[Remarks from the reunion dinner.]

With thanks for the splendid work of the organizers, I'm delighted to welcome you to this event - and to the end of the first decade of the 21st century - over the salad course...

In Edward de Vere's play Antony & Cleopatra, a noted older woman refers to her "...salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood...."

In the years since our own salad days, this country has become a much more civilized place - as a sage of the previous generation, Noam Chomsky, has put it.

We graduated into a country that denied some Americans' rights - and was killing people in a criminal colonial war in Southeast Asia. A creative decade brought some of those injustices to an end.

Now, 50 years later, we live in a country that denies some Americans their very livelihoods, jobs, and homes - and is killing people in a criminal war for oil in Southwest Asia.

It's our task once again to bring some of these injustices to an end. Welcome to the tasks ahead. I'm looking forward to talking with you about them.