Boston Colleges third annual academic convocation for first-year students features a keynote address by John McCain, Republican senator from Arizona, who makes a moral appeal to the students to look above self-interest in their lives and careers. He makes the same challenge to the government, saying the United States is an unfinished nation that must not sacrifice our values in the war on terrorism.

In weeks prior to the convocation, McCain had been critical of the Bush administrations interpretation of the Geneva Conventions standards on the treatment of prisoners of war. A fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, McCain was captured and tortured as a POW in North Vietnam for six years.