SPEECH TRANSCRIPT

Chancellor Moeser, distinguished members of the platform party, guests, faculty colleagues, and above all graduates and their families. To the graduates, especially warm congratulations on this brilliant, Carolina made-to-order afternoon! … To the seniors and the faculty who have honored me with the invitation to address this commencement, my sincere thanks!

When the chancellor conveyed the invitation, I still had in my head a commentary that Garrison Keillor, the bard of public radio, had done on graduation. … It is "a time when we kick our children out into the world." But he was also thinking about the graduates because he had advice for them in this imagined scenario that he played out. He said, "Don’t get a job. Don’t settle down. Have adventure. When you’re young, you ought to travel. See the world. Have interesting experiences."

And he had some ideas about how to get parents’ attention in case they were getting too complacent. Send a postcard from some distant place, like Mombassa or Timbuktu of Bali. Drop tantalizing hints about interesting people you have met. Tell them you are supporting yourself by shepherding goats during the day and doing therapeutic massage in the evening, and that someday you’ll be home to report on all this. And above all, tell them where they can wire money. That’s the key thing.

… Let me … turn to a matter of more serious consequence, and I think particularly for the graduates and their generation. We live in somber times. September 11 continues to cast a dark shadow over the early years of the new century. Almost certainly that September morning of stunning destruction is now burned in the collective memory of the graduate’s generation. That day may well define a national watershed. Before, Americans were cavorting carefree with the jolly green giant of peace and economic prosperity. After, our lives seemed stalked by dark forces, the world less welcoming, our perplexities piling high. In the name of greater security we have bolstered government surveillance, raising the classic issues of how a free society safeguards itself without compromising its basic principles. We have launched military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq that have turned into open-ended and problematic commitments. The war on terrorism promises like predecessor crusades against poverty and drugs to be long and dispiriting and perhaps inconclusive.

There is yet another worrisome consequence of 9-11 that I’d like you to think about. So strong a grip does that attack have on our national imagination and policy that it may obscure a broad, gradually building set of global problems. These are problems with the potential to cause serious, far-reaching mischief. Here are a few from my own long laundry list:

To begin with, the old enemy of hunger is still with us – chronically in the lives of some 800 million people (more than a tenth of the human family). Hunger still harvests six million children a year. Another six million die annually from preventable diseases with malnutrition as a major contributory cause. This extreme poverty persists despite the spectacular rise in living standards in many regions of the world.

A close second is the HIV/AIDS epidemic that is now building toward a second wave of infection. In sub-Saharan Africa AIDS has already eaten away at the sinews of societies and dramatically reduced life spans. The spread of the epidemic to Asia threatens human misery and social instability on a mind-numbing scale.

Then consider the relentlessly rising environmental stress on our Earth. That stress is apparent in many ways – from global warming and rising sea levels, to climate swings, to species and tropical forest losses, to depletion of fresh water sources, to the desertification of the oceans and seas. A world population four times larger today than a century ago is putting the planet under enormous pressure. All of us are responsible – from poor people devouring local land and fuel supplies to the rich with gargantuan appetite for goods. All of us are (in the words of one respected environmental historian) playing "dice with the planet without knowing all the rules of the game."

Finally, to my list, I would add the surging hostility to the global economic system over the last several years. It found dramatic voices in recent times in Seattle in November 1999. There critics of globalization came together to close the city down. They acted in the name of defending fragile ecosystems, protecting labor rights, and preserving democracy against distant, unelected economic bureaucrats. Since then, the activists have turned global economic summits into armed camps as the activists continue to chip away at the consensus on which free trade and investment has depended for its advance.

These and other problems bear directly and inexorably on our country and your lives. In question is the air you breathe, the climate you live with, the microbes you absorb, the networks of commerce and confidence you will be dependent on for a livelihood, even the responsibility you bear for needless suffering within the human family.

These difficult problems are made yet more difficult by the eroding sense of international community. On one side Americans have good reason to feel frustrated and chagrinned by post-9-11 developments and to ask: Why not withdraw from an ungrateful, unyielding, dangerous world? Might a more solitary America be a safer place? It might be less vulnerable to attack, less dependent on fickle friends, less likely to get entangled in distant quarrels, more secure in its homeland and its domestic liberties. The logic is seductive.

But following this logic would mark a major reversal. Over the last half-century, U.S. vision, generosity, and leadership have done much to shape the global order which you now inherit. American fingerprints are everywhere. Washington promoted European integration at its fragile start as well as Japan’s recovery from crushing defeat at the end of World War II. Major international institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank exist as a result of U.S. initiative and support. The same can be said for the worldwide free trade system now under assault, the drive to elevate human rights, and the campaign to hold leaders responsible for what have become widely accepted norms on genocide and crimes against humanity. American leadership – consistent and collaborative – remains as critical today as it was earlier to the development of international community and order. How can it be otherwise for the world’s largest economy, the unquestionable master of military power, the most widely admired model for social mobility and technological innovation, and the fount of cultural trends that reach around the world?

… No less serious than turning our back on the world is the world turning its back on us. We run the risk of losing our legitimacy as architect and keeper of global order. Poll after poll over the last several years reveals that vaulting U.S. national ambitions and talk of either being with us or against us has generated world-wide resentment, even among long-time allies. While we remain widely admired socially and economically, elites around the world are regarding our policies, even our national style with growing suspicion, even aversion.

So now we come to the heart of the matter: If my reading of the current situation is right, your generation stands at a turning point. The coming half-century that will round out your lives has the potential for change no less great than that witnessed over the previous half century. It is critical that we not let our fixation with the war on terrorism obscure the significance of the choices that loom.

One course is to recognize that global abundance and peace are inextricably tied to the resolution of the global problems now before us. Inequality, disease, environmental stress, and grass-roots disaffection are an inextricable and unsettling part of a highly dynamic and highly productive global society. Whatever its flaws, that society has made extraordinary strides and brought great benefits to many people. Simply consider the resources now available to us (an annual world-wide output of $30 trillion) compared to 50 years ago when it was a tenth of what it is today. Imagine what those resources mean today in the lives of people in all lands – in their health and welfare. Think about the capacity that this amazing, unprecedented leap in global productivity gives us to deal with the very problems that confront us. Only by addressing these mounting problems can a new generation hope to extend the considerable achievements of the previous 50 years.

What is to be done? Sustaining hope in the notion of a better world, seeking understanding of the workings of that world, and looking for ordinary ways of acting within your means as voters, consumers, investors, and professionals come at once to mind. Of these elements, understanding strikes me as especially important. You cannot deal with something that you do not understand or want to understand. The starting point is the simple but profound realization that there is more than the U.S. perspective on any of our current problems. That basic insight orients us to the importance of the diverse perspectives prevailing among other peoples and sensitivity to the power and persistence of different national and regional values molded by sometimes profoundly different histories. We are getting a crash course on this point in regard to Islam and the Middle East. But the challenge to understanding is much broader than one religion or one region. It arises almost anywhere we turn – from the seemingly familiar European Union (with its distinct notions of welfare capitalism) to China (with its deep attachment to strong, centralizing state power) to the indigenous communities in Central America (fighting for cultural survival). Other peoples’ insistence on their own particular set of values does not mean that we have to embrace a paralyzing moral relativism. We do have to recognize that that ignoring or dismissing their views foredooms any sustained, fruitful attack on global problems in the years ahead. Your effort to understand, to act, and to preserve hope will not necessarily be crowned with success.

But the other course of making no effort will surely bring a global unraveling. The possible consequences of that unraveling are not pleasant to contemplate: discord among states and peoples leading to rising cultural intolerance, flaring nationalist fervor and rivalry, deepening international division, and fraying economic ties that, in turn, slow growth and press down life span and health in wide swaths of the human population. This would be a world of narrower horizons, fewer choices, and less interaction among peoples and cultures. This would be a world in a downward spiral with diminished capacity for addressing the very global problems threatening us all.

Yogi Berra, the legendary baseball player and master of the fractured aphorism, reportedly declared, "It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Those who think my crystal ball excessively pessimistic should recall a not-so-distant history. In 1914 things began to go wrong so disastrously and ultimately on a global scale. A world at peace amidst a rising tide of wealth stumbled into a 30-year military and economic catastrophe. By 1945 millions upon millions lay dead, some of the world’s leading cities were rubble, starvation widespread … hope shattered. The road from that hellish period to our own relatively blessed state was long and by no means inevitable. Roads can carry traffic both ways – what has been accomplished can be lost.

You came to get graduated and have had dropped on you the fate of the world. You are in this exposed position in part by chance. This happens for all of us: you are citizens of the mightiest republic in history at a critical point in its history. But you have also gotten into this pickle by your choice of attending a university with a deep faith in the power of cultivated intelligence to resolve practical problems and improve human welfare. The founders of UNC no less than the founders of our republic believed education was critical if citizens were to fulfill their public obligations and make intelligent choices.

The social utility of schooling figured prominently in the university’s charter approved by the General Assembly in 1789: "in all regulated governments it is the indispensable duty of every Legislature to consult the happiness of a rising generation, and endeavour to fit them for an honorable discharge of the social duties of life, by paying the strictest attention to their education."

Six years later Thomas Jefferson put the case for an educated citizenry well. He wanted Americans educated, in his words," so much as may enable them to read and understand what is going on in the world, and to keep their part of it going right: for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence."

Take heart in knowing that your university is caught in this new world of danger and opportunity with you. You have taken your last exam, finished your final paper, and had the registrar compute your grades for all eternity. For you the formal record at least is closed. But the test for UNC is only beginning. Those of us who teach here are mindful that we labor under this old obligation to attend to the needs of our citizens. UNC has moved dramatically over the last decade to better discharge that obligation by becoming a more global university. In our courses, our programs, our research, our student body, our faculty, our study abroad – in all these ways we have hurried to catch up in our understanding of a fast changing but still diverse world.

Your experience in the years ahead will offer a verdict on how well UNC has done in becoming a global university. Come back and tell us how we did in preparing you. Help us figure out how to do better. Make us a resource as you try to find a way to play your role honorably in the world. Return four decades from now to say that you kept your part and fulfilled the mission of this institution – that you made the world a more hospitable, humane place. That would be an exceedingly fine legacy for the generations to follow yours.

Again, to the graduates, my warm congratulations! Celebrate your achievements and enjoy great success in the months and years ahead!!

-- 30 --