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National security adviser gives commencement speech 

STANFORD — National security adviser Condoleezza Rice returned home to Stanford University on Sunday, urging this year’s graduates to use their education to promote freedom and tolerate cultural differences. 

Rice told the 4,600 graduates that a different world awaits them now than when she first spoke to them as provost their freshman year. 

She said they had a responsibility to use their education to break down the hatred that erupted on Sept. 11. 

“In the months past, we have been reminded in dramatic and terrifying ways of what happens when difference becomes a license to kill,” she said. “Terrorism is meant to dehumanize and divide.” 

About two dozen graduates disagreed with the choice of Rice as speaker for Stanford’s 111th commencement held Father’s Day in the school’s stadium. They stood during her speech, holding up their black mortarboards with a red flier attached outlining their outrage with Rice’s politics, including the United States’ refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol, among others. 

In the stands, several people stood holding a large sign that read: “Stop Isolating U.S. — Respect Int’l Law.” 

“I think that for the university to choose a speaker with morals and values like Condi’s to lead us into the next phase of our lives is ... very disrespectful,” said Caitlin Gerdts, a human biology graduate from Bainbridge Island, Wash. She held up a large map of the world that read “What’s going on with this picture of the world?” 

But many in the crowd of about 25,000 applauded Rice as she told a personal story — reliving losing a childhood friend in the 1963 Birmingham, Ala., church bombing. 

“Though I didn’t see it, I heard it a few blocks away. It is a sound that I can still hear today,” she said. “I realize now that it is an experience that I have overcome, but will never forget. And so it will be for all of us — you and me — who experienced Sept. 11.” 

Rice did not specifically address the conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians or between India and Pakistan. 

Rice is a political science teacher on leave from the university and was the school’s provost from 1993 to 1999.