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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Remarks by J. Brady Anderson,
at the Fulbright College, University of Arkansas Commencement 2000
USAID Administrator
May 13, 2000
Good afternoon.
Graduates, parents, faculty of the University of Arkansas and the Fulbright College—I am very honored that you asked me to join you on this very special day.
Upon my own graduation from college I moved to Washington to work for Senator J. William Fulbright.
1967 was both an exciting and troubling time—the war in Vietnam filled our television screens and was uppermost on the minds of most Americans.
My friends and I knew our military draft notices would be in the mail within a few weeks of graduation.
America’s cities were in turmoil as African-Americans sought their rightful place in American society.
President Kennedy’s call to a new generation of Americans still rang in our ears, and many of us were filled with a determination to change the world for the better.
Among the small group of Arkansans in Washington that summer was a college student from Hot Springs who worked part-time for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Fulbright’s committee.
Each morning he would pick up the committee’s mail and come by our office because beside my desk was an electric letter opener. And we’d chat about the day’s events and our plans for that morning. Friendships begin that way don’t they?
So I can honestly say if it were not for Senator Fulbright and that electric letter opener I would not have met Bill Clinton and would not be standing before you today!
Another Arkansan I met that summer was Hoyt Purvis, whose role in helping to establish the Fulbright Institute of International Relations is recognized by all of us.
The Institute’s annual symposia focusing on international issues and the Middle Eastern Studies Program are reflections of the life of Senator Fulbright…a leader who was dedicated to “…bringing reason, justice, and humanity into the relations of men and nations.”
I am pleased to be here to honor the legacy of J. William Fulbright.
You know before I came here today a friend of mine gave me some advice, as good friends are prone to do:
He said, “The commencement speaker is sort of like the body at an Irish wake. They need you to have the ceremony, but no one expects you to say much.”
That’s good advice, so I promise I’ll be brief.
Let me start by congratulating the class of 2000—the first graduating class of this century. I should also apologize to all you parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and friends up there.
Because today I’m not talking to you. Today I want to talk to you graduates. This is your day and the things I have to say I want to say them to you.
For four long years you’ve spent hours at Mullins Library studying the life cycles of the Mexican Fruit Fly.
You have spent days analyzing the importance of the Battle of Dunkirk.
You have compared and contrasted the symbolism in “The Heart of Darkness” and “Apocalypse Now.”
And so, to the graduating class of 2000—congratulations on a job well done.
So now you are prepared, but prepared for what?
Senator Fulbright once said that “We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception, and there is no way of doing that except through education."
Education gives us the key to understanding, as Kant said, “…the starry skies above and the moral law within.”
Starting today—or tomorrow (you can take the rest of the day off)—you will be called on to use what you have learned, not only for your own benefit, but for those around you.
I challenge you to use your knowledge and training to expand the boundaries of your mind and your heart, and to make a difference—in your neighborhood, in your community and, most particularly, in the world beyond our borders.
You will be following in the footsteps of Vince Foster, Mack McLarty, Rodney Slater and Diane Blair.
Get involved. Get your hands dirty.
Today, you are not citizens just of the United States of America. I’m sure you know that better than I do because you have chosen to pursue degrees in the liberal arts and sciences that have prepared you to be, like Senator Fulbright, citizens of an ever shrinking world.
Today, events in far away places like Jakarta, Indonesia or Lagos, Nigeria have profound implications even for small towns like my hometown of Helena.
I know this first-hand. As an Arkansan born-and-bred , I love this state dearly.
I have also had the privilege of living and working in England, Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Many of you have studied abroad, you too have struggled with foreign languages and adapted to alien cultures.
Thomas Friedman, the very insightful New York Times foreign affairs correspondent, once told me that “Globalization is not a choice it is a fact!”
When ideas and capital can cross international boundaries with the stroke of the enter key and when the democratization of technology allows a student in the Philippines to inflict $9 billion in damage with a computer virus, we know the world has become a very small place.
Right now, as head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, I have the honor to direct the United States’ foreign aid program.
For 40 years the United States has provided foreign aid to developing countries. We do it because it helps our economy and because it makes the world a safer place. We do it because it is an investment in America, and good for American businesses.
But we also do it because it is the right thing to do.
I believe one of the things that makes America unique is that we want to help our neighbors—whether they live across the river or across the ocean.
When we see pictures of starving children or sick mothers, we want to help. We are driven to care—by our consciences and by our faith.
Foreign aid doesn’t cost as much as you might think. For less than one-half of one percent of the federal budget—less than one-half of one penny for every dollar the federal government spends—we are fighting AIDS and TB in Africa and Asia;
We are helping build market economies in Eastern Europe and we are helping brave leaders like Presidents Wahid of Indonesia and Obasanjo of Nigeria make the first cautious steps in building multiparty democracies with respect for human rights.
We do it, as I said, because it’s right. But the fact is, we can’t afford not to.
We can’t afford to let international bankers and foreign policy experts be the only ones that pay attention to events around the world.
Because today, we all have a stake in the global economy.
As the world’s richest and most powerful country we benefit the most when countries like Mozambique, in East Africa, and Ukraine, in Eastern Europe, remain stable, secure, and at peace.
A stable, more peaceful world means that our men and women in uniform are less likely to be called to fight. It is not surprising that no two democracies have ever fought a war with each other. Economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen had observed that no functioning democracy has ever suffered a famine.
In the 21st century, the success or failure of American business, and the jobs they generate, will increasingly depend on an expanding and stable economic system.
Foreign aid helps America’s businesses compete in this system by promoting stability and prosperity in the world— more prosperous citizens in India or Brazil mean more consumers for American products and services.
Thousands of American companies such as CocaCola and Disney earn more in foreign countries than they do in the United States!
There are other reasons to care about what goes on around the world. Some of the biggest threats we face today are threats that can’t be contained within national borders—like crime, drugs, terrorism and disease.
The Clinton Administration has formally designated AIDS as a threat to U.S. national security—because AIDS is a disease so devastating that it could actually topple foreign governments, touch off ethnic wars and undo decades of progress in developing countries around the world.
Not since the bubonic plague has any one disease threatened both the stability of so many nation-states and the health and well-being of the people that live in them. AIDS, like many other diseases, knows no borders.
Let me give you another example of a problem that crosses national borders: terrorism.
In 1998, one individual—Osama Bin Laden—launched an attack against Americans, and bombed two embassies in East Africa, including the embassy in Tanzania, where I served as Ambassador for three years.
I lost many good friends and colleagues in that one horrific act of terrorism.
As the Cold War fades into distant memory and technology spreads to every corner of the world, the United States will have to deal with more terrorists like Bin Laden.
It is therefore in our best interests to stop them before they start their career of terror. We can’t afford to look the other way.
Foreign aid can help stop terrorism before it starts by expanding opportunity for people—helping provide them with a basic education, for example, or helping them start their own businesses with a very small loan.
This gives people a stake in their communities, and in the world—and so they are less likely to try and destroy it.
I mention these things not to try to frighten you or to brag about what my agency does but to give you a sense of the opportunities and challenges that face you.
Allow me to get a little corny for a moment—commencement day, after all, comes around only once or twice in your life.
From where you sit, with the new century stretched before you like a blank canvas, you have every opportunity not just to do well, but to do good.
The choices you make will influence the lives of many people, not only those of your friends and family, but also those around the world. What we do, what I do, what you do will make a difference.
We eliminated smallpox from the face of the earth and polio is soon to follow. More people live in free societies today than at any time in our history.
But these successes did not just happen on their own. They require commitment, vision and perseverance by men and women like you.
I urge you to use that empathy Senator Fulbright spoke of to change what’s wrong and to build on what’s right.
You will travel to other countries. Some of you will live there. But every one of you will be affected by events in far away places. Help bring the world closer together not just through technology, but through human understanding.
For those of you interested in pursuing a career in public leadership, I would offer the following advice: the goal of public service should not be the pursuit of power, but of knowledge and understanding.
Senator Fulbright believed that knowledge promotes tolerance and understanding among peoples. Nothing is more needed today as the tragedies in Sierra Leone, Kosovo and Chechnya so graphically demonstrate.
This is crucial precisely because we live in a time of bewildering changes and corrosive cultural and ethnic conflicts, which are all the more frightening because of our limited understanding of them.
Our challenge is to comprehend the series of profound structural changes occurring within our society and our world.
Humankind and our institutions are constantly challenged by an ever changing, increasingly complex world. We have never really been able to achieve mastery over the great historical forces that continue to shape and change our world.
Yet it is important for us to cultivate reflection, to attempt to understand and, where possible, master the forces that buffet us and bring such uncertainty into our lives.
So let me leave you with one last wish: I wish for you a life spun with many different threads, so that one day, when you look back on your experiences, you will find a tapestry as complex and as beautiful as you are. And this will be your greatest success of all.
Graduates of the class of 2000, congratulations—and God bless each and every one of you.
This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
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Last Updated on: July 12, 2001 |
