The following is the complete text of President Bok's commencement address which was delivered at Notre Dame University on May 17, 1987.

It is a special privilege to speak at the final commencement of a great leader of American higher education. For over 30 years, Ted Hesburgh has taught us all that it means to be an educator in the fullest sense of the word. At a time when so many of us are little more than energetic administrators, Ted has succeeded not only in strengthening Notre Dame academically but in teaching audiences everywhere about the values that matter in our society.

We should not underestimate what an unusual accomplishment this has been. University presidents constantly try to please all of their constituencies because their institutions cannot prosper without the support of faculty, students, and alumni, not to mention foundation officers and government officials. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that Ted has been willing to speak and speak again for ideas and ideals which he knew were unsettling and unpopular.

Such integrity in the service of humane values has special meaning at a time when many educators are searching for ways to strengthen the moral standards of their students. In the coming years, we are likely to witness more courses on ethics and more attention paid to developing standards of honesty, decency, and respect for others on our campuses. That is all to the good. But as we labor at these reforms, we should keep one thing in mind. No set of courses, however brilliantly taught, no code of conduct, however wisely conceived, will ever succeed in strengthening the character of our students unless they are buttressed by the force of personal example. If you would know virtue, Plato tells us, observe the virtuous man. For more than a quarter of a century, Ted Hesburgh has given to us all the example of a virtuous man. May his success embolden more of us to follow his lead.

Commencement is an ancient rite that takes different forms in different institutions. But almost everywhere, the ceremony affords an occasion not only to congratulate the seniors who have completed their course of study but to reflect upon the world they will inherit and the contributions they can make to improve it. In this spirit, let me draw upon the three months I recently spent wandering abroad to express some thoughts on one of the many themes to which Ted Hesburgh has devoted his talents.

Throughout the life of American higher education, great institutions like this one have steadily grown from small local colleges to national universities and then to international seats of learning. In this evolution, our universities have simply followed in the path of the society to which they belong. For America too has grown from a collection of separate colonies preoccupied with local interests to a single nation shielded by oceans from foreign conflicts and finally to a great world power connected by political, commercial, and military links to events in every corner of the globe.

With each passing year, the bonds that join us to other nations are growing tighter--mounting trade, larger capital flows, greater travel, and much more rapid communication. These developments make us more and more sensitive to events in other parts of the world. Today, recessions in Asia can cause hundreds of thousands of Americans to lose their jobs. Population growth in Mexico seeps across our borders to alter the economic and political life of cities and states from New York to California. Decisions by oil ministers in distant continents can affect our standard of living and endanger our economic prosperity. An epidemic of AIDS in Africa or a hole in the ozone layer over the Arctic threatens the lives of Americans all across the land.

While these developments are familiar, there is one respect in which our relations with the rest of the world have not gone exactly as one might have expected. As the welfare of nations grows ever more interdependent, one might have thought that America would be entering into more and more forms of close international cooperation. And so we did, at least for a time. After World War II, the United States led the way in developing the United Nations, in supporting international organizations and agreements of many kinds, in upholding international law, proposing limits on atomic weapons, promoting freer trade and--not least--in giving generously to help poorer nations through the Marshall Plan. the Point Four program and other initiatives of a similar kind.

Decline of Internationalism

Over the past 15 years, however, the postwar spirit of internationalism seems to have waned and given way in this country to something quite different. Our behavior toward international organizations has become less supportive and our voice often petulant and shrill. We have left UNESCO, pulled out of the ILO for a time, rejected the World Court, threatened to leave the FAO, cut our contributions to the World Health Organization and the United Nations itself, and balked at supporting new initiatives by the World Bank.

In the domain of arms control, we have repudiated the SALT II understanding and flirted with questionable interpretations of the ABM treaty.

In the field of international exchanges, we have allowed inflation to erode the Fulbright Program to the point that it supports less than half of the students and scholars that it did when I was a Fulbright scholar more than 30 years ago. The Peace Corps too has shrunk to a level less than half its former size.

In trade, where we once led the fight for liberalization, we have voted new quotas and tariffs and would certainly have imposed even greater barriers had President Reagan not threatened to veto them.

In foreign aid, although we live in a world where four billion people are in poverty and 40,000 children die of starvation every day, our economic assistance has dropped by almost 50 percent in real dollars since 1960--and much of that is concentrated now on just two countries, Egypt and Israel. Among the industrialized nations, we have sunk to 17th in the proportion of our gross national product that we give to aid our poorer neighbors abroad. Some even have suggested that $200 million is to much to give to Aquino's Philippene government.

It is tempting to see these developments as the handiwork of politicians and government bureaucrats. But this is hardly an accurate view of what has transpired. In fact, the shift away from international cooperation reflects much deeper changes in American public opinion. According to public opinion polls, the interest of Americans in international matters steadily declined throughout the 1970s. By the early 1980s, only one international problem--defense policy and the threat of war--ranked among the ten issues that Americans considered most important. In 1986, the foreign policy goal most important to the public was protecting the jobs of American workers, while strengthening international organizations, promoting human rights, and encouraging the growth of democracy abroad lagged far behind. Three-quarters of the public agreed that "we should no longer think so much in international terms but concentrate more on our own national problems." Even the left no longer offered a positive agenda for working with other nations but simply did what it could to keep Washington from engaging in questionable activities abroad.