Equally warmly I welcome parents, other relatives, and friends who have come along to lessen the apprehensions that our freshmen might have. For many of you parents, this is not the easiest of tasks, since you yourselves are full of apprehension about this rite of passage and great adventure, and about what lies ahead for your daughters and sons. I understand this from my own experience as a parent. President Harding once said, in what has become one of my favorite mixed metaphors: "One must not drop anchor until one is out of the woods." Alas, as parents you are not yet "out of the woods."
The students among you have recently made two choices: first, to go to college, and, secondly, to attend Stanford. Some among you may have reversed the order: deciding first that you wanted to be at Stanford and then figuring out that you had to go to college to accomplish that. To the President of Stanford that does not seem to be a wholly irrational way of thinking. Indeed, I know quite a few people who first chose Stanford and then looked for the means to achieve their ambition. I know even more people who, once they chose Stanford, could no longer imagine that they had ever contemplated any other possibility. I very much hope that all of you soon will find yourselves in this latter category.
Obviously, I believe that the two choices you have just made are both excellent. The first because there are so many reasons to develop an understanding of the world we live in, to see the clearer where we have come from, where we are, where we are going. There also is the need to be critical, to master the tools of thought and analysis and to get into a lifelong habit of inquiry. And last but not least, there is the necessity to prepare for your future.
Your second election - Stanford - has brought you to a university that is one of the best academic institutions in the world, dedicated to the pursuit of many excellences and with excellent conditions for that pursuit across a wide spectrum of disciplines; to a university that is marked by a "Western" spirit of pioneering and energy; ivy is not the dominant plant on campus: indeed, as you can see behind me, it has a hard time growing here. You have come to a university that is, by any measure, richly diverse; to a university that is global in its reach; to a university that prizes service to the public; to a university that is so much of a leader in athletics that - if it were a country - it would have ranked among the top medal winners at the Olympic Games in Atlanta. There were 49 Stanford participants in the Olympics (36 from the United States, 13 representing other nations) and, among them, they won or helped win a total of 22 medals - 18 of them gold). You have come to a university with an unsurpassed setting: the gentle climate, the foothills, the bay, the yellow sandstone arches and cloisters, the "red tile roofs against the azure sky." Some of Stanford's features may be found elsewhere; the combination of attributes that make up Stanford you will encounter nowhere else.
This summer I was in Rome to see an exhibition on the theme of Odysseus in the sculpture of antiquity. A friend of mine who had curated the show gave me a tour. In the course of that tour, he encountered a Roman acquaintance, an academic, who, it turned out, had been at Stanford. When she learned where I was from, she said: "Oh, to us Italians, Stanford is Utopia." In some ways, what is now your university is a utopia, indeed, and not only to Italians. Now that this utopia has chosen you and you have chosen it, seize its opportunities, seize the day!
Alas, the fact that you have chosen well so far will not relieve you of the burden of making more choices, many of them bewildering, all of them with consequences for your own lives and the lives of others. More than 90 percent of the Americans among our freshmen will have their first opportunity to vote in this presidential election year. Of the two foremost expressions of citizenship, many among you already have fulfilled one: paying taxes. About that you have no choice. You can, of course, choose not to vote. I nevertheless urge you to vote, to become engaged citizens, to help your country make choices. The United States Supreme Court once referred to the right to vote as the "preservative of all rights." And even if you do not cast the decisive vote, the margin to which you contribute can itself have a far-reaching political impact. Admittedly, the choices that are entailed in voting are most perplexing. First, you must reason and deliberate critically and decide what you would like to accomplish with your vote. And then, with little truly reliable information, you must pick those who you think would best represent you and attend to the country's needs.
Well, I welcome you to adulthood, to choice, to ambiguity and ambivalence - to the difficulty of making your own choices responsibly. At the university, you frequently will be called upon to choose. For one, nobody in authority will tell you "to get out of bed." Your parents will worry even more about the fact that nobody in authority, short of a doctor, will order you to get more sleep.
There will be a few matters, though, in which you have no choice, in the sense that university citizenship entails certain obligations that we consider basic. For instance, we expect you to abide by the principles of the Fundamental Standard that has governed student conduct at Stanford for the last one hundred years. Or, when it comes to examinations or other academic work, you have no choice but strictly to observe the Honor Code, whose 75th anniversary is this year.
Generally, the university does not presume to tell you who you should become, or with what groups to associate or not to associate. University citizenship, however, also entails the obligation to speak your own mind and to accept all other members of the community as contributors to the search to know. In a university nobody has the right to deny another person's right to speak plainly, without concealment, and to the point. In a university discussion, your response to an argument must never be. "Does she or he belong to the right group?" Instead, the only criterion is whether an argument is valid. An argument must not be rejected because the speaker is male or female, black or white, American or foreign. You were admitted to Stanford as individuals, not in groups. This is a critically important aspect of university life, of the university's own culture, its own civilization.
At the end of the millennium, American universities are sometimes criticized for paying insufficient attention to Western civilization. Given globalization, we are, of course, also taken to task for neglecting non-Western civilizations. Occasionally, the same people make both criticisms: one week the one, the next week the other. The fact of the matter is that unless you are satisfied to surf across and skate over the complexities of civilizations and the mix of good and bad they present, no institution has been capable of doing an adequate job in the teaching of civilizations, at least not since the end of the last century, when "globalization" actually began in a major way. Stating this as a fact, being realistic about it, is not the same as saying that such teaching should not be tried.
However, the critique that says we do not sufficiently stress Western civilization misses the most important aspect of a university. Another university president, Edward Levi, once said, universities "are the custodians not only of the many cultures of man, but of the rational process itself." This is the Western university's major contribution to civilization. One of the great university reformers of the early nineteenth century observed that the idea of disciplined intellectual activity, embodied in universities, is the most valuable element of "moral culture." The commitment to, and practice of, reasoning clearly and thinking critically is what we must uphold. In that we have no choice.
The university has values that it prizes above all others: freedom (not just academic freedom), nondiscrimination (you will be heard, among other things, regardless of your sex, race, ethnicity, religion), and equality of opportunity. Whatever we choose to study, the way in which the study is undertaken describes a culture we share as members of the university. That culture rests on such values as respect for rational inquiry, evidence, and argumentation; respect for the autonomy, integrity, and contributions of the individual; freedom of thought and expression; respect for rules for action that encompass both rights and obligations.
I return to the subject of making choices. I am afraid that at least some of my speeches are subject to the critique Mrs. Frankfurter once gave of the speeches of her husband, Felix Frankfurter, one of the most distinguished justices in the history of the United States Supreme Court. She said there were two things wrong with Justice Frankfurter's speeches: first, he always got off the subject; and second, he always got back on the subject.
One evening, a couple of years ago, I had a group of about 15 undergraduates at the house for milk and cookies. We got into a discussion of all the things there are to do at Stanford: choosing courses, taking courses, writing research papers, meeting requirements, learning a foreign language, electing a major, perhaps choosing a minor (or should it be a dual major?), attending an overseas campus, engaging in public service, hiking in the foothills, or deciding how best to train for the Olympics, what a cappella group to join, how to combine the demands of the Stanford Symphony Orchestra with the desire to co-term in Electrical Engineering and on, and on, and on. Finally, a student turned to me in utter exasperation: "You know, we have no time whatsoever to go out on dates. You really need to do something about that!"
Ah, yes, that is what a university president is for! Alas, I repeat what I said earlier: "Welcome to adulthood!" You do have to make choices, and trade-offs are unavoidable. I use the term "trade-off" here in the sense of a sacrifice made in one area to obtain a benefit in another. The choices are yours. In the end, neither I nor anybody else at the university can tell you what to choose, although we impose some requirements and obviously attempt to provide guidance and advice. Even that task is quite difficult to perform to everyone's satisfaction. As I said earlier, you were admitted to Stanford as individuals, and that means as more than 1,600 very different circumstances, combinations of talents, and aspirations.
Now that you are here, I cannot tell you what to choose, only that choosing is unavoidable. However, I should like to make a very few suggestions about how to think about making choices.
First, not choosing is in itself a choice. In some circumstances, like not voting, that often means abdicating the choice to others. At a university, abdication is seldom possible because in many circumstances we leave you no choice but to make a choice. Not making choices at college more often means delaying a choice or scattering attention across too many activities and thus depriving yourself of the pleasure that comes from pursuing some activity with intensity and in depth. Less is often more.
Having said that, I should like to demonstrate the ambiguity that is involved in the task of making choices and urge you not to choose too early. Robert Oppenheimer, the great physicist, in 1932 wrote to his younger brother, who seemed to be settling on a particular course of study: "But let me urge you with every earnestness to keep an open mind: to cultivate a disinterested and catholic interest in every intellectual discipline, and in the non-academic excellences of the world, so that you may not lose that freshness of mind from which alone the life of the mind derives, and that your choice, whatever it be, of work to do, may be a real choice, and one reasonably free." I could not agree more.
I recently have been reading essays on the subject of making choices by some of your predecessors from last year. I should like to quote from two of them.
The first is from Marcella, a student who thought upon arrival she knew exactly what to do at the university.
Although I entered Stanford an undeclared major, I had relatively clear goals in mind. First Stanford, majoring in something practical like economics; then [Law School]; then practicing law until I was old enough for the White House. . . . This rigid mindset did not prepare me for college. I had already planned my classes for the next four years, without any concept of whether or not the subject material even appealed to me. This had a great deal to do with the fact that my family and I had no idea what one does at a major university.
Toward the end of her freshmen year, Marcella wrote: "My stereotypical notions of success, brought on by own ignorance, [have] faded." At that time, she was contemplating Comparative Literature.
My second quote is from Greg whose original position was the opposite of Marcella's. Greg came without any idea what he wanted to do.
When I arrived at Stanford, my academic plans were nebulous and wide-ranging. When my dorm-mates asked me that all-encompassing question "So, are you a fuzzie or a techie?" - I could only respond, "Yes." In high school, I loved learning more than I loved any one subject, and I knew that would make matters difficult once I arrived at a place with so many possibilities and so little time. . . . Now I'm considering a double major in International Relations and Computer Science, but I'm almost certain that I'll change again several times in the course of my undergraduate career. In the most important sense, though my goals have remained constant. I'm still committed whole-heartedly to wresting from my Stanford years every drop of experience and learning they offer me.
Unless Greg becomes that legendary figure - a Methuselah living for hundreds of years, he will actually not succeed in his endeavor, since Stanford offers too many experiences and too much learning to capture in a few years. However, if Greg were to remember the auxiliary verb "can," his plan is doable: he should be committed to wrest from Stanford every drop that it offers and that he can wrest. The bounds set by can are another reminder of the need to make some choices.
The very concept of choice suggests deliberateness, a "real choice," as Robert Oppenheimer said. For that you do need a foundation in learning and experience. In order to acquire that foundation, you must make one other choice: You must seize the initiative, and seek out the range of opportunities that Stanford has to offer across the entire spectrum of a full-blown university. And you must participate. Let me quote from a third Stanford sophomore, reflecting on her freshman experience. Amy writes:
The word that comes to my mind after my first week of discussion sections at Stanford is intimidation. I felt that everyone was more intelligent than I. I thought that any input I could offer would pale in comparison to the profound statements of my classmates. I spent the first few weeks of autumn quarter trying to gather up courage to participate in discussions. Soon I realized that my insecurities were unfounded and that my lack of participation in section prevented me from forming my own ideas. I gradually became more involved in discussions and found that the more I contributed to a section the more valuable it became.
Indeed! The quality of your experience and your choices depends on your active participation in the unceasing process of inquiry.
There are so many things to consider about the subject of making choices at a university that I cannot even scratch the surface. The main conundrum you face is this: In order to make the right choices, you have to search widely, while keeping in mind that - measured by the quality and intensity of your experiences and the sense of balance in your lives - less may be more.
Finally, it behooves all of us to maintain a sense of modesty about the deliberateness of our choices. Do not worry yourselves to death about getting everything just right! There is much you can do, but, in the end, as the saying goes, you can only do so much. The French Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne in his famous essay "On the Art of Discussion" expressed this sense of modesty forcefully. I quote: "[Even] our wisdom and deliberation for the most part follow the lead of chance. My will and my reasoning are stirred this way and that. And there are many of these movements that are directed without me. My reason is daily subject to incitements and agitations which are due to chance." This is putting it too forcefully for my taste, but there can be no doubt that serendipity will play a role in your choices, as it certainly has in mine throughout my life.
If you find Montaigne's notion of chance worrisome, let me restate the point in a highly positive manner by quoting the poet Goethe. He once wrote: "We derive great benefit from lively and frank associations with educated people. A nod, a word, a warning, encouragement, timely opposition are often capable of changing our lives." Deliberateness and serendipity will continue to be dialectical elements of your lives.
Stanford University, for the most part, is a very deliberate institution, especially in relation to such matters as the curriculum and academic programs we have designed for you. For its part, it has greatly benefited from deliberate commitment, handed down from one generation of faculty, one generation of students, and one generation of alumni to the next. Now you are the "next," the new chapter in our history and the last chapter that will be completed in this millennium.
It is my custom to write a letter every summer to graduates and friends of Stanford in which I report about the university. And while I do write other letters in which I ask for financial support of Stanford, the "Summer Letter" does not. This year's letter engendered many responses. Among them was one from alumni parents of the class of 2000 who, I assume, are here this morning and who will recognize what they wrote. I quote:
We appreciate your letter for two reasons. It told us what was coming down the pike, and . . . it did not ask for money. The latter was especially well received at this moment in that we are getting ready to mortgage the house, sell the dog, rent out the cat and take in boarders in the basement in order that our daughter will obtain a "Stanford education." Actually, we are immensely proud, and we really aren't going to rent out the cat.
I appreciated the sentiment, though I admit that I would have been curious to hear more about cat rental. When my daughter owned a cat, we never succeeded in renting him out on even a short-term basis. Instead, we had to rent people to take the cat. Be that as it may. I should like to emphasize that Stanford fully appreciates how hard pressed many of you are in financing the education of your children. This despite the fact that tuition has never in the past covered, nor does it cover now, the full cost of a college education.
The rest of that cost is covered by many of your predecessors, who have felt and presently feel a moral obligation to help you and future generations obtain the benefits that come from the pursuit of knowledge. Stanford is flourishing because of this continuing commitment of alumni, friends, faculty, students, trustees, and parents. One day, Stanford will therefore call on you, too, to make another choice, to display the same sense of moral obligation that others now show on your behalf in order to enable the university to do the work of education and research for future generations.
Stanford's history stretches back more than 100 previous entering classes and more than 100 years. By comparison with other universities, 100 years does not seem long. Some European universities date almost to the beginning of the second millennium while Stanford was founded towards its end. I submit that what we lack in antiquity, we more than make up for in the intensity of commitment and tradition.
Stanford's motto, "The wind of freedom blows" (Die Luft der Freiheit weht), was chosen by David Starr Jordan, our first president, after he encountered the phrase in a biography of Ulrich von Hutten, a humanist who had lived from 1488 until 1523 and who, in the course of the 19th century, had captured the public imagination as an early fighter for freedom. In his own student days, at the height of the Renaissance, Hutten made an enthusiastic statement about the search to know. He wrote in a letter to a fellow humanist: "It is a pleasure to live. . . . Studies blossom and the minds move." I wish that you may fully experience the pleasures that come from studies blossoming and minds moving.
Welcome to the Farm, class of 2000!