Burns Commencement Address at Dickinson College

Commencement Address at Dickinson College

R. Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs

Carlisle, Pennsylvania
May 19, 2007

Ladies and gentlemen of the Dickinson class of 2007, it is a very great honor for me to join you, President Durden, the board of trustees, your families, friends and the faculty of your college to pay tribute to you today.

Graduation day in America and here at Dickinson is about many things—it is a hopeful day when a college community gathers to celebrate an ancient academic ritual in gowns and hats more in keeping with the sixteenth century than our own; about families uniting from the far-flung corners of the country; about the collective commitment of the faculty and administration to sustain and build a great American college.

But, the real point of this day is to honor all of you seated before us. Dickinson’s Class of 2007. This is your day when we pause to mark your completion of the great marathon of a college education. We then ask you to go off into the world to do great things.

Remember this moment, right now and remember the truly indispensable people who made this day possible—your parents, families and teachers. They dreamed of your attaining what is now an essential feature of educated life in America& mdash;a college degree.

I’m the parent of college-age kids, and I can tell you that your parents, especially, have paid for that distinction-- in more ways than one. With that in mind, may I suggest that all of the graduates rise and salute your parents with an enthusiastic round of thanks and applause.

They say that your graduation day is one of the most important anniversaries of your life, along with birth, marriage, having kids, and the most momentous day of all—when you finally pay off your student loans.

Now I can tell you from experience that, once that diploma hits your hands in a few moments, two things will happen.

First, your parents will be very proud.

And second, the Dickinson Alumni Association will have you listed permanently in its data bank as a prospective donor.

Don’t be surprised if you even get a call on your cell phone in the next few minutes asking you to make your first donation.

You will join the alumni ranks of a distinguished American college, the very first to be chartered in our country after the American Revolution.

When I called President Durden to thank him for inviting me to speak today and to talk about Dickinson, he spoke with great passion and pride about the long history of this college and its core commitment to “engage the world& rdquo;.

At a time when America is challenged as never before and needs to find a way to broaden its engagement with the rest of the world, I think Dickinson is a school that is far ahead of the national curve.

You are among the nation’s leaders in Fulbright grantees. Nearly sixty percent of you have studied overseas. Your high percentage of foreign students is testimony to the unique international character of your school. And you have a valuable relationship with the state department where I work—Dickinson has hosted on our behalf in the last few years hundreds of international students and scholars here in Carlisle, especially from the Middle East and North Africa.

So, you chose the right school in Dickinson if you believe, as I do, that Americans will need to adjust in the years ahead to an increasingly interconnected world.

I graduated from Boston College exactly twenty nine years ago tomorrow. I remember how proud my parents were. I remember how happy I was just to graduate. But frankly, I don’t remember a single word that my commencement speaker said. Chances are you won’t either. And, I promise not to take it personally.

When I was 22, my reality was remarkably different from yours today. As your parents will attest, we did not have cell phones, personal computers or Ipods. We certainly did not have You Tube, Stephen Colbert, Borat, My Space, American Idol and the phenomenon known as Sanjaya.

Most Americans at the time did not dream of traveling or living overseas. Many didn’t even own a passport. And despite the obvious dangers of the east-west conflict, we felt protected in many ways by our separateness from the world and the physical security given to us by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

You will emerge as Dickinson graduates in 2007 to live in a dramatically different world than the one we looked out on in the 1970s. Because you are coming of age in the era of globalization—a time when Americans have never before been so buffeted by the winds of change in the world.

While our reality was the certainty and bipolarity of the cold war, your reality is the uncertainty of a globalized world where our country will in the future be interdependent –closely intertwined--with the rest of the world. America’s borders have shrunk and even disappeared. Technological and scientific change has narrowed distance and time. For the very first time in the human experience global forces have linked the fate of all people in all countries.

This central fact will require you to think and live and, most importantly, act differently than all the generations of Americans before.

Think of globalization this way—there is a bright, positive side and there is a dark side.

They represent at once your greatest future opportunity and your greatest danger.

The bright side of globalization is obvious for all to see -- the awesome power of the information age as technology -- cell phones, computers, jet travel gives people, and I’ve seen this especially in the developing world, a degree of personal liberty never experienced before.

Think of the medical advances that give us the hope of eradicating for the first time the terrible scourges of malaria, polio and HIV/aids. Think of cutting edge energy research that promises to help replace carbon-based fuels by using hydrogen, biofuels and wind power. Think of space research that may take us in our lifetimes beyond mars.

When we look at globalization this way, we understand that we live at one of the most hopeful and positive times in human history. Think of that for a moment. We have more power in our time to create more wealth, conquer poverty and ignorance and improve the human condition than any other generation before us.

That is an awesome thought. It is incredibly positive and hopeful. And it is a marker for how to think about your own future and what you can do personally to improve the human condition.

This is a great time to be graduating from college. There is so much you can do to make America and the world around us what you say at Dickinson you want it to be—more just, more compassionate, more economically viable, more democratic.

But, there is also the dark side of globalization. We see the rapid growth of negative forces that threaten the way we live and, in some parts of the world, our very existence. These new threats race over, under and right through our national borders.

We can’t ignore them. The world is not built like that anymore.

Think for a moment about global climate change that threatens our global environment; the scourge of trafficking in women and children that robs them of their innocence and dignity; the spread of global drug cartels that bring crack cocaine and heroin to every city in our country; international criminal gangs that exploit the poor and elderly; the spread of pandemic diseases that could affect millions of people; and, especially – especially -- the proliferation of chemical weapons, biological weapons and nuclear suitcase bombs and the chance that global terrorist groups might acquire them and use them--- against us.

These are real forces affecting all of us here this morning. And we have to think—intelligently and creatively—about what to do to defeat them.

And here is the truth about globalization— these global forces – positive and negative -- cannot be managed by one nation alone, even one as powerful as the United States. Instead, we have to work with countries throughout the world in common cause. That is the only forward.

This very fact gives us an enormous opportunity to do great things internationally. But, it also gives us the responsibility to do the right thing and to lead effectively.

The United States is the most important global leader at a time of globalization—we have the largest and most successful economy, the strongest military and the greatest political reach. We are the indispensable country called on to tackle the world’s most difficult problems.

That places a huge premium in our having the best possible leaders in government, business and academia.

It means we especially need many of you to choose a life of public service. You might think of your Dickinson education as a call to service. Dickinson has given you an ethical compass with which to navigate your lives beyond this campus. It asks, as President Kennedy did, what you can do for America and the world.

Gandhi put it differently — ghandi said: “you can be the change you want to see in the world.” So, don’t wait for someone else to empower you to make a difference. Have the confidence and belief that each of you has something unique and powerful to give to the world in your lifetime.

When you leave Dickinson today, we will ask you to lead at one of the most historic junctures in our national history.

I have been a professional diplomat for twenty five years and I cannot remember a time when our country was faced by so many complex challenges seemingly all at once.

Think of the global headlines from just your senior year—terrible wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; a truculent Iran seeking nuclear weapons; the genocide and humanitarian crisis in darfur; massive poverty on all continents; the lack of social justice and human dignity in vast stretches of the developing world.

In a globalized and interdependent world, Americans have been given the baton of leadership. We need to maximize the promise of the positive forces at work in the world and minimize the dark side.

And, to be an effective global leader, we also need to reject the twin illusions of isolationism and unilateralism.

For much of our national history, we have swung wildly between periods of isolation from the world and intense bursts of engagement in it. Well, those days are over. If 9/11 taught us anything, it is that America can never again isolate itself from the great challenges of the day or avoid the mantle of leadership. We Americans now know that we cannot live apart from the world or turn away from its challenges or pull the covers over our heads on stormy mornings.

But, we also need to reject isolationism’s twin evil—unilateralism. There are some in our county who still believe that we can go it alone in the world. I fear that theirs is a one-way road to failure for our foreign policy. We should not want to be the lone global cop. Our soldiers should not do all the fighting. Our taxpayers should not foot the entire bill for the world& rsquo;s troubles. We should not and cannot go it alone in the world.

Instead of turning away from the world as the isolationists want to do or go it alone as unilateralists wish, we need to commit ourselves, as our government is doing, to a stronger and wiser policy of rebuilding the united nations, nato and other international organizations to help America succeed in the world.

The United States must also demonstrate a concern for all the world’s problems. If we communicate to the rest of the world that we don’t really care about its problems, then it won’t believe in our leadership. Simply put, our global gameplan can’t just be about us—it has to be about the rest of the world too.

That means that those of us who live lives of wealth and luxury relative to the rest of the world—and that is nearly all of us here today—must identify with those less fortunate and build bridges to them.

We can’t be satisfied with the status quo when 700 million Indians live at poverty levels, or millions languish in despair in the slums of Brazil and Haiti. Or when the health care we enjoy here in America is non-existent in most of the rest of the world.

If your generation of Americans is to provide global leadership that is convincing to the rest of the world, then we need to speak out forcefully for the most deeply felt human dreams — to end poverty and injustice and end war. We need to see over the horizon to reach for these goals.

What I admire so much about young people is that so many of you are idealistic. Idealism is essential to true greatness on the world stage. Americans have been at our best when we held fast to our ideals, and acted on them. Jefferson did so in writing that all people are equal before god. Lincoln did so in ending slavery. Eleanor Roosevelt did so in committing the new United Nations to a universal declaration on human rights. Martin Luther King, Jr. Did so when he sat in a Birmingham jail and called for peaceful and non-violent change to give African Americans the rights in our time that should have been theirs all along.

America must always give the world hope. You graduates of Dickinson and all the young women and men graduating in all fifty states this spring need to give us all hope that you can help us seek, as the great poet Tennyson said, “A newer world”.

Now, I do remember what it was like to listen to a graduation speaker and to wonder- what can I possibly do to make the world a better place? Well, the answer is this—you can actually do quite a lot if you put your mind and heart and soul to it. You may sometimes feel hopeless when you witness the cruelty and even darkness we see in our modern world -- the senseless slaughter of fellow students at Virginia tech, the awful plight of the refugees in Iraq and all the people who have succumbed to aids and malaria in recent years.

But, I have one request of you —please don’t ever despair that you can’t contribute something positive to the world.

As you leave Dickinson today, think about what you can do to answer the call to service which is the responsibility of every man and woman in our society. Think what you can do in government service to win the war against terrorism and to bring peace to the world. Think what you can do as future business leaders to ensure integrity and fairness in the work place. Think what you can do as doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses and civic leaders to strengthen bodies, minds and communities.

You have role models right here today who can show you the way forward.

Many of your grandparents are here today. They are rightfully called the greatest generation because they overcame the great depression and then went on to defeat Nazi Germany and imperial Japan in the most terrible war of all time.

Your parents are role models. They launched the great crusade to end racial segregation in America. They put men and women in space. They learned how to transplant hearts and condense a library full of books into a single, slender disc. They and we are finally ensuring women equal rights in the workplace and before the law.

Your grandparents and parents have spoken the essential human truth that everything is possible and that your hopes can be realized if you believe in yourself and commit to a lifetime of service for the public good.

When he campaigned for President nearly forty years ago, Robert Kennedy asked us to remember the words of the Greek poet, Aeschylus, “to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of the world.”

That is indeed a worthy goal around which all Dickinson graduates and all people can unite.

As you set out today from Dickinson, may you retain the will to take risks, the strength to be courageous, the spirit of optimism that is particularly American, the importance of defending our great country and the imperative of keeping alive the dream we don’t talk about enough anymore—the dream of peace—peace here in our hometowns, peace in America, a global peace that will benefit all the people of the world.

As you graduate today, you join the ranks of a privileged community – the community of the educated. Your Dickinson education has changed your life forever. It is the key to the American dream and it will help to propel you forward for all the days of your life.

We wish for you the very best of good fortune, success and happiness in the years to come. We wish you wisdom and humility. And we look forward to follow your accomplishments as you live and write the history of America and of the world in the century to come. Congratulations to you all!

Released on May 21, 2007

ENDS

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