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Koger Center is site of annual ritual for students, faculty, parents, friends
May 7, 2009
Wes Jackson
Global warming offers the largest environmental challenge in the history of our species, a renowned scientist said Thursday at the Arnold School’s 22nd annual Hooding Ceremony.
"I hope you are ready," said Wes Jackson, a plant geneticist and president of The Land Institute in Salina, Kan.
Jackson delivered the Hooding Lecture for a class of some 136 newly-minted Arnold School graduates in ceremonies at the Koger Center for the Arts.
Dr. Tom Chandler, interim dean, presided over the annual event which also included awards to students and faculty members for outstanding service and scholarship. Awards also were presented in the name of Norman and Gerry Sue Arnold, the school’s leading patrons.
As commencement speaker, Jackson said he was bound by tradition to mention three quickly forgettable points:
- In your time you will be called on to provide leadership in your profession and in your community.
- You will be required to remain alert and to be ready to incorporate developments certain to arise both within your profession and related ones.
- We are all expecting you to place health ahead of professional advancement and fashionable trends.
"I'm not a climate scientist," said Jackson. But he said his scientific training and understanding put him in agreement with "the 99 percent of the men and women who publish in refereed journals on climate" that the planet is warming up because of the burning of fossil fuels.
"I have studied some of the arguments of the tiny minority who stand in opposition to their colleagues, all the while hoping they are right, because before me on my bulletin board, as I type this commencement address are pictures of my six grandchildren," he said.
Jackson said the graduates of 2009 are all that stand in the way of an unwelcome future for the earth.
