My daughter Lucy, freshman at Columbia University is at the edge of some major political drama this morning, with the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a speech and question and answer period with students. Many are outraged with President Lee Bollinger for allowing the tyrant a platform for his ideas, but I have confidence that Lee Bollinger and the students of Columbia can hold their own in an environment of free speech and open discussion.

One of the most divisive principles in human affairs is the belief within religious sects that special morality and values set each sect apart from its rivals. We talk about Christian values, Jewish values, Muslim values as though the fundamental human values don't exist. Various sects insist that without their role in shaping the values of our young, that society and culture would dissolve into chaos. In the early days of Educational Sloyd, there was opposition from Christians who found the idea that working with wood would impart essential values, shaping the morals of children to be a threat to their own religious control. Otto Salomon and his benefactor August Abrahamson were Jews in an earlier age of religious distrust.

If you put aside the war of words and of ideas espoused by those who wish to manipulate human culture for their own distorted purposes, we can discover a vast overlap in cultural values, each nation, each tribe, and each community. That overlap of essential human values is expressed most clearly and succinctly in the artifacts that result from the workings of the human hand. It may be expressed in the form of a rug from Iran, or a piece of John Townsend's furniture from early Providence, Rhode Island. The shaping of material into forms of usefulness and beauty is the fundamental moral act, expressing the height of human values and culture. Make something beautiful and it stands beyond question or challenge. Every act of creation is an act of synthesis, and every act of synthesis is foundation for development and expression of fundamental human values, even without the enforcement of doctrine and creed.

Today, throughout the world politicians and pundits will analyze the speeches of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Columbia President Lee Bollinger and the international affairs students at Columbia. As important as all that is (and it is important), I will remind that there is some important work going on in human hands, and that work may speak more clearly with less distortion and misunderstanding. It's not making bombs and missiles but creating beauty in the common objects that enrich our lives and make us comprehensible to all others.