thedrifter
06-11-07, 06:00 AM
June 10, 2007
Commencement Speeches
With Iraq War as a Backdrop, Speakers Reflect on the Future
By ALAN FINDER
For many if not most members of the class of 2007, the war in Iraq has been the constant background of their college years. And so as seniors graduated from thousands of colleges and universities in recent weeks, the war was on the mind of many commencement speakers. Some criticized its prosecution, others commended the sacrifices of the hundreds of thousands of volunteers serving in the armed forces, but few ignored the continuing struggle.
“Most of you were juniors in high school when terrorists attacked America in September 2001, and it became clear we were a nation at war,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told graduates at the United States Naval Academy. “With your credentials, you could have attended another prestigious university, and subsequently pursued a private life, with all its material rewards, your freedom and safety assured by other young men and women who volunteered to serve in the American military.”
Some speakers offered a critical view of the war and its consequences. Anthony W. Marx, the president of Amherst College, spoke at Amherst’s commencement of the lessons of the Roman empire, which he said declined when leaders turned away from civic action toward private pursuits, abdicating civil authority to the military.
“Always, our political reach, our cultural persuasion, our economic integration and our military might are bounded,” Dr. Marx said, drawing analogies between Rome’s decline and the present. “At those boundaries, smugness is challenged. If we fail to heed that challenge, if we do not learn from the limits of our victories, we risk the fate of Rome.”
Boyd Tinsley, an electric violinist in the Dave Matthews Band, told graduates in a speech the day before graduation at the University of Virginia, his alma mater, “I hope that you will once again bring us back to a time when a person’s patriotism was judged by how much they loved their country, and not by how much they loved war.”
Still, there was plenty of customary commencement fare. Graduates were exhorted to be bold and public spirited, to confront environmental degradation and global warming, to end poverty in the United States and curb it internationally. They were urged to find their inner voice, to leap confidently over obstacles in their careers, to avoid apathy and the lure of personal enrichment over civic engagement.
“Times like these call for people like you to stand up and get to work,” Kamala D. Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, told graduates at San Francisco State University. “To break barriers, to drive change, roll up your sleeves instead of throwing up your hands.”
There was also the usual complement of confessions. Brian Williams, the anchor of the NBC Nightly News, confided to students at Tulane that he had not earned a college degree, which he described as “one of the great, great regrets of my life.” The mystery novelist Mary Higgins Clark told graduates of Quinnipiac University that she could not sing, dance, cook or sew, though she acknowledged she could tell a story.
And Tom Brokaw, the former news anchor at NBC, said at the Skidmore College commencement that his mentor at the University of South Dakota had characterized his undergraduate career this way: “We always thought his first degree was an honorary degree.”
Then, too, a number of speakers worried aloud that they might be going on too long. The presidential historian Michael Beschloss reminded graduates at Lafayette College that former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey was known for giving speeches that lasted as long as three hours.
“Once Humphrey did this, and even he knew he was overdoing it,” Mr. Beschloss said. “He yelled at the audience, ‘Anybody here got a watch?’ and someone yelled back, ‘How about a calendar?’ “
Robert M. Gates
Secretary of defense
The College of William & Mary
Some of you may know the story of Ryan McGlothlin, William & Mary class of 2001: a high school valedictorian, Phi Beta Kappa here and Ph.D. candidate at Stanford. After being turned down by the Army for medical reasons, he persisted and joined the Marines and was deployed to Iraq in 2005. He was killed leading a platoon of riflemen near the Syrian border.
Ryan’s story attracted media attention because of his academic credentials and family connections. That someone like him would consider the military surprised some people. When Ryan first told his parents about joining the Marines, they asked if there was some other way to contribute. He replied that the privileged of this country bore an equal responsibility to rise to its defense.
It is precisely during these trying times that America needs its best and brightest young people, from all walks of life, to step forward and commit to public service. Because while the obligations of citizenship in any democracy are considerable, they are even more profound, and more demanding, as citizens of a nation with America’s global challenges and responsibilities — and America’s values and aspirations.
Tom Brokaw
Former anchor, NBC News
Skidmore College
You’ve been told during your high school years and your college years that you are now about to enter the real world, and you’ve been wondering what it’s like. Let me tell you that the real world is not college. The real world is not high school. The real world, it turns out, is much more like junior high. You are going to encounter, for the rest of your life, the same petty jealousies, the same irrational juvenile behavior, the same uncertainty that you encountered during your adolescent years. That is your burden. We all share it with you. We wish you well.
Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Supreme Court justice
St. Mary’s College
Decades from now, you may be different than you are today in a lot of significant ways. You may have a lot more than you have today. You may have more money and more status and more power and more accomplishments. You may also have more responsibilities, more worries, more regrets and more bruises. But underneath all of that, you will still be the same person who is here today graduating from college, and it will be good for you to stay connected with the people who know the real you.
Gloria Steinem
Writer
Smith College
In my generation, we were asked by the Smith vocational office how many words we could type a minute, a question that was never asked of then all-male students at Harvard or Princeton. Female-only typing was rationalized by supposedly greater female verbal skills, attention to detail, smaller fingers, goodness knows what, but the public imagination just didn’t include male typists, certainly not Ivy League-educated ones.
Now computers have come along, and “typing” is “keyboarding.” Suddenly, voila! — men can type! Gives you faith in men’s ability to change, doesn’t it?
Kamala D. Harris
San Francisco district attorney
San Francisco State University
As you grow in your career, you may hit another barrier — the limits that others set for you. A ceiling on what you can accomplish and who you can be. That happened to me. When I decided to run for district attorney, it was considered a man’s job even here in San Francisco. No woman had ever been elected district attorney in San Francisco. No person of color had ever been elected district attorney in San Francisco.
I remember the day I got my first poll results back. I was sitting in a small conference room, a little nervous, but very hopeful. Then I read them. I was at 6 percent. And that wasn’t good. So I was told what you all have probably heard in your life, and that you will certainly hear in your future. I was told that I should wait my turn. I was told that I should give up. I was told that I had no chance.
Well, I didn’t listen.
And I’m telling you, don’t you listen either. Don’t listen when they tell you that you can’t do it.
John Grisham
Novelist
University of Virginia
Thirty years ago this week, I graduated from college, class of 1977. I don’t recall much about my commencement. I do remember that the speaker was dull and long-winded, and he did inform us that the future was ours and the world was at our feet. I do remember sitting through my commencement being pretty smug: I was graduating from college, I had been accepted to law school and I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to study tax law. I wanted to be a tax lawyer because I was convinced I could make a lot of money representing wealthy people who did not want to pay all their taxes. That was my dream, and I had it all planned. I knew the day I was going to start law school, the day I was going to finish. I had a pretty good idea where my office was going to be. It was all planned.
I don’t know where this idea came from. I did not like tax law. I sure didn’t know any wealthy people. Looking back, I cannot begin to remember where this idea was planted, but that was my dream. I had everything planned. The idea of writing a book had never crossed my mind. I had never written anything that had not been required by school. I had never dreamed of it.
Lesson No. 1: You cannot plan the rest of your life.
Rev. Peter J. Gomes
Professor, Harvard University
Augustana College
Around this time of year I have an annoying habit of asking people, like you seniors, “Do you have a job?” You resist answering that question, but I repeat it, “Your mother and I want to know, do you have a job?” By job we don’t mean simply something that gives you a salary; I think we really mean: “Do you have a purpose? Do you have a calling? Do you have a vocation?”
I want to suggest to you that whether or not you have a job, everyone has a vocation, and that vocation is to live a life that is worth living. The best advice I can give is that which St. Paul gives us in Romans 12, where he says to the likes of you, who all look alike from here, “Be not conformed to this world.” Do not join the throng. Don’t get lost in the crowd. Don’t be a part of the cookie-manufactured college generation, but stake out for yourselves some extraordinary, maybe even eccentric, piece and place of the world, and make it your own.
Representative John Lewis
Democrat of Georgia
Adelphia University
Sometimes I hear some young people say nothing has changed. I feel like saying, come and walk in my shoes. In 1956, at the age of 16, being so inspired by Dr. King along with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins, we went to the little library in Pike County, Alabama, a public library in the little town of Troy trying to get library cards, trying to check out some books. And we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for coloreds.
I never went back to that library until July 5, 1998. By that time I was a member of Congress, and I went there for a book signing of my book. Hundreds of blacks and white
Ellie
Commencement Speeches
With Iraq War as a Backdrop, Speakers Reflect on the Future
By ALAN FINDER
For many if not most members of the class of 2007, the war in Iraq has been the constant background of their college years. And so as seniors graduated from thousands of colleges and universities in recent weeks, the war was on the mind of many commencement speakers. Some criticized its prosecution, others commended the sacrifices of the hundreds of thousands of volunteers serving in the armed forces, but few ignored the continuing struggle.
“Most of you were juniors in high school when terrorists attacked America in September 2001, and it became clear we were a nation at war,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told graduates at the United States Naval Academy. “With your credentials, you could have attended another prestigious university, and subsequently pursued a private life, with all its material rewards, your freedom and safety assured by other young men and women who volunteered to serve in the American military.”
Some speakers offered a critical view of the war and its consequences. Anthony W. Marx, the president of Amherst College, spoke at Amherst’s commencement of the lessons of the Roman empire, which he said declined when leaders turned away from civic action toward private pursuits, abdicating civil authority to the military.
“Always, our political reach, our cultural persuasion, our economic integration and our military might are bounded,” Dr. Marx said, drawing analogies between Rome’s decline and the present. “At those boundaries, smugness is challenged. If we fail to heed that challenge, if we do not learn from the limits of our victories, we risk the fate of Rome.”
Boyd Tinsley, an electric violinist in the Dave Matthews Band, told graduates in a speech the day before graduation at the University of Virginia, his alma mater, “I hope that you will once again bring us back to a time when a person’s patriotism was judged by how much they loved their country, and not by how much they loved war.”
Still, there was plenty of customary commencement fare. Graduates were exhorted to be bold and public spirited, to confront environmental degradation and global warming, to end poverty in the United States and curb it internationally. They were urged to find their inner voice, to leap confidently over obstacles in their careers, to avoid apathy and the lure of personal enrichment over civic engagement.
“Times like these call for people like you to stand up and get to work,” Kamala D. Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, told graduates at San Francisco State University. “To break barriers, to drive change, roll up your sleeves instead of throwing up your hands.”
There was also the usual complement of confessions. Brian Williams, the anchor of the NBC Nightly News, confided to students at Tulane that he had not earned a college degree, which he described as “one of the great, great regrets of my life.” The mystery novelist Mary Higgins Clark told graduates of Quinnipiac University that she could not sing, dance, cook or sew, though she acknowledged she could tell a story.
And Tom Brokaw, the former news anchor at NBC, said at the Skidmore College commencement that his mentor at the University of South Dakota had characterized his undergraduate career this way: “We always thought his first degree was an honorary degree.”
Then, too, a number of speakers worried aloud that they might be going on too long. The presidential historian Michael Beschloss reminded graduates at Lafayette College that former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey was known for giving speeches that lasted as long as three hours.
“Once Humphrey did this, and even he knew he was overdoing it,” Mr. Beschloss said. “He yelled at the audience, ‘Anybody here got a watch?’ and someone yelled back, ‘How about a calendar?’ “
Robert M. Gates
Secretary of defense
The College of William & Mary
Some of you may know the story of Ryan McGlothlin, William & Mary class of 2001: a high school valedictorian, Phi Beta Kappa here and Ph.D. candidate at Stanford. After being turned down by the Army for medical reasons, he persisted and joined the Marines and was deployed to Iraq in 2005. He was killed leading a platoon of riflemen near the Syrian border.
Ryan’s story attracted media attention because of his academic credentials and family connections. That someone like him would consider the military surprised some people. When Ryan first told his parents about joining the Marines, they asked if there was some other way to contribute. He replied that the privileged of this country bore an equal responsibility to rise to its defense.
It is precisely during these trying times that America needs its best and brightest young people, from all walks of life, to step forward and commit to public service. Because while the obligations of citizenship in any democracy are considerable, they are even more profound, and more demanding, as citizens of a nation with America’s global challenges and responsibilities — and America’s values and aspirations.
Tom Brokaw
Former anchor, NBC News
Skidmore College
You’ve been told during your high school years and your college years that you are now about to enter the real world, and you’ve been wondering what it’s like. Let me tell you that the real world is not college. The real world is not high school. The real world, it turns out, is much more like junior high. You are going to encounter, for the rest of your life, the same petty jealousies, the same irrational juvenile behavior, the same uncertainty that you encountered during your adolescent years. That is your burden. We all share it with you. We wish you well.
Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Supreme Court justice
St. Mary’s College
Decades from now, you may be different than you are today in a lot of significant ways. You may have a lot more than you have today. You may have more money and more status and more power and more accomplishments. You may also have more responsibilities, more worries, more regrets and more bruises. But underneath all of that, you will still be the same person who is here today graduating from college, and it will be good for you to stay connected with the people who know the real you.
Gloria Steinem
Writer
Smith College
In my generation, we were asked by the Smith vocational office how many words we could type a minute, a question that was never asked of then all-male students at Harvard or Princeton. Female-only typing was rationalized by supposedly greater female verbal skills, attention to detail, smaller fingers, goodness knows what, but the public imagination just didn’t include male typists, certainly not Ivy League-educated ones.
Now computers have come along, and “typing” is “keyboarding.” Suddenly, voila! — men can type! Gives you faith in men’s ability to change, doesn’t it?
Kamala D. Harris
San Francisco district attorney
San Francisco State University
As you grow in your career, you may hit another barrier — the limits that others set for you. A ceiling on what you can accomplish and who you can be. That happened to me. When I decided to run for district attorney, it was considered a man’s job even here in San Francisco. No woman had ever been elected district attorney in San Francisco. No person of color had ever been elected district attorney in San Francisco.
I remember the day I got my first poll results back. I was sitting in a small conference room, a little nervous, but very hopeful. Then I read them. I was at 6 percent. And that wasn’t good. So I was told what you all have probably heard in your life, and that you will certainly hear in your future. I was told that I should wait my turn. I was told that I should give up. I was told that I had no chance.
Well, I didn’t listen.
And I’m telling you, don’t you listen either. Don’t listen when they tell you that you can’t do it.
John Grisham
Novelist
University of Virginia
Thirty years ago this week, I graduated from college, class of 1977. I don’t recall much about my commencement. I do remember that the speaker was dull and long-winded, and he did inform us that the future was ours and the world was at our feet. I do remember sitting through my commencement being pretty smug: I was graduating from college, I had been accepted to law school and I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to study tax law. I wanted to be a tax lawyer because I was convinced I could make a lot of money representing wealthy people who did not want to pay all their taxes. That was my dream, and I had it all planned. I knew the day I was going to start law school, the day I was going to finish. I had a pretty good idea where my office was going to be. It was all planned.
I don’t know where this idea came from. I did not like tax law. I sure didn’t know any wealthy people. Looking back, I cannot begin to remember where this idea was planted, but that was my dream. I had everything planned. The idea of writing a book had never crossed my mind. I had never written anything that had not been required by school. I had never dreamed of it.
Lesson No. 1: You cannot plan the rest of your life.
Rev. Peter J. Gomes
Professor, Harvard University
Augustana College
Around this time of year I have an annoying habit of asking people, like you seniors, “Do you have a job?” You resist answering that question, but I repeat it, “Your mother and I want to know, do you have a job?” By job we don’t mean simply something that gives you a salary; I think we really mean: “Do you have a purpose? Do you have a calling? Do you have a vocation?”
I want to suggest to you that whether or not you have a job, everyone has a vocation, and that vocation is to live a life that is worth living. The best advice I can give is that which St. Paul gives us in Romans 12, where he says to the likes of you, who all look alike from here, “Be not conformed to this world.” Do not join the throng. Don’t get lost in the crowd. Don’t be a part of the cookie-manufactured college generation, but stake out for yourselves some extraordinary, maybe even eccentric, piece and place of the world, and make it your own.
Representative John Lewis
Democrat of Georgia
Adelphia University
Sometimes I hear some young people say nothing has changed. I feel like saying, come and walk in my shoes. In 1956, at the age of 16, being so inspired by Dr. King along with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins, we went to the little library in Pike County, Alabama, a public library in the little town of Troy trying to get library cards, trying to check out some books. And we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for coloreds.
I never went back to that library until July 5, 1998. By that time I was a member of Congress, and I went there for a book signing of my book. Hundreds of blacks and white
Ellie