 This has been an overwhelming day for me and you know it's been such an interesting trajectory. I got a call from Janet Napolitano two weeks ago Monday. It was a very surprising call to me and she asked me if I would accept this job and of course I said yes. But she also told me I couldn't say anything to anybody until this past Monday. And so I was living and I really didn't. I didn't even tell my kids. And so I've been living with this really momentous news for me for the past two weeks. And it's been an extraordinarily reflective time for me because I've been thinking about what Berkeley means to me. How it changed my life, which it did when I started here as a faculty member, and what it continues to mean. I came here in 1970, literally just having turned in my dissertation as I got into the car to drive across the country. And I had never been west of Philadelphia. I didn't know anything about California. I was young. I was naive. I was green. This was Berkeley was still with the aura of the 60s. And within a few years Berkeley changed my life. It changed my sense of the world. And I've been trying to identify what it was in this past week that was so deeply transformative to me about Berkeley. One was the level of intellectual vitality and excitement. There is no subject, I think, on the face of the earth that someone at Berkeley doesn't really know about and is not pushing the boundaries of our understanding even further about. So there was that, this extraordinary, nervy, heady intellectuality. There was also Berkeley itself. There aren't that many places in the United States where you feel history is happening. And I really felt more than in New Haven, Connecticut. History was happening. But equally important to me are the students. And one of the, I feel a bit like Mickey Mouse and the Sorcerer's Apprentice this week. My email keeps, every time I answer an email, there are 10 more that come. But some of the people I've been hearing from are students from the first decade of my career who said, I remember the course and whatever it was. And I want you to know that that was important to my life. And I mean that, you know, if you're a faculty member, you always think you're just casting your bread on the waters and you hope it comes back at some point. But it was the students at Berkeley and my favorites were always the transfer students. Each one had a story that was unique and whether they came from Arcata or Modesto or Fremont or Los Angeles. They always had a life story that brought them to this place. And then it was thrilling to see them discover their intellectual passions and to discover that they were really, really smart and really good at what they did. And that's such a gift. I think it's such a gift to have the privilege of working with people of the ages that most college students are. And such a gift to live in a university community like this one. Of course this is a challenging time for Berkeley. And I think more challenging than any time since the 1960s and the free speech movement and all the consequent demonstrations and protest movements that really was put Berkeley in the forefront of the ways in which colleges and universities changed in the 60s. This is a change of a different sort. It's a time where we have to change our financial model even as we don't change our sense of public mission. I believe that this is our problem together to address. And walking through the room, seeing everybody in this room, I feel so lucky to have you all as colleagues. And I want your advice, I want your help, I want your intellectual energy and imagination as we yet again will be a pioneer in thinking through the best way for public universities in this really changed fiscal environment will stay the public universities to which we're all so deeply faithful. So thank you, thank you for this reception. Thank you for everything that you give and do for Berkeley. Fiat Lux.