Commencement Address by U.S. Ambassador to Haiti
James B. Foley, '79
State University of New York at Fredonia
May 14, 2005

President Hefner,
Distinguished guests,
The graduating class of 2005,
Ladies and gentlemen:
 
I am extremely honored and humbled to have the opportunity to address you, the graduates, and to share your day of pride and accomplishment. I know that to reach this point it took four years of tremendous effort and sacrifice - or at least four years of crammed effort and sacrifice at the end of each semester.

I remember vividly my first day on campus as a freshman, and how frightened I was. I cried when my parents dropped me off at Igoe Hall. I never expected to see my own graduation day. And when that day came, as it has for you today, I certainly never expected to return in this capacity. If there is one lesson from my own experience that I would like to share with you, it is that all things are possible in life, and that with a degree from Fredonia good things will happen and your dreams can come true.

I am especially grateful to receive the honorary doctorate from my alma mater this morning. My own dream at Fredonia was to remain in the academic world for the rest of my life. I graduated with the intention of pursuing a PhD and a university teaching career. It took four years of drifting before I realized that I did not have an academic calling and that I would never earn a doctorate. Having abandoned the goal, I now find that I have reached it - again a lesson in the unexpected.

I graduated from Fredonia 26 years ago. With me at the commencement were my parents, and I am lucky and proud that they are here again today. Two people who are also with me today were not in attendance 26 years ago - my wife, whom I married when I was 40, and our baby daughter, who arrived when I was 47, just four months ago. The lesson there is that good things will happen in good time, not necessarily according to a preconceived timetable.

The speaker at my graduation was Ted Koppel of ABC News, who was somewhat more obscure then than he is now. He assured the graduates that we would not remember a thing he was going to say, which turned out to be untrue, since I obviously remember that he said it.

When I was sitting where you are today, I did not know what I was going to do with my life, or how I was going to make a living. Armed with a degree in English literature, I was not exactly stampeded by head-hunters or corporate recruiters. The so-called real world, where people did things and actually earned a living, seemed threatening. The hardest part was having to leave Fredonia itself, where I discovered happiness and began to discover myself. What a wonderful cocoon - the picture-postcard village, the architecturally-renowned campus, the brilliant falls and snowy winters, the friends I made and loved, the professors who personally took me under their wing and taught me to question, to think and to learn. This was a very difficult place to leave, and it took me a good three or four years to get over it. But this little world called Fredonia, by opening my mind to the realms of literature, philosophy, history and languages, actually prepared me for the big world better than I could have possibly known.

I found my path at the age of 26 when I joined the Foreign Service and embarked on a career representing the United States as a diplomat overseas. I had hesitated before joining because I heard you might actually be sent to places other than London, Paris and Rome. Sure enough, I was sent kicking and screaming on my first assignment to Manila, the Philippines. It turned out to be the most rewarding experience of my career, teaching me never again to trust my prejudices or assumptions.

The world I entered at that time just a generation ago was radically different from the one you are entering upon today. U.S. foreign policy was almost entirely centered upon the struggle with the Soviet Union and global communism. We never thought the competition between democracy and totalitarianism would end in our lifetime, except if it were to culminate in a nuclear holocaust.

There were signs of change, but few were able to read them. In my senior year a dynamic and charismatic young cardinal from Poland became pope, and began to shake the foundations of communist rule in Eastern Europe. Six months after my graduation, Ted Koppel rocketed to fame as "Nightline" was born to cover the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Iran and the beginning of the hostage crisis - America's introduction to fundamentalism and its hostility towards the United States. Seven months after my graduation the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, where eventually it bled to death and bankrupted itself. The United States provided significant assistance to the Afghan resistance - as did a then-unknown wealthy Saudi by the name of Osama bin Laden.

But at the time I was sent to the Philippines, we did not comprehend that the world was changing, or that technology would soon revolutionize international relations and the global economy. We still saw the world through the prism of U.S. - Soviet competition, and in the Philippines the dictator Ferdinand Marcos was professing allegiance to the U.S. camp. However, during my two years in Manila, Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union, and in the meantime Filipino democrats, now with U.S. backing, prevailed over the Marcos dictatorship. As a first-tour officer I played a small role in our new approach and was witness in the Philippines to the beginning of a wave of democracy that was to sweep the world, both communist and authoritarian, over the next two decades.

I next went to Algeria, an Islamic country close to Europe pulled in opposite directions by the lure of the West and modernization, and the claims of religion and traditional values. This conflict exploded in a decade of terrorist violence, which has claimed 100,000 lives up until now.

After serving in Washington with the State Department, where I put my fine Fredonia education to work as a speechwriter, I was posted to NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. I traveled to Sarajevo and had a bird's eye view of the ethnic and religious conflicts in the Balkans. Thanks to the intervention of NATO forces, led by the United States, we were able to bring an end to the killing, opening the way for the Balkan nations to join modern Europe and leave behind their tragic past.

Thus my career intersected with some of the great changes that brought an era in international relations to a close. We won the Cold War. Democracy supplanted dictatorship in many communist and authoritarian countries. China is now capitalist, if not democratic. Trade barriers have been erased; the global free-trading market is today a reality, no longer a dream. The goals that the United States set for itself at the time I graduated from Fredonia and entered the Foreign Service were largely achieved.

However, history does not stand still. Our very success has created new challenges, many unanticipated. We have entered a world for which my generation was not prepared, one which your generation will be called upon to confront and to lead. Regardless of the career or the careers you embark upon, you will in your daily lives be facing the challenge of the global market place. We can no longer say "Fredonia, NY" or even "Fredonia, USA". The reality is "Fredonia, the world". You will be competing with workers in Asia, Europe and Latin America. At the same time, our prosperity will be dependent on theirs. We are linked as never before to a global network of inter-relationships.

Americans need not be afraid of the competition; education is the key, and as long as public institutions like Fredonia can continue to provide a modern and sophisticated education that is accessible to the broader American public, we will do fine. I am more concerned, however, about our growing dependence on the well-being of other societies for our own prosperity and security. In a world without borders, our stake in the success of others is greater now than at any time in our history. Whole parts of the world remain outside the orbit of economic progress. While the Middle East largely still awaits its democratic transformation, other regions that have embraced democracy are mired in poverty and impatient for signs of economic improvement. They are groaning under the weight of ever-increasing populations, unable to meet the needs of today, much less tomorrow. The events of September 11, 2001 were the ultimate proof that we have entered an era in which the ills and resentments of a dysfunctional world beyond our shores can be visited upon us here at home.

Perhaps nowhere is the contrast between these two worlds more apparent than in the country where I represent our nation today, the Republic of Haiti. Haiti is the tragic island, where the hand of a violent history still lays heavily on the present. Haiti has a population of 8 million people which is expected to continue growing at a rapid pace, despite the ravages of disease. Acute poverty is widespread. Over 98% of the country's trees have been destroyed; rainfall sweeps soil to the sea, leading to desertification and the death of agriculture, not to mention terrible flooding. Public institutions are extraordinarily weak. In short, Haiti is a failed state - and it is only 400 miles from our borders.

I can tell you that the United States is providing substantial assistance to Haiti, and is working closely with the United Nations mission and military and police forces currently deployed to Haiti in an effort to create stability, hold democratic elections and lay a foundation for economic improvement. But the problems and challenges are monumental; they have been decades in the making, and will take decades of sustained international support to overcome. The point I would make is that even if the solutions are elusive, the United States has no choice but to try to help its neighbor. The reality of today's world - the world you are inheriting - is that what happens beyond our shores, both nearby and afar, will affect our livelihoods, our well-being and ultimately our security.

You are, after all, the class of September 11. Those terrible events happened in your freshman year I imagine only weeks after you arrived at Fredonia. They changed our world, and your future, indelibly. They were a wake-up call, a notice that your generation - like so many before it in the history of the United States - will be called to meet great challenges, to serve purposes higher than your own private interests.

The challenge is in one sense a call to compete - to compete in the global economy with the nations that are mastering new technologies and adapting their economies and work force to the demands of globalization.

It is, in another sense, a call to conscience - to respond to the suffering of a hungry world, and to the alienation of those who feel disenfranchised or excluded from the circle of successful, powerful and prosperous nations. For in this era of interdependence, we know that failing states can become ripe for terrorist exploitation, and that terrorists themselves can acquire the most advanced means of destruction with which to threaten our nation.

I have no doubt that your generation of Americans is ready to meet this challenge. You should feel lucky, and privileged, to answer history's call once again, and to help lead the world to new heights of freedom and economic opportunity.

As individuals, of course, you have more immediate concerns ahead. What career should I pursue?What job will I find?Will I find any job at all?Let me assure you that it will work out for you; it will work itself out. When I graduated, the job market looked very bleak, and the United States was gripped by pessimism. We had no idea our economy was poised to take off, and that our number one global competitor was on the verge of collapse. Be confident in our country. In an era of constant change, no nation on earth is as flexible, resilient and adaptive to change as our own.

Be confident in yourselves. Your graduation is proof that you have the intellectual tools and the dedication necessary to master any challenge you will meet in the workplace and the marketplace. Your degree itself from Fredonia, now a nationally-recognized institution of higher learning, is a ticket that will open doors. Once inside those doors, you will find that you can compete with anyone from any other educational institution in America. That has been my experience, and I am sure it will be yours as well.

Some of you will heed the call to public service. I urge you to consider careers in government, in the Foreign Service, or in the international or nongovernmental organizations devoted to addressing the problems of poverty and underdevelopment around the world.

Most of you will pursue careers in the private sector, careers that are as noble and necessary as any others.

I would urge all of you, no matter what path you follow, never to forget the meaning of Fredonia. You had fun here, I hope lots of fun, and it would be a terrible shame if the joy of living were somehow to get lost in the struggle to get ahead or make ends meet. Just as importantly, graduation should not be the moment you close your books, and thus your minds, for the rest of your lives. An education is not only a stepping stone to a career, it is also a gateway to the unending quest for knowledge of self and knowledge of the world - about why were are on earth, about our responsibility to our fellow man and the fate of the world. At the end of your lives, those are the things that are going to really matter to you, and it was here in Fredonia where that intellectual and moral journey began. Let it not end when you leave here today.

A former president, referring to the town where he was born, once said that he still believed in a place called Hope.

I still believe in a magical place called Fredonia.

Congratulations to you on your splendid achievement, and good luck in the journey you are about to begin.

Thank you very much.