David Boren: “last week was a very meaningful week for me. It was a week of reflection about my life and what I wanted to do with it…”

“last week was a very meaningful week for me. It was a week of reflection about my life and what I wanted to do with it as the regents of the University of Oklahoma announced that they had requested that I leave the Senate to become president of the university at the end of this congressional session, an invitation which I have accepted--an opportunity for a new form of service. On the day, last Wednesday, when that announcement was made and I was on the campus of the university for that announcement I also thought, as I was driving to Norman, OK, about events that were happening on the other side of the world. I thought about the election in South Africa of a new President, Nelson Mandela. It brought back a flood of memories of my own experience in South Africa in the late fall of 1988, after the congressional elections had taken place. Senator Nunn and I, and a delegation from the Congress, went to South Africa. It was one of the most life-changing experiences that I have ever had. We witnessed there firsthand a society in which people were being judged by the color of their skins, their ethnic background; being divided and separated from each other. We saw people of enormous talent whose talents were being wasted, again because of a classification by race. And while we saw much that distressed us, we also saw much that inspired us because we met some of the most remarkable people that I have ever met in my life.…”