Keith Reeves:	President Chopp, Dean Braun, Associate Dean Rodriguez, Nadia, who is a wonderful student of mine, I am proud to say, and of course, the members of 2017, good evening.
	On behalf of the faculty, I am absolutely delighted to add my welcome to members of the incoming class. I know a little bit about what you're feeling, what you are and have been experiencing these last few days. Moments of exhilaration that you're finally here. Bouts of anxiety, perhaps, about whether the admissions office made a mistake. They did not. And perhaps a bit of restlessness and trepidation as you eagerly await classes and seminars on Monday. 
	In addition to being a faculty member at this extraordinary institution, I am also a fiercely proud alum. In August of 1984, my late identical twin brother, Kenneth, and I moved our things into Willets dormitory. I remember that year particularly well. The Republican National Convention meeting in Houston, we nominated Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush as its respective presidential and vice presidential candidates. Meanwhile, the Democrats nominated the first woman by a major party for a national office, New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro. Apple unveiled its revolutionary Macintosh personal computer. South Africa adopted a constitution. Egypt and Jordan restored diplomatic relations. The hepatitis virus was discovered. The Cosby Show premiered on NBC. We actually had classmates of ours who were fighting over whether to watch the Cosby Show in color or on black-and-white. Believe it or not, Swathmore's total charges, including tuition fees and room and board, was $12,700.
	Just a few months ago, my classmates and I gathered here across the campus to mark our own 25th reunion from the college. I can assure you that you will never find a closer set of friends anywhere than those whom you will meet over the next four years. I stand here and I look upon this extraordinary group of students, and I am excited for you. You enter the college at it prepares to celebrate its sesquicentennial, the country is being led by the first African-American President of the United States, and of course, you enter Swathmore against the backdrop of the nation commemorating the 50th anniversary of the march on Washington whose original title was the March of Washington for Jobs and Freedom. For all of the challenges facing the country and our world and, indeed, the college, this is an extraordinarily terrific time to be you, to be in your shoes. 
	When my twin brother and I, along with our classmates, entered Swathmore several decades ago, we were dreamers, so I look upon this talented, bright group of students, this new cohort of dreamers, and I can honestly say that I envy you. For me and for my classmates, Swathmore certainly delivered on its promise, a rigorous, enriching academic and ultimately fulfilling personal experience. But with the very humble insight and hindsight of several decades, allow me if I may to proffer a few tidbits of insight regarding how you might make for a more substantive, gratifying intellectual experience over the next four years. Nadia has her lists, I'm going to have my list. You might call it the Reeves Roadmap for Success at Swathmore.
	Rule four, as Nadia has pointed out, be a joiner. There are more than 100 clubs, groups, organizations on campus from War News Radio to student government to intramural sports to the debate club. These groups constitute a vitally important lifeblood of the college and serve as a fun respite from the rigors of the classroom. So be a joiner.
	Rule three, go abroad if the circumstances permit. I certainly made plenty of mistakes during my years in the protective cocoon of Swathmore, but by far the best decision I made was to take a semester of study at Oxford University in England during the spring semester of my junior year. You have to understand how mind boggling this was for me, an inner city kid from neighboring Chester, the product of a single parent household, having the opportunity to study and to travel in Europe for a semester and for a summer. And two Swathmore professors made that possible. The experience planted the seed for subsequent work and travel in southeast Asia, and these comparative experiences provided keenly important insights for my own professional and personal development. I urge you to go abroad if the circumstances permit.
	Rule two, put away the social media tools from time to time and engage each other. This is probably my most important point. In a rather provocative 2010 essay for the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell, the prolific writer and public intellectual, reminds us that in the winter of 1960, three years before the March on Washington, four college students, freshmen, from North Carolina, [inaudible 00:05:58] sat down at a lunch counter at a Woolworth's department store in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. Their aim was both simple and revolutionary: "I'd like a cup of coffee, please," asks one of the four to a white waitress. She replied, "We don't serve Negroes here." During the next several days, weeks, and months, all across the country, some 70,000 college students were protesting trying to desegregate lunch counters all throughout the south, and Gladwell rights, "And it happened without email, without texting, without Facebook, and without Twitter." Without email, texting, Facebook or Twitter.
	The central point is that high risk activism of desegregating lunch counters and marching for voting rights, these organizing tools, even if they had existed at that time, would have been poor substitutes for students' relationships with one another. For nearly a month, late into the night, oftentimes over beer, the four students who planned the initial Greensboro protests discussed and debated their plans, and three of them had attended high school together. Gladwell reminds us that the student who worked up the courage to ask for the cup of coffee, he did so because he was flanked by his roommate and the two good friends from high school. The value of strong personal relationships in moments of high risk activism cannot be overstated.
	Of Dr. King himself, Gladwell says this: If Martin Luther King, Jr., had tried to do a wiki-boycott in Montgomery, he would have been steamrolled by the white power structure. The things that King needed in Birmingham ... Discipline, strategy, deep strong personal ties and connections with people ... Were things that online social media cannot provide. We can debate that in seminar. 
	As you seek to place your imprint on the college and the world beyond these bucolic borders, I encourage you not to let the wonderful tools of social media get in the way of forming sustained, meaningful friendships across the boundaries of race and class and geography and sexual orientation and religious identity and ideology and language.
	Most important, rule number one, be intellectually curious and dream of making the world and of making Swathmore a better place. James Michener, class of 1929, pointedly said of his Swathmore experience: "His Swathmore education was his passport into the wild and vivid life of the mind." Michener could not have been more on point. It was my Swathmore education and the seeds of intellectual curiosity that planted within me a passionate desire to devote my professional and personal life to public problem solving. It was this intellectual curiosity of Swathmore students dreaming of how they might reform the criminal justice system in this country who pressed and challenged me to expand my work to this important arena of public policy when I returned to join the faculty in 1999. 
	It was this intellectual curiosity and desire to tie academic learning to real world problem solving that is responsible for the radical transformative community seminar that I teach entitled "The Politics of Punishment," where 15 Swathmore students take a weekly class alongside 15 students, men, who are incarcerated. Over the course of the semester, we are all engaged in learning and public problem solving that is transformative on both the individual and institutional level, and the work is challenging. It is rewarding, deeply gratifying, sometimes painful, and also very importantly, it is intentional. Much like the college students who bravely integrated segregated lunch counters five decades ago, and the 250,000 of every stripe and color who descended on the mall on Washington 50 years ago this week, the new generation of emerging leaders at Swathmore are also making their mark to create what Dr. King and Congressman John Lewis, who is my personal hero, called the beloved community. 
	Lewis, who was one of the original speakers at the March on Washington, said this: "The beloved community is one that respects the dignity and the worth of every human being, so in the end, and if the end is the beloved community, the means must be one of love. There is no room for division and schisms and separation. There is no room for putting someone down because of their color or their class," and so I beg you, I urge you to be intellectually curious and intentional, and to help us bring closer to the fruition of Dr. King's dream of the beloved community. 
	In closing, I'd like to have each of you stand and repeat this closing affirmation that my students and I recite alongside our students when we go into the prison, and with the hallmarks of this liberal arts education that we attain at Swathmore, critical thinking skills, analytical skills, the ability to communicate effectively and persuasively to problem solve, this charge sums up our deliberate intention to help bring about the beloved community. If everyone would stand and repeat after me, and the only condition is you have to speak as loudly so that our neighbors in the borough can hear you.
	Repeat after me, please. In this hour in history, education is the most powerful weapon which we can use to tear down walls and change the world.
	Welcome to Swathmore.