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, conflicting emotions. On the one hand, I feel great satisfaction at sharing this celebration with you; on the other, I am deeply concerned, as many members of our academic community have been profoundly affected by the recent attack by Hamas on the State of Israel and the ensuing outbreak of war.
But let's start on a positive note. Today is a day for celebration and pride. It's also a day for gratitude, because, just like all significant milestones in life, graduation is a team effort. Your families have undoubtedly been a tremendous source of support throughout these years. Take this opportunity to express your gratitude to them.
Some of you may be thinking about 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 entering 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 turned into the beginning of a nightmare. It falls to your generation to align our technological capabilities with our moral compass.
Today is a day of celebration for everyone, yet for many, including myself, it is also a time of anxiety due to the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Many of us have friends and relatives in that country, and we closely follow their situation day by day. If they live in southern 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 discernible military objective. The attackers themselves filmed their actions and broadcast them live so that families could watch in real time as their children or siblings were being killed, thereby creating evidence of war crimes themselves.
There is certainly a propaganda motive behind these actions, but this is more than just propaganda. It is the glorification of violence, of the supremacy of armed men over defenseless women and children, and of the right to commit sexual abuse. The only way to understand these actions is as a postmodern form of human sacrifice.
It feels as though 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 stand united in rejecting this barbarism. Day after day, we watch the funerals and listen to the families of the kidnapped. We all hope that the war does not escalate further, that there will be 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 resort to 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 the hundreds of murders of unarmed civilians? It should not be a difficult test. Can we condemn gang rapes without reservation? 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 go against our conscience, we can support other victims, explore the history of the conflict more deeply, and propose alternatives. But today, we should all stand together in solidarity with a wounded country, the families of so many innocent victims, and the hundreds of hostages.
Unfortunately, many were unable to muster the minimum level of moral decency and intellectual honesty required to pass this test of humanity. For years, we have heard groups, organizations, and political parties rightly assert 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 is a false morality, akin to fake news. If Videla [the Argentine dictator during the “Dirty War”] or Pinochet [the 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 perhaps the victims brought it upon themselves. As they used to say in Argentina, “they must have done something.”
I am certain that most members of those parties or organizations that make excuses for terrorism shudder when they see the videos of Hamas’s 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 takes precedence over morality.
Placing ideology above morality poses a threat to democracy. The supremacy of ideology stifles individuals’ critical thinking; there are no longer citizens, only believers and heretics. In a democracy, there are no fixed ideas; opinions evolve through dialogue. That is why universities must educate individuals who are always capable of persuading and being persuaded—citizens who value the power of reason, not the reasons of power.
Strengthening our moral compass requires rejecting the dangerous notion that the ends justify the 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 ends. Just causes cannot be defended by unjust means. Human dignity cannot be defended through undignified means.
Dear graduates, the challenge facing your generation is the emergence of new forms of intelligence—a field that, until now, has been the exclusive domain of humans. Artificial intelligence will not be merely another technological advancement; it will affect human activities in ways that are difficult to predict. Universities have had to respond swiftly to the rise of new generative artificial intelligence systems, which have the potential to transform how we learn, how we teach, and how we assess.
From the very beginning, our position has been not to prohibit the use of these artificial intelligence systems, 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 more effectively. Only by understanding technology can you help minimize its risks and maximize its benefits, both economically and socially. We are entering an era in which the marginal cost of adding intelligence to systems will drop to zero. In other words, it will become increasingly cheaper to replace human tasks with automated ones. Humans will have to continuously retrain and adapt, and redefine their comparative advantages over machines.
The great challenge will be managing the ratio of knowledge becoming obsolete to the acquisition of new knowledge. The higher this ratio, the fewer opportunities we will have for personal and national development. 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, thereby 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 making strides toward freedom even as democracy is on the decline worldwide. We have weathered the pandemic with greater unity, rationality, and resilience than other countries, even those that are larger and wealthier. Of course, there is still much work to be done. Many Uruguayans struggle to find ways to improve their lives. Our education system must be modernized. We have not been able to agree on how to ensure sustainable pensions for our young people, but every problem has a solution. Your mission is to take our society to the next level on our path to development.
Dear graduates, wherever life takes you, keep our beloved country in your hearts. Help make it a just and prosperous, innovative and dynamic nation—a beacon in the region. Find your own path, but know that ORT will always be your home.
Thank you very much.