My hope is that you will carry the experience of higher education into the world around you, and that you will continue to open yourself to experiences that can shape your path and your life.
You have been particularly privileged as your learning had the benefit of comparative education of Eastern and Western perspectives and was aimed at fostering a global humanism.
If we need justice then we’ve got to think about reformation. We’ve got to recognize that the person who has done something wrong has done it out of ignorance or lack of understanding and that we need to help that person understand … and reform that person.
We must not think without history, detaching from it in a new autonomous cultural space, losing our historical memory. Soka University of America is prepared to honestly tell its students about the history we have passed so that we might have a more honest and inclusive tradition for building leaders in the academy.
This conversation is directed at the young and not so young leaders in this room. This conversation is directed at those watching online, to the young women in Africa, to the children of immigrants in the US, to anyone trapped by poverty, war, oppression, and violence, and to anyone who has had a crazy dream.
Soka allowed me to develop a strong foundation in the philosophy of educational thought, providing me with the knowledge I needed to anchor myself in core beliefs around children and their learning
