№ 2011.005 — Caltech — Commencement address
Ahmed Zewail
Nobel laureate Ahmed Zewail addresses Caltech's 2011 graduates, sharing his personal journey from Egypt to America and Caltech in pursuit of knowledge, and crediting passion and optimism for his success. He urges graduates to use their exceptional education to shape the future through science, which he argues drives societal advancement more than politics. Drawing on the recent Egyptian uprising and his role as U.S. Science Envoy, he advocates for science diplomacy and 'soft power' as tools for global progress and democracy.
Key moments
- 01 Recounts arriving in the U.S. in 1969 and his quest for knowledge leading to the 1999 Nobel Prize
- 02 Asks graduates to give their parents a standing ovation
- 03 Argues science is central to societal progress and democracy, citing the Egyptian revolution's use of social media
- 04 Calls for science diplomacy and global investment in education, quoting Jefferson and Martin Luther King Jr.
Transcript
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Read the full transcript at source →Provenance
Imported from NPR commencement archive; cross-referenced with Open Commencement DB
NPR archive last updated in 2015; destination availability has not been exhaustively rechecked | Open Commencement DB transcript; not independently verified against the original recording