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now gives me great pleasure to, um, introduce someone who we also have the great privilege of having in our presence. Our speaker this morning is a national leader in the urban university movement. As the president of San Francisco State University since 1988 and prior to that

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as chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Boston For nearly 10 years, Dr Robert Corrigan has made university community partnerships a hallmark of those campuses. His sensitivity to community issues and his dedicated dedication to breaking the barriers that often exists between academia and the streets. The

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classroom and the community has created a unique university system, reputed for its relevance and diversity and its commitment to excellence. At San Francisco State University, he heads a university with eight colleges, more than 26,000 students and 2500 faculty and staff. I personally Doctor Corrigan, have very

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fond memories of being at the San Francisco State University campus over three decades, almost three decades ago, when it was quite different and when we had quite a different president and I was like running away from the tax squad because we were protesting for ethnic studies

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well of course. They have ethnic studies at San Francisco State now, Um, Dr Corrigan is a founding member and past chairperson of the board and distinguished fellow of the Association of Urban Universities, which in 1991 1 funding to support community focused projects on campuses across the

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nation. He serves on many prestigious boards, councils and policy making bodies, and has received numerous honors and awards. He received his B A from Brown University and his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the extraordinary good fortune to be married

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to Joyce Mobley Corrigan, who is here with us at the nine o'clock celebration. Cecil wanted me to say this to Dr Corrigan, but, uh, Cecil, and are very appreciative of the honorary doctorate that Dr Corrigan and the San Francisco State University community conferred upon Cecil at

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last commencement ceremonies. But most importantly, we appreciate the friendship that assured between us and his wife. So it is truly my honor glides honor to welcome Dr Robert Corrigan. Yeah, thank you. Why and good morning, my brothers and sisters. It is an honor, and it is

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a joy, but it's also an awesome challenge to be here with you today. This congregation gives new meaning to the words liberation theology. This congregation is where it is at Glide Memorial is known throughout and beyond this city as a spiritual center, a place which stirs

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the soul and serves as a lifeline to thousands in our community. Here, glide lives are indeed transformed in the gospel made real Glide Memorial is our cities conscience our guide to our salvation. At the head of this congregation stands the most remarkable man I have met

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in San Francisco, the Reverend Cecil Williams. And as I stand before you in his physical but not his spiritual place, I am reminded of his inspiring words. When he came to our campus to preach to my congregation, we find ways. Then he said, to bring justice

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and mercy and love and righteousness and compassion. We moved then in this world to bring deliverance, liberation to the oppress, the poor, the forgotten, the alienated, the abandoned and amen to that. The physical journey that I've taken to join you this morning from the sand dunes

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of the sunset over the Twin Peaks through the tenderloin has been briefed and uneventful. But the spiritual journey has been enormous and fulfilling. I come to celebrate with you this man, Cecil Williams, who has lifted his voice against the evils of our society and so doing

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has challenged us to confront those evils with him. And I'm here in his pulpit to take up, as he has asked, the subjects of education and affirmative action at a time in which both are under savage attack. You know, as I know that education is our

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strongest ally in building a more just society and you know, to that affirmative action is necessary, positive and an essential part of higher education today? Yeah, necessary. Positive, essential. Not long ago, such a statement would have gone unchallenged. What a sad and rapid change has occurred

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in our lives. The tax on affirmative action have moved not only into the headlines but into the statehouses and even into the halls of Congress. We are told, to our astonishment, that affirmative action is no longer needed, that we have solved the problems that was designated

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to correct that the playing field has been leveled. I ask you, my brothers and sisters, has the playing field been leveled for you have you? My friend's been delivered from bigotry, from racism and from intolerance, and I ask that you consider the facts. Fact. One in

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three black men today is part of the criminal justice system. There are more young black males in the prisons of California than in all of our colleges and universities. There are more Native Americans awaiting execution at San Quentin than there are enrolled in all of the

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PhD programs. In this state, the killer of a white person is nearly three times more likely to be executed than the murderer of a non white fact. Family income remains higher for whites and for all the other groups, while not surprisingly, unemployment runs just the other

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way. College educated black professional women earned 40% less than their white male counterparts. 97% of the Fortune 500 executives are white, and more than 95% of those are male. Fact throughout this nation, 50% of the Latino and Chicano students who are in the ninth grade today

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will not graduate four years from now. Fact, gays and lesbians are still denied their constitutional rights in many American communities. In fact, undocumented aliens and legal immigrants contribute far more to the economic base than they take from it. But we are about to deny them social

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services, health care and even access to higher education. Fact. The so called Asian model minority of media lore doesn't exist. We find the same range of economic and social need within that community as in all others. In fact, we have more than 10,000 homeless people on

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the streets of San Francisco, most of whom are in desperate need of services we cannot fund, even as our legislators continue to lower the taxes of the affluent and the powerful. It is clear that while we dwell within the boundaries of the same nation, we truly

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live in different Americas. And many Americans seem not yet to recognize that fact. This has been overwhelmingly demonstrated to us in the last two weeks by the polarized response to the O. J. Verdict. That trial in tomorrow's march on Washington prove that we are a nation

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still at risk, more at risk now than perhaps any time in our history because of the inequality of opportunity and after eight years in San Francisco, even though I have seen much positive change, much positive change. I remain concerned about our smugness that far too often

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characterizes our behavior and our attitudes as if we had eradicated intolerance, bigotry, racism, sexism and homophobia, as if we were better than other cities, in terms of opening up positions of power and influence to women, into blacks, the Browns and the yellows. And I was reminded

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of this very recently as I sat at the head table of another major community event, looking out again over a sea of white faces interspersed with a handful of black, brown and yellow and not a single minority face, not a single minority at the head table

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in San Francisco. We must get over our smugness until we recognize that we are not the inclusive, egalitarian community that we so often pretend to be. We will not achieve the goals that the Reverend Williams and you have set for us as a community. Yeah, mhm,

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Yeah, let me tell you a story now about Joseph Django, who came to this country 100 years ago from a small Italian village to make not his fortune but a simple living in the New World. He spoke and he read no English and, if the truth

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were known, could read or write no Italian, either. He wasn't what you know, that insulting term for Italians like Guinea or Diego. But do you know the origins of whop W O. P without papers? That's what the immigration folks at Ellis Island stamped on the forms

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of undocumented aliens in those days. They came in steerage, the rotten, smelly bottoms of the ships without birth certificates, visas or documents of any kind without papers, wops. They asked Joseph Django his name, and he told them, and they wrote it out for him on his

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entry form as J E N G. O. But illiterate though he was, Joseph knew how to spell his name, and he knew that it was G e N g o a soft G, not a J. No, said immigration. In this country, we spell it J E

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N G. O. So for the next 65 years, until he died, Joseph spelled his name not as his parents, not as his grandparents, not as numerous generations before him had spelled it, but, as he was told to by the bureaucrat who stood between him and the

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Promised Land. And Joseph's Jangle worked hard for 55 of his 65 years in America as a longshoreman, loading and unloading oceangoing vessels not with cranes and hoists but with sweat and muscle. But he never learned English or, for that matter, how to read or write Italian,

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and he always spelled his name as immigration had taught him J E N G. O. Now Joseph had two sons and six daughters, and one of those daughters left school at age 13 13 when her mother died and eventually married the son of an Irish immigrant

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who had dropped out of school in the eighth grade. In these two modestly educated Children of illiterate immigrants raised a son who would one day become a college president. I am that son. I am Joseph Jangles grandson. Yeah, and at every step of the way, I

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was aided by family by friends, relatives, neighbors, church leaders, alumni, teachers who had never heard of affirmative action but knew instinctively what it was and realized that this grandson of peasants who before he went to college, had never visited a museum, attended a concert or even

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eaten in a restaurant might have the talent to succeed if given the proper affirmative support. My brothers and sisters, that is what San Francisco needs to be about. That is what San Francisco State University is about. Now. I recognize that as a university were not yet

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where we want to be need to be where we will be. We must confront some difficult issues of our own. The Malcolm X mural controversy still echoes Hate speech occasionally bursts out on campus, but I can say that your public university increasingly seeks out and supports

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our whole community. That is why we rank every year in the top five among thousands of universities in graduating students of color. The key to our success has been a commitment to affirmative action. Now, if there is ever a place where we can demonstrate the tremendous

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value of affirmative action to our nation, that place must be higher education. College education is a gateway to self discovery, to full development of individual talent to economic opportunity. And as I have said time and again on campus, in the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle

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and in many community forums, affirmative action is here to stay at San Francisco State University. Diversity is to us a mission. It's a source of pride is a fountain of strength, and we will not retreat from it, no matter what the political climate. Those who would

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oppose affirmative action out of ignorance or malice should see what I have seen at San Francisco State. Take, for example, the group of students that I met with our last commitment. The 10 most honored graduates of that class of 1995. They included a man who first

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attended college 25 years ago. A young woman who was abused as a child, a one time high school dropout, the son of a Greek farmer, Hong Kong born student who had 17, found herself abandoned in Australia. And a young man whose family fled Vietnam in a

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boat while earning their degrees. These students involve themselves with our community, tutoring Children here at glide, working with meals on wheels, volunteering with special court programs for young offenders and organizing a support system to get young dropouts back into school. I cannot imagine I cannot imagine

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a better custodians of our future than young people like these, but without the commitment to access that has characterized San Francisco State University. Many of them might not have had the chance to stand on that platform at commencement with Hillary Clinton and Cecil Williams. And there

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were, And there will be, I promise you there will be more like them. Our students are already as diverse a group as any you will find in the colleges and universities of America, and we work hard to bring more members of what I like to call

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the new majority into our campus family. Increasingly as well, the faces of our faculty mirror the faces of the students they would teach thanks to deliberate sustain in tremendously successful hiring efforts. 70% of the faculty hard in the last seven years are women and people of

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color. 70% of those we have hired. Yeah, these faculty come to us from with degrees from the best doctoral programs with records of high academic achievement and with a passion to teach. What arrogance, what bigotry, what ignorance To suggest that a commitment to diversity is to

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a lowering of standards. We have raised the standards at San Francisco state, even as we have opened the gates to those we previously ignored or denied. And at your university, we have found firsthand that everyone benefits from affirmative action. We know that our nation's future California's

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presence is multi cultural and multi ethnic, and that the workplace has become a global village as important as basic and professional education are, we take pride in the fact that our students also leave with a respect for all members of a diverse society, appreciation of our

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differences and recognition of our similarities. We have gone from the melting pot to the salad bowl. And what a richness of flavors and textures we have in that bowl where we blend rather than melt honor rather than denigrate, embrace rather than reject. Years ago, when I

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became dean of a college and a much more conservative city than San Francisco, I did deliver a very strong public statement regarding the social and political changes that I would like to see happen. And when my remarks controversial for that place at that time were published

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in the local newspaper, I was lectured politely but very firmly by an older black faculty member who told me that what she wanted was not liberal rhetoric but political shrewdness. to her education needed leaders, as she might have said today, not to talk the talk, but

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who walked the walk. Leaders who were shoot enough to focus on getting results, not on merely making friends leaders who could bring about a revolution in a society opposed to change. At San Francisco state. We intend to be both outspoken and shrewd in preserving the fundamental

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principles of access to higher education for the rich and the poor. For the young and the old for the black, the white, the brown, the red and the yellow for women and men, gay and straight, the abled and the physically challenged, the citizen and the immigrant

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for people in whom our investment will be returned a thousandfold. And in this marvelous setting glide memorial with this glorious choir, I'm reminded of the spirit in which we now must move forward, not blaming but teaching, not excluding. But including 2000 years ago the point was

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made, and I ask you to think of that moment in the Book of Acts went on Pentecost. The spirit of wisdom and truth descends upon the faithful, setting the young church on its path. The Holy Spirit chooses to do this at a time in a place,

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whereas we read there were dwelling at Jerusalem people out of every nation under heaven. And we see that the wisdom of the Holy Spirit comes not in a synagogue, not in a mosque but in a place where all are gathered, where the divisions of language and

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a tribe fall away, where all are included in the message and the grace. What a clarion call for community for an assertion that all people have equal access to the source of good for the spirit that binds us all together for none of us is free

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until all of us are free. John Done reminded us centuries ago that no man is an island and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr more recently than in a multiracial society. No group can make it alone. If Paul Robeson was right that the Song of freedom

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will prevail, then we will, in the words of Lantigua near make a chorus out of many voices, contending, that is our challenge and the just and equal society we seek can be our reward. Amen. Mhm! Yeah, right! Mhm! And the doctor characters were mhm. He's got

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a great job. And to the married couple, Happiness to you, Happiness Team