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Venturing into the unknown.
That's what it's about.
I wake up as a scientist thinking
about things we don't know.
Ideas excite me.
Yeah.
And they have consequences.
With each new note you add, it's as if the whole universe
has changed.
Let the best ideas come forward.
Ideas really do have consequences.
Ideas can change the world.
No university is better able to do that
than University of Chicago.
The University of Chicago's urban, global, courageous,
unusual, phenomenal, unrivaled, rigorous, fabulous, outspoken,
economics and pizza, pushing borders, invigorating,
intellectual crucible, that pushes
you to be your best every day.
University of Chicago is who we are.
From its inception, the University of Chicago
focused on rigorous intense inquiry.
It's defined everything about what the University of Chicago
is today and what it will be in the future.
The core curriculum at Chicago is the symbol of who we are.
Our mission is to get very talented students,
and to put them through a program
of systematic interdisciplinary training.
Then four years later, graduate what you call intellectuals.
It's not about teaching dogma, it's not about teaching rules.
Development of the mind and the inquiry of the mind.
Across many subject.
The ability to sort through complexity.
Evaluate evidence.
Defend one's arguments.
Listen to other people's arguments
and not just dismiss them.
We aren't just talking at each other, we're listening.
And at the end of the class, I may have a completely different
perspective on the issue.
I consider that my job here is to help
them build their weaknesses into strengths.
I'll bring up a discovery that we've made.
Then I'll proceed to criticize my own discovery.
It's through self criticism when they
see me able to do it on my own where they feel
comfortable to chime in, and all of a sudden you
create a learning culture k of critical inquiry.
The professors here were just incredible.
You have mentor relationships that just form really easily
because you work so closely.
Some excellent, excellent students over the years.
They were very much my teachers.
It changed my work.
It just exposed me to a world of ideas.
I was the beneficiary of a scholarship
from the University of Chicago.
Mind you, I was not a citizen of the United States.
I had no idea whether I'm going to stay in this country.
I would not have gone to business school
without that scholarship.
The Odyssey scholarship is supporting me
in a very basic way.
It's allowing me to live so that I can focus on my academics.
Attracting the best students, regardless
of their financial situation, is a good thing
for the University of Chicago.
I just feel so grateful that I was selected
to kind of be among the minds, and the intelligence,
and the incredible people in the best experience of my life.
I think supporting young people to pursue their dreams
opens up the world to you.
All we ask of anybody is that they do the same
to the next generation.
You're part of an intellectual community
that attracts individuals who are intellectually fearless.
It's a give and take culture that's rigorous,
asking deep questions.
You get pushed to think beyond your imagination.
No one assumes that you are correct just because you're
making assertions.
I don't care how many medals or honors you have.
Show me why this is right.
Today.
These are very distinguished faculty, very high
powered scholars.
That will bring together experts in different disciplines
to help solve problems.
In higher education today, the humanities
are really in retreat.
We really think that it's responsibility
to continue to foster growth of the humanities.
You can't really put a value on one humanities course
because it mushrooms and it bubbles
and it goes on for somebody's entire life.
The collegium you will allow teams of humanists
from all over the world to tackle problems that society
needs to deal with.
The institute of molecular engineering
is organized around solving water, energy, health
programs through designing matter from molecules up.
It's exciting because it is new for both the university
and for engineering, generally, to a new discipline.
Just solving one of all these problems that we're working on
would be tremendous.
Cities are both the source and locus of enormous creativity
and energy.
They are likewise the locus of some of the most difficult
problems that society faces.
The University of Chicago is part of the community.
We have patients who are our neighbors
and we learn from one another.
We're exploring opportunities to create more portals
for the community and people in the city
to come into the university and both get some of the knowledge
that we have, but also share their knowledge with us.
This presents an opportunity to address
these extremely difficult problems and an opportunity
to be contributing to, and participating,
in the great creative explosion that cities represent.
They're not very many institutions
that are at the level of University of Chicago
on the academic and scholarship side
at an inner city, that have need around them,
that are committed to having that impact.
Lots of people are skeptical about the ability
to use social programs to prevent crime.
What we tried to do is structure our research projects,
like randomized trials in medicine,
to generate evidence that is so rigorous and so compelling
that the most skeptical skeptic will
have to acknowledge that there's really something here.
One year of participation in youth guidance in Becoming
a Man program reduced violent crime arrests of these kids
by over 40%, which I think really
challenges the conventional wisdom
that the only way you can control crime and violence
in the United States is through locking up millions
and millions of people.
The city is a place that you can test out these theories
and, if you show the impact, it has global reach.
Billions of people, not just millions, billions of people
you can get to.
It's very important in a world which
is becoming more integrated that you
have these global universities.
To get the students out of the classroom
into the living environment, there's
no better way of doing it than going and living there.
We now have a rather more ambitious global strategy
with the same goals and quality of curriculum in teaching.
Students are going to want experience of understanding
other cultures because this is going
to be the world that they are functioning in over the coming
decades.
Can we bring people, scholars, politicians, administrators,
from these different areas also together
to discuss what's going on to debate the challenges facing
the world.
Think about what we humans are facing in the world.
It's really understanding climate change.
The marine biological laboratory has gotten very good
at monitoring that climate change,
but that depends on technologies.
That's where the Argon National Laboratories, the Institute
of Molecular Engineering, the kinds of people
who are developing the computational tools
for monitoring, can be brought together with colleges
so really we can bring these combinations together
in powerful new ways.
Human illness limits society and, accordingly,
fixing that, addressing that, is usually important.
It's transformative.
I had been diagnosed with metastatic, or advanced breast
cancer, in 2003.
The first thing Dr. Funmi Olopade
said to me is, I want to find out more about your tumor
so that I can personalize the treatment for both you
and the tumor.
I remember Shelly telling me, you
know my son just went to college.
I want to see him graduate.
The survival rate for metastatic diseases was one to two years.
I really must say that I have survived the odds.
I mean, I'm still sitting here, standing here, 10 years plus.
You know what?
It's worth every day, getting up ,
and supporting patients like her.
We have an enormous obligation to the people who gave us
the opportunity today to do what we do with these young people
and, in turn, they have an obligation to support those
who come after us.
The question for us today is how do we
realize these values in a powerful way going forward.
How can we take advantage of aberrant calcium signals
in treating neurodegenerative disease?
How do we replace those materials or recycle them?
How can I teach my students to write
their music, their own way?
The university is really made by the people in it.
Really very competitive.
Very unruly.
I don't want to call it perfection.
Seeing all the crazy, amazing things that they're doing.
Curing diabetes, cancer.
Innovation, more entrepreneurship, new ventures,
new technologies.
Really forces me to push for something
beyond what I'm doing.
It's a big, big university.
There's so much to be done and this
is the place where the future can be transformed and changed.
Together we are spreading grace and humanity.
Together we are thinking about ways in which you could
have an impact on society.
Together we have the potential to change the way people think
about urban problems.
Together we make amazing discoveries possible.
It's part of our DNA.
It's who we are.
Ours is the university of great discoveries.
Ours is the university of fearless inquiry.
Ours is the university that develops
ideas that change the world.
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