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Question everything: "We can protest and complain," the editors of the 1969 Hub yearbook wrote about this April 1969 campus protest, "and perhaps try to accomplish change. Or we can sit and not think so we will not be bothered." At the time, students were concerned with campus issues such as parietals and tenure as well as national issues such as the draft, the Vietnam War, and civil rights. Recently, these sentiments from over three decades ago were given a contemporary voice by Dennis Berkey, provost and dean of Arts and Sciences, during this year's GRS robing ceremony. He said, ". . . once you were here, instead of merely giving you answers, your professors goaded you with more questions. They acted in the spirit of Anatole France's words: '. . . teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.' . . . Though you may have found some answers in the course of writing your dissertations, you are probably leaving Boston University with more unsolved problems or unanswered questions than when you began. Consider this our gift to you, a gift which you will carry with you for the rest of your life, to inspire your scholarship, teaching, and research. The present era is less controversial than previous eras, but the sense of urgency in the desire to accomplish change is still felt by graduates." Photo from the 1969 Hub yearbook

8 June 2001
Boston University
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