I hope that, as you move beyond Northwestern physically, you will not leave behind you this wonderful place that I have grown so fond of in such a short time. I hope you will keep Northwestern in your minds and hearts and will find that what you learned here, both in classrooms and in your lives beyond the classroom, provides a fund of human and intellectual capital on which to draw throughout your lives. The Rock, SPAC, your residence hall or residential college, student organizations, events, concerts, plays, lectures, and your classroom and laboratory experiences should become important parts of your memories of Northwestern. For institutions like Northwestern, just as for each of us, adjustment to change need not indeed, must not lead to abandonment of strongly held principles and moral values. I would like to end by reading a poem by the Polish Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz, recently the subject of discussion in Northwestern's TriQuarterly.
Human reason is beautiful and invincible.
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. With capital letters, lie and oppression with small. It puts what should be above things as they are, Is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope. It does not know Jew from Greek or slave from master, Giving us the estate of the world to manage. It saves austere and transparent phrases From the filthy discord of tortured words.