It is a pleasure to be with you this morning for this very significant event in our community. The Martin Luther King, Jr. breakfast in Portsmouth has been a meaningful experience for me in each of the years that I have been at UNH. I thank the organizers and sponsors of the breakfast and those who kindly include the leadership of the University in its planning. Each year the Breakfast has grown in size and now the Martin Luther King, Jr. events include not only the Breakfast, but other events throughout this day and through the weekend preceding Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. One thing that makes the Breakfast especially exciting this morning is the presence of large numbers of young people, here to remind us of Dr. King's words, "Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

The University will celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on campus when the students return. Our celebration will be on Tuesday, January 29, at 7:00 in the evening. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Joseph White from the University of California, Irvine. His presentation is titled: "The Voice of Martin Luther King: Once Again the Trumpet Sounds." I hope you can join us for that event.

You may recall that UNH was initially placed as a college at Dartmouth. We were there for 28 years, but the two cultures did not blend successfully, and I am pleased that Benjamin Thompson left his farm to the State of New Hampshire so that the College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts could be located in the seacoast area. The seacoast of New Hampshire is somehow closer to the "real world", and it is important that university students have experiences in the real world while they are studying. Now we also have our urban campus in Manchester, offering still more opportunities for UNH students.

The community gathered here today has consistently been supportive of the University and what it is attempting to accomplish. I intend that UNH will always be supportive of your values and the values of Martin Luther King, Jr. which this morning we remember and reaffirm for our own lives and for our community: love, truth, and the courage to do what is right.

Dr. King said: "Through education we seek to change attitudes; through legislation and court orders we seek to regulate behavior. Through education we seek to change internal feelings (prejudice, hate, etc.); through legislation and court orders we seek to control the external effects of those feelings. Through education we seek to break down the spiritual barriers to integration; through legislation and court orders we seek to break down the physical barriers to integration. One method is not a substitute for the other, but a meaningful and necessary supplement. Anyone who starts out with the conviction that the road to racial justice is only one lane wide will inevitably create a traffic jam and make the journey infinitely longer."

I'd like to use my few minutes this morning to talk about the role that higher education - especially education at the University of New Hampshire - is playing on the road to racial justice. At UNH we take very seriously that education has a critical role in shaping attitudes. We also know that diversity is an important component in the quality of education that a university provides: diversity within the student body, diversity within the faculty and staff, and a curriculum that acknowledges the pluralism of our society and our heritage. Not everyone understands that diversity is a quality of education issue. There are at least two reasons why this is true.

• Students learn a great deal from one another. Indeed, each of us learns from others who have different backgrounds, cultures, beliefs, and values. The college years are years of intense learning and values acquisition. This is most successfully provided in a diverse environment.
• Students at a university like UNH are likely to live and work in more diverse communities when they leave the University than they have experienced in New Hampshire. They will be more successful if they experience pluralism while they are in school.

UNH's new academic plan comprises eleven goals. Goal #7 in this plan says that UNH will be a community that actively seeks and welcomes a more diverse faculty, staff, and student body, and supports and values diversity. I am pleased that the Board of Trustees for the University System of New Hampshire also elected to include this goal among their four goals for the current year.

At UNH we are now reviewing a proposal for a new general education program. General education is that part of a total education that provides students with the basic knowledge and skills needed for of advanced study. Among other things, the proposal would add to the current requirements a requirement that all students take courses centered on race, gender, sexual orientation, and/or physical ability; courses that introduce students to current scholarly approaches to these issues; courses that provide students with the historical background that they need to understand current debates and events; courses that introduce students to research methods for exploring social issues in greater depth. Discussion of this and other general education proposals is underway now and will continue through this semester.

As you know, UNH is a public institution, so many university practices and even the quality of education are affected by legislative decisions. In the next legislative session we will be particularly attentive to the review of proposed House Bill 1304. I will testify in opposition to this bill on February 5. The bill would prevent the University System from setting quotas, goals, or guidelines for the admission of students and the recruitment of faculty and staff based on race, sex, national origin, religion, or sexual orientation. We don't care about quotas; we don't want them, but we do care about goals and guidelines. The University must have goals in order to continue to strengthen its programs. We must have guidelines to indicate how the University will meet its goals, what we will do and what we will not do. At UNH all students are admitted under the same admissions standards. Our students of color are performing well academically and graduating at a rate slightly higher than the average for all UNH students. Their leadership roles in the University are exemplary. We welcome the opportunity to educate legislators in this session about the essential role that diversity plays in the quality of education we provide to all our students. We will explain that sound admission decisions are made on the basis of a complex matrix of indicators that look at the whole student rather than only at a few narrow numerical scales. I am confident New Hampshire will avoid the fallacies that have prompted some states to limit their universities' decision-making in the areas of admission and hiring to the extent that those universities are being damaged.

It is too soon to predict whether we will get help from the courts on these matters. We watch especially the case against the University of Michigan that is now in a federal appeals court and is expected to be heard in the U. S. Supreme Court before the end of this year. I am especially grateful to the University of Michigan because they have assembled and are presenting a wealth of compelling evidence showing that campus diversity has educational benefits. Actually, the University of Michigan is defendant in two lawsuits, one addressing undergraduate admissions and the second admissions to the University's Law School. However, the two cases are being heard and considered at the same time because of their similarities. Across the nation courts have issued quite divergent rulings in affirmative action cases of this type, and we are hopeful the Supreme Court will weigh in on inclusivity.

If you have access to UNH's website, you will see on the President's web page a document entitled "On the Importance of Diversity in Higher Education." UNH played a strong role in writing this document which states forcefully that a diverse society is best served by diverse communities on our university campuses because such diversity enriches the educational experience, promotes personal growth and a healthy society, strengthens communities and the workplace, and enhances America's economic competitiveness. These are the principles that the University of Michigan court case provides evidence for, and they are endorsed by essentially all major national higher education organizations.

We celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this year in a somewhat different atmosphere than in other years. The events of September 11 and the U. S. response to those events have both sobered us and reminded us of our dependence on one another, our families, and our communities. The University community has paused several times since September 11 to mourn the loss of loved ones and to grieve with their families and friends. On September 20 our chaplains led us in a service of remembrance that was built on Dr. King's profound words, "Unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."

Dr. King's writings are a great legacy. We have been reminded that our community today is not only local but global. He spoke about the interdependence our nation must assume with other nations, and the dependence of each one of us on others. "As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent."

Even as we recognize how far we are from Dr. King's ideals, how vigilant we must continue to be, and how great the cost is for doing what is right, we are able to celebrate the progress we have made, and press on for a better day. We know that the next steps will require that we work together. We are interdependent. We need each other.

Again, let me thank you for the strong support that you give to the University of New Hampshire. We hope to see you on campus engaged in our many projects, and I commit to you that UNH students, faculty, and staff will not be cloistered in hallowed halls, but will be with you in your communities making the Seacoast and the nation better for all citizens.