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№ 2002.002 — Massachusetts Institute of Technology — Commencement address
James Wolfensohn
President of the World Bank
World Bank president James Wolfensohn reflects on his own journey from Australia to MIT decades earlier and argues that the world is no longer a bipolar divide between rich and poor but an interdependent place. He contends that poverty and inequity anywhere—made vivid by the events of September 11th—affect everyone, and challenges graduates to make 'planetary equity' their central concern. He urges them to use their education with humility and to commit to social justice, development, and peace.
Key moments
- 01 Recalls his first visit to MIT in the 1950s and praises the OpenCourseWare program as a global contribution
- 02 Describes his earlier view of the world as bipolar—rich versus poor—and how that view changed
- 03 Cites September 11th and statistics on global poverty to argue inequity is unstable and shared
- 04 Tells the 'picking up the dog' anecdote to urge graduates to use their education with humility
Visual speech map
James Wolfensohn at MIT, 2002
A commencement address about global interdependence, poverty, planetary equity, humility, and using knowledge for development and peace.
- 01 MIT return
- 02 OpenCourseWare
- 03 Old divides
- 04 Interdependence
- 05 September 11
- 06 Poverty
- 07 Humility
- 08 Planetary equity
Return
MIT knowledge becomes a global public resource
Wolfensohn begins from his own MIT connection and praises OpenCourseWare as an example of education moving beyond campus boundaries.
A personal return to MIT gives the address the perspective of an alumnus looking across decades.
OpenCourseWare becomes a symbol of knowledge shared at planetary scale.
The institution's excellence matters most when it widens who can learn.
World
The rich-poor divide is no longer distant
He rejects an old bipolar picture of rich and poor worlds, arguing that poverty and inequity now move through one interdependent system.
The speech changes the map from separate worlds to connected consequences.
Global deprivation is not background tragedy; it is a structural fact shaping everyone's future.
September 11 makes instability and injustice impossible to treat as remote.
Standard
Planetary equity is the central assignment
The address asks graduates to make equity the measure of their careers, linking development, peace, and social justice.
The phrase turns compassion into a governing principle for technical and professional choices.
Growth is incomplete if it leaves vast numbers outside opportunity.
Lasting peace depends on reducing the conditions that make exclusion and anger durable.
Humility
Education must be carried without arrogance
Through a practical anecdote about humility, Wolfensohn warns that elite training should enlarge responsibility rather than ego.
The anecdote cuts against credential pride and returns attention to ordinary human decency.
Knowledge is judged by what graduates do with it, especially for those without power.
Humility keeps public purpose from becoming performance.
Transcript
The full transcript is hosted by the original publisher. Commencement Archive links to the source rather than republishing copyrighted text.
Read the full transcript at source →Provenance
Verified from official archive; targeted event-level link verified (2026-06-26)
Full prepared text on MIT News (136th Commencement, June 2002). Coverage page also linked. Verified live 2026-06-26. Category: Global development