134TH  ACADEMIC YEAR OPENING CONVOCATION

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Convocation Address by
H. Patrick Swygert, President
(Excerpts)

Moment of silence and reflection for all who lost their lives on September 11, victims and those who gave their last measure of devotion and caring for the victims.

We repeat our expressions of deepest sympathies to the members of the Howard family lost as a result of the tragic events of September 11. Your Howard University family joins you in sorrow and joins you in celebration of the memories of those lost.

We gather together as a family, a family of teachers and students, a family searching for answers to that which we do not have an answer.why did so many innocent human beings die and die so tragically? At 3p.m. on the day of the tragedy, after suspension of classes and activities, we gathered at the University flagpole for reflection and prayer.

Friday, a week ago we again gathered as a family in Rankin Chapel and from there marched to the University flagpole for prayer and remembrance. And on Sunday, Reverend Richardson in a moving sermon spoke from this very same place and sought to help find some sense of God's design and will. His powerful message of love still resonates in my heart, yet I must confess that my heart and my head are not one. Like you, perhaps, they are separate. And, perhaps again, like you, I too pray that my heart and spirit can join my intellect to provide solace and peace.

As a community of scholars we say to the world and each other that what we do is propelled by reason, reasoned analysis, scientific inquiry and quantification of what is known and what is discovered. When all reason is challenged, it should not be abandoned, but we should look deeper into the question of who and what we are, as an anchor in times of deep troubles.

At Howard University, that deeper look takes us to the University's motto, Veritas et Utilitas, our core values and the meaning we ascribe to Leadership for America and the Global Community.

We ask ourselves what does Truth and Service, core values and leadership mean after September 11? Are the presumptions we shared the same? Are they different? Or are they somehow changed or subject to examination and scrutiny as to their continued relevancy to the University.

I believe that our values and Leadership for America and the Global Community has not so much changed as it has taken on a special urgency. Going forward we will be judged and we will judge ourselves not simply by how we are ranked or where we find ourselves on a list, any list, but really and truly whether leadership provided by faculty, students, staff, and all the members of the Howard Community, during this time of great national stress and challenge is real and not rhetorical, purposeful and not the result of happenstance and fully engaged, not coincidental.

This is not simply a call to get going again with the activities of the University, to let's get serious, to step up to the plate and other such phrases that only serve to diminish the true seriousness of what lies before us.

Our history demands that we lead, our core values show us the way. And we must prepare ourselves for the challenge to our core values that we will face in the days, weeks, and months.perhaps years ahead. Our core values of the unequivocal search for truth; the maintenance of the University as a place where African Americans and all others can come to study, learn, teach and conduct their research free of oppression of any type, stripe or kind; the core value of Howard as a University that engenders and nurtures an environment that celebrates African American culture in all its diversity and, the core value of this University as a caring, nurturing and respectful environment for all of the members of the Howard family: faculty, students, staff, trustees, alumni and administrators.

We will not and must not permit ourselves to be aligned with those who would condemn a people and a religion for the horrible acts of those who debase the human spirit. We will do everything we can that we have not abandoned our core values, just as President Bush has sought to ensure all our fellow Americans that the rights and privileges accorded to each of us will not be denied to any of us because of religion, color, or national origin.

And we will lead not by embracing some all inclusive dogma or proceeding in lock step in a manner that suppresses and chills dissent. Dissent there will be and how we relate to that dissent will determine the only important evaluation of a great University, an evaluation not of what we have but who we are. Who we are as a University that holds fast to its core values, a University that continues and will continue to provide a forum for dissent. In other words, a great University.

And let everyone understand that we fully recognize our overarching responsibility to protect and secure as best we can the safety and well-being of the Howard family, whether they be faculty and students here or abroad, or visitors. The security and well-being of this University will not be compromised.

This short address speaks to us, today's Howard family, but it really seeks to ensure that those who follow us-the young people who are here today and the thousands who will join us in years to come-inherit not empty phrases, but a truly great University.great because those phrases resonate throughout our work, our relationships with one another, our commitment to our great nation and the world.

I began by speaking about the heart and the mind. Our hearts do ache, the pain, the sense of loss is profound beyond our ability to articulate it. We pray for peace for the victims, and hope for the survivors. God Bless America.