KAUST CEREMONIAL SPEECHES

Your Majesty, your royal highnesses, your excellencies, distinguished members of the International Advisory Board, honored guests. This is a great occasion and a memorable event, not only in the life of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but also of the region and of the larger world. It is also a significant event in the long history of higher education, where a new chapter is being written today.

For even as we celebrate the literal ground breaking in this remarkable location, this place of such cultural and spiritual significance, we also celebrate it in the wider educational sense. The physical ground breaking will support a green campus, with buildings of startling beauty and functionality. The educational ground breaking marks the creation of an institution whose bold vision and innovative design promise to make it a place of transforming influence and enduring significance.

It has been said by Morris Bishop that” there can be no great achievement without a dream. Giant towers rest on a foundation of visionary purpose.” KAUST is, indeed, a statement of visionary purpose and we celebrate the beginning of the construction of “giant towers” that will mark its implementation.

This day is memorable for several reasons. First, it is memorable because of the vision that this gathering embodies and represents. The vision is the culmination of a decades-long dream of His Majesty, King Abdullah, to create a new House of Wisdom – Bayt al-Hikma – that would represent the quest for knowledge within an international community of men and women, pursuing scholarship of the highest standard. As such, it represents the rekindling of the historial Arab and Muslim spirit of learning and the reaffirmation of the high place given to knowledge and its benefit to the larger society. In this new university this knowledge is represented both by science, the endless quest for understanding of ourselves and the planet on which we live, and technology, the enduring search for useful applications of that knowledge to enhance the well-being of all peoples.

This is also a memorable occasion because of the generosity that supports the vision. The grandeur of the site, the beauty and functionality of the buildings, the generosity of the endowment and its sheltering in an enduring waqf all speak to the remarkable generosity behind King Abdullah’s provision for the fulfillment of his vision.

Today’s gathering is also memorable because of the bold aspiration and remarkable scope of KAUST. For this university has selected for its goals a limited range of subject areas. Yet between them, they touch upon almost every aspect of our daily lives: resources, energy, the environment, materials science, biosciences, engineering, applied mathematics and computer science. Here is the promise of science in a nutshell. Here are the areas where the advancement of knowledge may contribute the most good to the human condition, to the people of this region, and especially to the future welfare of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. But this is not just another college or another university, however praiseworthy that would itself be. This is a university that aspires to international stature, to employing the best practices and appointing the leading scholars from throughout the world. The very boldness of this plan and the targeted strategy it represents add to the significance of the day.

Equally memorable and significant as we gather today is the membership and partnerships that the university represents. The membership will be international, including men and women of all persuasions, of all faiths, and of all nations. This openness to talented individuals of outstanding ability will be the earmark of the new university and the best guarantee it offers for achieving its remarkable goals. The distinguished men and women members of the International Advisory Board are indicative of the international character and stature of the new university.

No less memorable and no less important is that the university will be governed by a self-perpetuating, independent Board of Trustees who have already publicly stated that their goal is to nurture and protect the fullest freedom of research, thought and discussion. This characteristic is a critical part of the successful search for knowledge. Already some of the most distinguished universities in the world have embraced KAUST in academic partnerships, affirming their belief in the strength of the vision this represents.

Today is also remarkable, not only because of the direct potential benefits that KAUST will offer to the Kingdom, to the region and to the world beyond, but also for the hope it provides as a beacon reaffirming the centrality of knowledge, not only to human well-being and advancement, but also to understanding, reconciliation and cooperation.

So this is a day of celebration, not simply in the beginning of the physical construction of a glittering new campus, but also in the reaffirmation of the vision of the benefit of knowledge to human needs and of the promise that study and work together, as partners in applying knowledge to those needs, can lead us to a more equitable, more peaceful, and more sustainable world.

Your Majesty, I am privileged to speak on behalf of the International Advisory Council and of all sister institutions of higher learning in congratulating you on the splendor of your vision, in thanking you for the generosity of the provision you have made for its implementation, and in assuring you of our gratitude to you, our respect and admiration for you, and our partnership with you, in achieving these high and worthy goals.