University of New Hampshire Commencement

May 19, 2007
Durham, NH

Thank you. Thank you very much, Patrick. I think you and Ashley both did a great job. Let’s give them a hand. They were terrific.

Madam President Newman. That has a nice ring to it. I think I’ve decided women should run everything. George and I can spend more time playing golf.

I’m honored to be here. I’m honored to be here with Governor Lynch. And I echo what President Bush said, we’re grateful for the good work you’re doing. Representative Carol Shea-Porter is here. Two former governors, Jeanne Shaheen and John Sununu. Your Senate Leader, Sylvia Larson, and Speaker Terie Norelli, thank you for being here. And the governor’s counselors, members of the trustees, the faculty, the students, the families. I want to say a special word of appreciation to the people who provided our music. Reginald Wilburn, if I had a voice like yours, I would have gone into a different line of work. And I thought the Wind Symphony was wonderful, playing “Pomp and Circumstance” as we walked in. I also would like to thank your Board of Trustees’ Chair, Andy Lietz, for what he said, and all those who serve, and Jeffrey Salloway, I just loved what you said, and so I want you to be careful walking across the street after this is over, because you’re a treasure.

Nancy Kinner walked us in and I know she’s a member of the faculty, but she reminds me of a Sergeant Major in the Army, carrying that big old mace or whatever it is, whipping us into shape. I thank you. And Father Cryans, thank you for your wonderful prayer in the true spirit of Thomas More.

Finally, I want to say to the Class of 2007, you need a sense of humor. My great curse in life for winning the ’92 election is that God has ordained that I spend the rest of it being George Bush’s straight man. He stands up here and cracks all these jokes, and then I have to come up and bring up the rear.

But I will say this. I give a fair number of commencement speeches, and you win the prize for creative mortar boards. I especially like the pink helmet brigade over here. That’s very impressive.

President Bush pointed out that as you celebrate the end of your academic journey and the beginning of the rest of your life, whatever you decide, you have to decide what it means to be a citizen.

This is one of the most exciting, yet challenging, times in all of human history. It is literally exploding with opportunity. Just in the last few weeks, as a result of the sequencing of the human genome, we’ve found the main genetic markers for diabetes. That gives us hope that we might turn around what threatens to be the next great epidemic. It’s estimated that one in three children born after 2000 in the United States may be diabetic. And just a couple of weeks ago, we found that there is a planet going around a star that’s one of the 100 closest to our solar system which may have atmospheric conditions making life possible. Unfortunately, it’s 20 million light years away and nobody can get there in a human lifetime, so unless a few families are prepared to devote three or four generations to a space trip, we’ll have to wait for them to come to us.

This is a culturally diverse and creative time. This whole class is much more diverse than it would have been 30 years ago. And yet, this time is also marred by inequality, insecurity, and because of climate change and resource depletion, unsustainability. And much of our common life, as President Bush pointed out, has been shaped by religious, political, and even psychological fundamentalism that requires people to dehumanize those who disagree with them and ignores evidence whenever it is inconsistent with their ideology. That is the total antithesis of what you have learned here.

I believe that you are going to be given a great opportunity to change this world of division and divisiveness, because it’s also a world full of decency and hope. And it’s a world in which private citizens have more power to change the world for the better than ever before. For all kinds of reasons, you can move from this unstable interdependence to whole communities where people share opportunities and responsibilities and have a genuine sense of belonging.

There are all kinds of ways to serve. I want to say a special word of thanks to your graduates who are here in uniform today, who will soon be in our Armed Forces. Thank you for your service. The United States also has 355,000 different religious congregations, representing every religious faith on earth, all of them involved in some kind of community service. There are over a million nongovernmental charitable organizations. All of them are involved in some way in community service.

When the President asked his father and me to help raise money for the South Asian tsunami, the American people gave over a billion dollars. And 30 percent of households in this country gave, half of them over the Internet. The median contribution was less than $60. That is an astonishing fact. So whether you leave here as a scientist, a writer, an engineer, a businessperson, or an artist, you must also be a citizen. It’s more important now than ever before. It’s key to building a world with more partners and fewer enemies, key to building a better America, to fighting income inequality, to providing health care, and to giving our children and grandchildren a clean, independent, responsible energy future.

All of these things can only be accomplished if we embrace one simple idea. It’s so easy to say, but hard to do. Our differences are important. They matter. They make life more interesting, and they aid the search for truth. But our common humanity matters more.

What makes you a community today? Not just that you’re all wearing these little black robes, with Lord knows what underneath, but because of what you have shared here that causes you to reach across race and religion and political convictions and everything else. You have a common set of experiences because you had an opportunity to participate. You felt a responsibility to go forward, and you’re here celebrating this together, not individually. No person here is graduating alone. You’re graduating because of your teachers, because of your families, because of your classmates, because of mentors. You are not alone. This is a common celebration. So for all your differences, you can shout with joy every time anybody mentions the Class of 2007, because what you have in common is more important than those differences.

In Southern Africa, where I do a lot of work, this whole concept of genuine belonging among people is captured in a word in the Xhosa language, the language of Nelson Mandela’s tribe: “Ubuntu.” In English, it means “I am because you are.” We do not exist alone. Therefore, for us to ignore one another’s problems is a travesty.

When the human genome was sequenced in 2000, to me the most important thing discovered by these scientists looking at the 3 billion genomes per human body is something that all the religious faiths had always taught: that genetically, every person on earth who looks different from you is different in less than one tenth of one percent of his or her genetic makeup. Even our gender differences are determined by less than one tenth of one percent of our genetic make up. Why is it that people, even highly intelligent people, go through life obsessing about and trying to get other people to obsess about only the one tenth of one percent of us that is different instead of the 99.9 percent we have in common?

The ancient Hebrew prophets knew it when they said that he who turns aside a stranger might as well turn aside the most high God. In the Christian New Testament, we are told that the second most important commandment next to loving God is to love your neighbor as yourself. In the Koran, the prophet said that Allah put different people on the earth, not that they might despise one another, but that they might come to know one another and learn from one another. In the Dhammapada, the Buddhists said that you’re not fully human unless you feel the arrow piercing another’s body as if it pierced your own.

I do a lot of work in the North Central Highlands of Africa, where almost nobody rides anywhere and everybody walks. When people meet each other on trails, one will say “hello” or “good morning” or “how are you?” And the answer is not “hello” or “I’m fine” or “how are you?” The answer, translated into English, is simple: “I see you.” Think of how many people we never see, or we never see fully, because they’re part of the Other or they’re just invisible. Somebody’s going to have to come in here and clean up after us today. Will they be seen? What about the people who are of different faiths and different politics and live in different places? Do we ever really see them?

You are going to live in the most interesting period in human history. It should be the most peaceful, prosperous, exciting time the world has ever known. Do we have problems? Yeah. Is global warming a huge problem? Yes. Is the disappearance of species a big problem? You bet. Is Darfur a travesty? Of course it is. Am I worried about increasing income inequality in America and the fact that we still don’t have health care for everybody? Absolutely. But they can all be solved if we see each other, if we recognize our mutual responsibilities, and if no one believes that he or she is free to pursue any career without being a citizen, too. “I am because you are.” We have to believe that and act on it. There is nothing beyond the reach of our common endeavor. All you have to do is remember it is our common endeavor.

Good luck and God bless you.