Time in graduate school is a time of important transitions:
Stanford feels like a supermarket of classes, resources, activities, roles, life-styles, and so on. Last year's specials included: Jimmy Carter here in this room, Jesse Jackson just outside. John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin lectured on Justice, Hilary Putnam and Bas van Frassen on quantum mechanics, and I enjoyed a talk by Sir Karl Popper, particularly because I bad decided to settle for the entertainment value rather than the truth value. I missed Dr. Ruth, and, unfortunately, Desmond Tutu, Umberto Eco, ... and the Ollie North slide show.
There is a part of the University called Residential Education. It sets the general tone, provides an excellent infra-structure and encourages students to organize events, such as inviting people like Edward Teller or Sid Drell to speak in the residences. It is not only the quality of the speakers but also the quality of the audience that makes residential education a success: we, the students, both invite the speakers and attend the events. The metaphor of Stanford as a supermarket has to be modified: Stanford is more a medieval marketplace where people meet to exchange ideas. We are both buyers and suppliers. I invite you to think of yourself as a resource, too. Bring in your creativity. It is rewarding.
And now, you have to eat, right? Do you fancy sitting at home, lonely, chewing on some left-over macaroni and cheese from last week, sharing the misery of your life with your TV set, only cheered up by the dinner- time advertisements on indigestion? Well, here is an alternative: become an eating associate in one of the cops. They are houses on campus for 30 to 60 students, who cook, eat and live together. By paying a moderate amount and helping with the cooking once a week, you get a pretty good dinner every night and 24 hour access to a well stocked kitchen.
But I got a great deal more out of it than just food: I discovered college culture. Three quarters of the students in a co-op are undergraduates. I am very happy to have met some great people there. Co-ops are one of the few shelters where mutually enriching and enjoyable friendships between undergraduate and graduate students can form. You can do all kinds of things together: get advice on fun classes, give advice on graduate school, play volleyball, watch a video on SDI and talk about it, tie-dye shirts and do other preparations for the Grateful Dead concerts, cook lobster at beach parties, and wonder what "doing justice to the individual" might have meant for Nietzsche.
In the co-op community, we have more than once seen misconceptions between undergraduate and graduate students dissolve into mutual understanding and appreciation. Another precious niche is the arts scene: there are lots of opportunities on campus to get involved in music, theater, dance and the like. I would be enthusiastic if the idea of a mixed arts theme house became reality: a place where undergraduate and graduate students interested in the arts would live together. In the past, the responsiveness and flexibility of the administration has impressed me. If you have an idea, don't give up quietly if someone just says no. Our university is a place of discourse. Pursue your individuality in all its facets, being aware that you are embedded in a web of other complex individuals.
Stanford is rich in its diversity: multiple ethnic, racial and other groups are present within our community. Look at one of your neighbors. Do you know what the chances are that the student you are looking at right now is gay? The probability is higher than ten per cent - one in ten. How many of your friends does that mean might be gay? How many of them have come out to you, told you about it? Why so few? Gay people form an invisible minority, as opposed to, say, people of color.
We all want to live and work in a comfortable and supportive environment in which people can be the way they want to be without encountering any discrimination. We all agree that people ought to be free to think and feel and believe in anything they want. However, they are not free to act in any way they like: the values of the University constrain people from behaving in ways that demean or show disrespect for others. I would advocate even more than a mere tolerance in which you approach somebody (if you approach them at all) despite any differences in your backgrounds. Try to approach them because of the differences. To not care for the otherness of the other, to say that everybody is really just the same, is not openness but actually blindness to differences. Who we are crystallizes in contrast to who we are not. We understand ourselves through others.
You do not learn about a culture by reading about it. I learned about America by living with Americans, by sharing their language game, by participating in their form of life. On the other hand, the heritage of the international students here, from one hundred countries, is itself a resource for the whole community, well worth exploring. Be careful not to slap somebody in the face by insisting on a culture- or language-barrier.
Summarizing: pluralism asks for an inclusive attitude, emphasizing the equal standing of all of us: male or female, gay or straight, engineer or philosopher, faculty or student, graduate or undergraduate.
It was great to see Stanford spring back to life in the last days, friends returning, you arriving. Welcome: to be here is a fantastic opportunity. By now you know what I mean: people are Stanford's main resource. I've pointed out the places I found conducive for meeting some of them. Let us preserve these places and create more of them. I wholeheartedly wish you an intellectually stimulating, personally enriching, exciting but harmonious time with true friendships.