Ever since September 11th, I have been trying to understand how 19 "well educated" and privileged young men could willingly set out to destroy so many lives. These were not illiterate youngsters literally and figuratively drugged into committing a crime of passion. And if these young men were "brainwashed," (itself a remarkable phrase of our modern age), we need to grapple with what that means. How did they come to hate us so totally? Somehow, their unquestioning conviction of their own moral rectitude allowed them to demonize the rest of us, justifying mass murder. Ethical ambiguity was not part of their thought process. Indeed, they seem to have been educated not to think.

In sharp contra-distinction to how those 19 were trained, our notion of education celebrates a free and open exploration of ideas. We seek truth even to its innermost parts, understanding that people, institutions, governments, and even ethical values are open to change and improvement, always subject to challenge. Modern science, artistic innovation, business and economic systems and structures, literary criticism, or educational theory constantly are being scrapped, or reexamined, or refined. And if some of us believe in "absolute truth," we also accept that we as individuals are not entitled to impose that belief on others. Veritas, truth, is accepted as a most worthy but
non-achievable goal in an imperfect world.

How different is this modern learning compact from what was taught in a 12th century Benedictine monastery, or a 16th century yeshiva, or a 20st century Madrasa, the kind of Islamic academy at which many of the terrorists studied. In all of these, the boundaries of knowledge were circumscribed; truth, already divinely revealed; and the notion of curriculum, eternal and unchanging. To think "out of the box," to use our modern parlance, was heresy. And while there could be nuanced debate within such institutions, there were clearly defined limits consistent with that particular orthodoxy. The purpose of studying at such an institution was to master that which had already been revealed and to transmit that truth to the next generation, rather than to explore that which may still be unknown or unimagined.

John Locke, the great 17th century English philosopher, described the rationale for the modern university this way: "If men are for a long time accustomed only to one sort or method of thoughts, their minds grow stiff in it, and do not readily turn to another. It is therefore to give them this freedom, that I think they should be made to look into all sorts of knowledge, and exercise their understandings in so wide a variety and stock of knowledge. But I do not propose it as a variety and stock of knowledge, but as a variety and freedom of thinking, as an increase to the powers and activity of the mind, not as an enlargement of its possessions."

Secular, modern universities are messy when compared to these other types of institutions. Built into them are the concepts of dissent and dispute. Faculty tenure exists not to provide job security, as is commonly assumed by the lay community, but rather to protect unpopular or non conventional ideas by protecting the teachers who may espouse such ideas. Modern universities, fortunately, do not possess the political authority or the moral rectitude to excommunicate or to banish.

Adam and Eve discovered their nakedness, their human frailty, their mortality by eating the apple of knowledge. The fall from Grace is directly linked to their discovery of self-awareness. In many ways, any orthodoxy provides a simple and secure road map of behavior. But our kind of modern of university can and does provide you, her graduates, the capacity to make independent judgment, to evaluate ideas and institutions, to decide right from wrong, to know and to seek beauty. Each of us is burdened with the individual obligation to search for truth and then structure our life accordingly. Unlike those 19 terrorists, our pursuit of learning must not be rationed or circumscribed.

And thus, back we come to Ground Zero and that awful moment which has defined this academic year and will shape much of the rest of your lives. The conscientious objectors within the Israel Defense Force who now refuse to serve in Gaza and the West Bank, the student protestors who went to jail to help end the war in Vietnam, the anonymous British and German soldiers in the trenches of World War I who organized a Christmas truce spontaneously in 1914 to celebrate the Holidays, all express a personal conviction which defies authority and which risks punishment by the State. National ideologies like religious orthodoxies oft demand a totality of allegiance summarized in the phrase: "My country right or wrong."

The education we certify today by conferring upon you your degrees is precious, thus, not only for the economic advantage it may give you, but even more important, for the capacity to empower you and to strengthen your capacity to act on your own, to follow your own conscience. In this, our world, it is a secular sin to allow yourself to be "brainwashed." Our greatest achievement and your greatest inheritance is that capacity to think for yourself. Adlai Stevenson once shrewdly observed that "men may be born free; they can not be born wise; and it is the duty of the University to make the free, wise."

In sum, as Yoda, one of my most favorite post-modernist philosophers put it: "May the Force be with you."