For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
May 17, 2004
Dr. Rice Speaks at Vanderbilt
Remarks by the National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice
May 13, 2004
As Delivered
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you
very much. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for this wonderful
honor. It's terrific to be here in Nashville.
The academic in me is pleased to be at a university like
Vanderbilt, respected around the world.
The sports fan in me is thrilled to be at the home of the
Commodores, the 2004 SEC champions in women's basketball and golf, home
of two basketball teams that made it to this year's Sweet 16, and a
university whose football team is going to improve. I guarantee it.
The Southerner in me is happy to be here, a little closer to my
roots in this region that has changed so much so quickly.
To Gordon Gee, the Chancellor of the University, thank you very
much for having me here. Martha Ingram, the chairman of the Board of
Trustees, the faculty and staff, distinguished alumni and guests,
family and friends and especially the graduates of 2004.
It's been many years since my undergraduate commencement at the
University of Denver. I remember almost everything about it'the pride
of my family, the closeness I felt to my classmates and friends, the
thrill that comes with reaching an important goal.
I do not, however, remember a single word that the commencement
speaker said and you won't either, and I promise not to take it
personally. On this day, you can be forgiven for feeling a little
restless and a little proud. For many of you, earning a great degree
from this great university represents a mark of the most substantial
accomplishment of your lives thus far. And being Commodores, I'm sure
it's not going to be the last.
You are here because you worked hard. You are here because you
value education. You are here because this university saw in you the
raw potential that is now being realized.
But let's be very clear. Merit alone did not see you to this day.
There are many people in this country, many from your hometown, some
even from your own high school, who are just as intelligent, just as
hard-working, and just as deserving, but for whatever reason, they
didn't have that one teacher that inspired them, or parents who made it
possible, and they didn't enjoy the opportunities that came your way.
Don't ever forget that when you leave here. Don't ever forget that
just because you deserve something it doesn't mean that you'll
necessarily get it. And don't ever assume that just because you got
something, it meant that you deserved it.
Commencement is an opportunity to graduate to humility. Also never
forget the struggles and the sacrifices of the generations of people
who came before you -- people who built this university, who
strengthened this nation and made possible the limitless opportunities
that you now enjoy.
If you look closely around you at the crowd of faces, it's a very
different crowd than you would have seen even 50 years ago. Represented
among us today are students and faculty of both genders, all races,
numerous ethnicities, every major religion and many different
nationalities. This diversity is a credit to this school, a great
advantage to each and every one of you, and an important affirmation
throughout the world that multi-ethnic democracy can work.
It is often said that diversity is one of our nation's greatest
strengths, but too rarely do we take the time to think what that means.
I believe the answer is very simple. America and Americans are willing
to embrace all that is good in the world, in art and science and
culture, while maintaining the basic principles of American liberty, as
enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
In this way, our system of government and our society are
constantly renewing and improving themselves. All Americans who embrace
the principles of those documents find in them a common refuge and are
bound together in a common devotion.
A first generation American has as much claim to the legacy of
Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln as those who can trace their roots to
the Mayflower.
But we know that it was not always that way and we know that we
have still further to go. We know how difficult our nation's journey
has been, how much sacrifice it has entailed, and I want to tell you
from firsthand experience, it hasn't been easy.
I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, before the Civil Rights movement
-- a place that was once described, with no exaggeration, as the most
thoroughly segregated city in the country. I know what it means to
hold dreams and aspirations when half your neighbors think you are
incapable of, or uninterested in, anything better.
I know what it's like to live with segregation in an atmosphere of
hostility, and contempt, and cold stares, and the ever-present threat
of violence, a threat that sometimes erupted into the real thing.
I remembered the bombing of that Sunday school at 16th Street
Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. I did not see it happen, but I
heard it happen and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my
father's church. It is a sound that I will never forget, that will
forever reverberate in my ears. That bomb took the lives of four young
girls, including my friend and playmate Denise McNair. The crime was
calculated, not random. It was meant to suck the hope out of young
lives, bury their aspirations, and ensure that old fears would be
propelled forward into the next generation.
But those fears were not propelled forward. Those terrorists
failed. They failed because of the poverty of their vision?a vision of
hate, and inequality, and the primacy of difference. And they failed
because of the courage and sacrifice of all who suffered and struggled
for Civil Rights. Those brave men and women asked America to make a
choice, between living up to our founding ideas or perpetuating state
sanctioned racism.
Next week marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's
decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education. Fifty years ago, before
the Brown decision, there was literally no interracial contact in
Southern schools. Long after Brown, though, that segregation
persisted. You may find this hard to believe, but I started school in
1960. I did not have a single white classmate and I had one white
teacher until we moved to Denver, Colorado in 1968.
I remember too, my first trip to Nashville. I was seven or so years
old and we traveled here to Fisk University to hear the Fisk Jubilee
Singers. There would have been no thought of dinner in a restaurant or
lodging in a hotel. No, the American South was still quite separate
and quite unequal.
But thanks to the courage of many -- some famous, some whom history
will never record -- America had a second founding, and in that second
founding the old South passed away.
You can see it in my old hometown of Birmingham that now confronts
squarely its past even as it embraces its future. You can see it here
in Nashville, with its nationally influential healthcare and music
industries, its economic growth, and its diverse neighborhoods. America
is finally becoming whole.
Because America is now closer to its ideals, your birthright, your
inheritance is a freer, more just, strong, confident and wealthy nation
in which you can make your way according to your talents and your
dreams.
That privilege is enhanced immensely by the access to higher
education that you have had here. Education is transforming. I first
learned of the transformation of higher education by the stories of my
paternal grandfather. He died before I was born, but he was a huge
figure in our lives.
Granddaddy Rice was a sharecropper's son in Ewtah, Alabama, and one
day he decided he was going to get book learning, so he asked in the
parlance of the day how a colored man might get to college. And they
told him about 50 miles down the road there was this little
Presbyterian college called Stillman College and if he would go there
he could get a college education.
So he saved up his cotton and he took off for Tuscaloosa and he
finished his first year of college. And they said, "Now how are you
going to pay for your second year?" He said, "Well, I'm out of cotton."
They said "You're out of luck, you'll have to leave Stillman." And so
he said, "Well, how are those boys going to school?" And they said,
"Well, you see they have what's called a scholarship, and if you wanted
to be a Presbyterian minister then you could have a scholarship too."
And my grandfather said, "Well, you know, that's just what I had in
mind." And my family has been Presbyterian and college-educated ever
since.
Now with that privilege of higher education in hand, you also have
certain obligations. The first is to be optimistic. The world you live
in today, this world in which it is possible for you to attend a great
university like Vanderbilt and then go on to whatever you will do?law
school or medical school or whatever career you choose'that world was
built by optimists not pessimists. And the people who built it for you
did not sacrifice and sweat so that you would wallow in cynicism. Your
parents and your families and your teachers and your neighbors expect
better.
With all that you have leaned and all that you've been given, you
have no excuse to be pessimists. You should know that progress is not
only possible, but an unfolding story in which you have an obligation
to play a part.
Second, you have an obligation to work to close the cultural gaps
that divide our nation and our world. The intellectual foundation of
terrorism, like the intellectual foundation of slavery and segregation,
rests on arbitrarily dividing human beings into friends and enemies,
even into human and non-human. The perpetrators of September 11th were
people who believed that difference was a license to kill. Because the
education you have had has privileged you to be with those who are
unlike you, you know better than most that difference is not a source
of fear but an opportunity to learn.
Your third obligation is to work to further the same democratic
progress here and abroad that has made your own opportunities possible.
All people are bound together by several common desires. Never make the
mistake of assuming that some people do not share your desire to live
freely'to think and believe as you would like to see fit, to raise a
family and educate children, boys and girls. Never make the mistake of
assuming that some people do not desire the freedom to chart their own
course in life.
In my professional life, I have listened as some explained why
Russians would never embrace freedom, that military dictatorship would
always be a way of life in Latin America, that Asian values were
incompatible with democracy, and that tyranny, corruption and one-party
rule would always dominate Africa.
Today we hear these same doubts about the possibility of freedom in
the Middle East. We have to reject those doubts. Knowing what we know
about the difficulties of our own history, knowing the history of
Alabama and Mississippi and Tennessee, we should be humble in singing
freedom's praise, but our voice should never waiver in speaking out on
the side of those who seek freedom. And we should never indulge in the
condescending voices that allege that some people are not interested in
freedom, or aren't ready for freedom's responsibility. That view was
wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it's wrong in 2004 in Baghdad.
The need for idealists eager to do the hard, yet necessary, work of
furthering peace and justice and democracy has never been greater, but
neither has the opportunity to do good and change the world. With all
of the images of troops and tanks and military operations, it's hard to
remember that this is primarily a war of ideas, not armies. It will be
won by visionaries who can look past the moment to see a world in which
freedom is not only the birthright of all but a reality for all and who
will work to make that day come true.
I hope that some of you will consider working for this progress in
one of the components of our national security, in the foreign service
or in the military or in public diplomacy or in the Peace Corps. But
whatever you choose to do, you have one other obligation and that is to
yourself. Do it with passion.
If you've not yet found your passion, keep searching. You never
know when it will find you.
The Chancellor was nice enough to say that I once had a chance at a
great career in concert music. Well, of a sort. I was pretty good, but
I realized I wasn't great. And I thought, I'm going to end up teaching
13-year-olds to murder Beethoven, or playing piano bars someplace or
playing at Nordstrom?I'm not going to play Carnegie Hall. And I did
find a passion, and it happened to be Russia.
What was a nice girl from Birmingham doing studying Russia? Well,
it has changed my life?my life has never been the same. And when you
find your passion, not just what you like to do but that which makes
you want to get up every morning, you too will have a life-changing
experience.
You now join the thin ranks of those throughout the world
privileged to have an education. It is a club that you may never quit,
and from which you can never be expelled. And membership confers
certain responsibilities.
You must satisfy the obligations of education, and the obligations
of having been born into a world of freedom. Liberty is forgiving of
many failings, but it forgives neither apathy nor neglect. Its
continued health makes demands on us all, and its greatest victories
are won over decades.
It took America centuries to get where we are today, a fact that
should make us humble as well as hopeful. When the founding fathers
said, "We the People," they didn't mean me. My ancestors were
considered three-fifths of a man. But we've made great strides. Our
democracy is still a work in progress, not a finished product. The hard
work begins anew each day and there is plenty of work to do.
Congratulations. Roll up your sleeves. And let the work begin.
Thank you.
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