https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIXFiLYUEFk
Ladies and gentlemen, Director-General of ORT Uruguay, deans, members of our university's academic staff, dear friends of ORT, and especially, dear graduates and their families.
Today, I welcome you with two overwhelming, contradictory emotions. A great satisfaction in sharing this celebration with you, but also deep concern as many members of our academic community are profoundly affected by the recent attack by Hamas on the State of Israel, and the onset of war as a consequence.
But let's begin with the positive. Today is a day for celebration and pride. It's also a day for gratitude, because much like all significant milestones in life, graduation is a team effort. Your families have surely been a huge source of support throughout these years. Take this opportunity to express your gratitude to them.
Some of you may be contemplating your next steps in life. Should you seek the stability of employment or the adventure of entrepreneurship? Should you pursue further education through graduate studies, or enter the job market? Should you dedicate yourself to public service or focus on personal growth? There are no right answers to these questions. Each individual must find their own path. Every choice carries risks, and there will always be roads not taken. Don't wait for the perfect moment or ideal circumstances to pursue what you deem important; they may never come.
Dear graduates, you are now graduating into a tumultuous and contradictory world. A world of continuous technological progress but moral regression. War is reemerging as an accepted extension of politics. Distortion and falsehoods are becoming the prevailing forms of public information. What seemed like the end of history a few years ago has now transformed into the beginning of a nightmare. It falls on your generation to harmonize our technological capabilities with our moral compass.
Today is a day of celebration for everyone, yet for many, including myself, it is also a moment of anxiety due to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.. Many of us have friends and relatives in that friendly country, and we closely follow their situation day by day. If they live in the South of Israel, there is a significant chance that they have been killed, injured, raped, or kidnapped. Hamas killed more than 1,500 people in a single day including men, women, children, the elderly, both the healthy and the sick, people in wheelchairs, children with autism, pregnant women, Israelis, and citizens of 23 other nationalities, among them Argentinians, Brazilians, and at least one Uruguayan.
Hamas's attack was more than a terrorist act; it was more than an act of war. It was a massive act of violence against defenseless individuals, with no comprehensible military objective. The attackers themselves filmed their actions and broadcasted them live so families could watch in real-time as their children or siblings were being killed, thus creating evidence of war crimes themselves.
There is certainly a propaganda aim in these actions, but this is more than propaganda. It is the glorification of violence, of the supremacy of armed men over defenseless women and children, of the right to sexual abuse. The only way to comprehend these actions is as a post-modern form of human sacrifice.
It seems like we are regressing to ancient times. What comes next, a return to slavery? All of us who believe in moral progress and human rights should be united in rejecting this barbarism. Day by day, we follow the funerals and listen to the families of the kidnapped. We all hope that the war does not escalate further, that there are no more innocent victims. We hope that the criminals are defeated, and that both populations can live as we all desire, in peace, with hope for the future, and with neighbors who are not obsessed with killing us. Today, it seems very difficult, but as the Talmud says, "we are not obligated to complete the task, but neither are we free to desist from it".
This attack by Hamas is not just a heinous crime; it is a test. For the perpetrators, it was a test of their willingness to exercise violence. For Israel, it is a test of resilience, but the most important test is for those of us who are far away. Can we unequivocally condemn hundreds of homicides of unarmed civilians? It should not be a difficult test. Can we condemn gang rapes without reservations? Can we declare that the kidnapping of children is unacceptable? And if we cannot, what does that say about us?
Tomorrow, we can condemn other actions if they violate our conscience, we can support other victims, delve deeper into the history of the conflict, and propose alternatives. But today, we should all react as one by supporting a wounded country, the families of so many innocent victims, and the hundreds of hostages.
Unfortunately, many could not muster the minimum of moral decency and intellectual honesty to pass this test of humanity. For years, we have heard groups, organizations, and political parties correctly affirm that human rights are eternal and universal. Homicides, disappearances, torture, and child abductions are unacceptable crimes that must be condemned in every possible forum, with no statute of limitations, neither legal nor moral.
Yet now, in the face of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, some of these organizations and parties remained silent. It's a false ethics, akin to fake news. If Videla [Argentinian dictator during the “dirty war”] or Pinochet [Chilean dictator who deposed President Allende] committed such crimes, they are deemed crimes against humanity. But, if Hamas commits them, we must understand it as part of a historical process, and possibly, the victims brought it upon themselves. As they used to say in Argentina, "they must have done something".
I'm certain that the majority of members of those parties or organizations that excuse terrorism shudder when they see the videos of the Hamas murders and rapes and tremble at the thought that it could happen to their loved ones. Nevertheless, they still stand by their excuses because for them, ideology is above morality.
Placing ideology above morality is a risk to democracy. The supremacy of ideology nullifies the critical spirit of individuals; there are no longer citizens, only believers and heretics. In democracy, there are no unique ideas; opinions change as a result of dialogue. That's why universities must educate individuals who are always capable of persuading and being persuaded, citizens who value the power of reasons, not the reasons of power.
Strengthening our morality requires rejecting the great perversion that any end justifies any means. Albert Camus, one of the great thinkers of the 20th century, warned us over 50 years ago that it is the means that justify the end. Just causes cannot be defended by unjust means. Human dignity cannot be defended with undignified means.
Dear graduates, the challenge of your generation is the new forms of intelligence, until now, a human monopoly. Artificial intelligence will not be just another technological change; it will impact human activities in ways that are hard to predict. Universities have had to take a stance quickly regarding new generative artificial intelligences that have the potential to alter how we learn, how we teach, and how we evaluate.
Our position from the beginning has been not to prohibit the use of these artificial intelligences, but rather to encourage their use by students and educators, as graduates will need them. Remember, you won't be competing with machines; you'll be competing with other people who use technology better. Only by understanding technology can you contribute to minimizing its risks and maximizing its benefits, both economically and socially. We are entering an era in which the marginal cost of adding intelligence to systems will decrease to zero. In other words, it will become increasingly cheaper to replace human tasks with automated ones. Humans will have to retrain and adapt continuously and redefine their comparative advantages over machines.
The great challenge will be managing the obsolescence-to-knowledge vs. acquisition of new knowledge ratio. The higher this ratio, the fewer our personal and national development opportunities. The ability to learn will become a key skill for personal development. The challenge for our country is to create a system that allows more people to retrain regularly in shorter time frames, preventing the creation of a divide between those who can be educated and the rest.
Dear graduates, we have much to be proud of in our country, which is advancing in freedom as democracy recedes worldwide. We have weathered the pandemic more united, rational, and whole than other countries, even those larger and wealthier. Of course, there is much work to be done. Many Uruguayans struggle to find ways to progress. Education must modernize. We have not been able to agree on how to ensure sustainable pensions for our young people, but everything is solvable. Your mission is to take our society to the next level on our path to development.
Dear graduates, wherever your life takes you, keep our dear country in your heart. Help to make it just and prosperous, innovative and dynamic, a beacon in the region. Seek your own path, but know that ORT will always be your home.
Thank you very much.