131st Commencement Address

Cornell University

Chairman Tanner, members of the Board of Trustees, faculty and staff, family and friends of the graduates, and most of all, members of the Class of 1999 and candidates for advanced degrees: Welcome to Cornell's final commencement of the 1900's! This is indeed an epoch-making event.

I want to begin today by saying that I feel a personal affinity for the Class of 1999. We started as freshmen together in the fall of 1995, and we have survived four years more or less intact. Most of you have more hair left than I do, but, on the other hand, I'm still taller than the vast majority of you. It is safe to say that Cornell has had a significant influence on all of us, an influence that will endure for the rest of our lives. It is, then, worth our while to inquire into the nature of this place so that we can begin to understand the meaning it holds for each of us.

It is hard to capture the essence of most large universities: they tend not to have distinct personalities. They are impersonal, indifferent, concerned with simply credentialing rather than forming individual students. Cornell, despite its size, is anything but a colorless place. This is a place of imagination, of ingenuity, of creativity. It is an elite university, but it is not elitist. There is an anti-establishment spirit here that is innovative, iconoclastic and distinctively Cornellian.

When I think of the Cornell spirit, I think of the fire-breathing, undulating dragon that embodies both literally and figuratively the creative talents of freshman architecture students. The dragon tradition started in 1901, and it still succeeds in drawing most of the campus to its snaking route from Rand Hall to the Engineering Quad where it faces the taunts and snowballs of Cornell engineers before coming to its glorious end in a conflagration on the Arts Quad.

When I think of the Cornell spirit, I think of the National Science Foundation's comment when it renewed its support of the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) accelerator: that the Cornell accelerator has produced more scientific papers for less money than any other facility in the country. The agency's funding for CESR represents about 3 percent of the total dollars spent on the national particle physics program, but experiments at CESR have accounted for about 18 percent of the papers on experimental particle physics published in the last three years. Cornell researchers have achieved that high level of efficiency because of the ingenuity they bring to their work and I know that the $88 million that NSF will provide to the facility over the next five years will be well spent.

When I think of the Cornell spirit, I think of the 200-inch Hale Telescope atop California's Mount Palomar, on which Cornell astronomers faculty, graduate students and undergraduates have secured 25 percent of the observing time. One night in every four at Palomar is a Cornell night, and it has been that way for a decade. Cornell research at Palomar has produced two dozen Ph.D. dissertations, and it led, in the fall of 1997, to the discovery of two new moons of Uranus by Professors Philip Nicholson and Joseph Burns. I note with pleasure that the new moons will be named Caliban and Sycorax, after characters in Shakespeare's The Tempest.

When I think of the Cornell spirit, I think of the pumpkin that appeared mysteriously and dramatically atop McGraw Tower a year and a half ago. Only Cornellians could pull off a feat like that with such skill and secrecy that the perpetrators still have not been identified though we have a few ideas. And only Cornellians could turn a successful prank into a dynamic learning opportunity inventing a contest to determine exactly what the large orange object was and implementing it through strategies that did not allow the investigators to leave the ground.

Who gives Cornell this character, this inventiveness, this daring unpredictability? Some of it comes from the faculty, who evince remarkable originality across a wide spectrum of fields.

As Carl Becker wrote in his famous essay on "Freedom and Responsibility": "Mr. Cornell desired to found an institution in which any person could study any subject. Mr. White wished to found a center of learning where mature scholars and men of the world, emancipated from the clerical tradition and inspired by the scientific idea, could pursue their studies uninhibited by the cluttered routine or the petty preoccupations of the conventional cloistered academic life."

From the first, the university put its faith in people not in methods and it assembled here in Ithaca, from the academic and non-academic worlds, a group of extraordinary professors, in Becker's words, "highly individualized, as colorful, as disconcertingly original and amiably eccentric . . . as ever got together for the launching of a new educational venture." That spirit endures to this day.

It was the Cornell brand of originality that earned Professors David Lee and Robert Richardson the Nobel Prize in Physics in your sophomore year. Their discovery of superfluid helium-3 transformed theoretical and experimental research in low temperature physics, and its impact is still being felt today in areas from medicine, where it has application to nuclear magnetic resonance probes, to the behavior of rotating neutron stars.

It is Cornell's unusual sense of enterprise that has made us one of the world's centers for the study of Mozart and for playing his work on the fortepiano and other period instruments. Our reputation is so strong, in fact, that at a conference in New Zealand recently someone stood up and declared that there were only two places in the world for the study of Mozart London and Ithaca, New York. Professors Malcolm Bilson, Neal Zaslaw, James Webster, and John Hsu are among the reasons for that.

The faculty's highly individualized character and Cornell's unique stamp come through in other places too: You can find it in Prof. Mary Beth Norton's new book on the Salem witch trials, about which those of you who are Ph.D. candidates heard at yesterday's ceremony, and for which Cornell senior Molly Warsh did some of the background research. You can see it in Prof. John Henderson's archeological work in Honduras, which has linked the longevity of an ancient village there spanning 3,000 years from roughly 2000 B.C. to A.D. 1000 to its ability to produce good chocolate. Many of you experienced Cornell's idiosyncratic character in Prof. George Hudler's plant pathology course, "Magical Mushrooms, Mischievous Molds." More than 2,000 undergraduates have taken this course over the past decade, and it has earned Prof. Hudler both a Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching and a feature article in Rolling Stone. Or you may have taken "Art, Archaeology and Analysis" or "A to the Third," as it is affectionately known where the regular teaching staff includes one physicist, three geologists and a paleontologist, two librarians, a vision physiologist, one Renaissance art historian, an archaeologist, a dendrochronologist and a papermaker, all of whom explore the relationship of materials science to the arts. At no other university in the world can you find this unique mixture of intellectual interests both theoretical and applied that inform both teaching and research.

"A little wild, at times," Becker called the Cornell temper. It incorporates "some quality in it that is native to these states, some pungent tang of the soil, some acrid smell of the frontier and the open spaces something of the genuine American be-damned-to-you attitude." A half-century later, that is still an apt description of Cornell.

The distinctive character of Cornell is augmented by the distinguished visitors who come to the campus with remarkable regularity. During the past year alone, we have had lectures and classroom visits by Toni Morrison, Jane Goodall and John Cleese all of whom were here (and will be here again) as Andrew D. White Professors-at-Large. Dave Matthews and Wynton Marsalis both filled Bailey Hall, and their respective performances were so compelling that you could ignore the uncomfortable seats. I could not, of course; I don't fit in those seats! Sen. George Mitchell was our Bartels Lecturer in 1996, shortly before he led the peace agreement in Northern Ireland. That distinguished roster of visitors has been capped this weekend by Sandy Berger, the National Security Advisor, member of the Cornell Class of 1967 and father of one of your classmates, and by Harold Bloom, a 1951 Cornell graduate who is now Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, Berg Professor of English at NYU, and a prominent scholar and defender of the Western literary canon. These visitors bring high intellect and challenging ideas to Cornell; they augment the wealth of cultural and intellectual resources that are here every day.

But I submit that the essence of Cornell's character its distinctive blend of entrepreneurial spirit and intellectual daring comes from its students. It comes from YOU. During your time on campus, you have helped define the character of Cornell by your independence, your ingenuity, and the sheer energy you bring to everything you do. In fact, long before Elizabeth and I heard you cheering at our first hockey game or saw fish in Harvard's goal, we knew we weren't in Iowa any more. You bring an original quality that makes Cornell unique among American universities.

I must admit that there have been a few days in the past four years when I wished you were a little less original, slightly less energetic I am over 50 after all. Nonetheless, you awakened in all of us a concern for your concerns, from degradation of the environment to the exploitation of sweatshop labor around the world. You have deepened our awareness of current issues, and you have made Cornell a global community in the very best sense.

Globalism has become more feasible than ever, thanks to the growth in modern communications, especially through the Internet. You've heard the line: "I once had a life; now I have a computer and a modem." Even if you don't watch David Letterman, you probably have your own "top-ten" list of ways to tell if computers are taking over your life. But the number one way you can tell that computers have taken over your life is if you decide to stay in college after graduation for the free Internet access.

None of you are that far gone I hope but you have put your computer skills to use in new and creative ways in the classroom and beyond, and I won't be surprised if there are among you graduates who will create the next generation of Internet companies.

Those of you who took the Small Business Management Workshop, co-taught by Prof. Deborah Streeter and Senior Lecturer Marge Hubbert last fall, already have experience as entrepreneurs. You worked with local companies to solve their business problems by combining the theoretical and applied knowledge you had gained during your time at Cornell, and you gave your clients not just reports, but usable products such as a prototype Web site, or a list of key contacts for starting a strategic alliance, or marketing materials which they could put directly to use.

But you don't have to be a budding entrepreneur to have Cornell's entrepreneurial spirit. Cornell's enterprising spirit was very much in evidence, for example, at this year's Hotel Ezra Cornell, the tour de force for the Hotel School Class of '99, which true to its theme simmered with style. The Class of 1999 upheld the school's tradition, now 74 years young, that each HEC must be better than the one before.

our entrepreneurial spirit also emerged in the symposium on the Microsoft case and intellectual property rights organized by students from the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy.

You and your fellow students have given us another remarkably successful year in winning national and international fellowships: two Marshalls, a Churchill, four Goldwaters, three Udalls, a Hertz and a Fulbright Student Award among them. And for the 10th time in 11 years, Cornellians, including members of the Class of '99, won the regional College Bowl competition "the varsity sport of the mind."

You've given us impressive triumphs on the athletic fields. The softball team rolled over opponent after opponent this spring on its way to a 41-9 season that included an Ivy League championship. Wrestling won a share of the Ivy championship. Women's lacrosse went to the ECAC championship tournament this year; men's lacrosse finished second in the Ivy League and had a winning record in spite of a tough schedule.

Your talents as performers are extraordinary, and you put them to good use in Theatre Arts productions from "Twelfth Night," to "The Brecht Project," to the hilarious farce "A Flea in Her Ear," and in other forums as well.

You've had a record-setting senior class gift campaign, with 52 percent participation, and you've raised scholarship support so that future generations of students, no matter what their economic circumstances, can continue to attend Cornell.

And while some of you were relaxing on Florida's beaches or hurrying to job interviews during spring break, a contingent, led by a member of the Class of '99, traveled to the small mining town of Welch, West Virginia to work at the town's domestic abuse shelter. Another group, organized by graduate students in historic preservation and planning, worked during the break to stabilize the historic Commissioner's House on Ellis Island, with help from Cornell alumni. It was the first step toward what they hope will be a full-scale restoration of the building that served as home to medical personnel treating immigrants with contagious diseases just after the turn of the century. In keeping with our land grant mission, innovative service, like intellectual endeavor, is an integral part of Cornell.

From its inception, Cornell has combined theory and practice more successfully than other universities. This blending of the liberal and pragmatic arts is integral to Cornell's character. We believe, and have believed from 1865 when Cornell was founded, that it is essential not only to know what is right, but to act upon it.

Cornell's first President Andrew D. White laid down what he called the Permeating and Crowning Idea: "To develop the individual. . . , as a being intellectual, moral, and religious; and to bring the force of the individual to bear on society."

You, the Class of 1999, have continued and enlivened this Cornell tradition by your actions of the past four years. You have been, not passive recipients of the faculty's teaching, but active participants in the classroom, and then you have carried your ideas and your ideals beyond the classroom to the campus, the community, and the world at large. When moved, you have acted upon your feelings; when challenged, you have demonstrated on behalf of your beliefs. In thus speaking out for yourselves, you have become worthy heirs of earlier generations of Cornell students, and you have developed that individuality that marks Cornellians wherever they go.

The world you are about to enter needs the character you have developed at Cornell. Though this country has enjoyed in the past few years a remarkably vibrant and successful economy, we have suffered from an absence of public character. The ability to distinguish right from wrong, and then to act upon that knowledge, seems almost lost in a bygone era we can only dimly remember.

When you and I first arrived here, in the fall of 1995, Prof. Isaac Kramnick urged us to go to Eddy Gate in Collegetown and read the inscription carved in its stone. It says, "So enter that daily thou mayest become more learned and thoughtful."

Hold on to that thoughtfulness by which I mean deep thinking and reflection as you leave Cornell. In this age of pagers and cell phones, fax machines and the Internet, we prize speed and decisiveness; getting an answer and getting it fast has become the dominant characteristic of the information age. Taking the time for reflection. . . for deep thought about a complex issue. . . will stand you, and the rest of us, in better stead.

John Cleese made this point when he was on campus in February as A.D. White Professor-at-Large. Drawing inspiration from Guy Claxton's book Hare Brained, Tortoise Minded , Cleese described two opposing approaches to solving problems and generating creative ideas. The first is the hare brained approach data-based, action-oriented, logical, and fast. The hare brain approach works well for making incremental improvements, but it rarely leads to a major breakthrough or creative insight. The tortoise mind, on the other hand, takes an unconventional approach. It frequently seems to be wandering aimlessly, examining the problem for its own intrinsic interest, making unusual associations. It relies as much on intuition as on data, is slow, inefficient at least by hare brain standards. Yet it often produces more insightful and creative results along with some that are totally off the wall.

During your years here you have demonstrated that it is possible to be learned and thoughtful and yet action-oriented to think deeply and widely, but with a healthy irreverence for the established way of doing things. By combining these traits you have developed what Cornell calls "character." To paraphrase an Athenian I admire, let me say that I doubt that other universities can produce graduates, who, where they have only themselves to rely upon, are equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility, as Cornellians.

They say it's never safe to be nostalgic about something until there is absolutely no chance of its ever coming back. But I am, indeed, going to miss you. I hope you will come back regularly, not just to tell me what I'm doing wrong again but also to renew your ties to this great university on whose character you have left such an indelible mark.

Congratulations, Class of 1999!