So I think, if September 11 taught us anything, it taught us that we're vulnerable, and vulnerable in ways that we didn't fully understand.

You never cede control of your own ability to be successful to something called racism.

In any country, if you don't have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development.

After all, when the world looks to America, they look to us because we are the most successful political and economic experiment in human history.

I grew up in a very loving middle class family. My parents were educators. I'm not even the first PhD in my family. They tried to shield me, just as other parents in my neighborhood tried to shield their children. But you knew there was a reason that you couldn't go to that theme park or to a movie theater or to a hamburger stand. They couldn't shield you completely. What they did though was they never let it be an excuse for not achieving, and they always said racism is somebody else's problem, not yours. They tried in that way not to make us bitter about Birmingham.

American national security and American economic interests, of course - every president, every secretary of state - that is the primary goal. As you are in this job and in the work, you begin to see, though, that in the long run, both American economic interests and American national security are better served when there are other decent countries in the world who are both your allies and even when your adversaries are acting more decently.

Arnold Rampersad is a really good person. A really good person. As a matter of fact, he came to Stanford when I was Provost.