Video - Opening Remarks

Vartan Gregorian
President, Carnegie

DR. GREGORIANGood morning, sabah al-khayr, bonjour, buenos días. Mrs. Bush, Barbara Bush, ladies and gentlemen, today is an ideal day for master of ceremonies because everybody who is here is very important person. Everybody is somebody, so therefore we don't have to introduce anybody.

But instead, I would like to extend cordial welcome to this great conference to all the first ladies, first spouses, CEOs, presidents of universities, corporate leaders, as well as representatives of international organizations, UN UNESCO; foundation heads and representatives. All of you are extended a cordial welcome.

I would like to also extend our greetings to Barbara Bush but especially Laura Bush because they are both dedicated to literacy, learning, libraries, education, especially those of girls and women. Laura Bush has done more as a librarian and as an educator. It's therefore a great pride for me, as Paul LeClerc mentioned to invite the First Lady who is a librarian to one of the world's greatest libraries (inaudible.)

The aim of this conference is to build private public partnerships, international transnational bridges of cooperation. The challenge of literacy illiteracy is a global one. It cannot be neglected in the age of globalization, this age of knowledge. We cannot afford to surrender a billion people to the forces of ignorance and create a permanent underclass.

The challenges are not personal ones and personal tragedies alone. They affect the future of societies and hence nations as the future of humanity. For decades, the United Negro College, the fundraising arm of historical black colleges, had a great slogan: A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Eight hundred million minds are a tragic thing to waste.

It is befitting that this conference is being held at New York, New York, the seat of the United Nations and perhaps the most international city in the world. New York is the microcosm of humanity. All the races, religions, ethnic groups, as well as regions of the world are represented here in this wonderful city. There's some 400 ethnic publications alone in New York.

It is no accident that we are also meeting in the New York Public Library, the headquarters of four research and eighty three circulating libraries. This library is one of the five great libraries in the world, with over 23 million to 25 million books, and some 45 million to 50 million items, and from 2.5 million to 2.9 million cardholders.

It is the home for millions of citizens and non citizens as well, natives and immigrants, poor and rich, students and scholars, academics and businessmen, laymen and clergy. Two distinct characteristics of New York Public Library are it was born free; it is free; it's the embodiment of public private partnership; and it's here for a long time serving the nation and the world.

In 1983, none other than Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the head of the Bolshevik party and later the head of Soviet Russia, wrote an editorial in Pravda about this library. It might have been a very unbusy revolutionary time. He could not believe that any individual could walk in through the doors of New York Public Library as a right not as a privilege, ask for any item, without showing any card of identity or paying any fee, and without anybody's business as to why that person was here, for what purpose, because reading learning was a right not a privilege.

"What Russia needs," he said, "is a New York Public Library." Of course, that was 1913.

The library is the symbol of knowledge. It's the house of the intellect, the cathedral of learning, source of information, source of knowledge, wisdom, a laboratory for thought but also a source of action.

Yet none of this library none of this in this library no one can graduate from a library because library is the university of universities. This library is a haven for self improvement and emancipation from grips of ignorance as well as grips of economic bondage.

Those who cannot read cannot decide, cannot decode, cannot understand because they are illiterate. There are some 800 million adults around the globe, including the United States, who cannot read. There are some 100 million children who do not attend school. Two thirds of those without adequate literacy skills are women. In a sense, illiterates are handicapped prisoners in their own societies, confined to the present, detached from the past, and therefore detached from the future.

With that introductory remarks of welcome, it is my great pleasure to introduce the Secretary of State of the United States, the honorable Dr. Condoleezza Rice. She is an outstanding individual, a renaissance person, combining great teaching with exemplary scholarship.

She was an outstanding academic leader before she joined the government. She was chief academic and budget officer of Stanford University, my alma mater. She was its provost. She is the author of three important books and numerous articles. She has served on the boards of many important national and international corporations as well as important nonprofit organizations such as Carnegie Corporation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Rand Corporation, and others. Prior to assuming the position of the Secretary of State, she was national security advisor to the President.

She has received numerous awards and tributes, however, for today's purposes, I would like to highlight the fact, while at Stanford, she received two of Stanford's most coveted teaching positions as well as teaching awards because by nature, by temperament, she is an intellectual, an academic, above all a great teacher.

Dr. Rice, who has a keen intelligence, great command of the English language, nerves of steel, is also a great pianist. I am sure if she was born in the 19th century, she would have been present at the Concert of Europe in 1815 or Congress of Berlin in 1878. And if she was at the beginning of the 20th century born, she would have been, I'm sure, at the Versailles, during Versailles negotiations without tipping her hand and showing her biases at all.

It is my great pleasure to introduce the great Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

(Applause.)