Eisenhower's closing argument connected the university's mission to the cause of world peace. He praised Penn State as a place where 'students come from fifty different states and 118 different countries' and where interdisciplinary studies had long been valued. This diversity was not incidental — it was the mechanism by which mutual understanding could replace mutual suspicion. The final charge to the graduates was both practical and transcendent: they were to apply their education 'as productive leaders, as American citizens, as members of the free world community.' The emphasis on 'the free world community' was deliberate — Eisenhower was asking graduates to think beyond national borders at a time when the Cold War demanded exactly the opposite. His insistence that common humanity trumped political divisions was radical coming from a military president in 1955.