President's Remarks

Delivered by President Shirley Strum Kenny
Stony Brook University Memorial Commemoration, September 11, 2007

Six years. The students who came together that night in shocked silence, who filled our mall as they struggled to comprehend what had happened, those students are gone, graduated, turned to their professional lives. Those of us who had to try to say something, something that could help, are here, still struggling to make sense of it all. Six years, and the act seems as incomprehensible, as senselessly cruel as ever. Our lives have continued; even those most personally struck by the tragedy have managed to live with their sorrow and strive for meaning. And now, six years later, nothing makes more sense than it did on that achingly beautiful day when our lives changed forever.

In fact, in a way it makes less sense. The stain of those insane murders has spread across an earth filled with senseless killing and maiming of innocent people. The war in Iraq continues to confuse and divide the country as the carnage in that war-torn country continues to take lives, American and Iraqi. In many countries suicide bombers have struck, killing innocent shoppers in markets, innocent riders on buses, making the world chaotic and dangerous, destroying people with whom they have no quarrel. Genocide continues in places like Darfur, more than half a century after the Holocaust and our sacred vow of Never Again! Never another genocide for any people on earth. Peace in the Middle East continues to be unattainable decade after decade to people who just want to get on with their lives. So when Osama Bin Laden taunts us with another video, it only seems part of a general madness that has seized the world.

Stony Brook is a haven from that kind of senseless hatred. Here we have a chance to know people not for their national, ethnic, or religious characteristics, but as people, colleagues, students, teachers, helpers, friends. Here we have the opportunity to deal with prejudices by actually coming to understand other people’s cultures and world views. Here we feel the need to learn together; we depend on one another; we succeed through mutual efforts. Whether we're involved in a lab experiment, a string quartet, or the publication of a student newspaper, it takes working together to bring success. And we at Stony Brook represent the cultures of the world.

But all of us are part of a larger world too, and nothing now is simple. That's why it is so important for us to read and listen critically, to analyze intelligently, to respect views that are different from ours. That’s why it is so important for us to use our vote and use our voices. If we don't step up, if we don’t speak out—who will?

This world is ours, and we have the responsibility to say, "Enough madness. Enough cruelty begetting cruelty. Enough." We owe that effort to make our world sane—we owe it to those who died, and we owe it to those whom they left behind, and we owe it to our own children and grandchildren, to those who were not even born when September 11 changed our lives.