Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, the superb President of UMBC
Dr. Scott A. Bass, Dean of the Graduate School
Mr. Zhengiian Li, President of the Graduate Student Association
Dr. Arthur Johnson, Provost
Dr. John Martello, Executive Director of the UMBC Shriver Center
Regent Professor Adam Yarmolinsky
All of today’s Graduates,
All the new Ph.D.s,
50 or more All the new M.A.s
All of those who taught them.
Congratulations! To every one of you. I have chosen a simple but rather unusual message for you today.
It’s just this: I wish I were you! Not because I wish I were young again, but because for the first time in 1000 years, the new century, the 21st Century, can be the first without cataclysmic war!!!
If the world is to enjoy peace for a long term, your generation is the one which has to achieve it.
Thomas Jefferson wrote many unforgettable words, but do you remember how he ended The Declaration of Independence? He wrote, “We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor”!! Let Jefferson be your guide for the great, new beginning that is today! Yes, the battle of ideologies, -- communism vs. democracy; colonialism vs. self-determination; fascism vs. freedom is over! But, the new movement, the new era, is yet to be defined! In my day, we entered the world with national, political, religious and social boundaries defined. Our challenge was only to win for our team! But you are called on to create new boundaries, new rules and, yes, whole new idea systems to capture and define the world!
Now then, in what will you believe? Allow me to challenge you, not to think of what you will do nor where you will go, but in what you will believe. Martin Luther King defined, for America and the world, the power of belief in the simple idea of equality and he brought it to life in the villages of 20th-century America. Now you must enter the arena with your beliefs -- beliefs for which you are willing to give your lives! Be you doctors or lawyers, teachers or technicians, parents or politicians, you must challenge the world with images and actions that jar the comfortable, make simple the complex, nurture the family and bring justice to people in our country and in every corner of the world.
I hope you think and believe in just such a way about Peace. Let peace be the new metaphor for your times. As a veteran of this Century of such tremendous antagonisms, I hope you will define the 21st Century as “The Century of Peace!”
The 20th Century, my Century, has been “The Slaughterhouse Century”. We have killed by far more human beings in this Century, My Century, than any Century in history!!! But you can change all that!
You do not have to know in advance exactly how to wage peace. We certainly did not know exactly how to organize and lead the Peace Corps. None of us knew what a Peace Corps was, specifically, or if it would work. But it has worked, and it is now headed to enlist 10,000 Volunteers. Then it should go to 20,000, 30,000, 40,000, even 50,000.
So let’s bring peace to our communities, too.
Almost six years ago, on the same campus where we celebrate your achievements today, your visionary President, Freeman Hrabowski, dedicated a Center to Service, -- The Shriver Center. The Mission of The Shriver Center is to focus the resources of the University, this University, on the problems of the City and to improve, in an intentional way, the human condition...to serve as a model for “the urban university engaged in community service”. The Shriver Center has united Baltimore’s public and private colleges and universities in the development of, academically based, community service. Over the last five years, more than 5,000 UMBC undergraduate and graduate students and 8,000 Center Consortium College and University students have been placed in community-based organization: The Center’s “Choice” Program has served over 5,000 of Maryland’s most troubled youth through around-the-clock intensive supervision and case management. These are just a few of the accomplishments of The Shriver Center.
Peace is for those who serve the least among us. Special Olympics has convinced me of that truth. In 30 years, Special Olympics has expanded from its start with 1,200 athletes in Chicago, to 1,250,000 athletes, all with mental retardation, in over 160 countries. No private-philanthropy has grown so fast and so effectively in the entire 20th Century. Never before in the history of the world has there been any comprehensive program for persons with mental retardation. Yet there are 250,000.000 human beings with mental retardation, alive, today, on earth.
Special Olympics arises from the genius of one woman, my wife of forty-six years, -- Eunice Kennedy Shriver! All of it costs less than one one-hundredth of the cost of just one nuclear submarine! That submarine will be useless in fifty years, even if it’s necessary today. But, athletes in Special Olympics today will be contributors to “A Peaceful Society”, worldwide into the second half of the 21st Century. They will be contributors to the peace throughout that time. They will open all human hearts. They will help to perfect all human society!
If one American woman could invent Special Olympics, what’s to stop you from exceeding her accomplishment? What is needed to do just that?
An open mind, a new spirit, an uninhibited personality, a heart sensitive to the needs of the least of our brothers and sisters and children, and the strength to follow your own vision...not, selfishly, for yourself, but for and with others.
Leaving UMBC today I hope each of you will be a peacemaker. No calling is higher, no calling is more needed. You are called on to be peacemakers in your families, in your neighborhoods, and in your workplaces. If we wish to eliminate weapons from the world, first we must get them out of our own hearts!!!
You have the chance to move peace away from the sideshow to center stage, to make peace not an issue, but the issue - to harness for your family, your community, and your world, the power of peace!
And I have one small word of advice because it is going to be tough: Break your mirrors!! Yes, Indeed -- shatter the glass! In our society that is so self-absorbed, Begin to look less at yourself and more at each other! Learn more about the face of your neighbor, and less about your own.
You’ll get more from being a peacemaker than a warrior! I’ve been both, so I speak from experience.
Be peacemakers of the community, and you and your family, will be happy!
You and your world will be the best ever. You and your families and your Nation will rejoice in your achievements. You will be acclaimed everywhere.
Nothing could be better!
