Dear Friends:
I have chosen a simple but rather unusual message for you. It’s just this: “I wish I were you!”, not because I wish I were young again, but because you are the best placed, and the most qualified, to make the 21st Century what it should be, a new unified, compassionate, courageous, and peaceful Century! That is not to say that someone over the age of 60, 70, or even 80, such as myself, could not contribute something meaningful to the world. Some of us old-timers maybe could make a difference. But you college graduates today are the ones I am counting on to start making a new and different World for tomorrow.
If the world is to enjoy peace and avoid war for a long time, your generation is the one which has to work to make that dream come true.
In my day our challenge was only to win victories just for our own country. And there were parts of the world, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Northern and Central Africa where battles then being fought were only to save one country threatened by greed from another. But, now in the world there will soon be many places you will be called on to establish new boundaries, new roles and new ideas in order to create a New World, intellectually, and bring it into existence politically.
Here, at this great University, you have benefited from an excellent educational process and superb teachers. Your student population is so diverse that you learn from one another as well as from professional teachers. You learn different languages, different histories, and different objectives. Your graduating class this year represents 46 nations and maybe a dozen languages. I recommend you maintain your friendships created here, and build upon new ideas, and new visions you have learned just by being students in the American University of Paris. Most of all, I hope your education and experience and your life here living with and talking with so many fellow students and teachers from so many nations will enable you and inspire you to create a “New World” in the 21st Century. But, I think you must seek to create a common humanity, rooted in a common existence both of which will help you to face successfully all world-wide problems.
I hope, therefore, when you leave this great University you will believe and adopt in your hearts and souls what Martin Luther King said: “You ought to believe in something in life, and believe that thing so fervently that you will stand up for it till the end of your days!”
