VOL. 23, NO. 24	JUNE 12, 1998

Graduates Celebrate as their degrees are conferred during Commencement Day, May 20. Graduates of Columbia Business School, pictured here, are particularly enthusiastic.   At left, Maurice Sendak, the artist and writer, listens as President George Rupp and Provost Jonathan R. Cole, present his honorary degree.   Some of the Columbia folks who made the great day happen.

he images of Columbia’s 244th commencement were of pageantry and celebration but the message of the day was of peace, diversity and scholarship.

  Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, who was awarded an honorary degree, spoke at the Alumni Federation luncheon in Low Rotunda following commencement on May 20.

  “Today you honor not only me but the entire United Nations,” Annan said. “You honor the highest ideal that we hold in common—the ideal of universal peace. This ideal, like all ideals, reflects not only hope for human progress, but also the dread of human conflict.

  “The threats we face today cannot be defeated simply of in one fell swoop. They must be met with patience, determination, perseverance and a lasting commitment to progress.”

  In the same vein, President George Rupp in his commencement address asked the thousands of graduating students to respect diversity, cultivate critical learning and try deeply to understand how others see them.

  “The incapacity or unwillingness to grasp what is at stake from another vantage point is surely a salient feature of many of our conflicts,” he said.

  “In some of the conflicts within the United States today, the difficulty of respecting the position of others is excruciatingly evident—for example, in our debates over affirmative action and abortion.”

  The challenge of understanding and appreciating different perspectives is also a crucial dimension of international issues, he said.

  Rupp cautioned: “We may begin to take this world of instantaneous communication and ever more insistent integration into an international market economy to be the single culture that unifies the world. This tendency is suspect because it is uncritically triumphalist: it simply assumes that the highly individualistic, market-driven society that many Americans take for granted is universally attractive and acceptable.

  “To counter this tendency requires precisely the critical intelligence and the respect for diversity that characterize inquiry—both teaching and learning—in this University.”

  Columbia College salutatorian John Ng, also praised the value of diversity and finding one’s own path.

  Ng, a physics major headed to medical school at Harvard, told his classmates: “Some people say quantum physics is hard. I say pursuing a life in your own vision is even harder.”