t and speak up for those who may be shouting but aren’t being hard. Let your conscience shout as loud as it wants if you’re using it in the service of others.

And as an example of action in service of others, you need to look no further than this Hollywood-worthy backdrop of Memorial Church. Its south wall bears the names of Harvard alumni — like President Faust has already mentioned — students and faculty members, who gave their lives in World War II. All told, 697 souls, who once tread the ground where stand now, were lost. And at a service in this church in late 1945, Harvard President James Conant — which President Faust also mentioned — honored the brave and called upon the community to “reflect the radiance of their deeds.”

Seventy years later, this message still holds true. Because their sacrifice is not a debt that can be repaid in a single generation. It must be repaid with every generation. Just as we must never forget the atrocities, we must never forget those who fought for freedom. So as you leave this college and head out into the world, continue please to ‘reflect the radiance of their deeds,’ or as Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan would say, “Earn this.”

And please stay connected. Please never lose eye contact. This may not be a lesson you want to hear from a person who creates media, but we are spending more time looking down at our devices than we are looking in each other’s eyes. So, forgive me, but let’s start right now. Everyone here, please find someone’s eyes to look into. Students, and alumni and you too, President Faust, all of you, turn to someone you don’t know or don’t know very well. They may be standing behind you, or a couple of rows ahead. Just let your eyes meet. That’s it. That emotion you’re feeling is our shared humanity mixed in with a little social discomfort.

But, if you remember nothing else from today, I hope you remember this moment of human connection. And I hope you all had a lot of that over the past four years. Because today you start down the path of becoming the generation on which the next generation stands. And I’ve imagined many possible futures in my films, but you will determine the actual future. And I hope that it’s filled with justice and peace.

And finally, I wish you all a true, Hollywood-style happy ending. I hope you outrun the T. rex, catch the criminal and for your parents’ sake, maybe every now and then, just like E.T.: Go home. Thank you.

“Facts and truth are matters of life and death. Misinformation, disinformation, delusions, and deceit can kill.”

Martin Baron

2020 “Imperfect though [it] may be” an independent press is key to ensuring that facts are presented and truth defended in society,” the Washington Post executive editor said.

Good morning from my home. Like you, I wish we were together on campus.There is so much now we can no longer take for granted. The air we breathe is first among them. So, those of us who are healthy have ample reason to be grateful. I am also grateful to Harvard and to President Bacow for inviting me to be with you. To the Harvard Class of 2020, congratulations. And congratulations to the parents, professors, mentors and friends who helped you along the way. Joining you for graduation is a high honor.

For me, this is an opportunity – an opportunity to speak about subjects that I believe are of real urgency. Especially now during a worldwide health emergency.

I would like to discuss with you the need for a commitment to facts and to truth. Only a few months ago, I would have settled for emphasizing that our democracy depends on facts and truth. And it surely does. But now, as we can plainly see, it is more elemental than that.

Facts and truth are matters of life and death. Misinformation, disinformation, delusions and deceit can kill. Here is what can move us forward: Science and medicine. Study and knowledge. Expertise and reason. In other words, fact and truth. I want to tell you why free expression by all of us and an independent press, imperfect though we may be, is essential to getting at the truth. And why we must hold government to account. And hold other powerful interests to account as well.When I began thinking about these remarks, I expected, of course, to be on Harvard’s campus. And I thought: Not a bad place to talk about a free press. Not a bad place to talk about our often-testy relationship with official power.

It was in Boston, after all, where the first newspaper of the American colonies was founded. Its first edition was published September 25th, 1690. The very next day, the governor and council of Massachusetts shut it down. So, the press of this country has long known what it means to face a government that aims to silence it. Fortunately, there has been progress. With the First Amendment, James Madison championed the right of “freely examining public characters and measures.”

But it took a very long time before we as a nation fully absorbed what Madison was talking about. We took many ominous turns. We had the Alien and Sedition acts under John Adams, the Sedition and Espionage Acts under Woodrow Wilson, the McCarthy era. It was not always clear where we as a nation would end up.

Finally, witnessing the authoritarianism of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, we began to secure a free press in this country. The Supreme Court would forcefully emphasize the press’ role in guaranteeing a democracy. Justice Hugo Black said it well decades later: “The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people.” Not only the secrets of government, I would add. Our duty to inform the public does not stop there. Not by a long shot.

That was evident during my years as a journalist in Boston. Amid today’s crisis, it seems like another era. And I guess it is. But I want to tell you about it — because I think it remains instructive about what a strong, independent press must do.

I started as editor of the Boston Globe in the summer of 2001. One day prior to my start date, a Globe columnist wrote about a shocking case. A priest had been accused of abusing as many as 80 kids. A lawsuit alleged that the cardinal in Boston at the time knew about the serial abuse, didn’t do anything about it — and repeatedly reassigned this priest from parish to parish, warning no one, over decades. The Archdiocese called the accusations baseless and reckless. The Globe columnist wrote that the truth might never be known. Internal documents that might reveal it had been sealed by a judge. On my first day of work, we asked the question: How do we get at the truth? Because the public deserved to know.

That question led us to challenge the judge’s secrecy order. And our journalists launched an investigation of their own. In early 2002, we published what we had learned through reporting and by prevailing in court. We published the truth: The cardinal did know about the abuse by this priest. Yet he kept him in ministry, thus enabling further abuse. Dozens of clergy in the diocese had committed similar offenses. The cardinal had covered it all up.

And a bigger truth would emerge: Covering up such abuse had been practice and policy in the Church for decades. Only now the powerful were being held to account.

Late in 2002, after hundreds of stories on this subject, I received a letter from a Father Thomas P. Doyle. Father Doyle had struggled for years – in vain — to get the Church to confront the very issue we were writing about. He expressed deep gratitude for our work. “It is momentous,” he wrote, “and its good effects will reverberate for decades.” Father Doyle did not see journalists as the enemy. He saw us an ally when one was sorely needed. So did abuse survivors. I kept Father Doyle’s letter on my desk — a daily reminder of what journalists must do when we see evidence of wrongdoing.

Harvard’s commencement speaker two years ago, civil rights pioneer John Lewis, once said this: “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something.” We as journalists have the capacity – along with the constitutional right — to say and do something. We also have the obligation. And we must have the will. So must you. Every one of you has a stake in this idea of free expression. You want to be free to express your views. You should be free to hear the views of others, the same or different. You want to be free to watch any movie. To read any book. To listen to any lyrics. You should be free to say what you know is true without threat of government reprisal.And you should acknowledge this if you value these freedoms that come with democracy: Democracy cannot exist without a free and independent press. It never has.

Leaders who crave more power for themselves always move quickly to crush an independent press. Next, they destroy free expression itself. Sadly, much of the world is on that worrisome path. And efforts in this country to demonize, delegitimize and dehumanize the press give license to other governments to do the same – and to do far worse.

By the end of last year, a near-record 250 journalists worldwide were sitting in prison. Thirty of them faced accusations of “false news,” a charge virtually unheard-of only seven years earlier.

Turkey has been trading places with China as No. 1 on the list of countries that jail the most journalists. The Turkish government has shut down more than 100 media outlets and charged many journalists as terrorists. Independent media have been largely extinguished. China, of course, imposes some of the world’s tightest censorship on what its citizens can see and hear.

In Hungary, the prime minister has waged war on independent media. Harvard Nieman fellow Andras Petho, who runs an investigative reporting center there, notes that the prime minister’s business allies are “taking over hundreds of outlets and turning them into propaganda machines.”

Like other heads of state, Hungary’s prime minister has exploited the pandemic to grab more power, suppress inconvenient facts, and escalate pressure on news outlets. A new law threatens up to five-year jail terms against those accused of spreading supposedly false information. Independent news outlets have questioned how the crisis was managed. And the fear now is that such accountability journalism will lead to harassment and arrests, as it has in other countries.

In the Philippines, the courageous Maria Ressa, who founded the country’s largest online-only news site, has been battling government harassment for years on other fronts. She now faces prosecution on bogus charges of violating foreign ownership laws. By the end of last year, she had posted bail eight times. Her real violation? She brought scrutiny to the president. In Myanmar, two Reuters journalists — Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo – were imprisoned for more than 500 days for investigating the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys. Finally, a year ago, they were released. In 2018, an opinion writer for The Washington Post, Jamal Khashoggi, walked into Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul to get documents he needed to marry. He was murdered there at the hands of a team sent by highest-level Saudi officials. His offense? He had sharply criticized the Saudi government. In Mexico, murderous vengeance against journalists is common. Last year, at least five were killed, more than in any other country. I think also of the risks that American journalists have taken to inform the public. Among them are colleagues I can never forget.

One is Elizabeth Neuffer. Seventeen years ago this month, I stood before her friends at the Boston Globe to report that she had died covering the war in Iraq. Elizabeth was 46, an experienced foreign correspondent, a mentor to others; vivacious and brave. Her Iraqi driver was traveling at high speed because of the risk of abductions. He lost control. Elizabeth died instantly; her translator, too. Elizabeth had a record of fearlessness in investigating war crimes and human rights abuses. Her goal: Reveal the world as it is — because someone might then make things better.

Another colleague was Anthony Shadid. In 2002, I visited Anthony, then a reporter for the Globe, after he was shot and wounded in Ramallah. Lying in a hospital in Jerusalem, it was clear that he had narrowly escaped being paralyzed. Anthony recovered and went on to report from Iraq, where he won two Pulitzer Prizes for The Washington Post. From Egypt, where he was harassed by police. From Libya, where he and three New York Times colleagues were detained by pro-government militias and physically abused. He died in 2012, at age 43, while reporting in Syria, apparently of an asthma attack. Anthony told the stories of ordinary people. Without him, their voices would have gone unheard.

And now I think constantly of reporters, photographers and videographers who risk their own well-being to be with heroic frontline health workers — frontline workers of every sort – to share their stories. Anthony, Elizabeth and my present-day colleagues sought to be eyewitnesses. To see the facts for themselves. To discover the truth and tell it. As a profession, we maintain there is such a thing as fact, there is such a thing as truth.

At Harvard, where the school’s motto is “Veritas,” presumably you do, too. Truth, we know, is not a matter of who wields power or who speaks loudest. It has nothing to do with who benefits or what is most popular. And ever since the Enlightenment, modern society has rejected the idea that truth derives from any single authority on Earth.

To determine what is factual and true, we rely on certain building blocks. Start with education. Then there is expertise. And experience. And, above all, we rely on evidence. We see that acutely now when people’s health can be jeopardized by false claims, wishful thinking and invented realities. The public’s safety requires the honest truth. Yet education, expertise, experience and evidence are being devalued, dismissed and denied. The goal is clear: to undermine the very idea of objective fact, all in pursuit of political gain. Along with that is a systematic effort to disqualify traditional independent arbiters of fact. The press tops the list of targets. But others populate the list, too: courts, historians, even scientists and medical professionals – subject-matter experts of every type.

And so today the government’s leading scientists find their motives questioned, their qualifications mocked — despite a lifetime of dedication and achievement that has made us all safer. In any democracy, we want vigorous debate about our challenges and the correct policies. But what becomes of democracy if we cannot agree on a common set of facts, if we can’t agree on what even constitutes a fact? Are we headed for extreme tribalism, believing only what our ideological soulmates say? Or do we become so cynical that we think everyone always lies for selfish reasons? Or so nihilistic that we conclude no one can ever really know what is true or false; so, no use trying to find out? Regardless, we risk entering dangerous territory. Hannah Arendt, in 1951, wrote of this in her first major work, “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” There, she observed “the possibility that gigantic lies and monstrous falsehoods can eventually be established as unquestioned facts … that the difference between truth and falsehood may cease to be objective and may become a mere matter of power and cleverness, of pressure and infinite repetition.”

One hundred years ago – in 1920 – a renowned journalist and leading thinker, Walter Lippmann, harbored similar worries. Lippmann, once a writer for the Harvard Crimson, warned of a society where people “cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to opinions … what somebody asserts, not what actually is.” Lippmann wrote those words because of concerns about the press itself. He saw our defects and hoped we might fix them, thus improving how information got to the public.

Ours is a profession that still has many flaws. We make mistakes of fact, and we make mistakes of judgment. We are at times overly impressed with what we know when much remains for us to learn. In making mistakes, we are like people in every other profession. And we, too, must be held accountable. What frequently gets lost, though, is the contribution of a free and independent press to our communities and our country — and to the truth.

I think back to the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992 when the Miami Herald showed how lax zoning, inspection and building codes had contributed to the massive destruction. Homes and lives are safer today as a result. In 2016, the Charleston Gazette-Mail in West Virginia exposed how opioids had flooded the state’s depressed communities, contributing to the highest death rates in the country. In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana’s newspapers were indispensable sources of reliable information for residents. The Washington Post in 2007 revealed the shameful neglect and mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital. Corrective action was immediate. The Associated Press in 2015 documented a slave trade behind our seafood supply. Two thousand slaves were freed as a result. The New York Times and The New Yorker in 2017 exposed sexual predators in elite boardrooms. A movement of accountability for abuses against women took root. The New York Times in 1971 was the first to publish the Pentagon Papers, revealing a pattern of official deceit in a war that killed more than 58,000 Americans and countless others. The Washington Post broke open the Watergate scandal in 1972. That led ultimately to the president’s resignation.Those news organizations searched for the truth and told it, undeterred by pushback or pressure or vilification.Facing the truth can cause extreme discomfort. But history shows that we as a nation become better for that reckoning. It is in the spirit of the preamble to our Constitution: “to form a more perfect union.” Toward that end, it is an act of patriotism.

W.E.B. Du Bois, the great scholar and African American activist — and the first African American to graduate with a PhD from Harvard – cautioned against the falsification of events in relating our nation’s history. In 1935, distressed at how deceitfully America’s Reconstruction period was being taught, Du Bois assailed the propaganda of the era. “Nations reel and stagger on their way,” he wrote. “They make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth be ascertainable?”

At this university, you answer that question with your motto — “Veritas.” You seek the truth — with scholarship, teaching and dialogue – knowing that it really matters.My profession shares with you that mission — the always arduous, often tortuous and yet essential pursuit of truth. It is the demand that democracy makes upon us. It is the work we must do. We will keep at it. You should, too. None of us should ever stop.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for honoring me. Good luck to you all. And please, stay well.

“While the legacy of enslavement, racism, discrimination, and exclusion still influences so much of contemporary attitudes, we must never conclude that it is too late to overcome such a legacy. For it is never too late to do justice.”

Ruth J. Simmons

2021 The president of Prairie View A&M University and former president of Brown University and Smith College exhorted graduates to fight inequality and foster diversity and inclusion.

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Good day and congratulations to the Harvard University Class of 2021.

It is a singular honor to be invited to address you on this important milestone occasion. To all completing their studies today, I offer my best wishes as you undertake the next exciting phase of your lives. That you have succeeded so well during such a time as this is commendable and augurs well for the years to come when the world will rely greatly on your knowledge, your discernment, and your empathy for those less fortunate than you.

When first approached about delivering this Commencement address, I was, frankly, taken aback. I did not immediately feel up to the task. Recalling occasions when I sat in Tercentenary Theatre looking across the expanse of graduates to the steps of Widener Library, I could not picture myself confidently delivering remarks from a dais where so many more eminent figures had stood and, indeed, made history. Growing up on a constant Jim Crow diet that offered assertions of my inferiority, I’m always that same little Black girl trying to believe in and demonstrate her worthiness. Further, I thought about the challenge of what I might impart in such a pivotal national moment when social gains seem more like losses, when clarity gives way so easily to confusion, and when much heralded progress recedes like a trompe l’oeil that was never real.

I extend greetings from the faculty, administration and students of our 145 year old institution, Prairie View A&M University. And, though I have not been anointed to do so, I also bring greetings from the collection of Historically Black and Minority Serving institutions that have the weight and privilege of advancing access, equity and opportunity for so many communities across the world. Our university, like many others HBCUs, was founded at the end of Reconstruction when Blacks were thought to be unable to perform the highest level academic study. I speak to you, in fact, from the Prairie View campus whose 1500 acres were once the site of the Alta Vista Plantation. That plantation, before being sold to the State of Texas, was the site where 400 human beings were held in slavery. Thus, our very steps as they daily tread upon vestiges of the suffering of our ancestors, call to us constantly to do our duty as full citizens. Painful as such memories are, they are a powerful force that calls us to action when challenges arise.

During the 145 years following our 1876 founding, it would take many years for most universities in our nation to grant access to Blacks. So, universities like Prairie View, designed with limited resources, served the state and nation by admitting students to whom full access to the fruits of liberty was intentionally blocked. We are therefore proud of our legacy of endurance and even prouder of the fact that we converted an assertion of the inferiority of African Americans into a triumph of human capacity. Like other HBCUs, we made a place to empower rather than disparage, to open minds rather than imprison them, to create pathways to promise rather than to stifle opportunity.

Such is the task of every true university. Those of you graduating today can well attest to that. When you first arrived at Harvard as undergraduate or post-graduate students, you most likely could not have imagined the many ways that your ability would be tested, your insights sharpened and expanded, and your prospects in life improved by studying at the University. I certainly didn’t expect such results when I arrived at Harvard and yet I know now that it is likely primarily because I studied at Harvard that I have had the deeply rich and satisfying career that I’ve enjoyed for so many years.

A product of a segregated upbringing in Houston and undergraduate study at an HBCU, I am ashamed to say that in my youth, I secretly bought into the prevailing racial assumptions of the day: that someone like me would be ill-prepared to benefit from and contribute to study at a university of Harvard’s stature. I expected to be flatfooted if not oafish in the company of well-heeled and urbane students who had the advantage of the best education and a wealth of experiences. While not outwardly immobilized by fear of failing the biggest test of my life, I was inwardly terrified that I would fail to measure up. Uncertainty and malaise governed my early days at the university.

Harvard was, you see, a place steeped in other peoples’ traditions—traditions that I could not easily access. My reaction was very much akin to the French expression denoting window shopping: “lécher les vitrines.” Those of us who are outsiders are often as mere observers looking through windows, salivating and wondering how we might ever be able to attain a sense of inclusion, acceptance and respect. Just as when, as a child, I was banned from white establishments, I identified as the outsider looking enviously at others who not only had full access to Harvard’s history and traditions but who also could so easily see themselves reflected in them. Few things that I could see at Harvard at the time represented me. Perhaps it is the memory of that feeling that moved me to remain in university life to make that experience easier for others who felt excluded.

The need to make universities more aware of how first generation and underserved communities reacted to the stultified tradition in many universities shaped my conviction about the importance of individuals feeling fully embraced and respected as learners, erasing vestiges of disparagement that inevitably accrue in an unequal society. Having been profiled and racially isolated and having carried within me for so many years the weight of that sentence, I understood that to change our country, we had to insist that everyone’s humanity, everyone’s traditions and history, everyone’s identity contributes to our learning about the world we must live in together. I came to believe what Harvard expressed in its admission philosophy: that such human differences, intentionally engaged in the educational context, are as much a resource to our intellectual growth as the magnificent tomes that we build libraries to protect and the state of the art equipment proudly arrayed in our laboratories. The encounter with difference rocks!

I believe that each of us has a solemn duty to learn about and embrace that difference. That undertaking takes not a month or a year but a lifetime of concerted action to ensure that we are equipped to play a role in caring for and improving the world we inhabit together. This responsibility should encourage us to commit to our individual as well as professional role in advancing access, equality and mutual respect.

Thus, I believe that the task of a great university is not merely to test the mettle and stamina of brilliant minds but to guide them toward enlightenment, enabling thereby the most fruitful and holistic use of their students’ intelligence and humanity. That enlightenment suggests the need for improving upon students’ self-knowledge but it also means helping them judge others fairly, using the full measure of their empathy and intelligence to do so. In an environment rich in differences of background, experience and perspectives, learning is turbo charged and intensified by the juxtaposition of these differences. Those open minded enough to benefit fully from the power of this learning opportunity are bound for leadership in this time of confusion and division. The Harvard model intentionally and successfully provides to students a head start in understanding how to mediate difference in an ever more complex reality in which some exploit those differences for corrupt purposes.

Today, irrational hatred of targeted groups is seemingly on the rise, stoked by opportunists seeking advantage for themselves and their profits. What stands between such malefactors and the destruction of our common purpose are people like you who, having experienced learning through difference, courageously stand up for the rights of those who are targeted. Your Harvard education, if you were paying close attention here, should have encouraged you to commit willingly to playing such a role. If you follow through on this commitment, in addition to anything else you accomplish in life, you will be saving lives, stanching the flow of hatred and the dissolution of our national bond. You will be serving the mighty cause of justice. If we are to thrive on this orb that we share, our schools and universities must contribute deliberately to increasing our understanding of the ways to interact meaningfully with others.

Harvard is, in some ways, the most powerful university bully pulpit in the nation. It did not achieve that status merely through its age and wealth; it attained that status principally through the efforts of its faculty and graduates’ scholarly and professional output. Through its gates have come generations of scholars with immense intelligence and passionate purpose to whom fate bequeathed the laurels of success. But it is important that universities model in their own values and actions the high purpose that they hope to see in the actions of their scholars.

In that vein, Harvard has a special responsibility as both a prod and steward of the national conscience. It could sit on the hill and congratulate itself on its prowess but it could also use its immense stature to address the widening gaps in how different groups experience freedom and justice. I spoke earlier about the heroic work of HBCUs and minority serving institutions that keep our country open and advancing the cause of equality and access. Yet, many of them have been starved for much of their history by the legacy of underfunding and isolation from the mainstream of higher education.

I call on universities like Harvard to acknowledge the limitations imposed on these institutions over the past decades. While universities like Harvard had the wind at their back, flourishing from endowments, strong enrollments, constant curricular expansion, massive infrastructure improvements, and significant endowment growth, HBCUs often had gale force winds impeding their development. Our nation is finally coming to terms with the consequences of the underfunding of HBCUs but we are far from where we need to be if we are to be assured continued progress in the fight for equal educational benefits.

I ask the university that did so much for me to add to its luster by embracing the opportunity to stand alongside these historic and other minority serving institutions to build stronger partnerships, advocate for greater funding, and elevate the fight for parity and justice to the level it deserves. Let us not complain in a hundred years that those historically excluded from access and opportunity continue to ask how much longer it will take to gain the respect, inclusion and support that their service to the nation deserves.

Many minority serving institutions accept students from impoverished underserved communities where educational preparation often lacks the pre-requisites needed for certain careers. Children in those communities may experience the same or a worse fate than I and my peers did during the pre-Civil Rights era. Consigned to underfunded schools and alienating curricula, they must wonder as I did what will befall them in life. ublic schools saved me and they have the burden still of saving millions of children across this land. In so very many cases, these institutions are the only hope for many children and their families. Support for public education in this moment is as important as it was in the early days of the country when Horace Mann first called for universal education. For Mann, it was a matter of what our young country would need; it still is today as Mann’s emphasis on civic virtue continues to ring true.

Further, in such a moment, universities and all of you must play a leadership role in reversing the designation of the teaching profession as less intellectually worthy, less glamorous, and less important than the high-flying careers of financiers and technologists. Attention to and investment in K-12 teacher preparation and curricular content remains one of the most important ways for universities and the average citizen to contribute to the civic good.

None of us is exempt from responsibility for the future we give our children. Harvard has its role and so do all of you. I have come to ask you who graduate today what you are prepared to do to acknowledge and address the historic biases and inequities that so many continue to experience. Will your actions point us in a more uplifting direction? For, just as we recount the moral bankruptcy of those who cruelly enslaved others, we also tell the story of those who were equally guilty because they refused to challenge the practice of slavery. In the future, the history of these times will reveal both what we do and what we fail to do to address the unjust treatment of marginalized groups. Among all that you will have learned at Harvard, I hope that the consciousness of your responsibility in the struggle for equality remains with you. While the legacy of enslavement, racism, discrimination and exclusion still influences so much of contemporary attitudes, we must never conclude that it is too late to overcome such a legacy. For it is never too late to do justice.

Today, I call on all of you to declare that you will not give sanction to discriminatory actions that hold some groups back to the advantage of others. I call on you to be a force for inclusion by not choosing enclaves of wealth, privilege and tribalism such that you abandon the lessons you learned from your Harvard experience of diversity. I call on you to do your part to ensure that generations to come will no longer be standing on the outside fighting for fairness, respect and inclusion.

Today, after decades in the academy, my path has taken me back to a place where students are waging the same battles that were so hard fought when I was a teenager: safe passage in the face of bigotry, the right to vote, and equal access to educational and professional opportunities. Sandra Bland, a Prairie View alumna, was stopped for a minor traffic offense at the entrance to our campus. Jailed for this offense, she was found deceased in her cell three days later. Must every generation add more tragic evidence of the racial hatred that has troubled the world? Our work is not done as long as there are young people growing up with the thought that they matter less than others. As long as they have fewer and narrower educational opportunities. As long as they must fear for their safety every moment of every day of their lives. As long as their full participation in society is circumscribed by policies that willfully chip away at or block their rights.

Just as I ask Harvard to use its voice on behalf of minority institutions that have been unfairly treated across time, I ask you to add your voice to the cause of justice wherever you go. Help the children of need wherever they are: in underfunded public schools, in neighborhoods bereft of resources, in search of a way to belong. If they do not hear your voices advocating for them and their worth, what must they conclude about their place in the world?

If you take up the cause of these children, you are taking up the greatest cause—that of justice. Today, you earn your laurels as a scholar. Taking up the cause of justice, you will earn your laurels as a human being.

Congratulations, once again, and God speed.

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16 Best Graduation Speeches That Leave a Lasting Impression

By Kristi Kellogg and Noor Brara

Some of the most impactful and inspiring sentiments are shared during graduation speeches delivered by the leaders we look up to. Graduation speeches from celebrities , entrepreneurs, authors and other influential thinkers are motivational, inspiring, thought-provoking and just might make you reach for the nearest tissue. After four years of hard work, stress, and exhausting self-discovery, lucky graduates are privy to a life-changing speech to top it all off.

Here, we rounded up up 16 of the best graduation speeches of all time, including words of wisdom from Natalie Portman, Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and more.

1. Steve Jobs: Stanford, 2005

"You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."

2. Michelle Obama: Tuskegee University, 2015

"I've found that this journey has been incredibly freeing. Because no matter what happened, I had the piece of mind knowing that all of the chatter, the name-calling, the doubting...all of it was just noise. It did not define me, it didn't change who I was, and most importantly, it couldn't hold me back."

3. Natalie Portman: Harvard, 2015

"I just directed my first film. I was completely unprepared, but my own ignorance to my own limitations looked like confidence and got me into the director's chair. Once there, I had to figure it all out, and my belief that I could handle these things, contrary to all evidence of my ability to do so was half the battle. The other half was very hard work. The experience was the deepest and most meaningful one of my career."

4. Amy Poehler: Harvard University, 2011

By Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg

By Donya Momenian

By Kristi Kellogg

"What I have discovered is this: You can't do it alone … Listen. Say 'yes.' Live in the moment. Make sure you play with people who have your back. Make big choices early and often."

5. Meryl Streep: Barnard College, 2010

"This is your time and it feels normal to you but really there is no normal. There's only change, and resistance to it and then more change."

6. David Foster Wallace: Kenyon College, 2005

"Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master."

7. Barack Obama: Howard University, 2016

"You have to go through life with more than just passion for change; you need a strategy. I’ll repeat that. I want you to have passion, but you have to have a strategy. Not just awareness, but action. Not just hashtags, but votes."

8. Kerry Washington: George Washington University, 2013

"You and you alone are the only person who can live the life that can write the story that you were meant to tell."

9. Conan O'Brien: Dartmouth College, 2011

"There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized. Today I tell you that whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality … Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen."

10. J.K. Rowling: Harvard, 2008

"I stopped pretending to be anything than what I was. My greatest fear had been realized. I had an old typewriter and a big idea. Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

11. Oprah Winfrey: Harvard University, 2013

"Learn from every mistake because every experience, encounter, and particularly your mistakes are there to teach you and force you into being more who you are. And then figure out what is the next right move. And the key to life is to develop an internal moral, emotional G.P.S. that can tell you which way to go."

12. Joss Whedon: Wesleyan University, 2013

"You have, which is a rare thing, that ability and the responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself, to at least give it the floor, because it is the key—not only to consciousness–but to real growth. To accept duality is to earn identity. And identity is something that you are constantly earning. It is not just who you are. It is a process that you must be active in. It's not just parroting your parents or the thoughts of your learned teachers. It is now more than ever about understanding yourself so you can become yourself."

13. George Saunders: Syracuse University, 2013

"Do all the other things, the ambitious things … Travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop)—but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness."

14. Nora Ephron: Wellesley College, 1996

"Be the heroine of your life, not the victim."

15. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Wellesley College, 2015

"As you graduate, as you deal with your excitement and your doubts today, I urge you to try and create the world you want to live in. Minister to the world in a way that can change it. Minister radically in a real, active, practical, get your hands dirty way."

16. Admiral William H. McRaven: University of Texas at Austin, 2014

"If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right."

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Transcript of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's Foundation Day Lecture

Light the lamp of knowledge.

May I be a protector for those without one, A guide for all travelers on the way; May I be a bridge, a boat and a ship For all who wish to cross (the water).

by Acharya Shantideva, A Buddhist Master of 8th century

I am indeed delighted to address the 24th Foundation day of National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS). My greetings to the Chairman, Directors, Faculty, Staff and the NIOS Coordinators (Teachers), NIOS Expert Faculty members, Administrative Staff members from NIOS, participating affiliated Schools, regional centers, and also the representatives from the study centre from Middle East and Nepal, NIOS Learners (Students) and the distinguished guests. I am very happy to know that NIOS is the largest open school in the world with a cumulative enrolment of 2.02 million learners. NIOS offers Flexible Academic, Vocational and Life Enrichment courses at the Secondary, Senior Secondary and Elementary [Open Basic Education (OBE)] level through its 5813 study centers spread throughout the length and breadth of the country, 20 study centers in Middle East and Nepal. I am very happy to know that in the year 2012 itself, 1400 Learners out of 4500 Learners of NIOS from Senior Secondary school has cleared the AIEEE exam for engineering courses competitively and a number of students cleared the AIPMT Exam for obtaining MBBS. When I see the principals and teachers and successful students through open school system, let me share my thoughts on the topic "Light the lamp of knowledge".

Students as Competitive Quality Learners

I like the unique concept of NIOS by naming the students as Learners. It is a great shift in education. NIOS efforts in providing quality education through their network of study centers had made the students as competitive as compared to the other Education boards such as State boards, CBSE, ICSE and other boards. I am very happy to know that in the year 2012 itself, 1400 Learners out of 4500 Learners of NIOS from Senior Secondary school has cleared the AIEEE exam for engineering courses competitively and a number of students cleared the AIPMT Exam for obtaining MBBS.

One of the unique concepts of NIOS is any student who has failed to clear some subjects of the CBSE or any board exam, may appear the On-Demand Exam conducted by NIOS throughout the year flexibly and get it cleared immediately with the credit transfer certificate from NIOS if the candidate qualifies in the NIOS exam.

Dear friends, I would like to share two experiences which I came across personally at various times that are relevant for today.

Bride at Ten, Mother at Fifteen, MA at 80

"All her life, like countless Indian housewives, I was an unknown woman - a woman of no consequence. But at the age of 80, I became a known Indian woman - a person of some consequence. What had I achieved in my life until that point? I had brought up six daughters, the first being born when I was fifteen, the last when I was twenty nine."

"I passed my M.A and my degree came by post. It was a bare second division but I had at last fulfilled a great desire, my life's ambition which was burning within me"

"Age doesn't matter, if you have a great aim in life, you can achieve, achieve and achieve"

Experience of Madam Sethu Ramaswamy getting her MA degree is a radiating learning and a life long process which is an inspiration. Let me narrate another experience which I am personally involved.

It doesn't matter who you are?

Friends, it was in the year 2011, I went to Madurai for inaugurating the Pediatric Oncology Cancer unit at Meenakshi Mission Hospital on 7 Jan 2011. When I completed the task, suddenly one person was approached me and his face was familiar to me. When he came closer to me, I found out that it was V. Kathiresan, who worked with me as Driver, during my DRDL days at Hyderabad. He worked with me day and night for nine years. During that time, I used to witness, he was always reading some books, newspapers and journals during his free time. He had a very high concentration on his reading. That dedication attracted me. I asked him a question? What made you to read during your leisure time? He replied that he had a son and daughter. They used to ask him lot of questions. That made him to study and try to answer to his level best. The spirit of learning in him, attracted me, I told him to study formally through the distance education mode and gave him some free time to attend the course and complete his +2 and then to apply for higher education. He took that as a challenge and kept on studying and acquiring his skills and upgraded his educational qualification, he did B.A. (History), then he did M.A (History) and then he did M.A (Political Science) and completed his B.Ed and then M.Ed. Then he registered for his Ph.D in Manonmaniam Sundaranar University and got his PhD in 2001. He joined the Education Department of Tamilnadu Government and served for number of years. In 2010, he became an Assistant Professor in the Government Arts College at Mellur near Madurai. What a commitment and dedication that has helped him to acquire the right skills in his leisure time that has made his career progress and upgrade his livelihood. The message is, it doesn?t matter who you are if you have a vision and determination to achieve that vision, you will certainly achieve.

"When you wish upon a star, Makes no difference who you are Anything your heart desires will come to you"

Friends, teachers create beautiful minds. Beautiful minds are creative and many times with indomitable spirit. Our nation was fortunate to have beautiful minds in science, humanities, law, industry and political leadership right from our pre-independent period who were created by great teachers and due to whose efforts, we are experiencing the freedom and growth of our country today.

Teachers who love teaching

Friends, I visualize a scene - a school having about 50 teachers and 750 students headed by a Principal. It is simply a place of beauty for creativity and learning. How is it possible? It is because the school management and the Principal selected the teachers who love teaching, who treat the students as their sons, grandsons or grand daughters. The children see the teacher, as a role model in teaching and always look pious through their daily way of life. Above all, I see an environment in which there is nothing like a good student, average student or poor student. The whole school and teacher system is involved in generating students who perform the best. One great example is my primary school teacher Shri Sivasubramania Iyer who taught us, when I was ten year old boy. During one of his classes he was explaining how birds fly. When most of students told that they didn?t understand fully about the flight of birds, he took us to the sea-shore to give practical example. The way he taught gave me what to dream in life and what should be the pattern of education which I have to follow. And above all what should be the traits I should possess based on teachers life both inside the class room and in the village. I have witnessed, as a young boy of 5th class, when my teacher enters the class room, we saw in him "radiating the knowledge and also radiating purity of life". Students indeed in school learn not only knowledge but also purity of life and ethics of the great teachers. This race of teachers should multiply.

Teacher as a facilitator of innovation

Friends, teachers have to emerge as facilitator of new ideas and lead to lifelong innovative thinking in the young minds. This reminds me of a poem "The Student's Prayer" by a Chilean biologist Maturana. I will narrate a few lines from the poem.

The Student's Prayer

Show me so that I can stand On your shoulders. Reveal yourself so that I can be Something different

Don?t impose on me what you know, I want to explore the unknown And be the source of my own discoveries. Let the known be my liberation, not my slavery.

I am sure, the Principals and teachers assembled here would be great facilitators of learning and innovation.

Dynamics of Smile

When we see a child, we see the innocent smile of the child. When we come across the child in the Primary School, the smile is reduced as the child has to carry a heavy school bag. When we see the child in their teens, their smile slowly fades away and the sign of concern appears. This is because of the anxiety about the future. When they complete their education, the most important question in their mind is, what will I do after my education? Will I get an employment? Will I get a proper employment? Can the Principals and teachers see this dynamics of smiles of the child and preserve the smile in their faces when they complete their school education. The Student should be confident that "I can do it", she or he should have the self esteem and the capability to become an employment generator rather being an employment seeker. The management of education, leader of education has to facilitate such type of creative teacher in large numbers in primary school and then the secondary school. This transformation can only be brought about by a teacher who has a vision to transform, who has the ability to take risk against all challenges, who is a good listener, who is a good innovator, who maintains a cordial inter-personal or intrapersonal relationship and who has the ability to carry the parents, community, media and the teachers for accomplishing the vision of generating an enlightened citizen for the nation

Dynamic school

Since I see, in the audience, a number of school principals, teachers and connected members I thought of sharing my view on how a dynamic school should be, so that you will impart dynamic school characteristics to Open School candidates.

• A school that radiates greatness by the teaching capacity of the teachers.
• A school is great because creativity is bubbling everywhere.
• A school is great, because it cherishes the learning environment with library, internet, e-learning and creative laboratories.
• A School is great, because it creates and generate students with confidence that "I can do it" that in-turn will generate the team spirit that "We will do it" and "India will do it".
• A School that promotes best in learning all-round to all the students.
• A School is great because it has teachers who lead a unique way of life with purity and become role models for the students and develop them as enlightened citizens.
• A School is great because it has the capacity to teach all students to succeed.
• A School that generates creativity among all students irrespective of whether they belong to arts or science stream.
• A school is great, that generates alumni who cherish that they belong to this school.

NIOS Smart HDVT Network

For creating such type of dynamics of smiles in the face of NIOS Learning community, we need to outreach quality education, quality teachers, quality laboratory, quality library and quality content across the country to reach out 2 million learners community registered in various schools from the NIOS Studio in the similar lines of Pan African e-Network implemented by Govt. of India for connecting 53 African nations to provide quality education, healthcare and e-governance services. Hence, I suggest NIOS to study the Pan African e-Network and may like to consider creating a NIOS Smart High Definition Virtual Tele-presence network to empower the students who are presently attending only the contact classes in the affiliated schools and having their own private study. This will help NIOS to outreach quality education across the country seamlessly for creative quality human resource cadre for higher education segment, which will not only bring down the dropout rates, but create highly competitive students for higher education system in the country in addition to the learning contents and tools provided by NIOS.

Conclusion: Mission of Teaching

"Give me a child for seven years; afterwards, and let God or devil take the child. They cannot change the child".

"The sense of human need is there and the teacher can satisfy it by giving to the youth an idea of the fundamental power and worth of man, his spiritual dignity as man, a supra-national culture and an all embracing humanity."

My best wishes to all of you success in the educational mission of NIOS to make the nation a knowledge society. May God Bless You.

I would like to give an eleven point oath to the teaching community who are the creators of nation building.

Eleven Point Oath for Teaching Community

• First and foremost, I love teaching. Teaching will be my soul.
• I realize that I am responsible for shaping not just students but ignited youths who are the most powerful resource under the earth, on the earth and above the earth. I will be fully committed for the great mission of teaching.
• I will consider myself to be a great teacher for I can lift the average to the best performance by way of my special teaching.
• All my actions with my students will be with kindness and affection like a mother, father, sister or brother.
• I will organize and conduct my life, in such a way that my life itself is a message for my students.
• I will encourage my students and children to ask questions and develop the spirit of enquiry, so that they blossom into creative enlightened citizens.
• I will treat all the students equally and will not support any differentiation on account of religion, community or language.
• I will continuously build the capacities in teaching so that I can impart quality education to my students.
• I will celebrate the success of my students, with great elegance.
• I realize, being a teacher, I am making an important contribution to all the national development initiatives.
• I will constantly endeavour to fill my mind with great thoughts and spread the nobility in thinking and action.

By, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

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175th Anniversary Founder's Day Speech

Speech by Richard Tillett, Principal of Queen’s College, London

on Founder’s Day, 29th March, 2023

Good afternoon everyone, and thank you very much for joining us at this very special Founder’s Day service.

I would like to start by thanking those who have made this event possible today:

• Father Stephen for allowing us to use his church;
• Eric Wilkins for sorting out all of the logistics and, with Annabel Johns, choosing readings representing some of the early history of the College;
• And of course the fabulous musicians and readers who have made this so much more stimulating and interesting, well, than the next fifteen minutes or so is going to be.

For those of you not familiar with Founder’s Day, it is the first of not one, but two annual Speech Days, the second one being Annual Gathering in the summer. This one always focuses on an aspect of the history of the College, and the convention is that I focus on an anniversary that falls in each Founder’s Day’s particular year.

This year, then, it is a no-brainer, as today, of course, is the exact 175th anniversary of the foundation of Queen’s College; a huge milestone not just in the history of this remarkable institution, but in the history of the education of women in this country, a history which we have showcased this week in a beautiful Archive Exhibition in the Waiting Room at Queen’s. If you haven’t yet managed to look around the exhibition, which has been beautifully curated by former pupil Julia Rank and assembled by Emilie Sitlani and Elly Broughton from our Development and Marketing team, please do try to do so while you still can, over the remainder of this week.

____________

But what actually happened on 29 March 1848?

Well, like many momentous historical events, it must have seemed quite low-key at the time. It was a lecture to a few dozen people in Hanover Square by FD Maurice, a renowned academic who held no fewer than three professorships at King’s College, London – in History, English Literature and Theology - and who is now recognised as the Founder of Queen’s.

In his lecture he outlined his three-pronged vision for what the new institution was founding, which had just received Queen Victoria’s support and could thus be known as Queen’s College, should be. Women, he argued, should be ready to enter employment, would almost all be teachers themselves in some form in future so needed to be educated themselves, and should be given a grounding in knowledge for its own sake.

The original idea of the Committee of Education, which Maurice and a group of fellow professors from King’s had set up a year before to lay the foundations for the establishment of the new College, was to educate governesses. These were a group of (usually) young women who found themselves caught in the middle of the incredibly stratified Victorian society; part servant, part member of the family, from a genteel background, but unmarried and needing to support themselves, so unable to take part in many of the social rituals and events of the time.

On its first curriculum, Queen’s College offered these women the chance to study subjects like Arithmetic, Mechanics and Geology, which had never been done before. They could then use these qualifications to go to university, which until that point had been exclusively the preserve of men.

There were six students to begin with, including two young women called Frances Buss and Dorothea Beale, who later became famous in Victorian society for their determination to advance the cause of women and their complete indifference to relationships with men. There was even a children’s nursery rhyme about them:

‘Miss Buss and Miss Beale, Love’s darts do not feel.

How different from us, Miss Beale and Miss Buss’

Within a year Queen’s had grown from six to over 250 students, and it was soon opened up beyond governesses, to any girl aged over 12 whose family wanted them to be part of this ground-breaking institution. In 1849, Bedford College was founded as the first higher education institution for women in this country. A year after that, Frances Buss, one of those first six pupils, founded North London Collegiate, with the other I mentioned, Dorothea Beale, founding Cheltenham Ladies’ College a few years later. Women’s education was up and running, and has not looked back. 29 March 1848 was a momentous day.

Those few dozen witnesses in Hanover Square, then, will have known that they were listening to something truly radical. It is hard to overstate how ahead of his time FD Maurice was. Even twelve years later, in 1860, a Parliamentary report concluded that women should be educated only to be ‘decorative, modest, marriageable beings’. The idea that they should be educated to the same standard as men was truly revolutionary.

But then I suppose 1848 was an appropriate year in that respect. Political revolutions were breaking out all over central Europe – it was less than 60 years since the French revolution, of course – and Maurice himself is said by one biographer to have welcomed the ‘shattering of thrones, the convulsions of governments’ that marked that period.

Britain itself was experiencing a rapid growth in radical ideas too. This was the year that the Chartist movement, with which Maurice had a lot of sympathy, was at its height, and its leader, Feargus O’Connor, had organised for a mass rally to be held on Kennington Common on 11 April, demanding, among other things, that MPs should be paid, all men should have the vote, and that it should be allowed to be an MP even if you didn’t own property. It was called off only after the government recruited 100,000 special officers to crush it.

Maurice was disappointed by the failure of the Chartist movement, and, having established Queen’s College, immediately turned his attention to other forms of social reform. He got together with a group of like-minded radicals to consider other ways of improving life for the working class. The first meeting of what became known as the Christian Socialist movement, with Maurice as its leader, took place in London on 10 April 1848 – less than two weeks after that founding lecture in Hanover Square.

It is important to recognise that Maurice was not a Socialist, however. This group did not want the overthrow of the government. They were Christian Socialists; their discussions centred on how the Church could help to prevent revolution by tackling what they considered were the reasonable grievances of the working class. As his biographer, Bernard Reardon, put it: ‘Maurice … disliked competition as fundamentally unchristian, and wished to see it, at the social level, replaced by co-operation, as expressive of Christian brotherhood’.

Early in 1850 the Christian Socialists started a working men's association for tailors in London, followed by associations for other trades. To promote this movement, a Society for Promoting Working Men's Associations (SPWMA) was established with Maurice as a founding member. His second great educational institution, the Working Men’s College, was founded in Red Lion Square in 1853 and he remained as Principal there for the rest of his life.

His legacy lives on in this respect too; you can still enrol for courses at the Working Men’s College in one of its two branches in Camden or Kentish Town today, and the SPWMA became very influential in the development of the co-operative movement later in the nineteenth century, with the Co-op, of course, still flourishing now.

However, Maurice was soon to have more time to devote to his social projects that he might have anticipated, because in the same year that he founded the Working Men’s College, 1853, he was sacked by King’s College. It is at this point that we need to get a bit technical.

Because for all of his astonishing social achievements, Maurice was first and foremost a theologian, a religious scholar in other words, writing numerous works which go into very intricate detail about the nature of Christianity, discussing ideas that might seem very obscure to us now.

It is important to remember the historical context here. While these days we might argue in our PTE lessons or with our friends about the existence of God, or the rights and wrongs of different religious traditions, Britain in the nineteenth century was almost entirely Christian, with around two-thirds of the population attending Church every week. Religious debate therefore instead centred on what type of Christianity was the right one to follow. Legislation in the 1820s had opened up certain professions and educational establishments to people who were not members of the Church of England, and this had given rise to an explosion of alternative forms of Christianity.

To illustrate this, in the 1851 census – the first one after the foundation of Queen’s, of course – everybody in the UK population was asked to tick one of 39 different boxes to describe their religious affiliation. One of these was Jewish - the other 38 were all different types of Christian. There was no option to say that you were Muslim or Hindu, for example, and no option to say that you had no religion at all. There were, however, six different types of Baptist to choose from, and seven types of Wesleyan Methodist, among many, many others. Around half of all Churchgoers attended services in these alternative forms of Christianity, rather than the Church of England.

This was the world in which FD Maurice lived and worked, and he was one of the great thinkers at the heart of these detailed debates.

In fact he had been immersed in these divisions within Christianity from infancy – his mother converted to Calvinism when he was a young child, believing passionately that everyone was destined to go to heaven or hell from the moment of birth, while his father remained a devout Unitarian. He eventually settled on the most common form of Christianity at the time, Church of England Anglicanism, and a good job too, as his College at Cambridge, Trinity, had resisted the rise of alternate Christian belief systems and still didn’t allow anyone who believed in anything other than the established Church to graduate. At least, unlike many other Oxbridge Colleges, you didn’t have to pass a test of orthodox religious belief before you started studying there in the first place.

Maurice settling on Anglicanism is perhaps our first sign of his role as a mediator, a balancer. He was described by one biographer as someone who desperately wanted the various factions of Christianity to get better at listening to one another and respecting one another; I wonder what he would make of the polarisation of opinion we see in the world today. 

But despite being a moderate, it is one of these controversies about the detail of Christian belief that eventually cost him his professorships.

In 1853 the most hotly debated of Maurice’s many books, his Theological Essays, was published. In one of these essays, Maurice argued that when the Bible talked about eternal life, it was not talking about time – i.e. going on for ever – but about a state of being in the present. Maurice believed that God simply would not allow people to live in suffering for ever; instead, people were constantly choosing whether to be in ‘eternal life’ or ‘eternal death’ depending on if they believed in God or not.

This clashed completely with the established Church, which taught that heaven and hell would go on for ever, and was seen as so morally dangerous to the undergraduates at King’s that Maurice was asked to resign by the Principal of King’s, Richard Jelf. Maurice stuck to his principles and refused, demanding that he be either ‘acquitted or dismissed’. He was dismissed.

His departure from King’s also marked the end of his association with Queen’s. Concerned that the controversy might affect his new educational institution for women, Maurice ‘severed his relations’ with the College. He became priest of St Peter’s in Vere Street, just around the corner from Harley Street, attracting large congregations to hear him preach. He also remained as Principal of the Working Men’s College, and was allowed to do some teaching back at Cambridge. He died aged 66 in 1872.

So what lessons can we learn from this man? Well, like most great figures of history, opinions are divided. As we often talk about in assemblies at school, everybody is a mixture; nobody can please everyone.

He certainly had his fans. The theologian Julius Hare described him as ‘the greatest mind since Plato’, and no less a figure that the philosopher John Stuart Mill, who knew Maurice well, said that ‘there was more intellectual power in Maurice than in any of my contemporaries.’

Admiration was not universal, however: the critic Aubrey Thomas de Vere said that listening to Maurice preach was like ‘eating pea soup with a fork’; pea soup or not, though, even his critics seem to agree that he was a kind, thoughtful and generous man.

He clearly had a phenomenal mind, and a determination to stick up for his principles, even at the cost of his job, and a clear vision to improve life for groups overlooked in the society of the time.

He was also a moderator, a balancer, a listener, a calming influence. In his religious belief, he tried to find a middle way, a moderate compromise between the extremes. He preached about the importance of trying to understand people with different views, rather than shout them down. As arguments raged about Darwin’s new theory of evolution, for example, sending religious conservatives into a spin at the idea that all living things may not have been created by God, while some radicals felt it disproved the Bible completely, Maurice calmly argued that the Bible and Science were trying to answer different questions and were not actually in opposition to one another at all.

But being moderate, of course, often ends up pleasing neither side. Religious conservatives thought him too unorthodox, many liberals thought he was not radical enough.

So there is no real consensus on his theological legacy. We can all agree though, I think, on his social and educational one. The word ‘visionary’ is overused these days. It is sometimes used to business leaders, politicians, even football managers. But F D Maurice most certainly really was one.

He saw that access to education needed to be widened and that society needed to be made more just, and he worked tirelessly to make that happen. By founding Queen’s, and then the Working Men’s College, he showed that education does not need to be the preserve of the elite, and that everyone in society has something to offer. Meanwhile, in the way he taught and spoke, in everything he did it seems, he demonstrated a willingness to listen, to compromise, to understand and not to judge.

So that is the legacy of our founder, this truly remarkable man who, 175 years ago today, started this extraordinary institution. We owe it to him I think, to our College, and to ourselves, to be tolerant, reflective and courageous. If we can do that, we will do him proud, we will help ourselves, and, in our own way, we might just make the world a slightly better place. That, ultimately, is what FD Maurice was all about, and what we are all here for.

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Sample Speech by a Chief Guest or Guest of Honor

Ladies and gentlemen,

Distinguished guests,

Faculty members,

Dear students,

I stand before you today with a profound sense of honor and privilege to be invited as the chief guest at this prestigious event. As we gather here, I am reminded of the countless hours of hard work, dedication, and perseverance that have brought us to this moment of celebration.

First and foremost, I extend my heartfelt congratulations to all the students who have successfully completed their academic journey. This day marks a significant milestone in your lives, and it is a testament to your commitment to learning and personal growth. Your accomplishments deserve applause, and I am confident that you will continue to achieve greatness in all your future endeavors.

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the exceptional efforts of the faculty and staff who have guided and nurtured these young minds. Education is the foundation upon which societies are built, and the role of educators cannot be overstated. Thank you for your dedication and commitment to shaping the leaders of tomorrow.

Today's event is not just about individual achievements; it is a celebration of the collective spirit that thrives in this institution. The bonds forged here, the friendships made, and the experiences shared will shape your lives in ways you may not yet fully comprehend. As you step out into the world, remember to cherish these connections and support one another.

While we celebrate this moment of success, we must also recognize the challenges that lie ahead. Our world is rapidly evolving, and with it comes a myriad of global issues, from climate change to social inequality. As the leaders of tomorrow, it is your responsibility to confront these challenges head-on and work towards building a more just and sustainable future.

Embrace innovation, think critically, and foster a spirit of collaboration. The problems we face today require collective solutions that transcend borders and ideologies. I urge you to be the agents of positive change, to be compassionate and empathetic, and to always strive for excellence in whatever you pursue.

Remember that success is not solely measured by individual achievements but also by the impact we have on others and the world around us. As you excel in your chosen fields, consider how you can give back to society and uplift those who are less fortunate. Be role models, mentors, and beacons of hope for others to follow.

Lastly, never forget the value of lifelong learning. Education does not end here; it is a continuous journey of discovery and growth. Keep an open mind, embrace new ideas, and adapt to the ever-changing landscape of knowledge.

Once again, congratulations to the graduating class, and my best wishes to all the students for a bright and promising future. Thank you to the faculty, staff, and everyone involved in making this institution a center of excellence. Together, let us build a world that is compassionate, equitable, and sustainable.

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The Significance of School Foundation Day

Every year, schools and universities celebrate their respective foundation days to commemorate the day when the school was founded or established. It is significant not only because of the number of years it has served the community where a school belongs to. It is likewise significant especially if the founding of the school has resulted to considerable benefit to those it serves.

When is School Foundation Day Commemorated?

The Foundation Day is typically the date when the school  first opened its doors to the public. On special milestones such as the 10th or 25th founding anniversary, the celebration may be done for several days. This is usually done to accommodate the various activities lined up for the occasion. Speeches of school authorities are heard as they enumerate school accomplishments  and their goals and plans for the coming years.

It is typical for schools to adopt a very festive mood during the commemoration of the Foundation Day. There are carnival rides, games, dance and singing contests, movie showings, friendly sports competitions, food booths, retail booths, and just about anything that completes a school-wide celebration.   For Catholic schools and universities, the Holy Mass is an integral part of the School Foundation Day celebrations. One of the usual highlights of the event is the Field Demonstration of students as coached by their respective teachers.

Field Demonstration

For most parents, the field demonstration is considered the highlight because this is one of the rare chances they see their children perform with the rest of the students. Taking a cue from its name, it is often done in an open field to the loud beat of drums, uptempo music, and applause.  Students will dress and perform accordingly depending on the prevailing theme for the year.

Technically speaking, this is part of practical learning as students hone their skills in other things aside from academics. They will learn discipline, teamwork, and patience especially during practice sessions. The many hours spent in rehearsing are considered well spent as students put up a show of a lifetime for their parents.

In my children’s school, the celebration of the School Foundation Day is a very much awaited event. By far, this year’s celebration was the grandest we have seen because it was the 20th founding anniversary. Like all the other years before, it was a 3-day event which highly encouraged family bonding and togetherness. As early as now, the 25th year is already being talked about.

Commemorating the school foundation day is significant since it is the chance to remind the students about the humble beginnings of their educational institution. This could help them better appreciate the improvements they are currently enjoying which have been worked-hard for by school authorities, parents, and students that came before them. It is an opportune time especially for older and graduating students to determine what kind of legacy they can leave behind to the school that has supported them through the years and to the student body that will be left behind.

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Louisiana Law Cracks Down on Campus Civil Disobedience

By  Jessica Blake

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A new law enacted Monday in Louisiana excludes acts of civil disobedience from free speech protections on public college campuses, The L ouisiana Illuminator reported .

Introduced in response to the wave of pro-Palestinian student encampments that swept campuses this year, the law, sponsored by Republican senator Valarie Hodges, is designed to maintain free speech while protecting the educational function of a college or university.

“What we need on college campuses is education, not activists,” Hodges told The Illuminator .

It excludes free speech protections from any act that carries a criminal penalty—in the case of encampments, trespassing, for example. 

The bill, “protects free speech for everyone but makes it very clear that criminal activity and pro-terrorist, giving support to terrorist groups, does not belong on our college campuses,” Hodges said during a committee hearing on the bill in May. 

Students and faculty oppose the law, arguing that it will inhibit First Amendment rights and cause a chilling effect at institutions that are meant to foster a marketplace of ideas.

“Criminalizing free speech is not the answer,” Pablo Zavala, a Loyola University of New Orleans professor, said at the same hearing. “Just because someone does not agree with what students are saying or what they are protesting does not give lawmakers authority to curb their rights.”

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Speech on Education and its Importance for Students

Speech on importance of education for students.

Good Morning to one and all present here! Today I am here to deliver a speech about education. It is usually a belief that education is the foundation for all-round development. Life is based on development and that developing and growing is life. If we describe this view into the perspective of education, we can sum up that education is the all-round development of the individual’s personality. Thus, education is nothing but all-round development of the individual’s personality. Education is a process of man-making. Hence, education is necessary for all.

Importance of Education

As per the report of the Kothari Commission, “the destiny of India is being shaped in its classrooms.” Education ingrain civic and social responsibility among everyone. India is a land of diversities. Therefore, in order to bring unity, education is a means for emotional integration. We cannot do without any kind of education. Education is an essential aspect of human development. Education is a means of achieving a world of peace, justice, freedom, and equality for all. Thus, education is extremely necessary for all. No good life is possible without education.

It indorses the intelligence of human beings, develops his skill, and enables him to be industrious. It ensures his progress. Education also channelizes the undeveloped capacities, attitude, interest, urges and needs of the individual into desirable channels. The individual can adjust and modify his environment with the help of education as per his need.

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Problems and Prospects

In a democratic country, education is necessary for all its citizens. Unless all the citizens get education, democratic machinery cannot work well. So we may emphasize that the problem of equality of educational opportunities in Indian. This situation is a very formidable one.

Our education system is at cross-roads. The Indian constitution enacted that there should be a universalization of primary education. In the order of the constitution, it was indicated that compulsory education must be for all children up to the age of 14. The universalization of elementary education has been implemented as a national goal. ‘Education for all’ is now an international goal.

The main problems are finances. Rural-urban disparity due to illiteracy. Women’s education, economic conditions of backward communities and non-availability of equipment are some other major problems.

Strategies and efforts at the national and international level

Universal elementary education has run the formulation of the project “education for all”. The provision of article 45 of the Indian constitution is a noble determination for the universalization of elementary education. Big efforts have been made to reach the goal of providing elementary education to every child of the country through, universal enrolment, universal provision, and universal retention.

Our constitution is making arrangements for free and compulsory education with the right of minorities to establish educational institutions. As well as there are education for weaker sections, secular education, women’s education, instruction in the mother-tongue at the primary stage, etc. These constitutional provisions are nothing but our effort to achieve the target of the project “Education for all”.

Thus, in the end, we find that education is a significant factor for achieving success, building characters, and for living a wholesome and happy life. True education always humanizes the person. In this reference, “Education for all” has become an international goal for both developed and developing countries.

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FACT SHEET: President   Biden Announces New Actions to Keep Families   Together

Since his first day in office, President Biden has called on Congress to secure our border and address our broken immigration system. As Congressional Republicans have continued to put partisan politics ahead of national security – twice voting against the toughest and fairest set of reforms in decades – the President and his Administration have taken actions to secure the border, including:

• Implementing executive actions to bar migrants who cross our Southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum when encounters are high;
• Deploying record numbers of law enforcement personnel, infrastructure, and technology to the Southern border;
• Seizing record amounts of fentanyl at our ports of entry;
• Revoking the visas of CEOs and government officials outside the U.S. who profit from migrants coming to the U.S. unlawfully; and
• Expanding efforts to dismantle human smuggling networks and prosecuting individuals who violate immigration laws.

President Biden believes that securing the border is essential. He also believes in expanding lawful pathways and keeping families together, and that immigrants who have been in the United States for decades, paying taxes and contributing to their communities, are part of the social fabric of our country. The Day One immigration reform plan that the President sent to Congress reflects both the need for a secure border and protections for the long-term undocumented. While Congress has failed to act on these reforms, the Biden-Harris Administration has worked to strengthen our lawful immigration system. In addition to vigorously defending the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood arrivals) policy, the Administration has extended Affordable Care Act coverage to DACA recipients and streamlined, expanded, and instituted new reunification programs so that families can stay together while they complete the immigration process.  Still, there is more that we can do to bring peace of mind and stability to Americans living in mixed-status families as well as young people educated in this country, including Dreamers. That is why today, President Biden announced new actions for people who have been here many years to keep American families together and allow more young people to contribute to our economy.   Keeping American Families Together

• Today, President Biden is announcing that the Department of Homeland Security will take action to ensure that U.S. citizens with noncitizen spouses and children can keep their families together.
• This new process will help certain noncitizen spouses and children apply for lawful permanent residence – status that they are already eligible for – without leaving the country.
• These actions will promote family unity and strengthen our economy, providing a significant benefit to the country and helping U.S. citizens and their noncitizen family members stay together.
• In order to be eligible, noncitizens must – as of June 17, 2024 – have resided in the United States for 10 or more years and be legally married to a U.S. citizen, while satisfying all applicable legal requirements. On average, those who are eligible for this process have resided in the U.S. for 23 years.
• Those who are approved after DHS’s case-by-case assessment of their application will be afforded a three-year period to apply for permanent residency. They will be allowed to remain with their families in the United States and be eligible for work authorization for up to three years. This will apply to all married couples who are eligible.  
• This action will protect approximately half a million spouses of U.S. citizens, and approximately 50,000 noncitizen children under the age of 21 whose parent is married to a U.S. citizen.

Easing the Visa Process for U.S. College Graduates, Including Dreamers

• President Obama and then-Vice President Biden established the DACA policy to allow young people who were brought here as children to come out of the shadows and contribute to our country in significant ways. Twelve years later, DACA recipients who started as high school and college students are now building successful careers and establishing families of their own.
• Today’s announcement will allow individuals, including DACA recipients and other Dreamers, who have earned a degree at an accredited U.S. institution of higher education in the United States, and who have received an offer of employment from a U.S. employer in a field related to their degree, to more quickly receive work visas.
• Recognizing that it is in our national interest to ensure that individuals who are educated in the U.S. are able to use their skills and education to benefit our country, the Administration is taking action to facilitate the employment visa process for those who have graduated from college and have a high-skilled job offer, including DACA recipients and other Dreamers. 

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Roger Federer Holds Court at Dartmouth Commencement

A resilient Class of 2024 celebrates after weathering challenges.

Commencement Day at Dartmouth

Members of the Class of 2024 first arrived on campus during the COVID-19 pandemic, then lived and learned through politically turbulent times, showing extraordinary resilience over the past four years.

On Commencement Day, they managed to celebrate their achievements in front of an audience of 11,000 who weathered a rainy morning to share the moment with them and also hear from tennis great Roger Federer . Another 7,700 watched on the livestream on Sunday.

Dartmouth conferred more than 1,150 degrees to undergraduates from 49 states, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., and 42 other countries, and 902 graduate or professional degrees. And Federer, an eight-time Wimbledon champion and philanthropist, served up what he called three “tennis lessons,” applying his time-tested sports philosophy broadly to life’s most daunting challenges.

First, “‘Effortless’ is a myth. People would say my play was effortless,” said Federer, who was known for his graceful style on court. In fact, Federer said he worked hard to perfect his technique and be patient and disciplined and is proudest of victories he earned when the competition became fierce.

“Because they prove that you can win not just when you are at your best, but especially when you aren’t. Most of the time it’s not about having a gift. It’s about having grit.” 

Federer’s second lesson: perfection is impossible. “In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches.” Yet he won only 54% of the points he played. 

Most of the time it’s not about having a gift. It’s about having grit.

“When you’re playing a point, it is the most important thing in the world,” he explained. “But the truth is, whatever game you play in life, sometimes you’re going to lose. A point, a match, a season, a job: it’s a roller coaster, with many ups and downs.”

Third, Federer reminded the audience, the world is much bigger than a tennis court. 

“Even when I was in the top five, it was important to me to have a rewarding life, full of travel, culture, friendships, and especially family,” he said. 

Motivated by his mother, Federer, who holds dual citizenship in Switzerland and South Africa, started a foundation when he was only 22 to empower children through education, and it has enabled nearly 3 million children in Switzerland and six countries in southern Africa to get a quality education and helped to train more than 55,000 teachers. 

“It’s been an honor—and it’s been humbling,” he said.

Beginning his professional tennis career at 16, Federer never attended college, and he said receiving a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Dartmouth was his “most unexpected victory ever.”

In addition to Federer, President Sian Leah Beilock presented honorary degrees to :

• Joy Buolamwini, founder of Algorithmic Justice League, author of Unmasking AI;
• Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney;
• Mung Chiang, president of Purdue University;
• Mira Murati, Thayer ’12, chief technology officer, OpenAI;
• Paul Nakasone, retired general and former director of the National Security Agency;
• Richard Ranger ’74, a member of the class celebrating its 50th reunion;
• John Urschel, assistant professor of mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and former NFL player;
• Roy Vagelos, retired chairman and CEO, Merck & Co. Inc.

President Beilock on “finding joy”

In her valedictory address, President Beilock urged graduates to find joy, even in trying times. 

“One thing I hope you have learned at Dartmouth is not to seek out the one, irrefutable truth,” she said. “Remember the humanity of your colleagues, friends, neighbors, and understand their points of view, even when they’re in sharp opposition to your own. Understand the massive challenges our country and our world face right now, while not letting those challenges overwhelm you, every waking hour of the day. And know that even in moments of great difficulty, it is still OK to find joy, and encourage others to do the same.”

Urging students to understand and learn from history, Beilock noted a “new Commencement tradition here today, as we incorporated the Wampum Belt, given to Dartmouth by the Mohegan Tribe, for the first time in our Commencement procession this morning.”

A reminder of the “long and complicated relations between Dartmouth and the Mohegan Tribe and Indian Country,” Beilock said the belt’s purple beads signify conflict, while its white beads signify cleansing. 

“The belt is, in its own way, a treaty: signifying a promise to honor our commitment to the Tribe and the Indigenous peoples of this land. It also reminds us that mutual respect is born through an unwavering dedication to meaningful dialogue. It symbolizes the importance of trying to understand where the other side is coming from, and learning from each other.”

Student speakers

Dartmouth’s history as an institution founded to educate Native Americans was also the focus of the welcoming remarks by Raylen Bark ’24 and Paige Nakai ’24, co-presidents of Native Americans at Dartmouth . “It’s a diversity of Indigenous knowledge and background that truly makes Dartmouth, as we and this institution embark on our next chapters,” said Nakai.

Valedictorian Brian Zheng ’24, who on Saturday was commissioned as second lieutenant in the Army, drew inspiration from his favorite poem, Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening . 

“Every time I read that poem, I can’t help but think of the Dartmouth Class of 2024,” he said. “When we arrived on campus in the fall of 2020, amidst a global pandemic, it truly did not matter who you were or where you came from. You could have been me, a child of immigrants whose middle name, Haixiang, literally translates to ‘flying across the ocean.’ Or you could have been someone who spent their entire life in the Upper Valley before coming to Dartmouth. The important thing was that you chose to spend your time here, in these woods, with these people, for at least a couple of snowy evenings.”

With curiosity “gained in the woods,” Zheng predicted that “our passion, our caring, our drive, will and must propel us to lift up those around us and to lend a hand to those in need.”

The ceremony included sporadic protests from pro-Palestinian and graduate student-union supporters, with some students walking out during the three-hour ceremony. But for the most part, Commencement 2024 was marked by age-old traditions, ending with the singing of the Alma Mater as students gathered with friends and families near the Green.

Among them: Lexi Dewire ’24, a captain of the women’s tennis team. She loved Federer’s speech.

“I think the part that resonated with me the most was when he said, out of all the things he’s accomplished, he’s only won about 54% of all the points in all of his matches,” Dewire said. “You’re going to lose a lot. You can’t win everything, and each particular point doesn’t matter. It’s the whole match and the whole adventure. It’s not always going to be clean and easy and beautiful, but it’s the outcome that’s important, and whether you accomplish what you need to accomplish, no matter what you went through or how you got there.”

Charlotte Albright can be reached at [email protected] .

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I was trying to pass on the things that I learned about winning and losing, and dealing with those situations, and about a positive mindset, and travel and philanthropy.

What is Project 2025? The Presidential Transition Project explained.

The detailed plan to dismantle and reconstruct the government laid out by conservative groups known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project has critics up in arms over its " apocalyptic " and " authoritarian " nature.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., led an effort to create the more than 900-page "Mandate for Leadership," published in April 2023, reimagining the executive branch and presented a plan to overhaul several federal government agencies, including the FBI, for the country's next conservative president to follow.

According to the Project's website, the playbook provides a governing agenda and a lineup of people ready to implement it to "rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left." It includes a domestic and foreign policy agenda, a list of personnel, training, and a 180-day playbook.

"It is not enough for conservatives to win elections," Project 2025 said on its website . "With the right conservative policy recommendations and properly vetted and trained personnel to implement them, we will take back our government."

Project 2025's Director is Paul Dans , who served as the U.S. Office of Personnel Management chief of staff in former President Donald Trump's administration. Although it mentions Trump by name, the handbook does not directly assume the Republican party's presumptive nominee will be the one to carry out its agenda.

Prep for the polls:   See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

What is in Project 2025?

The mandate attacks several policies that former President Obama and President Joe Biden instituted, including student loan forgiveness and Obamacare . It simultaneously calls for expanded executive power for the commander-in-chief while criticizing what Project 2025 members perceive as overreaches by the Biden administration.

"Presidents should not issue mask or vaccine mandates, arbitrarily transfer student loan debt, or issue monarchical mandates of any sort," the plan reads. "Legislatures make the laws in a republic, not executives."

The playbook calls for the reinstatement of a Trump executive order augmenting a president's power to hire and fire federal officials by replacing civil servants with political appointees throughout government.

It also seeks to repeal aspects of the Affordable Care Act , urge the Food and Drug Administration to reverse the approval of abortion pills , and further empower Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport undocumented immigrants .

The plan also specifically addresses LGBTQ+ issues and attacks "radical gender ideology." In addition to calling for an end to the Department of Education, it suggests legislation that would forbid educators from using transgender students' names or pronouns without written permission from their guardians. It also appears to oppose same-sex marriage and gay couples adopting children by seeking to "maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family."

More: Trump tried to crush the 'DEI revolution.' Here's how he might finish the job.

Project 2025 generates concern

Project 2025 has received substantial criticism from Democrats, including Representative Jasmine Crockett , D-Texas, who called out the controversial plan during a congressional hearing last month.

"I don't know why or how anybody can support Project 2025," Crockett said. "In the United States of America, dictatorships are never funny, and Project 2025 is giving the playbook for authoritarianism as well as the next dictator to come in."

Progressive Democrat U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts called it a "far-right manifesto" in a post on TikTok . The Biden campaign captioned a video detailing Project 2025, stating it "needs more attention."

Rachel Barber is a 2024 election fellow at USA TODAY, focusing on politics and education. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, as @rachelbarber_

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Biden Gives Legal Protections to Undocumented Spouses of U.S. Citizens

The new policy is one of the most significant actions to protect immigrants in years. It affects about 500,000 people who have been living in the United States for more than a decade.

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Biden Announces New Protections for Undocumented Immigrants

President biden announced an executive action to protect about 500,000 undocumented spouses of u.s. citizens from being deported and provide them with a pathway to citizenship..

A few days ago, we marked the 12th anniversary taking care of dreamers that President Obama and I put in place. There were a few of these immigrant — these immigration areas that have had most positive impact and gotten more support from the American people across the board. These young people known as Dreamers, Hispanics, South Asians and more who came to America as children only know America as their home have been able to live and learn out of the shadows. So today I’m announcing new measures to clarify and speed up work visas to help people, including Dreamers, who have graduated from U.S. colleges and universities, landed jobs in high-demand, high-skilled professions that we need to have grow — to see our economy grow. It’s the right thing to do. I’m announcing a common-sense fix to streamline the process for obtaining legal status for immigrants, married, excuse me, to American citizens who live, lived here and lived here for a long time. Let’s be clear. This action still requires undocumented spouses to file all required legal paperwork to remain in the United States. It requires them to pass a criminal background check. And it doesn’t apply to anyone trying to come here today.

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs ,  Miriam Jordan ,  Jazmine Ulloa and Hamed Aleaziz

The reporters have covered immigration policy and politics during both the Trump and Biden administrations.

President Biden on Tuesday granted far-reaching new protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have been living in the United States illegally for years but are married to American citizens.

Under the new policy, some 500,000 undocumented spouses will be shielded from deportation and given a pathway to citizenship and the ability to work legally in the United States. It is one of the most expansive actions to protect immigrants since Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, was enacted 12 years ago to protect those who came to the United States as children.

“These couples have been raising families, sending their kids to church and school, paying taxes, contributing to our country,” Mr. Biden said at the White House, where he was joined by members of Congress and DACA recipients, known as Dreamers. “They’re living in the United States all this time with fear and uncertainty. We can fix that.”

Mr. Biden also said he would make it easier for young immigrants, including Dreamers, to gain access to work visas, a significant move that could help them eventually get a green card. That would protect their legal status even if DACA, which is already tied up in litigation, disappears.

“We’re a much better and stronger nation because of Dreamers,” Mr. Biden said, as he marked the anniversary of the Obama-era DACA program.

The new policy allows Mr. Biden to balance his recent crackdown on asylum with a sweeping pro-immigrant measure at a moment of political peril. With five months until the presidential election, Mr. Biden has been trying to curtail record numbers of illegal border crossings without alienating longtime supporters who have called for a more humane immigration system after the Trump years.

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What can i say: free speech on college campuses.

By Nora Faris. This essay won second place in FIRE's 2012 Essay Contest.

You are a high school junior on your first college visit, eagerly sampling the campus culture—the dorms, the dining halls, the academic departments. You notice that the campus seems exceptionally quiet—well-manicured grounds, imposing buildings, and dedicated students walking purposefully between classes. However, after wandering the campus for the afternoon, you come upon a bustling congregation of students in an amphitheater, where the atmosphere of a political rally prevails. Slogans are shouted. Flags, t-shirts, and protest paraphernalia are waved and worn. One student, outfitted with a megaphone, calls out to passersby, rallying them to action for the latest cause—anything from birth control to the lack of edible food on campus. Another student solicits signatures for an upcoming ballot initiative. Amidst the throng, an eclectic undergrad evangelist known as “Brother Jed” leads his flock of shaggy collegiate disciples in worship—his volatile preaching mingling with the chants of protestors. The entire scene is a living embodiment of the First Amendment—a cacophony of educated voices freely engaging in open and public discussion, a discussion which you can’t wait to join. Now this is what higher education is all about, right?

However, a mere ten paces away from this raucous celebration of the First Amendment, freedom of speech is under siege. The scene you witnessed was unfolding in a “free speech zone”—a tiny island on campus where freedom of expression is not curbed by disciplinary action. Outside this oasis of liberty, students are subject to speech codes—university-imposed restrictions on freedom of speech. If the protestors left the designated space, their picketing, no matter how peaceful, could lead to punitive action by the university. If the signature-soliciting student attempted to collect names for the petition outside the zone, he could face potential arrest—as was the case for members of a student group at the University of Cincinnati. And what of Brother Jed? He and his congregation could be incarcerated under the guise of disorderly conduct, in a situation similar to that of evangelist Keith Darrell, who was arrested after preaching his religious beliefs on the Youngstown State University campus in Ohio. You may ask yourself, “Isn’t this a college campus in America—a cornerstone of knowledge, a source of revolutionary ideas?” By all accounts, the answer should be yes.

In 1969, Justice Abe Fortas ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines : “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” The understanding that democracy is the product of education—the proliferation of ideas enlightening young minds—confirmed the belief that free and unhindered expression is vital to academics. However, many modern students are finding that their constitutional rights are all but unchallenged at the entrance to campus. Colleges entice students with glossy invitations, touting the “open and challenging academic discussions” occurring in their respective collegiate communities. No mention of speech codes or free speech zones can be found—only dazzling scholastic testimonials by prospective students. Universities obviously understand the importance of free and open discourse in an academic community—but their willingness to allow such unbridled interactions is another story.

What kind of world are universities creating through their attacks on free speech and expression? By labeling some books as unacceptable or offensive, colleges are mandating what students may learn—shielding young minds from the powerful and stimulating catalyst of controversy. Through the creation of free speech zones, universities are telegraphing the message that freedom of speech is finite, limited to “the right place and the right time.” Reprimanding expression on campus through viewpoint discrimination applied through broad regulations causes students to reluctantly accept an attitude of apathy rather than hold an opinion which will only be stifled by authority. An education is becoming, essentially, a stamp of conformity—molding students into indifferent citizens who, being accustomed to limited speech, will not question the further erosion of their rights by the government.

Now, imagine an America in which the full spectrum of freedom of speech and expression was respected on college campuses. The university protestor, allowed to audibly voice their opinions to the public, will become tomorrow’s engaged citizen—a citizen who spies a problem or an injustice and rallies others to help correct it. The petitioner for an on-campus club will become tomorrow’s political organizer—amplifying the voices of his fellow citizens and promoting active involvement in government. Even the eccentric campus evangelist, freely preaching his own doctrines, will encourage other citizens to embrace their own power through expression of their interests. Silencing voices on campus does not prevent controversy—it prevents progress. So go ahead students—step outside the “Speaker’s Circle.” Step outside of the free speech zone and tell the nation what’s on your mind. This is a college campus in America, and it’s your right.

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