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a professor who believed in you. And take care to avoid what Toni Morrison calls “secondrate goals and secondhand ideas.” “Our past is bleak. Our future dim,” Morrison writes. “But if we see the world as one long brutal game, then we bump into another mystery, the mystery of beauty, of light, of the canary that sings on our skulls.” Being for something is a search for those mysteries, for that light: it is an act of radical optimism, a belief that a more perfect world is within reach and that we can help build it. What are you for? You may well turn that question back to me. What are you for, Peter Salovey? I am for the transformative power of a liberal education – one that asks you to think broadly, question everything, and embrace the joy of learning. I am for the American Dream in all its rich promise – the idea that opportunities are shared widely and that access to education is within reach for the many, not the few. 6 。 and served your neighbors and the world. You have created a vibrant, diverse, and exciting munity. Take these experiences with you and draw on them when you need encouragement. Remember a class that surprised you。 excelled in athletics。 the fraying of the social fabric. “The falcon cannot hear the falconer,” and we wonder if the center can hold. I understand the impulse toward negativity. Like many of you, I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the challenges we face, by the injustices that call out for our condemnation. Yet it is precisely because our cha