“Class of 2010, let yourselves be renewed, here at Amherst College, as you embrace this paradox: that you reach your fullest potential by engaging with those you find to be most different from you; that as you strive toward your individual identity, you must question, as [author James] Baldwin said, and take in the answer you learn from the larger community of which you are a part. That is how we achieve not just the appearance, but the practice, of a diverse community of vivid individuals. Not when we pass each other by, but as we come forward to one another. In questioning and thereby coming to appreciate more deeply each other, you bring this place alive. And, in the bargain, you become a morally fulfilled human being.”
President Anthony W. Marx
In his 2006 Opening Convocation speech
Johnson Chapel, Sept. 4, 2006
“The purpose of copyright law is not the protection of authors. It is—as it says in the Constitution—‘to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.’ The purpose of copyright is the dissemination of culture.”
Kembrew McLeod, documentary filmmaker and media scholar
In a multimedia program titled “Culture, Inc.: How Intellectual Property Erodes Freedom of Expression”
Converse Hall, Sept. 18, 2006
“The tragedy is that for the first time in western human history, we have forgotten how to build cities. Instead, we destroy the cities we have. The classical and traditional understanding taught us that a city is a place where people come together to perfect their individual natures by pursing what is good by nature for all members of the city. Now we believe that the individual ought properly to pursue whatever he believes to be in his individual best interest, to pursue his bliss, and that the city is either irrelevant or an impediment. The hole in the ground in lower Manhattan is a physical embodiment of this attitude. ”
Carroll William Westfall, architectural historian at the University of Notre Dame
In a talk titled “To Restore the American City,” part of the Colloquium on the American Founding
Pruyne Lecture Hall, Sept. 11, 2006
“I know that 30 years from now, when I'm an alum and I come back to Amherst for Reunion or Homecoming, I'll drive past these houses and say to my kids, ‘I helped build that.’”
Daniel DeZeeuw ’08
At the “wall-raising” for the first Amherst College-Habitat Partnership homes being built on land donated by the college to Habitat for Humanity
Sept. 16, 2006