Concern

These concerns, by young people in your countries and in mine, stem in part from the intensified concern of our countries as a whole for the problems of society. And these concerns also stem from your training. You seek education not merely to become intellectual tradesmen, but to become humane and thoughtful men and women. I know you will continue to feel these concerns as part of the legacy of your education and your faith.

So there is no need for me to come and exhort you to develop such concern for your fellow men. What I would like to do instead is ask whether you will continue to act on behalf of those deeply-felt concerns. There is a danger, growing out of your university experience, that you will not do so. The very education which has helped expand your awareness of the problems of other men is the same education which prepares you for a place in society far removed from those problems.

The carpeted office of the medical specialist in the United States has little relationship to the ailing peasant child in Latin America. The philosopher's study in Europe is a century away from the hovels of the Asian poor. The research laboratory does not produce concern over militarism in a faraway country.

As the skilled and professional people of your nations and the world, you will be escalated out of contact with the large number of people in the world whose principal worries are hunger and hope.

You will be equipped to live, work, think and travel in the very latest day of the 20th century. You will read and hear about poverty and tyranny; you will be aware, concerned, and sympathetic. But will you also work to lend your talents to the service of your society—and of all societies of this shrinking planet?