Speeches & Publications

Student Convocation

Welcome, Jayhawks. This is a special time of the year, when KU is restored and reinvigorated by the arrival of 4,000 or so freshmen filled with new ideas, high anticipation and (let's be honest about it) a modest amount of stark fear.

You have gone through Hawk Week and become true Jayhawks. There hasn't been a physical change. Nobody's nose has started to harden and take on the appearance of a yellow beak. Any itching around your ribs or shoulders is probably not the growth of Jayhawk wings. In fact, it is probably something else: the power of suggestion, or the need for a change of bed sheets.

So there are no physical changes in becoming a Jayhawk.

But what does it mean? To become a Jayhawk?

It means first and foremost that you have made a very good decision. You have decided to invest the next four to six years of your life, and $40,000 to $50,000 dollars or so, into acquiring a Jayhawk education. That is an investment that will pay a lifetime of dividends.

It means that you will attend, and graduate from, one of the very best universities in the U.S., a school with a beautiful campus and remarkable students, an outstanding staff and a faculty internationally recognized for its learning.

It is true that you are not the first to make this Jayhawk decision. In fact, people have been making this decision since 1865, and we have graduated hundreds of thousands of Jayhawks.

But this does not make you any less unique, and should provide some reassurance. You are not alone. You are part of a long tradition. Others have had the same feelings that you have right now, and they can testify to the rightness of your Jayhawk decision. The careers of Jayhawks who came before you illustrate the value of a KU education.

Beginning tonight, you join them to become part of KU's collective story, a narrative of excellence through history and across the globe.

The Jayhawk story can be simply stated: I came, I studied, I learned. Because I learned, I dreamed. I graduated and I found that wherever my dreams took me, to London or Louisville, to Cairo or Kazakhstan or Kansas City, to Paris or Peking, I could compete with anyone else in the world.

Why is KU a good decision? Because you have chosen a path that we know can lead to the fulfillment of those dreams. There are plenty of examples for you from those who have come before. For example:

Linda Zarda Cook — CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, Europe, earned her bachelor of science from KU in petroleum engineering in 1980.

Steve Hawley — a Salina native who earned a bachelor's degree in physics and astronomy in 1973; he became a NASA astronaut and went into space to fix the Hubbell telescope so that the rest of us can see through the telescope what he saw in person.

Phil Anschutz — a Great Bend native who grew up in Hays, earned his bachelor's in business in 1961. He purchased the Union Pacific railroad, and used the traintrack right-of-way to lay fiber-optic cable and founded Qwest Communications.

Alan Mulally — a Lawrence native, is now CEO, of Boeing's Commercial Aircraft division. He earned his B.S. in aerospace engineering in 1968 and his master's from KU in 1969.

B.H. (Pete) Fairchild — a nationally known poet from Liberal, earned his B.A. in English in 1964, and his MA in 1968. Pete has won the New York Book Critics Award for Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest, a book of poems.

Ruth Ann French — from Partridge, studied the environment, earning a bachelor's degree in political science this past spring. She's off to Oxford, England, as KU's 25th Rhodes Scholar; B.A. Political Science, 2005.

Why is KU a good decision? Because you have chosen a path that we know can lead to the fulfillment of those dreams. There are plenty of examples for you from those who have come before. For example:

All of these Jayhawks successfully pursued their dreams. They are very accomplished.

But they were once where you are tonight, and they had to make many of the same decisions that you face from the profound to the banal:

• Roommates. Do they honestly expect me to cohabit with someone who leaves sweaty underwear in the middle of the floor?
  
• Decisions about studying. Do they really expect me to spend two hours studying for every hour in class? Yes, they do. But only you will know if it is enough.
  
• Decisions about going to class. On second thought there aren't any decisions about going to class. Don't even think about it. Just be there. You have to be there to learn.
  
• Decisions about drinking. You have to decide do or don't you? If you do, how much? It is your decision, but remember, it is inexcusable for you to risk your safety or anyone else's. You can't be safe if you're drunk.
  

Your teachers will offer help with your decision-making, but we won't always be reliable guides. Quite frankly, you are facing a world very different from the world your teachers faced at your age.

The faculty on this stage are all old enough to remember a time that was

• Before the Internet
  
• Before cell phones (Many of them are still unreasonably and pathetically attached to that quaint antique called a land line.)
  

In contrast, you have never been part of a world where personal computers, cell phones, and the Internet and Web browsers were not a primary access to information. You are a connected generation. You plug in and play.

Because of this you are going to face a different, 21st Century.

Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist, has written a new book about this 21st century in which you will dream your dreams and make your decisions. I want to recommend it to you and share with you some of his thoughts. It is relevant on the night before you begin your college career.

Friedman's book is entitled The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century. Some of you have read it. The title is provocative because we all know that Columbus embarked on an adventure to the New World in 1492 to prove to the Queen of Spain that his theory was correct, that the world was indeed round, not flat.

Friedman believes that we are experiencing a fundamental change in our conceptions, comparable in magnitude to Columbus's discovery of the new world.

His point is that sure, the world is still physically round, but the way we navigate in the 21st century, the way we acquire information and understanding has now become a flat process — as flat as a computer screen — and you don't need to explore to the ends of the earth to get good information or confirm your theories.

So you are entering your period of educational decisions at a unique time. No generation before you has ever had the opportunity and the challenge that you do. You are the Internet Generation — you have never been unconnected.

Friedman identifies a number of significant events that have given you a flat world.

First, there was the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989. He says this date is as important, if not more important, than Sept. 11, 2001. The fall of the Wall tipped the balance of world power toward a democratic, free market orientation, away from the authoritarian rule and centrally planned economies of communism.

When the wall fell, communism was exposed as a failed economic system. Totalitarian systems depend on a monopoly of information, held centrally, and such a monopoly cannot be maintained if there is instantaneous sharing of information. Democratic capitalism won. Global free markets dominate the world's economic system.

Friedman observes, however, that the world's economic playing fields have all been leveled by the extraordinary convergence of fiber-optic cable, computers, the Internet, fax machines, the World Wide Web, cell phones and web browsers.

Beginning with the introduction of the IBM PC in 1981, the wide spread adoption of the Windows operating system in the 1990s, and the creation of the web browser Netscape in 1995, the tools of competition became the same for everyone. All of these things came together rapidly. The first website was created in 1991. By 2001, there were 800 million users of the World Wide Web.

The effect of this flat world revolution is that everyone came to have equal access to the same knowledge. In effect, information was democratized, available to everyone with a PC and access to the web.

The best example of a flat world is the invention of Google in the late 1990s. You all know what I am talking about. How many of you have used Google in the last week?

Colin Powell told Friedman that when he first became Secretary of State, if he wanted a public document he had to ask his staff and wait for them to track it down and deliver it to him. After Google, he just Googles it. You and the Colin Powell use the same search engine, maybe at the same time.

Google is searchable in 100 different languages. It now processes one billion searches a day, up from 150 million three years ago. Interestingly, only 1/3 of its searches are U.S. based, and less than half are in English. What does that tell you about how the rest of the world is gaining information? Friedman's point is that Google perfectly illustrates the flatting world effect. As he puts it, "Never before in the history of the planet have so many people, on their own, had the ability to find so much information about so many things and about so many people."

Is this democratization of knowledge a good thing? How do you feel about it? Could you just skip these next four years, save $60,000 and educate yourself?

You could, but probably you would discover that you need the kind of perspective on this new flat world that comes with a college education. College gives you the fundamental principles that enable you to distinguish between truth and fiction, good and bad information, as you search through Google.

But the flattening of the world also challenges you, because it shows you how tough the competition is going to get. A whole new group of people, several billion in fact, came on to this international playing field from China, India, and former Soviet empire. They will compete with you for jobs and ideas, and they have access to the same information tools you have.

What can help guide your educational decisions in this new flat world? What will you need to know to be gainfully employed? Will you be able to compete with a KU degree?

The answer is yes, absolutely. Because education will become more important, not less.

Friedman believes everyone will need to be educated beyond high school and in some disciplines beyond college. As he put it, "John Fitzgerald Kennedy wanted to put a man on the moon. I want to put every American man and woman on a campus."

You have made the right decision to come to this campus. But it is not enough to just be here. It is also important that you acquire the flexibility to adapt to a world that changes every 18 months.

Friedman says that the job of education is not to guarantee anyone a lifetime job—those days are over. What education must guarantee people is the chance to make themselves more employable.

How do you do that?

Friedman offers you an answer. He says, "On this flat earth the most important attribute you can have is the creative imagination — the ability to be the first on your block to figure out how all these enabling tools — PC's, laptop, cell phones, web browsers, etc. — can be put together in new and exciting ways to create products, communities, and opportunities. That has always been America's strength because America was, and for now still is, the world's greatest dream machine."

So, welcome to KU, home of the Jayhawk dream factory. We are proud that you are here, and we look forward to exploring this new geography with you. And we pledge to you that we will nurture your dreams, letting them grow and build and become a part of this wonderful construction called the Jayhawk future. You will be able to say: I came. I studied. I learned. Because I learned, I dreamed. We'll see you in class, Jayhawks.