In the forty academic years since, as a young man, I established this institution, I have had the privilege of inducting into educational endeavor many thousands of young people. In that long vista of years, with never-ending regularity, men have entered this school, trained themselves for the larger opportunities of life, and have gone forth in successive waves to bear their part in a troubled world. Lawyers, judges, business executives, and public officials in ever-increasing numbers testify to the vital role that Suffolk University has performed for this community, for this nation, and for the world.

Not long ago, a very modest Chinese student was enrolled in our college of Liberal Arts. He answered the call of his native land and became a general in the army of Chiang Kai Chek. A Brahmin from India was graduated from our law school in 1926. He is today one of the potent leaders in India’s great struggle for political and economic freedom. Our first Arab graduate received his degree from Suffolk in 1934. He returned to his people [and] became a professor of law in the University of Iraq in Baghdad. Today he is one of the diplomats who represent the Arab states in Washington. Not very long ago a tall serious young man [worked] his way through our law [school] as a student worker in our library. Today he is with General MacArthur in Japan, a member of the counter-intelligence corps of the United States Army. He has recently been appointed as an instructor in American law at Sapporo on the island of Hokkaido in Japan.

I recite these things not in a spirit of boasting but that you may know that Suffolk University is performing a worldwide service. May I say also that in all its history Suffolk has never barred from its classrooms any student because of his race, or his color, or his religion, or because of his financial condition. We do not believe in or practice racial quotas or other devices of exclusion. Every worthy student with the equivalent of a day high school education is given his chance to prove that he can do college-grade work.

We do not coddle our students. Education is a serious business, just as life itself, for [what] they are here to prepare is serious and exacting. Today we are reassembling our teaching staff. Dean Lester R. Ott, whom I have designated to preside over the faculty of our College of Liberal Arts, has been absent in military service just as the majority of those who will teach you have been. Thus, added to ripe scholarship and teaching experience before the war, we have a faculty at Suffolk University College of Liberal Arts who have faced the same problems and the same perils that have confronted this great aggregation of veterans of World War II.

And now I wish to say to you in all earnestness that never in forty years of experience as chief executive of this institution have I felt so profoundly the significance of an opening day. This group is composed, virtually 100 percent, of those who have served in the armed forces of the United States. You have served your country in the greatest war of human history. You have faced death in myriad forms that the United States of America might continue to enjoy the blessing of constitutional government and that system of political, religious, and industrial freedom that...