I have spent my career as a keeper of the Permanent Record, and it is for your own good that I remind you of its existence.

The Permanent Record is more than just how you did at school, your penmanship, spelling, citizenship and grades. It includes any demerits received at summer camp and notes from your grandmother.

In my parents’ living room, there is a wall of books. Floor to ceiling; biographies and histories, novels and mysteries. Beyond the reach of six children—both physically and in understanding—the collected Shakespeare. And over here (be still my heart), the World Book Encyclopedia. We used the World Book for most of our homework assignments, though there were no reports on Mars, the Mississippi, or the Merrimack, as “M” had gone missing.

I would stand before the bookcase as a young reader and think, “There’s so much to know!” But with parents who were readers and who kept us supplied in Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and tales of the Old West, the battle was engaged.

Degree holders will do important work in their personal, professional and civic lives. Health-care providers, artists and musicians, educators and librarians, engineers and technologists, attorneys, social workers, managers in both the profit and non-profit sectors, journalists, scientists and those who will do something with computers—I’m never sure quite what, but I know there are lots of ones and zeros involved, and they work hard doing it.

But it is the students being graduated in the liberal arts that are most prepared to understand and engage with the world in which we live and work. To question assumptions. To integrate information from disparate fields. To interpret and to see the nuances. Whether one studies anthropology, communications, economics or English, there is recognition that the world is complicated and exists in many shades of gray. Consider the concept of self-determination and national identity.

Some historians see the 20th as a short century, beginning in 1914 and ending in 1989. Much of that time was spent in the evolution or disintegration of countries that had been cobbled together through the economics and ambitions of empire.

What makes a people? Ethnicity? Shared language or location? Customs or values? Faith? We know that strife can exist even when many of these are held in common.

The historical method of studying the great men of history has given way to a more comprehensive approach, influenced in large measure by a group of French historians. In Fernand Braudel’s The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, there is a great deal of the Mediterranean and not so much of Philip.

Why are these people here? How has their location influenced their development? These aren’t just questions of understanding history, but in dealing with our world today. It is by integrating demography, politics, economics and the natural world that we may be able to answer a question such as “What would it take to make a Palestinian state viable?”

What are the connections? How is the story of a people told by its artists, poets and historians? Much of what we see now in art and literature has lost, for us, its germination or context. Whether we studied geography, philosophy, museum studies or political science, we recognize that having a broader knowledge of societies allows this deeper understanding.

Consider influences.

We recognize that science is a collaborative endeavor, building on what others have discovered or made. Newton wrote: “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.”

That hasn’t been as obvious to us in other fields. Even in the arts, among the most independent of endeavors, Garcia Marquez was influenced by Joyce’s Ulysses. Joyce, in turn, was inspired by Homer and Dujardin. Picasso modeled Les Demoiselles d’Avignon on African masks and depicted the disasters of the Spanish Civil War in Guernica.

Though ours is a young country, history has a long reach. There is still alive today in Alabama a woman whose husband fought in the Civil War, a man born when Polk was president.

Think of how the past constantly intrudes on us.

• The Battle of Kosovo occurred in 1389 between the Serbs and the Ottoman Turks. The Turks won and began a centuries-long occupation of the Balkans. After World War I, Yugoslavia was created, but in the creation were sown the simmering seeds of its dissolution.

• Many modern African borders are the product of their former colonial status, with the result that people have been forced together in ways that too often have led to conflict.

• The victory of Protestant Prince William of Orange over Catholic King James in 1690 still resonates in Northern Ireland’s annual marching season.

• Three years ago, Americans didn’t think much about Islam. Aside from the call to prayer and perhaps the hajj, I don’t know that many of us could give an accurate summary of any of its key tenets or practices or understand its different branches. Too many of us have put a single face on a faith with over one billion followers, just as many Muslims lump together the even larger number of branches of Christianity.

Too often we seek a single, simple view that, in its simplification, leads to misunderstanding and misstep. We all recognize the need to understand the past to make any sense of our own time. I mentioned earlier that some historians consider the 20th a short century. Other scholars don’t believe it has yet ended.

W.E.B. DuBois wrote in 1903: “The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line, the relation of the darker to the lighter races in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.”

Many, if not most, Americans believe there has been progress in terms of civil rights and race relations, though there is great disparity among the groups in just how much progress. We generally remain separated in social and residential settings. Some of this is the result of access and income; some of it a matter of comfort.

For as long as the U. S. has been a country, whites have been a clear majority. The Census Bureau projects that by 2050, persons of color will account for half our population. How will living in a no-majority society change us? How well are we prepared to deal with it? What steps must we take to better understand each other and ourselves?

We live in an era that celebrates the ascendancy of technology and science. As students of the liberal arts, we understand why the humanities must inform science. There is the perspective and breadth of understanding of peoples, cultures and ethics to contribute to the debate, whether in stem cell research or in questions of the use of our most personal information.

We also recognize that just as science needs the humanities, we need a solid grasp of science. Without it, we risk becoming the two cultures warned against by C.P. Snow in the wake of Sputnik.

Students refer to “graduation.” We at the university call it “commencement.”

We run the ceremony and print the program, so our name wins. This isn’t just a matter of semantics. We recognize that graduation is the start of an education, not the conclusion.

No one would argue that we know all we will need to; the world is not a static place, and life isn’t organized into academic disciplines. Education is more than study, it is involvement.

We’ll be watching the progress of our graduates in the newspaper, in church bulletins, association newsletters, professional journals and, we hope, through keeping us informed of what they are doing. Above all, we would wish that they always stay curious. There is so much to know and so very much to be done.

Let us go forth, now, and transform the promise of our rhetoric into reality.

Editor’s note: Grove will be retiring in August and was the pre-commencement speaker to IUPUI’s liberal arts graduates May 9. An adaptation of that address is printed here. Full text of his address is available at this Web site:

http://liberalarts.iupui.edu/downloads/news/commencement2004.pdf