Mass. Colleges Hold Commencement Exercises

Commencement speakers stressed issues of health and human service as college graduates around the state yesterday prepared to enter a world where technological innovations must combat problems of disease and poverty.

Louis Sullivan, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, told about 5300 students receiving graduate and undergraduate degrees from Boston University that health issues divided developed and underdeveloped countries.

"Malaria, tuberculosis, cancer and the effects of smoking and other disorders are, for the most part in the western world, conquered. But in our borders south of us and across the ocean, to the east and the west, too many of our brothers die from preventable diseases," he said.

"So we are in a very real sense, a long way from one world and the right to a happy healthy, prosperous life."

Sullivan, a graduate of B.U.'s class of 1958, charged students with the goal of creating one world.

"This disparity as we approach the 21st century must become a challenge to all the developed nations of the world and particularly a challenge to all of you, the class of 1990," he said.

At Brandeis University in Waltham, U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, (D-Hawaii), warned the 900 graduates that the superpowers will be involved in the Middle East if a regional conflict develops over tensions there.

Inouye emphasized U.S. support for Israel and that the U.S. and its allies must undertake a "military fencing in" of Israel to protect it from the rapidly increasing military might of its Arab foes.

"If we fail to do this, it may help to escalate the present confrontation," he said.

Inouye, who also received an honorary degree, accused the United States of "using" the plight of Soviet Jews when it was "handy politically" but then closing its doors when thousands were freed from the Soviet Union and needed sanctuary.

Other honorary Brandies degree recipients were: Nathan S. Ancell, chairman of the board, emeritus, of Ethan Allen Inc.; Donald Hewitt, executive producer of "60 Minutes"; architect Philip Johnson; former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, Norman Leventhal Beacon Companies; writer and novelist. Cynthia Ozick; and Simone Veil, former president of the European Parliamentary Assembly; and Clara McBride Hale, a New York City resident who has spearheaded programs for ill and drug-addicted children.

Harvard paleontologist and author Stephen Jay Gould told nearly 700 graduates at Clark University in Worcester that nature is "massively indifferent" to their concerns--and this was cause for rejoicing.

Human beings are "accidental, unrepeatable, lucky-to-be-here side twigs on the glorious arboretum of life," said Gould, who is the Agassiz professor of zoology at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

"We shouldn't kid ourselves with respect to our power," said Gould, who received a honorary doctor of science degree. "The planet would probably take care of itself."

"We ought to rejoice in nature's massive indifference to us," he added. "It is the source of our freedom. It allows us the freedom to do it ourselves. It is the source of our salvation."

At Tufts University in Medford, Mass., more than 2500 graduating students listened to remarks by Professor Robert Coles of the Medical School, an authority on the problems of poverty and racial discrimination and the award-winning author of "Children of Crisis: A Study of Courage and Fear."

Coles, who received an honorary degree of humane letters from Tufts, recounted the ordeal of six-year-old Ruby Bridges, the black girl he counseled during her court-ordered admission into a New Orleans Public School more than 35 years ago.

"Ruby showed us what is possible, what mind and soul can do given an opportunity," he said. "Let us be worthy of our 'Rubys.' Let us see the day when 100,000 of our children won't be homeless, when we do better than the more than dozen nations who do better than us in infant mortality rates."