In the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech, we asked a number of scholars, college presidents, and writers to answer this question: If you were giving the commencement address at Virginia Tech this year, what is the core of the message you would like to leave with the graduates?

Amy Gutmann | Michael Eric Dyson |Ariel Dorfman | Lionel Shriver | Edward J.W. Park | Donna E. Shalala | Barry R. Glassner | Sissela Bok | Robert Coles | Karla Jay | Bobby Fong

April 23, 2007

Donna E. Shalala, president of the University of Miami

Search for Meaning: Moments of tragedy show us what is at stake in education. In the midst of our grief, our shock, our sense of loss, we are consumed by the question: Why did this happen? Alone among living creatures, human beings have no tolerance for the inexplicable. A major purpose of all we do with our minds and spirits — art, philosophy, science, literature — is to make life meaningful by making it intelligible.

Indeed, we human beings seem to depend on the assumption that meaning and intelligibility are linked. A world that makes no sense cannot be filled with purpose, with achievement, with growth, with joy. Ultimately, this is why we study, this is why we question, this is why we learn. Because the more we understand the world, the more we can be at one with it and with ourselves.

Tragedy is always inexplicable. It frightens us; it takes us by surprise; and it shifts our sense of ourselves and of our place in the world. Those who lost their lives here at Virginia Tech on April 16 were learners. They were people different from one another in countless ways but all working, each in her or his own way, to make the world more sensible, more intelligible.

One of the important things this tragedy can help us see is that learning represents a belief in ourselves and in our innate capacity to overcome the inexplicable. Learning is the opposite of walking away, shaking our heads, and throwing up our hands. Rather, learning is an act of conviction about our ultimate ability to understand tragedy and thereby someday to diminish or prevent it. Make learning your promise to yourselves and to your futures. Learning is an act of hope. Let it illuminate the rest of your lives.

Previous: Barry R. Glassner, professor of sociology and executive vice provost at the University of Southern California, and author of 'The Gospel of Food' (Ecco, 2007) and 'The Culture of Fear' (Basic, 1999)
Next: Edward J.W. Park, associate professor of Asian-Pacific-American studies at Loyola Marymount University