Real growth involves not only risking failure, but also overcoming adversity. In launching his freedom campaign, Mandela was aware of the risks he faced, and when he was arrested, he faced the challenge of finding a way toremain committed to the freedom struggle during his many years in prison.
You will certainly face intellectual challenges during your time here at Stanford, but I encourage you to experiment and take intellectual risks. Challenge yourself with courses in disciplines that are new to you. And should you occasionally not succeed, do not become disillusioned. The only people I know who succeed at everything they undertake are those who have been timid in setting their goals.
A cornerstone of Mandela‘s efforts to bring about a democratic South Africa was to develop a set of ideals, inspired by the Declaration of Independence, and other statements of a community’s highest principles. The Freedom Charter, which he helped draft, opens with the following words:
“We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people ...”
Today, you join a university community created and bound by a commitment to similar lofty ideals, a community of scholars dedicated to the pursuit of truth, knowledge and understanding. It is a community rooted in principles established by the university‘s founders and early leaders:
By Jane and Leland Stanford, who-after the tragic death of their only son at the age of 15-founded this university to benefit other people’s children and, as it says in the founding grant,“to exercise an influence on behalf of humanity and civilization.”
Stanford‘s first president, David Starr Jordan, who chose the motto“The Wind of Freedom Blows”to remind us of the importance and privilege of free and open inquiry.
And by Stanford’s first faculty and students, who in 1896 created theFundamental Standard, which emphasizes personal integrity and respect foreach and every member of the scholarly community-a standard still in effect more than 100 years later.
As you begin your time at Stanford and plan your years here, I urge you to remember that your undergraduate education is much more than a ticket to your first job. Mandela‘s law studies prepared him for a life of work with his fellow activists, helping to educate them and prepare them for their many struggles; his education also prepared him to be an effective advocate for change when he was eventually released from prison. Likewise, your undergraduate education is an opportunity to develop the skills and passion for being a lifelong learner in areas related to and outside of your future career. It is the foundation not just for your first job but also for your whole life.
To the parents in the audience, I assure you that Stanford will provide your children a variety of possibilities for growing and learning during the next few years. But it is your children, as individuals, who will choose what excites them, what generates intellectual passion, and what engages their very able minds. I hope that you will support their choices.
In the movie Invictus , Mandela aims to motivate the captain of the Springboks with the poem“Invictus,”which helped inspire him during his long imprisonment. The final stanza of that poem is:
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
So it is with your time here at Stanford. You will have many opportunities, but you are the master of your fate for the next four years. And, you will also be responsible for how you use your education after you leave Stanford. We will return to that topic at your graduation on June 15, 2014.
I welcome all our new students and their parents to the Stanford family,a family that consists not only of the 25,000 students, staff and faculty on campus, but also of more than 100,000 alumni around the world.
Students, I hope your time here transforms your lives, just as it has transformed the lives of so many alumni.
