Angie Mangino: 'You don't have to choose between your pratical path and your passionate path', Fordham University - 2025

17 May, Rose Hill Campus, Fordham University, New York, USA

President Tetlow, Father McShane, distinguished faculty, proud families, and most especially, graduating class of 2025: thank you for this incredible honor.

Standing here today at Rose Hill reminds me of my own Fordham journey: from my freshman and sophomore years at the School of Education on 302 Broadway, to my junior and senior years when Lincoln Center opened and became my new academic home. But it's here at Rose Hill where my Fordham story truly came full circle, when I married my husband, a School of Business graduate, in the landmark chapel on this very campus a year after our graduation. Looking out at you now, I'm struck by how much has changed since my own graduation day. But I'm also struck by how much hasn't changed, particularly that mixture of excitement and terror you're probably feeling right now about what comes next.

When I graduated from Fordham, my commencement speaker gave us the usual advice about following our dreams, working hard, and making a difference in the world. All good advice, certainly. But there was something crucial they didn't tell us. Something I wish I had known at twenty-two.

Let me tell you what no one told me: You don't have to choose between your practical path and your passionate path. You can walk both roads simultaneously, and in fact, you probably should.

Let me share my story because I suspect it might sound familiar to some of you.

During my time here at Fordham, I was deeply involved in writing. I worked on the newspaper, spent countless hours on the yearbook staff, and felt most alive when I was crafting stories, conducting interviews, and seeing my words in print. Writing wasn't just what I did; it was who I was. It was my dream, my calling, the thing that made me feel like I was contributing something meaningful to the world.

But when graduation day arrived, I did what so many of us do. I looked at my student loans, thought about my family's expectations, and convinced myself that writing was a luxury I couldn't afford right away.

“I'll get stable first,” I told myself. “I'll find a real job, get on my feet, and then I'll pursue writing seriously.”

So I became an office manager. It was a good job: steady, respectable, with health insurance and a regular paycheck. I told myself this was temporary, that I was just getting my financial foundation solid before I made the leap to my “real” career in writing.

But here's the thing about temporary situations: they have a way of becoming permanent when you're not paying attention.

Years passed. I was married, then became a mother to three children. And with each life change, writing seemed to move further and further away. Not because I loved it any less, but because I had fallen into what I now recognize as “all or nothing” thinking. In my mind, I couldn't be a writer unless I could quit everything else and devote myself to it completely. I couldn't call myself a real writer unless writing was paying the bills.

This kind of thinking is seductive because it feels so logical, so responsible. But it's also a trap.

Now, some of you are pursuing careers that do require intensive, focused commitment. If you're heading to medical school, law school, or other demanding professional programs, your path may look different. But even in those fields, the principle I'm sharing still applies. You can still nurture other interests, contribute to causes you care about, and maintain the parts of yourself that make you whole.

What I didn't understand then is that you don’t build your career overnight, and dreams don't require you to burn every other bridge to pursue them. I could have been building my writing career incrementally. I could have been freelancing on weekends, pitching articles during lunch breaks, building a portfolio one piece at a time.

Instead, I put my dream in a box labeled “someday,” and convinced myself that someday would come when all the stars aligned perfectly.

The truth is, someday never comes on its own. You have to create it, piece by piece, choice by choice.

When I finally did start writing professionally, I began exactly the way I could have begun right after graduation: with small freelance assignments, building relationships with editors, learning the business side of writing while still maintaining other sources of income. Yes, it took me longer than it could have, but that journey taught me resilience, gave me life experiences that enriched my writing, and showed me that there's no single “right” timeline for success.

The gradual approach that I thought was impossible at twenty-two turned out to be not just possible, but ideal. It allowed me to develop my skills without the pressure of needing every article to pay the rent. It let me build a network of contacts over time. It gave me the luxury of being selective about the projects I took on.

Most importantly, it meant I was actually doing the thing I loved instead of perpetually preparing to do it someday.

So here's what I've learned that I want to share with you today: Your dream doesn't need permission from your circumstances. It needs you to start where you are, with what you have, right now.

This doesn't mean you should be reckless. Take that office job if you need it. Pay your student loans. Be responsible. But don't let responsibility become an excuse for abandoning the things that make you feel most alive.

Let me be specific about what this looks like in practice. If you want to be a filmmaker, commit to creating one short video every month on your phone. Post it online. Learn from feedback. If you want to start a nonprofit, volunteer two hours every Saturday morning while you're earning steady income elsewhere. If you want to be an entrepreneur, spend Sunday mornings for the next six months developing your business plan and building your network.

The beautiful thing about living in 2025 is that you have the tools for pursuing your passion that have never been more accessible. You can build a writing career through online platforms, develop a photography business through social media, start a consulting practice through networking sites, or launch a creative project through crowdfunding, all while maintaining another source of income.

The key is to stop thinking in terms of either/or and start thinking in terms of both/and.

You can be both practical and passionate. You can be both responsible and risk-taking. You can be both building security and pursuing dreams.

But here's the crucial part: you have to be intentional about it. Your passion won't develop all by itself. You need to carve out time for it. Even if it's just one hour every Sunday morning at first. You need to treat it seriously, even if no one else does initially. You need to invest in it consistently, even when progress feels slow.

Some of you might be thinking, "But what if I fail? What if I'm not good enough? What if it doesn't work out?"

Here's another thing I wish someone had told me at twenty-two: failure isn't the opposite of success; it's part of success. Every article I pitched that an editor rejected taught me something about my craft and the industry. Every small freelance project I completed, even the ones that didn't pay much, helped me build skills and confidence.

The real failure would have been to never try at all.

As you leave Fordham today and step into whatever comes next, I want you to remember that you are more capable than you know, more resilient than you think, and more creative than you've probably had a chance to fully explore yet.

You don't have to figure everything out today. You don't have to choose between security and dreams. You just have to start. Start small, start imperfectly, but start.

Take the job that pays the bills, but don't let it consume your soul. Pursue the practical path, but keep your passionate path alive too. Be responsible adults, but don't let adulthood kill your dreams.

The world needs what you have to offer. Not someday, not when you're perfectly prepared, not when all your ducks are in a row. The world needs it now, in whatever form you can give it, even if it's just one small step at a time.

Congratulations, Class of 2025. Your Fordham education, deeply rooted in Jesuit principles has prepared you to think critically, to question deeply, and to contribute meaningfully to this world. These values remind us that success isn't just about personal achievement. It's about how we use our gifts to serve something greater than ourselves.

Now do all of it: the practical and the passionate, the secure and the uncertain, the dreams and the day jobs.

Believe me. Your future self will be happier if you do.

Thank you. Congratulations.

Ken Burns: 'Listen, listen,' Brandeis University commencement - 2024

31 May 2024, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA

Brandeisian, love it.

President Liebowitz, Ron, Chair Lisa Kranc, and other members of the board of trustees, Provost Carol Fierke, fellow honorees, distinguished faculty and staff, proud and relieved parents, calm and serene grandparents, distracted but secretly pleased siblings, ladies and gentlemen, graduating students of the class of 2024, good morning.

I am deeply honored and privileged that you have asked me here to say a few words at such a momentous occasion that you might find what I have to say worthy of your attention on so important a day in all of your lives. Thank you for this honor.

Listen, I am in the business of history. It is not always a happy subject on college campuses these days, particularly when forces seem determined to eliminate or water down difficult parts of our past, particularly when the subject may seem to sum an anachronistic and irrelevant pursuit, and particularly with the ferocious urgency this moment seems to exert on us. It is my job, however, to remind people of the power our past also exerts, to help us better understand what's going on now with compelling story, memory, and anecdote. It is my job to try to discern patterns and themes from history to enable us to interpret our dizzying and sometimes dismaying present.

For nearly 50 years now, I have diligently practiced and rigorously tried to maintain a conscious neutrality in my work, avoiding advocacy if I could, trying to speak to all of my fellow citizens. Over those many decades I've come to understand a significant fact, that we are not condemned to repeat, as the saying goes, what we don't remember. That is a beautiful, even poetic phrase, but not true. Nor are there cycles of history as the academic community periodically promotes. The Old Testament, Ecclesiastes to be specific, got it right, I think. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun. What those lines suggest is that human nature never changes or almost never changes. We continually superimpose that complex and contradictory human nature over the seemingly random chaos of events, all of our inherent strengths and weaknesses, our greed and generosity, our puritanism and our prurience, our virtue, and our venality parade before our eyes, generation after generation after generation. This often gives us the impression that history repeats itself. It does not. "No event has ever happened twice, it just rhymes," Mark Twain is supposed to have said. I have spent all of my professional life on the lookout for those rhymes, drawn inexorably to that power of history. I am interested in listening to the many varied voices of a true, honest, complicated past that is unafraid of controversy and tragedy, but equally drawn to those stories and moments that suggest an abiding faith in the human spirit, and particularly the unique role this remarkable and sometimes also dysfunctional republic seems to play in the positive progress of mankind.

During the course of my work, I have become acquainted with hundreds if not thousands of those voices. They have inspired, haunted, and followed me over the years. Some of them may be helpful to you as you try to imagine and make sense of the trajectory of your lives today.

Listen, listen. In January of 1838, shortly before his 29th birthday, a tall, thin lawyer prone to bouts of debilitating depression addressed the young men's lyceum in Springfield, Illinois. "At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?" He asked his audience, "Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step the earth and crush us at a blow?" Then he answered his own question. "Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time or die by suicide." It is a stunning, remarkable statement, one that has animated my own understanding of the American experience since I first read it more than 40 years ago. That young man was of course Abraham Lincoln, and he would go on to preside over the closest this country has ever come to near national suicide, our civil war, and yet embedded in his extraordinary, disturbing, and prescient words is also a fundamental optimism that implicitly acknowledges the geographical forcefield two mighty oceans east and west and two relatively benign neighbors north and south have provided for us since the British burned the White House in the War of 1812 and inspired Francis Scott Key.

Lincoln's words that day suggest what is so great and so good about the people who happen to inhabit this lucky and exquisite country of ours. That's the world you now inherit: our work ethic and our restlessness, our innovation and our improvisation, our communities and our institutions of higher learning, our suspicion of power. The fact that we seem resolutely dedicated to parsing the meaning between individual and collective freedom; What I want versus what we need. That we are all so dedicated to understanding what Thomas Jefferson really meant when he wrote that mysterious phrase, "The pursuit of happiness". Hint, it happens right here in the lifelong learning and perpetual improvement this university is committed to.

But the isolation of those two oceans has also helped to incubate habits and patterns less beneficial to us: our devotion to money and guns and conspiracies, our certainty about everything, our stubborn insistence on our own exceptionalism blinding us to that which needs repair, especially with regard to race and ethnicity. Our preoccupation with always making the other wrong at an individual as well as a global level. I am reminded of what the journalist I.F. Stone once said to a young acolyte who was profoundly disappointed in his mentor's admiration for Thomas Jefferson. "It's because history is tragedy," Stone admonished him, "Not melodrama." It's the perfect response. In melodrama all villains are perfectly villainous and all heroes are perfectly virtuous, but life is not like that. You know that in your guts and nor is our history like that. The novelist, Richard Powers recently wrote that, "The best arguments in the world," — and ladies and gentlemen, that's all we do is argue — "the best arguments in the world," he said, "Won't change a single person's point of view. The only thing that can do that is a good story." I've been struggling for most of my life to do that, to try to tell good, complex, sometimes contradictory stories, appreciating nuance and subtlety and undertow, sharing the confusion and consternation of unreconciled opposites.

But it's clear as individuals and as a nation we are dialectically preoccupied. Everything is either right or wrong, red state or blue state, young or old, gay or straight, rich or poor, Palestinian or Israeli, my way or the highway. Everywhere we are trapped by these old, tired, binary reactions, assumptions, and certainties. For filmmakers and faculty, students and citizens, that preoccupation is imprisoning. Still, we know and we hear and we express only arguments, and by so doing, we forget the inconvenient complexities of history and of human nature. That, for example, three great religions, their believers, all children of Abraham, each professing at the heart of their teaching, a respect for all human life, each with a central connection to and legitimate claim to the same holy ground, violate their own dictates of conduct and make this perpetually contested land a shameful graveyard. God does not distinguish between the dead. "Could you?"

[Audience applauding]

"Could you?" A very wise person I know with years of experience with the Middle East recently challenged me, "Could you hold the idea that there could be two wrongs and two rights?"

Listen, listen. In a filmed interview I conducted with the writer James Baldwin, more than 40 years ago, he said, "No one was ever born who agreed to be a slave, who accepted it. That is, slavery is a condition imposed from without. Of course, the moment I say that," Baldwin continued, "I realize that multitudes and multitudes of people for various reasons of their own enslave themselves every hour of every day to this or that doctrine, this or that delusion of safety, this or that lie. Anti-Semites, for example," he went on, "are slaves to a delusion. People who hate Negroes are slaves. People who love money are slaves. We are living in a universe really of willing slaves, which makes the concept of liberty and the concept of freedom so dangerous," he finished. Baldwin is making a profoundly psychological and even spiritual statement, not just a political or racial or social one. He knew, just as Lincoln knew, that the enemy is often us. We continue to shackle ourselves with chains we mistakenly think is freedom.

Another voice, Mercy Otis Warren, a philosopher and historian during our revolution put it this way, "The study of the human character at once opens a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul. We there find a noble principle implanted in the nature of people, but when the checks of conscience are thrown aside, humanity is obscured." I have had the privilege for nearly half a century of making films about the US, but I have also made films about us. That is to say the two letter, lowercase, plural pronoun. All of the intimacy of "us" and also "we" and "our" and all of the majesty, complexity, contradiction, and even controversy of the US. And if I have learned anything over those years, it's that there's only us. There is no them. And whenever someone suggests to you, whomever it may be in your life that there's a them, run away. Othering is the simplistic binary way to make and identify enemies, but it is also the surest way to your own self imprisonment, which brings me to a moment I've dreaded and forces me to suspend my longstanding attempt at neutrality.

There is no real choice this November. There is only the perpetuation, however flawed and feeble you might perceive it, of our fragile 249-year-old experiment or the entropy that will engulf and destroy us if we take the other route. When, as Mercy Otis Warren would say, "The checks of conscience are thrown aside and a deformed picture of the soul is revealed." The presumptive Republican nominee is the opioid of all opioids, an easy cure for what some believe is the solution to our myriad pains and problems. When in fact with him, you end up re-enslaved with an even bigger problem, a worse affliction and addiction, "a bigger delusion", James Baldwin would say, the author and finisher of our national existence, our national suicide as Mr. Lincoln prophesies. Do not be seduced by easy equalization. There is nothing equal about this equation. We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives. This is a choice that could not be clearer.

[Audience applauding]

Listen, listen. 33 years ago, the world lost a towering literary figure. The novelist and storyteller, not arguer, Isaac Bashevis Singer. For decades he wrote about God and myth and punishment, fate and sexuality, family and history. He wrote in Yiddish a marvelously expressive language, sad and happy all at the same time. Sometimes maddeningly all knowing, yet resigned to God's seemingly capricious will. It is also a language without a country, a dying language in a world more interested in the extermination or isolation of its long suffering speakers. Singer, writing in the pages of the Jewish Daily Forward help to keep Yiddish alive. Now our own wonderfully mongrel American language is punctuated with dozens of Yiddish words and phrases, parables and wise sayings, and so many of those words are perfect onomatopoeias of disgust and despair, hubris and humor. If you've ever met a schmuck, you know what I'm talking about. [audience laughs] Toward the end of his long and prolific life, Singer expressed wonder at why so many of his books written in this obscure and some said useless language would be so widely translated, something like 56 countries all around the world. "Why," he would wonder with his characteristic playfulness, "Why would the Japanese care about his simple stories of life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe 1,000 years ago?" "Unless," Singer paused, twinkle in his eye, "Unless the story spoke of the kinship of the soul." I think what Singer was talking about was that indefinable something that connects all of us together, that which we all share as part of organic life on this planet, the kinship of the soul. I love that.

Okay, let me speak directly to the graduating class. Watch out, here comes the advice. Listen. Be curious, not cool. Insecurity makes liars of us all. Remember, none of us get out of here alive. The inevitable vicissitudes of life, no matter how well gated our communities, will visit us all. Grief is a part of life, and if you explore its painful precincts, it will make you stronger. Do good things, help others. Leadership is humility and generosity squared. Remember the opposite of faith is not doubt. Doubt is central to faith. The opposite of faith is certainty. The kinship of the soul begins with your own at times withering self-examination. Try to change that unchangeable human nature of Ecclesiastes, but start with you. "Nothing so needs reforming," Mark Twain once chided us, "As other people's habits." [audience laughs]

Don't confuse success with excellence. Do not descend too deeply into specialism. Educate all of your parts, you will be healthier. Do not get stuck in one place. "Travel is fatal to prejudice," Twain also said. Be in nature, which is always perfect and where nothing is binary. Its sheer majesty may remind you of your own atomic insignificance, as one observer put it, but in the inscrutable and paradoxical ways of wild places, you will feel larger, inspirited, just as the egotist in our midst is diminished by his or her self regard.

At some point, make babies, one of the greatest things that will happen to you, I mean it, one of the greatest things that will happen to you is that you will have to worry, I mean really worry, about someone other than yourself. It is liberating and exhilarating, I promise. Ask your parents.

[Audience laughs]

Choose honor over hypocrisy, virtue over vulgarity, discipline over dissipation, character over cleverness, sacrifice over self-indulgence. Do not lose your enthusiasm, in its Greek etymology the word enthusiasm means simply, "god in us". Serve your country. Insist that we fight the right wars. Denounce oppression everywhere.

[Audience applauding]

Convince your government, as Lincoln understood that the real threat always and still comes from within this favored land. Insist that we support science and the arts, especially the arts.

[Audience cheering]

They have nothing to do with the actual defense of our country; They just make our country worth defending.

[Audience applauding]

Remember what Louis Brandeis said, "The most important political office is that of the private citizen." Vote. You indelibly... [audience applauding] Please, vote. You indelibly underscore your citizenship, and most important, our kinship with each other when you do. Good luck and godspeed.

[Audience applauding]

Declan Fay: 'But now you all have a blank page', Eltham High Valedictory - 2023

Declan Fay speaking at a different event

16 November 2023, Eltham, Melbourne, Australia

Thank you teachers, parents, students, and younger siblings who really wish they were at home playing Fortnite.

So you’re probably sitting there with a lot of questions? What score will I get for VCE? What will I do next year? Who is this slightly overweight, balding comedy writer standing in front of us, when Olympian and tour de France winner Cadel Evans went to our school? Cadel may have won the Tour de France, but has he ever written a joke that made the head of the abc have to front a senate estimates enquiry? (Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that joke, because your school hasn’t paid me yet).

I finished school in 1997. A time before google, when you if you liked someone you couldn’t just google a picture of them. It was a time before bluetooth, when people on the street who looked like they were talking to themselves were actually talking to themselves.

It was a time when mobile phones were the size of house brick and no one had them. Kids definitely didn’t have them, so if you liked someone, you had to find their number in a giant book, hope you had the right house, and then speak to their actual parent and beg to speak with their child. Then if they weren’t there you had to leave a message and hoped they call back when you’re still at home. To organise one date it could take three months and series of panic attacks.

So when I finished school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I did the one course you do when you don’t know what to do, Arts. I didn’t even really know what Arts was, I just knew I liked some of the subjects and there was a subject where you all you had to do was watch movies. The other big plus is you only had to go for eight hours a week. That kind of appealed to me. 

When I told my dad I was going to do arts, he looked like I’d just dragged a dead animal into the lounge room. And he said, “Why don’t you be a vet” This was a strange because I had no interest in being a vet. And I hadn’t done any of the subjects you needed to do to be a vet. The total extent of my experience with animals was our cat. And I didn’t even like our cat. I still don’t like cats, they just seem arrogant and aloof.

It turns out my dad wanted to be a vet, but he hadn’t done it, so now he wanted me to do it.

So I don’t want to teach any lessons, because I feel like you’re probably sick of people teaching you things, so I’ll just give pieces of advice that might or might not help…

And the first piece of advice that may or may not help is: Please don’t do something because someone else wants you to do it. You won’t be happy, then you won’t do well at it, and then you’ll resent them, and it’ll make Christmas really awkward every year. And I know all about awkward family Christmases, because I come from a family of Irish people who never discuss their feelings, until they drink too much. That’s actually my second piece of advice if you find yourself at an Irish  Christmas, the second they crack out the whiskey and start singing Danny Boy, get the hell out of there.

So I started this Arts degree, and I wasn’t really enjoying it. You’d turn up and do one class in a massive theatre, then leave and never see those people again for another week. It was incredibly lonely.

And then one day I was walking out of the uni and I saw a sign which said, “Do you think you’re funny?” It was auditions for a comedy show at the university called the Melbourne University comedy review.

I walked into the audition and I was not a confident performer, and the first thing we had to do was stand in a circle and tell a funny story. It got to my turn to speak and I just froze, and I tried to speak and it was like the bit that connected my brain to my mouth short circuited, and I just kind of mumbled. The others were looking at me like is this guy, okay. I tried to speak again, does this guy have serious bowel problem.

Then I did what any mature person does who’s embarrassed themselves in front of a room of strangers… I ran out of the room. So In was standing at the mirror, And I thought if I don’t go back, I’ll never go back to a comedy audition. Plus, I’d already embarrassed myself. There wasn’t anything to lose, so I decided to go back.

Then they partner us off, and no one came near me. I didn’t blame them. Most people were probably thinking I don’t want to be with that weird sweaty guy who’s just emitting random sounds in the corner. But I get the last guy who’s left over, and he’s a really quiet guy. And before we can plan anything we get called up on stage. And this guy goes it’ll be alright, just whatever happens.

But as soon as I get up there, I completely freeze, and this guy looks at me like, “please just do something”. To this day, I don’t know why I did this, but I panicked and looked around and then did this. (*Make a very loud screech like a bird dying). And this guy looks at me like, “What are you doing?”

And then he must have panicked, because he looks around, and then goes, (*SIMILAR LOUD BIRD SCREECH). And suddenly we were two twenty year old guys squawking at each other like two animals doing some weird mating dance.

And it gets to the end and no one has laughed, if anything people were just a little bit frightened.

There was this long awkward silence, until this one girl in the corner laughed. And she goes (make nasal blocked nose laugh)… she did one of those laughs where it sounds like you nose is trying to squeeze out your brain… And that caught onto the guy next to her… who also laughed, and that caught onto the girl next to him who had one of those embarrassing laughs, and she went… (MAKE SNORT LAUGH SOUND)… And everyone knows the snort laugh is the worst laugh. If you make that noise at a party, call an uber and go home. Because you are are never coming back from the snort laugh.

But suddenly everyone in the room started laughing. And In that moment I realised everyone was nervous, it’s just that people have different ways of showing it. Some people get loud, some people get quiet, some people flap their arms and squark like a dying bird. And in that moment I just stop worrying about what everyone was thinking and I thought, I’ve got nothing left to lose here. And something just shifted in me and I thought don’t leave the room. And that’s the power of a great joke, or a big laugh, it can change the whole energy of the room, it can change the worst moment of your life into one of the funniest moments of your life. And for the rest of the audition I was like a different person, and the audition finished.

I got a phone call a few days later and I got in. And my paranoid brain thought maybe they don’t think I’m funny, maybe they just thought we’ll get that guy and if we get bored we’ll poke him and he’ll make a weird nose.

But I did that show, and I found the place I fitted in. You kind of know when you find it. You feel excited to go there. You like being there, and you don’t want to leave.

Another piece of helpful advice that you can take or leave, is whatever you decide to do, there will be moments where you massively stuff up, but don’t give up, and don’t do what I did and run out of the room, because I’ve thought alot of times if I didn’t go back, I may never have ended up in comedy, writing television.  Those stuff ups are the best chance to learn, the best chance to laugh, and they often make for the best stories at the end. 

And the next piece of helpful advice…  comedy has taught me is to never lose your sense of humour. Even in the worst moments of your life, there will be a time where you can laugh about it down the track. Mistakes are the best chances to learn and often end up making for the best stories down the track.

So we did that show. And it was one of the best experiences of my life.  And one night me and some of the other people in our show go out to the comedy festival. And everything was sold out. There was one show that still had seats. It was a show none of you would know but it was called Brian Munich and friends, and it is simply one of the most bizarre things i’ve ever seen. But it made me laugh so hard, I had tears running down my face.

But after the show I waited out side the door of the theatre. I didn’t even tell my friends I just pretended to go to the toilet and said I’d see them in the bar. But I waited until the main came out and said, That’s the best thing I’ve seen. And then I said, how do you become a comedy writer, and he said just keep writing everyday. And he gave me his number number and said to call I ever wanted to talk about comedy.

So I took his advice. As I said, this was a time before google, so I would go to a local cafe and look at the newspaper and just write jokes, stupid ideas, anything… I’d buy one coffee and stay as long as I could before it got weird.

I stayed in touch with Jason, and five years later I got a phone call from him, and he was the new head writer of the biggest comedy show on TV. A show called Rove. And asked me if I wanted to write for the show. And that was how I got that first comedy writing job. And I’ve been working as a comedy writer ever since.

So here’s a list of helpful suggestions you can take from that… If you ever see something you like on stage, in a book, or just someone doing some you like, don’t be afraid to go up and tell them, because you make art to connect to people. And because performers are incredibly needy people, who need affirmation. 

And don’t be afraid to ask questions, “How did you get into this?”, “How did you come up with that?” Nine out of ten people of them will try to help you.

These days you can google advice about how to do anything. A few months ago I googled, how to boil an egg. And I still stuffed up the egg. But nothing beats going up and asking someone for advice. Nothing beats an actual human connection. Google won’t ever be the head writer of a comedy show and offer you a job. Or at least I hope not.

And just keep working on your thing, even if you don’t have a job in the area, keep practising, keep doing it, so when the opportunity comes along you’ll be ready.

So I think back to that moment where I saw the poster on the wall for the auditions, or when I waited outside the comedy show. And this is hopefully my last piece of possibly helpful advice:

There will be a moment some time in the next few years when something catches your eye, a poster for an audition, or person in a class, or a show you go to, or something you see online, and don’t be afraid to trust that moment, or take that detour, or go up to that person who has inspired you, because you have no idea where it will take you. Maybe it’ll just be a good conversation or maybe lead to a whole other unexpected chapter of your story.

Finally when we finish writing something, whether it’s an episode, a series, or a comedy festival show, you’re always exhausted. But then there’s a moment you have to write your next thing. Usually it’s when I need money. But there’s a moment you open your laptop, and you stare at a blank page. Actually the first thing I see is my desktop which has 900 files on it, I am useless at filing things. But after I’ve gotten past that, I open a blank page. And it’s the single most thrilling and terrifying moment. Because you could put anything on it, and you could tell any story you want. For the last few years, you’ve all written your own story. Some of you will have loved that story, some of you might not have loved it, some of you may not know how you feel it about it, and some of you might just be relieved it’s over.

When you started at this school you probably weren’t even in control of of your story. Your parents may have chosen the school, teachers may have encouraged you to certain subjects, friends may have influenced you. But now all you have a blank page. And you can fill it with any story you want. And it doesn’t have to be perfect straight away. The first episode of Ronny Chieng:  International student had 32 different drafts and I still reckon it could be better. But the important thing is, you tell a story the story only you can tell. And a story you can be proud of.

Finally, be grateful to your parents, because one day you will need to borrow money off them. Houses are not getting any cheaper.

So that’s pretty much it, thank you for letting me share my story with you.

Declan is a guest on episode 54 of the podcast, talking about school visits and comedy writing generally

J.B. Pritzker: 'Don't trust idiots', Northwestern University - 2023

14 June 2023, Northwestern University, Evanstone, Illinois

Today graduates. I want to invoke a seminal piece of 21st century culture to help send you forward on the right path in life. I am of course, talking about the Emmy Award-winning sitcom known as The Office, which in its 200 episode run gave us all the wisdom that you need to make your way in this world.

Now look, the younger members of my staff made it clear to me that your generation might consider The Office to be sort of cheugy. Which I learned is a pejorative term, meaning 'uncool', or 'you're just trying too hard'. Well, that's fine. I don't care. I'm a dad. By definition. dads are cheugy.

We try too hard every day, mostly to get our kids to turn off the lights when they leave a room. We don't care if you don't think that we're cool. We are determined to plunge ahead anyway. So give me and The Office a chance to show you that non trendy things still have a lot of wisdom to offer.

You don't have to be a fan of the show, by the way, to follow along because quotes from The Office stand on their own in their uncommon wisdom and depth. I'll offer you the first one now.

1. 'PowerPoints are the peacocks of the business world. All show, no meat' —Dwight Shroute.

Before I was the Governor of Illinois, I ran a technology focused investment firm. And in the early years of the internet, I used to take at least three meetings a day with young entrepreneurs who would present their ideas for online retail businesses. Every young retail entrepreneur in the world wanted to copy Amazon's success, but frankly, they had to answer the magic question, 'how are you going to attract millions of customers without spending all your money on advertising?'

So one guy came to me with what he thought was the perfect answer. He started the Hey Company. Hey, spelled h-e-y. The guy told me that he had registered hundreds of domain names that all started with the term, the word hey. Like heyooks.com, heytshirts.com, heywaterbottles.com — hundreds of them. His idea was that people would be browsing online and they would think to themselves, 'hey, I need some shorts, and that naturally would lead them to type into their browser, heyshorts.com, and bam, you'd find what they needed on his websites. It was brilliant except for the fact that no one shops by first saying, he yshorts or hey underwear. But he had a fancy PowerPoint and one of his slides had financial projections that showed his company was going to be bigger than Amazon. It was not.

Here's the thing that I remember most. The hey guy handed out his business plan in an expensive mahogany box and gave a great presentation. I give him credit that after a few months in business, he realised he wasn't going to make it and he closed up shop. He was at least honest with himself and with his investors. But sometimes when I see a news story about a company like Theranos or WeWork where a charismatic CEO has a clever pitch that fools a lot of intelligent people into investing their money. Or when politicians give flashy pitches and catchy slogans, I think about Dwight Schrute's lesson for life. So ask questions, demand answers. Do your own research. Trust people with a lot of life experience. Be sceptical.

2. 'Having a baby is exhausting. Having two babies, that's just mean' — Jim Halpert.

 I mentioned already that I'm a dad and I have two wonderful college age kids and like most of the parents here, having children turned me from a fun, cool, spontaneous person who could stay out past midnight, to a functional madman who answers the phone 'Y'allo' and won't let anyone in my house touch the thermostat.

We dads didn't start out cheugy. You made us that way! Look, we parents, we love our kids. We want you to grow up to be strong and kind, brave and smart, and we will do just about anything to make sure that that happens. But along the way, you have led a campaign of collective inception to make us question the very fabric of reality at times. If you really want to understand the multiverse of madness, have children.

When my son Donnie was in kindergarten, my wife MK and I went to school for a parent teacher conference. The teacher told us that Donnie was doing well in school, great at reading, great at math, but when she asked Donnie if he was struggling with anything he said, he couldn't tell time very well. Like all parents whose love of their child has led them to overthink every single decision that they've made, MK and I were flabbergasted. Did we do something wrong? Had we missed some critical step in our son's early childhood development? Had our embrace of the digital age led to a child who had some sort of clock face blindness? So we sprang into action. We bought all kinds of clocks and put them everywhere at our house. We made a big show of telling time at meals and reading clocks everywhere we went. We got Donnie an analogue clock that lit up and spoke the time out loud when asked. For an entire year, I walked around like the Mad Hatter constantly proclaiming the time. 'Donnie, it's seven 10. See, it's seven 10.' After 12 months of this insanity, just when MK and I were starting to congratulate ourselves for doing such a good job focusing on the time telling problem, Donnie decided to let us know that he had never had an issue telling time. It was just that when his teacher asked him to identify something that he needed help with, he couldn't think of anything to say. So he made up a story about not being able to tell time, and then he didn't want to admit that he had lied.

If you think your parents are crazy, it's important that you understand that you made us this way!

We are experts in worrying about you, and this affliction just gets worse with time and distance. We want you to go out and have amazing adventures in the world. We want you to love with abandon and to take calculated risks, and to experience the rich fullness that comes with an imperfect life. We know that we cannot hold your hand through every difficult situation that will happen to you, but there will come a moment, sometime in the future, when something you very much wanted to have work out will not. Maybe it will be a job, or a relationship, or some other passion that you've sunk your whole heart into, and you'll find yourself teetering on the edge of despair, because every person has teetered on the edge of despair at least once in their lives. That's when you want to call the person in your life who would've spent a year trying to help you learn how to tell time. Hopefully that's your parents, and I'm here to tell you on their behalf that we will always take your phone call. We will always be willing to help remind you of the strength that we know you have inside yourselves. Because we gave you some of ours.

3. 'Whenever I'm about to do something, I think, would an idiot do that, and if they would, I do not do that thing.' — Dwight Shroute

The entire efficacy of this incredibly useful piece of information hinges upon your ability to pick the right idiot. I wish there was a foolproof way to spot idiots, but counterintuitively, some idiots are very smart. They can dazzle you with words and misdirection. They can get promoted above you at work. They can even be elected president.

If you want to be successful in this world, you have to develop your own idiot detection system. As part of the responsibilities of being your commencement speaker, I'm going to share mine. Sure. I'm naturally suspicious of people who never saw the original Star Wars movies, and even more cautious of people who loved the prequels and the sequels. But I admit this is not a reliable idiot indicator. No. The best way to spot an idiot, look for the person who is cruel. Let me explain. When we see someone who doesn't look like us, or sound like us, or act like us, or love like us, or live like us, the first thought that crosses almost everyone's brain is rooted in either fear or judgement or both. That's evolution. We survived as a species by being suspicious of things that we aren't familiar with. In order to be kind, we have to shut down that animal instinct and force our brain to travel a different pathway.

Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being. They require the mental capacity to step past our most primal urges. This may be a surprising assessment because somewhere along the way in the last few years, our society has come to believe that weaponized cruelty is part of some well-thought out Master plan. Cruelty is seen by some as an adroit cudgel to gain power. Empathy and kindness are considered weak. Many important people look at the vulnerable only as rungs on a ladder to the top. I'm here to tell you that when someone's path through this world is marked with acts of cruelty, they have failed the first test of an advanced society. They never forced their animal brain to evolve past its first instinct. They never forged new mental pathways to overcome their own instinctual fears. And so their thinking and problem solving will lack the imagination and creativity that the kindest people have in spades. Over my many years in politics and business, I have found one thing to be universally true. The kindest person in the room is often the smartest.

4. 'I knew exactly what to do, but in a much more real sense, I had no idea what to do.' — Michael Scott

When I finished college only a few short years ago, I assumed that there would be a moment very soon after graduation when the maturity of adulthood would start to lend sense to the deep mysteries of life. 35 years later, I'm still waiting for that to happen. And I hate to break it to you, but the real wisdom that comes with age is that you gain a greater appreciation for just how much you don't know. In February of 2020, I had just finished up a successful first year in office. We had passed almost every major initiative that I had campaigned on, and I was beginning to feel that I could overcome any obstacle that might lay ahead. But then came a deadly global pandemic, a crisis that most of us would've said, well, just weeks before it began that it was inconceivable.

I've been asked many times what it was like to be governor during those early days of the pandemic, and all I can tell you is that it felt like waking up every day on a raft in the middle of the ocean, frantically searching the horizons for some land to anchor your feet on. I knew that my job was to minimise the damage this deadly disease was doing, but no one could guide me toward the absolute best way to do that. As Michael Scott said, I knew exactly what to do, but in a much more real sense, I had no idea what to do. I've had a few major crises visited upon me in my life, and the way forward each time has always been the same for me. When the world seems to be spinning, and out of your control, inertia can set in. So the absolute best thing that you can do is start to make decisions, even small ones, just get yourself moving.

Pick something you can tackle, and do it. Let your small decisions beget medium decisions, which will beget big decisions. Some of your decisions will be brilliant in retrospect, others will be less so. If you make a mistake, apologise and move on. Talk to people you trust and more importantly, listen to them. Be willing to change your mind when someone makes a good argument, but avoid that paralysing inertia at all costs because not making a decision is making a decision. And you won't like how that turns out. Most importantly, when facing a crisis, pick one value that you're going to hold yourself accountable to, and then every time you face a new choice about what direction you should take, ask yourself which of the options in front of you is most consistent with that core guiding value. For me as governor during the pandemic, I decided I was going to do everything I could to save as many lives as possible.

That was the most important thing. Everything else had to come second, and that gave me clarity amid an absolute maelstrom. Now I know that for this class especially, Covid loomed very large. You were robbed of a chunk of a college experience you very much deserved. I'm sure then and now that it feels very unfair. We don't get a say in what part of history our lives drop in on — the Great Depression World War II, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Covid pandemic. Every generation grows up scared or scarred by something. You are not unique in that regard. Here's the upside. Although you will face a great many challenges in life, most of them will pale in comparison to the challenge of facing a deadly global pandemic. COVID has made you stronger and gave you a unique set of armour. Use it well.

5. 'I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.' — Andy Bernard.

Most of us old guys dispensing advice as commencement speakers mistakenly will lead you to believe that everything good that happens, every day you will ever have for as long as you live, happens in college or your twenties or in your early career. But don't get me wrong, these are great days. But I think a lot of the parents and grandparents who are here travelling back half a century of life, looking at their lives, would tell you that there are plenty of things about being young that we don't miss at all.

The path of your life will have peaks and valleys and the good times are defined less by how old you are, and more by the people you have around you. During the very first worst days of the pandemic, there was a group of about 20 people who are part of our governor's office quarantine bubble. While most people stayed at home, my staff came into the state of Illinois building, in person, every day, to keep the levers of government moving. We worked together for 14 hours a day, tracking down masks and gloves and testing supplies, debating mitigations, tracking data, preparing for daily press conferences. Sometimes we stared into the abyss together. Anyone who's been part of a group like that, good people working closely together in a crisis, will tell you that the bonds that you develop with the people in the foxhole with you are some of the strongest you will ever form in your life.

One day in April of 2020, after weeks of punishing work, I decided to gather the small quarantine team together at the end of a long day for a much needed morale boost. The governor's office of the state of Illinois building, we're on the 16th floor, overlooking an interior atrium. If you dropped something from the top floor where the governor's office was, it would land 16 floors down. So we ordered some food and we gathered everyone, and we were the only people in the building. Someone put on some music, and for a little bit of time, we shared some gallows humour. At some time, at some point in it, a staffer suggested that we all make paper aeroplanes out of copier paper and see who could successfully launch their plane off the 16th floor balcony and into the atrium and land it in the middle of the first floor lobby below.

I remember how hard I laughed watching all these serious people — press secretaries and deputy governors and policy advisors try and construct the perfect paper aeroplane and get frustrated at their many failed launches. A lot of the worst days of COVID are still a blur to me. The stress and the worry that seemed to consume my life have just blended together. But I can remember with unusual clarity and warmth, that hour or so on the balcony of the 16th floor, flying paper aeroplanes with my battle worn compatriots. So I assure you that your nostalgia for certain times in your life won't be defined by when the thing happened, but by who you were in it with. If there are people around you who love you, who can make you smile when times are hard and make you laugh when the world seems lost, then you are in the good old days.

Now, ultimately, The Office was a show about a bunch of imperfect people trying to find their way together. And if that's not a metaphor for life, then I don't know what is. You will find your way, Class of 2023, I beseech you to remember the lessons of The Office. Be more substance than show. Set aside cruelty for kindness. Put one foot in front of the other even when you don't know your way. And always, always try and appreciate the good old days when you're actually in them. And remember what Dwight Shroute said, 'you only live once? False! You live every day. You only die once!' Thank you all very much.

Joe Biden: 'Hope can defeat fear', Howard University - 2023

13 May 2023, Capital One Arena, Washington DC, USA

Well, thank you, Mr. President, for that introduction. Dr. Morse, thank you for the incredible honorary degree.

And thank you, President Frederick, for the invitation and for your leadership of your alma mater.

Serena—Student Body President, College of Pharmacy, the class speaker. And just remember, when you’re President of the United States and they say, “Joe Biden is out in the waiting room to say hello,” promise me you will not say, “Joe who?” All right?

You all think I’m kidding.

To the distinguished faculty and staff, thank you for having me.

And to the parents and families and the Class of ’23—2023: Congratulations.

And, by the way, we will get to giving you your degrees. I promise that’s coming.

You are here with the heart and through the heartache, through blood, sweat, and tears of everything that’s came before, for everything yet to come. You are here at a new moment of hope and possibilities.

But, graduates, before we begin, as mentioned many times, tomorrow is Mother’s Day. Stand for your mothers and grandmothers. Stand and thank them.

Where I come from, moms rule.

To my friend—and he is my friend—Congressman Jim Clyburn, the thing that I admire most about you, Jim, is your absolute integrity in everything you do—in everything you do. This is a man of honor.

I attended South Carolina State University’s commencement as Jim received his degree he earned 60 years ago but never got a chance to receive it in person.

Jim, it’s an honor to join you here today and receive an honorary degree from this great university. …

I’m also honored that—there’s a person here today, Dr. Tony Allen. He is President of my home state [H]BCU, Delaware State University, where I got politically started.

I was fortunate to have Tony as a Senate staffer for a long time. Then he got his PhD, had a distinguished career in business, and became president of an HBCU. Now Tony chairs my White House Board of Advisors on HBCUs, which is designed to support and advance HBCU excellence with a lot more money.

I’m also proud to say that we’re the first White House to formally convene where the real power is: the Divine Nine. Oh, you all—you all think I’m kidding? Not a joke.

The Divine Nine not only has a seat at the table, we definitely hear you at the table. And they’re, first time ever, at the White House permanently.

So, folks, in 2023, I’m truly honored to be here at Howard.

Chartered 156 years ago by an act of Congress just after Emancipation and the Civil War. Founded—founded on a hilltop in Washington, D.C. The Mecca. The Mecca.

Always promoting, excellence, leadership, and truth and service. It really has. And a proving ground for future leaders of science, medicine, education, business, faith, arts, entertainment, and public service. Trailblazing intellectuals, lawyers, doctors. The first Black—I might say—Vice President of the United States of America. You can say that again.

Kamala sends her love. And she sent a clear message that today I have the privilege, as she points out, of speaking at the real H-U. Now you realize that’s going to cost me at home.

This—there’s enormous pride in this university founded in the verses of the Howard anthem. And I quote, “Reared against the eastern sky, proudly there on hilltop high … There she stands for truth and right, sending forth her rays of light.” It matters. It matters. It matters.

We’re living through one of the most consequential moments in our history with fundamental questions at stake for our nation. Who are we? What do we stand for? What do we believe? Who will we be? You’re going to help answer those questions.

Let me take you back to January of 2009. I stood in Wilmington, Delaware, on the train station of Amtrak, carrying my folder waiting to be picked up by a guy named Barack Obama. The first Black man elected President of the United States.

I was there to join him as Vice President on the way to the historic inauguration in Washington. A moment of extraordinary hope, but also, as I stood there—and this is the God’s truth—I couldn’t help think about another day I stood there.

I wasn’t much more than your age. I’d just got out of law school. I was a public—I had gone to work for a big firm, but my state—because when Dr. King was assassinated, parts of it were—my city—parts were burned to the ground. We had a very conservative governor. He stationed the National Guard on every corner with drawn bayonets for 10 months. I quit and became a public defender.

And I used to have to introduce my clients—no, that’s not so noble—I had to interview my clients down at the Wilmington train station when they were arrested. On the east side—that’s where they’d be taken in the aftermath of the riots that burned Wilmington following his assassination.

In 2009, while waiting for Barack, I was both living history at the same time I was reliving it. A vivid demonstration: When it comes to race in America, hope doesn’t travel alone. It’s shadowed by fear, by violence, and by hate.

But after the election and the re-election of the first Black American President, I had hoped that the fear of violence and hate was significantly losing ground.

After being—no longer being Vice President, I became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania for four years. But in 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, crazed neo-Nazis with angry faces came out of the fields with—literally with torches, carrying Nazi banners from the woods and the fields chanting the same antisemitic bile heard across Europe in the ‘30s. Something that I never thought I would ever see in America.

Accompanied by Klansmen and white supremacists, emerging from dark rooms and remote fields and the anonymity of the Internet, confronting decent Americans of all backgrounds standing in their way, into the bright light of day. And a young woman objecting to their presence was killed.

And what did you hear? That famous quote. When asked about what happened, that famous quote. “There are very fine people on both sides.”

That’s when I knew—and I’m not joking—that’s when I knew I had to stay engaged and get back into public life. No, I—I don’t say it for that reason. I say it for the journey.

I don’t have to tell you that fearless progress towards justice often meets ferocious pushback from the oldest and most sinister of forces. That’s because hate never goes away.

I thought, when I graduated, we could defeat hate. But it never goes away. It only hides under the rocks. And when it’s given oxygen, it comes out from under that rock.

And that’s why we know this truth as well: Silence is complicity. It cannot remain silent. We are live through this battle for the soul of the nation. And it is still a battle for the soul of the nation.

What is the soul of a nation? Well, I believe the soul is the breath, the life, the essence of who we are. The soul makes us, “us.”
The soul of America is what makes us unique among all nations. We’re the only country founded on an idea—not geography, not religion, not ethnicity, but an idea.

The sacred proposition rooted in Scripture and enshrined in the Declaration of Independence that we’re all created equal in the image of God and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. While we’ve never fully lived up to that promise, we never before fully walked away from it.

We know that American history has not always been a fairytale. From the start, it’s been a constant push and pull for more than 240 years between the best of us, the American ideal that we’re all create equal—and the worst of us, the harsh reality that racism has long torn us apart. It’s a battle that’s never really over.

But on the best days, enough of us have the guts and the hearts to st-—to stand up for the best in us. To choose love over hate, unity over disunion, progress over retreat. To stand up against the poison of white supremacy, as I did in my Inaugural Address—to single it out as the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy.

And I’m not saying this because I’m at a Black HBCU. I say it wherever I go.

To stand up for truth over lies—lies told for power and profit.

To confront the ongoing assault to subvert our elections and suppress our right to vote. That assault came just as you cast your first ballots in ‘20 and ‘22. Record turnouts. You delivered historic progress.

I made it clear that America—Americans of all backgrounds have an obligation to call out political violence that has been unleashed and emboldened. As was mentioned already, bomb threats to this very university and HBCUs across the country.

To put democracy on the ballot. To reject political extremism and reject political violence.

Protect fundamental rights and freedoms for women to choose and for transgender children to be free.

For affordable healthcare and housing.

For the right to raise your family and retire with dignity.

To stand with leaders of your generation who give voice to the people, demanding action on gun violence only to be expelled from state legislative bodies.

To stand against books being banned and Black history being erased. I’m serious. Think about it.

To stand up for the best in us.

And today, I come here to Howard to continue the work to redeem the soul of this nation, because it’s here where I see the future. And I’m not—that’s not hyperbole.

We can finally resolve those ongoing questions about who we are as a nation. That puts strength of our diversity at the center of American life. A future that celebrates and learns from history. A future for all Americans. A future I see you leading. And I’m not, again, exaggerating. You are going to be leading it.

Again, let’s be clear: There are those who don’t see you and don’t want this future. There are those who demonize and pit people against one another. And there are those who do anything and everything, no matter how desperate or immoral, to hold onto power. And that’s never going to be an easy battle.

But I know this: The oldest, most sinister forces may believe they’ll determine America’s future, but they are wrong. We will determine America’s future. You will determine America’s future. And that’s not hyperbole.

No graduating class gets to choose the world into which they graduate. Every class enters the history of a nation up to the point it has been written by others.

But few classes, once in every several generations, enters at a point in our history where it actually has a chance to change the trajectory of the country. You face that inflection point today, and I know you will meet the moment. Just think about the many ways you already have.

With your voices and votes, I was able to fill my commitment to put the first Black woman on the Supreme Court of the United States of America. And, by the way, she’s brighter than the rest. She is one bright woman.

Because of you, more Black women have been appointed to the federal appellate courts under—than under every other President in American history combined.

And, by the way, I mean it. I mean it. Because of you. Because of you. You turned out. You spoke up. You knew. You showed up, and the votes counted. And you made people say, “Whoa, wait a minute. What price will I pay if I don’t do the following?”

You feel the promise and the peril of climate change. Because of you, we’re making the biggest investment ever in the history of the world in climate change. Don’t ever think your voice doesn’t matter.

I’m keeping my promise that no one should be in jail merely because of using or possessing marijuana. Their records should be expunged—just expunged.

My student debt relief plan would help tens of millions of people, especially those on Pell Grants. Seventy percent of Black college students receive Pell Grants. Many of you, the savings would be significant and even wiping out student debt completely for some.

But—this new Republican Party is dead set against it, suing my administration to stop you from getting student debt relief. The same opposition who received relief loans, I might add, to keep their businesses afloat during the pandemic—members of the Congress—worth thousands, even millions of dollars—most of which didn’t have to be paid back. Yet, they say it’s okay for them but not for you. I find it outrageous.

To reduce your debt service payments when you graduate, we’re also ensuring that no one—no one with an undergraduate loan today or in the future will have to pay more than 5 percent of their discretionary income to repay their loans, down from 10. And in 20 years, it’s gone.

Republican officials are fighting that as well. But I will always keep fighting for you. And many others will—and many in the Republican Party as well will fight for you.

But we also know there is more to do. Because of your power, we took the most significant law on gun violence—we passed it—the most significant law in 30 years.

But we will not give up. I got the Assault Weapons Ban passed 30 years ago, and we’re going to pass it again. We must pass it.
And there’s more to do on police reform and public safety.

During the State of the Union, I asked the rest of the country to imagine having to talk to their children and their families like your families had to talk to you.

It’s about your security. It’s about your dignity. It’s demeaning and degrading and deadly when you just have to stand there and say, “When you’re stopped, turn the interior light on, put both hands on the wheel, don’t reach for your license.” What in the hell is going on in America? No, think about it.

I ask all the parents of non-minority children to ask what they would say, what they would do.

I know you’re frustrated that there are so many elected officials who refuse to pass a law that will do something.

Kamala and I stood next to the family of George Floyd and civil rights leaders and law enforcement officials to sign the executive order I came up with requiring the key elements of the George Floyd bill be applied to federal law enforcement: banning chokeholds, restricting no-knock warrants, establishing a database for police misconduct, advancing effective and accountable community policing that builds public trust. And we’ll keep fighting to pass the reforms nationwide.

Equal justice is a covenant we have with each other. It must not just be an ideal; it has to be a reality.

You’re leading the way on this and so much more. That’s why Kamala and I are so committed to investing in you and HBCUs. HBCUs help produce 40 percent of Black engineers; 50 percent of Black lawyers ; 70 percent of Black doctors and dentists ; 80 percent of Black judges.

Look, we see HBCU excellence in every day, with staff at every level of the White House and the administration, because I decided when I was elected, I promised I was going to have my administration would look like America.

But we all know that HBCUs don’t have the same endowments and funding as other major colleges and universities. For example, denying the opportunity to build and fund research labs that will lead to new technologies and good-paying jobs.

That’s why I asked and we’ve invested $6 billion and counting in HBCUs, including to create new research and development labs that prepare students for jobs of the future in high-income fields, from cybersecurity, engineering, biochemistry, healthcare.

Standing here, I think the last time I came to Howard with President Frederick and others was in my final year as Vice President to host the Cancer Moonshot on campus, because you are leading the way. You’re the scientists, the doctors, the advocates who will bring—do big things like ending cancer as we know it and even curing some cancers, which we’re on our way of doing.

You’re the diplomats and global citizens making democracy work for people around the world. Lawyers defending our rights.

Artists shaping our culture. Fearless journalists. This is real, though. You’re—this is what you’re doing. Fearless journalists and intellectuals pursuing the truth and challenging convention.

You’re the leaders of tomorrow, but it’s coming on you really quickly.
Because of you, I see a future we can finally move away from the narrowed and cramped view that the promise of America is a zero-sum game: “If you succeed, I fail.” “If you get ahead, I fall behind.” And maybe worst of all, “If I can’t hold you down, I can’t lift myself up.”

Instead of what it should be, “If you do well, we all do well.” That’s what I see in you. That’s what I see in America. And more Americans are—a future of possibilities for all Americans.

Look, no matter—that future—what it holds, my sincere hope is that each of you find a sweet spot between happiness, success, and ambition. That—a good life. A life of purpose.

Because here’s the thing: You don’t know where or what fate will bring you or when. You just have to keep going. You have to just keep the faith. You have to just get up.

And you can find the balance between ambition and happiness and success—that good life of purpose, of family, and, as you know here at Howard, of excellence, leadership, and truth and service. There is no quit in you. There is no quit in America.

So, let me close with this. In our lives and in the life of the nation, we know that fear can shadow hope. But it’s also true that hope can defeat fear.

In January of 2021, I stood at the U.S. Capitol to be inaugurated as President of the United States. Just days before, on that very spot, a violent insurrection took place. A dagger at the throat of democracy. For the first time in our history, an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power in this country.

And they failed. Our democracy held. Again, hope prevailed.

And this time, I was standing with a Black woman about to take a two-mile procession down Pennsylvania Avenue as President and Vice President of the United States of America.

And who was marching alongside her? The Howard University Marching Band in lockstep and solidarity. You were.
I give you my word as a Biden: Class of 2023, you’re the reason I’m so optimistic about the future. And I give you my word, I really mean it. You’re part of the most gifted, tolerant, talented, best-educated generation in American history. That’s a fact.

And it’s your generation, more than anyone else’s, who will answer the questions for America: Who are we? What do we stand for? What do you believe? What do we believe? What do we want to be?

I’m not saying you have to share this burden all on your own. The task at hand ahead is the work of all of us.

But what I am saying is: You represent the best of us. And that’s the God’s truth. You represent the best of us.

Your generation will not be ignored, will not be shunned, will not be silenced.

So on the hilltop high, keep standing for truth and right, and send your rays of light.

Congratulations to you all. We need you.

God bless you. And may God protect our troops.

Christopher Eisgruber: 'Heed their rising voices!', Princeton University - 2023

30 May 2023, Princeton, New Jersey

In a few minutes, all of you will walk out of this stadium as newly minted graduates of this University.  Before you do, however, it is my privilege to offer a few words about your time here and the path that lies ahead.

I want to begin by saying something about the honorary degrees that we conferred just a few moments ago.  Our purpose in awarding those degrees is not only to recognize the extraordinary achievements of the recipients, but to offer them to our new graduates as inspiring examples of the many ways that one might live a life of leadership and service to others.

One great pleasure of my job each year is getting to meet our honorary degree recipients, welcome them to the University, and learn a little about them.

In 2015, I was honored to share this stage with, among others, the vocalist and civil rights leader Harry Belafonte.  Though many people remember Belafonte as an entertainer, Princeton conferred upon him an honorary doctorate of laws in recognition of his social activism and humanitarian work.

Harry Belafonte passed away just over a month ago at the age of 96.  I would like to offer you some reflections prompted both by his memory and by current events.

I want, in particular, to tell you a story drawn from the struggle for racial equality in America.  It is a story about Harry Belafonte and the origins of the American right to free speech.  And it is a story about the moral courage of young people, about how their leadership played a crucial role in our country’s long and unfinished quest to establish a more perfect union and a more just society.

It is also a story that connects very directly to the history that Congresswoman Terri Sewell spoke about in her inspirational Class Day address yesterday.

Harry Belafonte was one of the principal fundraisers for Martin Luther King’s civil rights campaigns, and he had a leadership role in the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom.

In March 1960, that committee published a full-page advertisement in the New York Times.  The headline for the advertisement was “Heed Their Rising Voices.”

The “rising voices” were those of Black students in the American South, who, in the words of the advertisement, were engaged in “non-violent demonstrations in positive affirmation of the right to live in human dignity as guaranteed by the [United States] Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

The advertisement pled for help and support, because, it said, the students were “being met by an unprecedented wave of terror by those who would deny and negate” the freedoms promised by the American Constitution.

The advertisement also contained some serious errors.  It said, for example, that Alabama universities had padlocked their dining halls in an attempt to starve the protesting students, which was not true.

L. B. Sullivan, who was the police commissioner in Montgomery, Alabama, sued the New York Times.  He claimed that the advertisement had libeled him, and he won a $500,000 award.

That was the largest libel award in Alabama history, and, if it had been upheld, it might have been enough to put the New York Times out of business.

The Times took the case to the United States Supreme Court.  Their chances did not look good.  The Court had a lousy record in free speech cases.  It had never held that the First Amendment limited libel law in any way, and it had for the most part turned a blind eye to McCarthyism and earlier instances of political persecution.

In Times v. Sullivan, however, the Supreme Court rewrote the law of free speech.  It ruled unanimously in favor of the New York Times, and it created a new and powerful restriction on libel law.  The Court held that everyone had the right to criticize public officials without fear of legal liability unless their statements were not only false but also made with “actual malice.”

The Supreme Court thereby, suddenly and in a single decision, created one of the most speech-protective legal doctrines in history—and, for that matter, in the world today.

Justice William J. Brennan, from the great state of New Jersey, wrote the opinion of the Court and declared that there is “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”

When people talk about free speech rights in America, they often depict them as the legacy of the American founding in the 18th century, or as the product of elegant dissents authored by Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis in the early 20th century.

Without meaning any disrespect to the Constitution’s framers or to those legendary justices, this much is clear:  the expansive, legally enforceable free speech rights that Americans cherish today first emerged in the 1960s during and because of the fight for racial justice in the South, a fight whose leaders included Black student activists.

I insist on this point today because there is a movement afoot in this country right now to drive a wedge between the constitutional ideals of equality and free speech.  There are people who claim, for example, that when colleges and universities endorse the value of diversity and inclusivity or teach about racism and sexism, they are “indoctrinating students” or in some other way endangering free speech.

That is wrong.  It is wrong as a historical matter, and it is wrong as a matter of our constitutional ideals, which require us to care simultaneously about the achievement of real, meaningful equality and what Justice Brennan called “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” debate on public issues.

These ideals are at risk.  PEN America, an organization dedicated to free expression, reported in February that, in just the first two months of this year, state legislatures had already introduced 86 “educational gag orders” that restrict the ability of schools, colleges, universities, and libraries to teach or disseminate information about inequalities within American society.

Some of these bills prohibit discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity.  Some prohibit teaching disfavored views about race, racism, and American history.  Others seek to undermine the institutional autonomy of colleges and universities or to abolish tenure, thereby enabling politicians to control what professors can teach or publish.

Christine Emba, who graduated from Princeton in 2010 and now writes for the Washington Post, visited the University of Florida last month to examine how that state’s censorship laws were affecting students and faculty.

She talked to a University of Florida student, Emmaline Moye, who said this about her college experience:  “Being exposed to people who I’ve never been exposed to before, people of different races and ethnicities and genders and sexualities, and, as a queer student, hearing those things talked about makes me feel heard and seen.”

But Emmaline added that because of the newly passed laws, “I’m so scared for people like me … they won’t get that feeling of liberation, of getting to be who you are and know[ing that] you’re not alone.”

We must not let that happen.

We must stand up and speak up together for the values of free expression and full inclusivity for people of all identities.

As I said earlier, the advertisement that Harry Belafonte put in the New York Times more than 60 years ago began with the headline “Heed Their Rising Voices.”  It concluded with the message, “Your Help is Urgently Needed … NOW!!”

To all of you who receive your undergraduate or graduate degree from Princeton University today:

Your help is urgently needed—now!

So, as you go forth from this University, let your voices rise.

Let them rise for equality.

Let them rise for the value of diversity.

Let them rise for freedom, for justice, and for love among the people of this earth.

Wherever your individual journeys may lead you in the years ahead, I hope that you also continue to travel together, as classmates and as alumni of this University, in pursuit of a better world.

All of us on this platform have great confidence in your ability to take on that challenge.  We applaud your persistence, your talent, your achievements, your values, and your aspirations.

We send our best wishes as you embark upon the path that lies ahead, and we hope it will bring you back to this campus many times.  We look forward to welcoming you when you return, and we say, to Princeton University’s Great Class of 2023, congratulations!

Jake Baum: 'On the importance of failure', Occasioonal Address, UNSW, Faculty of Medicine - 2023

2 May 2023, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Deputy Chancellor, Senior Vice Dean of Medicine & Health, colleagues, distinguished guests, graduating students & families.

I want to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of these unceded lands, the rolling planes on which UNSW Sydney sits, the Bidjigal and Gadigal communities. Bidjigal I believe means plane dwellers in the Dharug language – one of the languages native to this area of NSW. So today, as you walk around the campus with your friends & family, pause to consider the incredible history witnessed by these rolling planes, and the debt of gratitude we owe to it, privileged to be able to study, learn and work freely in such a unique place.

This is my first occasional address. Let me clarify that. This is the first time I have been to any graduation ceremony, including my own. I will explain why.

I grew up in Bristol, a small city in the Southwest of England. My father was an eminent Paediatrician, my mother was and still is an abstract painter. I was brought up to ask questions at the dinner table, to study the world. Consumed by David Attenborough television shows I decided very early on that I would be a biologist. Though I went to a very modest state school, with help I managed to beat the odds and gain a place at Oxford University to study Biology. Guaranteed life-long success clearly would ensue?

Not necessarily. What I want to stress today isn’t success. It’s failure. Most Occasional Addresses I’ve watched in preparation for today, stress that graduation is one of the most important days of your life. OK, for some of you it might be. But I can imagine there are a few here that carry – as I did – a sense of failure. Perhaps you’ve not done as well as you expected? Perhaps you feel you should have done medicine instead? Perhaps you have no idea what tomorrow brings and that scares you?

At the end of my degree at Oxford, I was due to enjoy this very same ceremony. Two things, however, conspired to change my path. The first was the sudden death of my father. I felt bereft and uninterested in any form of celebration. Consumed by grief, all I could focus on was that I wasn’t training to be a medic, like him. The second was that I didn’t do well enough in my final exams. A PhD in Cambridge studying Biological Anthropology was promised to me, but it required a Distinction – and I’d fallen a few grades short. It was too late to enrol in postgraduate medicine. I was lost, feeling a deep sense of failure.

With no fallback plan I picked myself up and wrote. Pre-email, I mailed letters to every research lab I could find on the internet that looked interesting. To my surprise, a few months later a letter came from a parasitologist in Jerusalem offering me a 1 yr job in his lab. I said yes. This single year changed my whole life’s journey. Working with Palestinians and Israelis on the ancient relationships of Levantine goats – a fascinating subject I assure you - and living in one of the most complex and amazing cities in the world, I realised a profound lesson. You have to follow your own path. I was discovering a world of parasites, population genetics, and ancient human history. Maybe I didn’t need to become a medic after all.

With fresh perspective, my luck changed, I acquired a Ph.D. back in the UK jointly in Oxford and London to explore human genetics & malaria (a subject that I still work on today). Now, clearly my success was guaranteed!

At the end of my Ph.D. I submitted 3 applications for fellowships to study malaria further and applied to several jobs. Rejection followed rejection – I had failed again. Perhaps I was deluded, maybe this path wasn’t meant to be. Medicine?

Another year out followed. I considered throwing in the towel and finding an alternative career. Then, on a chance recommendation from a friend, I was introduced to Professor Alan Cowman, the world leading authority on malaria parasite cell biology. Over coffee he took a chance and offered me a 2-year position in his lab at the WEHI in Melbourne. I said yes, telling my mother soon afterwards that I’d be back from Oz in 2 years, she needn’t worry.

Within 2 years, I had met my now wife Andrea, I’d become a resident, we got married a few years later and our first child was born and my mum forgave me for living in the lucky country. Clearly now I could assume things would run smoothly? I worked my guts out in Alan’s lab and after 5 years, I had discovered and described a small protein – called RH5 – that I believed was destined to be the foundation for a universal malaria vaccine. We submitted the paper to the most prestigious journals we could, waiting for the almost certain accolades to follow. But, after 6 months of waiting we received a brutal rejection – worse still, another group published on Rh5 before us. I had been scooped. We rushed publication into an Australian journal – colleagues advised I move on. Failure?... Not so fast!!

RH5 is now in clinical trials in Tanzania, and its working. I’m not involved with those trials, but that paper I published is one of the most highly cited papers from my career. What am I trying to say?

As CS Lewis (the famous author) said “Failures are sign posts on the road to achievement.” or as civil rights activist Maya Angelou said, "It may be necessary to encounter defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”

I now passionately believe failure is a key part of any journey. Or to quote Einstein, “Failure is success in progress.”

So, for those of you here reflecting on how everything has gone your way – relish that feeling, celebrate it, but don’t take it for granted. It won’t always be like this, but thanks to the amazing lessons you’ve undoubtedly learned here at UNSW through teachers and friends, you should feel confident that you can achieve great things. And for those of you nursing a sense of failure or uncertainty – well, you went one better than me, you showed up to your graduation, you smiled for the camera, and you can say to yourself, this too shall pass – or as Richard Feynman said, the most important thing in life is not being afraid to fail.

As the Head of School of Biomedical Sciences, I want to close by saying something about the Biomedical journey itself.

My father used to tell the story of the starfish - his metaphor for the importance of being a Clinician. This is the story:

As an old man walked the beach at dawn, he noticed a young girl picking up starfish and putting them into the sea. He asked the girl “why are you doing this?”. She answered that the stranded starfish would die if left out in the morning sun. 'But the beach goes on for miles and there are thousands & thousands of starfish,' countered the old man. 'How can your effort make any difference?' The child looked at the starfish in her hand and placed it safely into the waves. 'It makes a difference to this one!'

It’s a powerful story – make a difference to one patient. Save one life! But I’ll let you in on a secret (and I might ask any clinicians present to close their ears). There is a way to save not just one but every starfish on that beach and it isn’t necessarily by becoming a medic. In the COVID pandemic, it wasn’t clinicians that changed the game, it was biomedical research, it was finding the cures and treatments, the vaccines & diagnostics and the decades of research that came before – which included a HUGE amount of failure! Dame Sarah Gilbert who developed the AstraZeneca vaccine is a researcher, not a clinician. So, whether you stay in biomedical sciences, pursue medicine (I do still love clinicians) or go onto something completely different, the perspective you’ve gained these last few years should still empower you to make a profound difference to the world.

So, in closing, whatever today means, go from here. You’ve got a jump start on life with a degree from UNSW, use it well, be prepared to fail, fail often, and get up again. Blaze your own path.

Thank you.

John Lewis: 'You must find a way to get into trouble, good trouble', Emory University - 2014

12 May 2014, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

President Wagner. members of the Board of Trustees, distinguished faculty, parents, family, and friends, and to the class of 2014, I'm delighted and very pleased to be with you on this important occasion.
Now let me join President Wagman in saying "hashtag thanks Gary" to each and every one of you who are receiving a degree. Congratulations. Congratulations. This is your day. Enjoy it. Be happy. Just be happy, have a little fun. Smile. You look good. You look beautiful, handsome. Did anyone else tell you that you really look good? <laugh> Colourful.

And let me just tell you for a moment, I didn't grow up in a big city like Decatur. I didn't grow up in a big city like Snellville. I didn't grow up in a big city like, uh, Buffalo or Chicago or New York or Los Angeles. Or Atlanta. I grew up in rural Alabama, 50 miles from Montgomery outside of a little place called Troy. My father was a sharecropper itinerant farmer, but back in 1944 when I was only four years old, my father had saved $300. And with the $300, he bought 110 acres of land. My family still own that land today. How many of you remember when you were four? Now what happened to the rest of us?

It was many, many years ago, when we would visit the little town of Troy, visit Montgomery visit Tuskegee visit Birmingham, I saw those signs that said 'white men, coloured men', 'white women, coloured women,' 'white waiting, coloured waiting.' I would come home and ask my mother, my father, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, 'Why?'. And they would say, 'That's the way it is. Don't get in the way , don't get in trouble! But one day in 1955, 15 years old in the 10th grade, I heard about Rosa Parks. I heard the words of Martin Luther king Jr on our radio. In 1957, I met Rosa Parks at the age of 17 In 1958 at the age of 18, I met Martin Luther King Jr, and these two individuals inspired me to get in the way, to get in trouble. So I come here to say to you this morning , on this beautiful campus, with your great education, you must find a way to get in the way. You must find a way to get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble.

Use your education. You have wonderful teachers, wonderful professors, researchers . Use what you have. Use your learning. Use your tools. To help make our country and make our world a better place where no one would be left out or left behind. You can do it and you must do it. It is your time.

In a few short days, we will commemorate what we call the Mississippi Summer Project, when more than a thousand students from all over America, many from abroad, made a trip to Mississippi to encourage people to register to vote. And on the summer night of June 21st, 1964, three young men that I know, two whites and one African American, Nick sprinter, Andy Goodman and James Chaney went out to investigate the burning of an African American church that was used for voter registration workshop. These three young men were detained by the sheriff, taken to jail, taken out of jail, turned over to the Klan where they were beaten shot and killed. And I tell students today, these three young men didn't die in Vietnam. They didn't die in the Middle East or Eastern Europe. They didn't die in Africa or central or south America. They died right here in our own country, trying to help all of our citizens become participants in the democratic process.

As young people, you must understand that there are forces that wanna take us back to another period, but you must say that we're not going back. We made too much progress and we are going forward.
There may be some setbacks, some delays, some disappointment, but you must never ever give up, or give in. You must keep the faith and keep your eyes on the price that is your calling, that is your mission, that is your moral obligation, that is your mandate. Get out there and do it get in the way!

In the final analysis, we all must learn to live together as brothers and sisters, not just in America, but around the world. I want to tell you one little story. I told you I wouldn't be long. You know, I got arrested a few times during the sixties, 40 times, an attorney, Ben Johnson, my great friend, president Beverly Tatum. I'm honoured to be honoured with these two wonderful people , that all of the charges was dropped and dismissed.

But since I've been in Congress and young people ask me, how can you be in Congress, you got arrested so many times. Been arrested since I've been in Congress, five more times.
<laugh>
And, and I may get arrested again.
The last time I got arrested was trying to say to the Congress, we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform and set people in a path to citizenship. It's the right thing to do
.
It doesn't make sense that we live in our country, we live in a society where more than 12 million people are living in the shadow, living in fear. That is not right. That is not fair. And that is not just, and you must get in the way and find a way to make the way outta no way.

When I was growing up, when I was growing up outside of Troy, Alabama, I had an aunt by the name of Sineva and my Aunt Sineva live in what we call a 'shotgun house.' I know as Emory students, soon to graduate, you had never seen a shotgun house. You don't even know what I'm talking about. My aunt Sineva didn't have a green manicured lawn , had a simple plain dirt yard. And sometime at night, you can look up through the holes in the ceiling, the holes in the tin roof and count the stars. And when it rained she would get a pail, a bucket or tub and catch the rain water.

But if you really want to know what a shotgun house look like in a nonviolence sense, it's an old house, one way in one way out , where you can bounce a basketball through the front door and it will go straight out the back door. My Aunt Sienva lived in a shotgun house. From time to time, she would walk out into the woods and cut branches from a Dogwood tree and tie these branches together and make what she call a 'brush broom'. And she would sweep the dirt yard very clean, sometime two and three times a week, but especially on a Friday or Saturday because she wanted that dirt yard to look good during the weekend.
One Saturday afternoon, a group of my brothers and sisters, and a few of my first cousins were out playing in my Aunt Sineva's dirt yard. And an unbelievable storm came up. The wind started blowing. The thunder started rolling. That lightning started flashing and the rain started beating on the tin roof of this old shotgun house. My aunt became terrified. She started crying. She thought this whole house were going to blow away. When it appeared that one corner of the house were going to blow away, my aunt had us all to hold hand and walk to that side, to try to hold the house down with our little bodies. When other corner appeared to be lifting, she had us to walk to that side. We were little children walking with the wind, but we never left the house. I said to you, as you leave here, leave this beautiful campus.

The wind may blow. The thunder may roll, the lightning may flash, and the rain may beat on our old house. Call it a house of Emory, call it a house of Georgia or Alabama or New York. Call it a house of Europe. Call it a house of Africa. Call it a house of Asia. Of central or south America. Call it a house of the Middle East. We all live in the same house , and it doesn't matter whether we are black or white, Latino, Asian American, or native American.

It doesn't matter if we, we are straight or gay. We are one people. We are one family. We all live in the same house.

Be bold. Be courageous, stand up, speak up, speak out and find a way to create the beloved community. The beloved world. A world of peace world that recognise the dignity of all humankind. Never become bitter, never become hostile, never hate. Live in peace. We are one, one people and one love. Thank you very much.

P.J. O'Rourke: 'We were the moron generation', Unlikely commencement advice, Change Magazine - 2008

4 May 2008

Well, here you are at your college graduation. And I know what you’re thinking: “Gimme the sheepskin and get me outta here!” Not so fast. First you have to listen to a commencement speech.

Don’t moan. I’m not going to “pass the wisdom of one generation down to the next.” I’m a member of the 1960s generation. We didn’t have any wisdom.

We were the moron generation. We were the generation who believed we could stop the war in Vietnam by growing our hair long and dressing like circus clowns. We believed drugs would change everything -- which they did, for John Belushi. We believed in free love. And the love was free, but we ended up paying a very high price for the sex.

My generation spoiled everything for you. It has always been the special prerogative of youth to look and act weird and shock the grown-ups. But my generation exhausted the earth’s resources of weird. Weird clothes -- we wore them. Weird beards -- we grew them. Weird words and phrases -- we said them. So, when it came your turn to look and act weird, you had to tattoo your faces and pierce your tongues.

Ouch. That must have hurt. I apologize.

True, my generation did have some good musicians. But those musicians are still out there touring. Therefore the only piece of good advice that I can give you is, don’t start a rock band. You won’t stand a chance against the Rolling Stones.

It’s my job to give you advice. But all the rest of the advice I’m going to give you is bad advice. I figure it this way: You’re finishing 16 years of education, and you’ve had all the good advice you can stand. Let me offer some relief.

1. Go out and make a bunch of money!

Here we are in the most prosperous country in the world, surrounded by all the comforts, conveniences, and security that money can provide, yet no American political, intellectual or cultural leader ever says to American young people, “Go out and make a bunch of money.” They say money can’t buy happiness. But it can rent it.

There’s nothing the matter with honest money-making. Wealth is not a pizza where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino’s box. In a free society, with the rule of law and property rights, no one loses when someone else gets rich.

2. Don’t be an idealist!

Don’t chain yourself to a redwood tree. Go be a corporate lawyer and make $500,000 a year. If you make $500,000 a year, no matter how much you try to cheat the IRS, you’ll end up paying $100,000 in taxes—property taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes. That’s $100,000 worth of schools and sewers, fire fighters and police. You’ll be doing good for society. Does chaining yourself to a redwood tree do society $100,000 worth of good?

Idealists are also bullies. The idealist is saying, “I care more about the redwood trees than you do. Oh, I know you care. But you only care as much as you have to. I care and care and care. I care so much I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, it broke up my marriage. And because I care more than you do, I’m a better person than you are. And because I’m a better person than you are, I have the right to boss you around.”

Get a pair of bolt-cutters and unleash that tree from the idealist.

Who does more to save the redwoods anyway—the person who’s chained to a tree or the person who founds the “Green Travel Redwood Tree-Hug Tour Company” and makes a million by turning redwoods into a resource more valuable than backyard deck railings, a resource that people will pay hundreds of dollar just to go look at?

So get rich. Don’t be an idealist. And ...

3. Get politically uninvolved!

Politics stink—and not just bad politics. All politics stink. Even democracy stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I’d be standing here with my midriff exposed. Imagine deciding what’s for dinner by family secret ballot. I’ve got three kids and three dogs in my family. We’d be having Fruit Loops and rotten meat.

Think how we use the word politics. Are “office politics” ever a good thing? When somebody “plays politics” to get a promotion, does he or she deserve it? When we call a co-worker “a real politician,” is that a compliment?

But let me make a distinction between politics and politicians. Some people are under the misapprehension that the problem is politicians—certain politicians who stink. Impeach George Bush, and everything will be fine. Nab Ted Kennedy on a DUI, and the nation’s problems will be solved.

But the problem isn’t politicians—it’s politics. Politicians are chefs, some good, some bad. The problem isn’t the cook. The problem is the food. Or let me restate that: The problem isn’t the cook. The problem is the cookbook. The key ingredient of politics is the belief that all of society’s ills can be cured politically. This is like a cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried. The soup is fried. The salad is fried. So is the ice cream and cake. The pinot noir is rolled in bread crumbs and dunked in the deep-fat fryer. This is no way to cook up public policy.

Politics is greasy. Politics is slippery. Politics can’t tell the truth. But we can’t blame the politicians for that. Because just think what the truth would sound like on the campaign stump, even a little bitty bit of truth:

“No, I can’t fix public education. The problem isn’t funding or teachers’ unions or a lack of vouchers or an absence of computer equipment in the classrooms. The problem is your kids!”

4. Forget about fairness!

We all get confused about what role politics should play in life. This is because politics and life send contradictory messages.

Life sends us the message, “I’d better not be poor. I’d better get rich. I’d better make more money than other people.” Meanwhile politics sends us the message, “Some people make more money than other people. Some people are rich and others are poor. We’d better close that ‘income disparity gap.’ It’s so unfair!”

Well, I’m here to speak in favor of unfairness. I’ve got a ten-year-old at home. And she’s always saying, “That’s not fair.” When she says that, I say, “Honey, you’re cute. That’s not fair. Your family is pretty well off. That’s not fair. You were born in America. That’s not fair. Darling, you had better pray to God that things don’t start getting fair for you.”

To heck with the income disparity gap. What we need is more income, even if it means a bigger gap.

5. Be a religious extremist!

So don’t get involved with politics if you can help it, but if you can’t help it, read the Bible for political advice—even if you’re a Buddhist or an atheist or whatever. Using politics to create fairness is a sin. The Bible is very clear about this.

“Oh, gosh,” you’re thinking, “this is the worst advice yet. We get federal funding here. And the commencement speaker has just violated Constitutional law about separation of church and state.”

But hear me out. I am not, in fact, one of those people who believes that God is involved in politics. My attitude is: Observe politics in this country. Observe politics around the world. Observe politics down through history. Does it look like God’s involved? No, that would be (the) Other Fellow who’s the political activist.

However, in one sense I do get my politics from the Bible, specifically from the 10th Commandment. The first nine Commandments concern theological principles and social law: Thou shalt not make graven images, steal, kill, et cetera. Fair enough. But then there’s the 10th: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.”

Here are God’s basic rules about how we should live, a brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts. And right at the end of it is “Don’t envy your buddy’s cow.” How did that make the top ten? Why would God, with just ten things to tell Moses, choose as one of them jealousy about livestock?

And yet think about how important this Commandment is to a community, to a nation, to a democracy. If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don’t whine about what the people across the street have. Go get your own.

So do get rich. Don’t be an idealist. Stay out of politics. Forget about fairness. And I have another piece of advice:

6. Whenever you’re unsure about what course to take in life, ask yourself,
“What would France do?”

You see, France is a treasure to mankind. French ideas, French beliefs, and French actions form a sort of loadstone for humanity. Because a moral compass needle needs a butt end. Whatever direction France is pointing in—toward Nazi collaboration, Communism, existentialism, Jerry Lewis movies, or President Sarkozy’s personal life—you can go the other way with a clear conscience.

One last thing.

7. Don’t listen to your elders!

After all, if the old person standing up here actually knew anything worth telling, he’d be charging you for it.

Dan Carlin: 'You cannot predict how you will use your education", University of Colorado - 2020

May 2021, Boulder, Colorado, USA

Hi everyone. While I, like all of you, I imagine, feel somewhat cheated out of a chance to congregate together on Folsom Field under a beautiful Colorado sky in the one of a kind city of Boulder. It seems somewhat apropos that a guy who delivers talks via the internet should be the inaugural speaker at the first virtual CU commencement.

I want to thank the students who thought of including me, Chancellor DiStefano, the faculty, and anyone else who had a hand in this. It is an unbelievable honor for me to be able to do this. Thanks to all of you.

As some of you know, I'm a podcaster and have been since 2005. It probably won't surprise you to know that I didn't study podcasting at Colorado. Back when I was in college, personal computers were still a really new thing and I actually remember going down to the CU Bookstore to see one. This was in 1986 I think, and if you had told me back then that I would someday be doing some sort of a show from my house, delivered to millions of people through computers and then on their phones? Well, I wouldn't have had a framework in which to process that.

I started college as a theater major at a school in Los Angeles before transferring to CU and changing majors to History. Both of those majors, by the way, as many of you know, fall into that dreaded category where people wonder what you will ever do in life to earn a living with it. When I was at CU, the History Department had this wonderful little pamphlet, I think it was green if I recall, called something like what to tell your parents about choosing History as a major. It was designed to give students some counterpoints when their parents said something like, what are you going to do with a History major? Be a high school history teacher? Which, first of all, is a great thing to be and I might not be here today except for some of those people. And yet, I can't help but notice that I use both my theater education, which I had thought for a long time was wasted class credit and hours, and my history education every day in my current work, every single day.

You couldn't have foreseen or sketched out plans for this in 1989, yet here we are. You can't predict how you will use your education. The world in which you will need it very well may not exist yet, but when it arrives you are going to be so much better off for having it than if you didn't have it. When I was here at CU, my advisor, History professor, and all around good guy Robert Pois told me about the German General, Helmuth Von Moltke The Elder who once reportedly said, in German of course, that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Boxer Mike Tyson made a similar point once saying that everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. But folks, life is gonna throw some punches your way. You don't need me to tell you that. You've already likely taken a few. Life is all about the unexpected, right? You can have a plan for your future all laid out. Take the requisite steps towards your goal, do everything right, be on your way there, and then have some unexpected event like billiard balls caroming off one another on a pool table that sends you careening towards a completely different goal on a totally different life path.

My dad once told me, “If you could look back on your life from the end of your life and try to connect the dots that led you from where you began to where you finally ended up, you couldn't do it.” There are way too many strange detours and sharp, unexpected twists and turns that everybody encounters along their way. The way this current pandemic has completely changed everything we were doing before it happened is a wonderful life lesson in how quickly reality can turn on a dime. This will be one of those dots in your life trajectory someday that would have been tough to plan for. But the fact that you can't count on a fixed plan to be flexible enough to deal with all the unexpected things life will throw at you doesn't mean you shouldn't be prepared.

I'm reminded of a line spoken by General and later President Dwight D. Eisenhower. “In preparing for battle, I've always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” What you've been doing here with your time at CU is planning. Planning and preparing for a future that you can't anticipate. Mike Tyson may be right that your specific plans may go out the window after that first punch, but if you've trained well, learned your craft, become more aware, more seasoned, and more knowledgeable, you will have options you otherwise wouldn't have. You will have a better chance to roll with life's punches and maybe even land a few of your own because if you want to get to where you want to go, I'm here to tell you, you can't just play defense here.

You're going to have to take some chances in this life. In the Broadway musical Hamilton, the lead character sings or raps that he's not throwing away his shot. Too many people in life don't take theirs. Often it's because the important opportunities in your life aren't apparent until you've seized them. You can only tell how pivotal they were after the fact. I've often looked back on my life – the things I did that ended up altering the entire trajectory of my existence – and marveled at how close I came to not doing them. At the time, it wasn't clear that he was such a big deal. You just don't know until you try. I got my first job as a television reporter after sending an audition tape to a news director who told me explicitly not to send him one. The man said they had no turnover at their station and that there was no job to give me. The quality of the tape itself didn't matter at all. My stepfather, however, told me to send him one anyway. I was loath to do this because those tapes were expensive and I didn't have many of them, but I sent out the tape anyway and the news director called me a week later, said he had an unexpected rash of people quitting and how soon could I start? What if I hadn't sent that tape? I mean, I nearly didn't. My bemoaning the cost and effort involved almost cost me a heck of a lot more than a $20 videotape and some time. While I was a reporter, I did a news story one day at a radio station and I was struck with a random thought that maybe I should just drop the program director that I just met a little note thanking him. It didn't seem like a big deal either way; I could take it or leave it. I vacillated about it. I almost didn't do it, but at the last minute I just said, “What the hell,” and dropped the note in the mail. He called that week and said, have you ever thought about going to talk radio? Again, my life changed course completely in a positive way by something I couldn't have foreseen or planned for in advance and that I nearly didn't do.

While I was in the radio business I worked with a fabulous person who became my friend, but then a person who was going to leave and move to a bigger town. I thought about writing her a note and telling her I'd like to ask her out, but it seemed like something that might backfire, you know, workplace romance and all that. I remember almost chickening out. I was going to put the note under her windshield wiper and I went back and forth. Do I? Don’t I? I finally just left the note on the car windshield, walked away, and left it in fate's hands as I recall, thinking. Well, she read the note and decided to stay and she's been my wife for 20 years now and we have two wonderful kids. But what if I hadn't left that note? I mean, I almost didn't.

But in the connect the dots story of my life, the tape that that news director led me to sending a letter to a radio boss, which led me to meeting the person who would give him my whole current life. Oh yeah, it was my wife's mother who also first suggested I do a podcast about history. So if I don't send that tape to the news director who told me not to, I'm probably not talking with you here today. It is absolutely terrifying to me to think how thin a reed my whole life today rests upon. The worst part was that I had no clue that those things I almost didn't do were in effect: my shots. But getting your shot is only half the battle.

Once you get it, then you have to make good on the opportunity. This is where your years of planning and hard work comes into play. Getting, for example, a transformative job means nothing if you get fired soon afterwards for not being able to do it well, and most jobs require some basic foundation in skills and knowledge and then the ability to learn more. CU gave me both the skills to put myself in a position to be offered these gigs and the knowledge – not the specific knowledge of how to do those jobs. After all, I didn't study journalism, broadcasting or podcasting in school – but the lifelong ability to know how to keep learning. This is one of the most important skills you've gained through your planning. You were prepared to learn more. This skill will be your salvation. We live in an era where the ability to be a lifelong self-educator is absolutely indispensable, so regardless of whatever specific degree you've earned or what subject you majored in, what we're really celebrating here today is the culmination of this stage of your life's work in making you better able to deal with whatever comes your way – positive and negative.

You're going to be blindsided by events, both joyous and not, your entire life. What you've done by completing this chapter in your personal story is hedge against the future. You don't know what's coming. Who can? But because of the work you've put in, you have become a more formidable individual. A more formidable version of you will be better able to roll with whatever punches await, while also putting you in a better position to take advantage of the opportunities that come your way in life. Think about who you were when you started here at CU and think about yourself now that you've finished. You've done the equivalent of leveling up in this role playing game or computer simulation called “Life.” This impacts everything for the rest of your days in ways that will be both obvious and not. A more formidable you will be a better employee, boss, parent, and maybe even person.

You may not be able to count on your specific plans for the future. They may get derailed or you may fall in love with another path, but because of your efforts and hard work, you're going to be more prepared for all of it. And remember to take your shots along the way because you never know which ones are going to pay off until you're in a position later on to connect the dots of your own past.

With one exception, I can guarantee you that the shot you took when you applied to this institution is one you will never regret. I don't have to wait until the end of your life to tell you that. I speak from experience. Congratulations Buffaloes on radically improving your chances in life. Go make the world a better place. I am so proud of you all. Go Buffs.

Chadwick Boseman: 'The light of new realizations shines on you today', Harvard University, 2018

12 May 2018, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

It is a great privilege, graduates to address you on your day, a day marking one of the most important accomplishments of your life to date. This is a magical place, a place where the dynamics of positive and negative seem to exist in extremes. I remember walking across this yard on what seemed to be a random day, my head down lost in my own world of issues like many of you do daily. I’m almost at the center of the yard. I raised my head and Muhammad Ali was walking towards me. Time seemed to slow down as his eyes locked on mine and opened wide. He raised his fist to a quintessential guard.

I was game to play along with him, to act as if I was a worthy opponent. What an honor to be challenged by the GOAT, the greatest of all time, for a brief moment. His face was as serious as if I was Frazier in the Thrilla in Manila. His movements were flashes of a past greater than I can imagine. His security let the joke play along for a second before they ushered him away, and I walked away floating like a butterfly. I walked away amused at him, amused at myself, amused at life for this moment that almost no one would ever believe. I walked away light and ready to take on the world. That is the magic of this place. Almost anything can happen here. HU!

(crowd) You know!

Howard University, I was riding here and I heard on the radio, somebody called it Wakanda University. But it has many names, the Mecca, the Hilltop. It only takes one hour, one tour of the physical campus to understand why we call it the Hilltop. Every day is leg day here. That’s why some of you have cars. During my junior and senior years, I lived in a house off campus at Bryant Street. For those of you… That’s right, Bryant Street. For those of you who don’t know what that means, that’s at the bottom of the hill where the incline gets real. Almost every day I would walk the full length of the hill to Fine Arts, where most of my classes were, carrying all of my books, because once you walked that far on foot, you are not walking back home until it’s time to go home for good.

But beyond the physical campus, the Hilltop represents the culmination of the intellectual and spiritual journey you have undergone while you were here. You have been climbing this academic slope for at least three or four years. For some of you, maybe even a little bit more. Throughout ancient times, institutions of learning have been built on top of hills to convey that great struggle is required to achieve degrees of enlightenment. Each of you had your own unique difficulties with the hill. For some of you, the challenge was actually academics. When you hear the words magna cum laude, cum laude, you know that’s not you. That’s not you. You worked hard. You did your best, but you didn’t make A’s or B’s, sometimes C’s. You never made the dean’s list, but that’s okay. You are here on top of the hill.

I want to say something to that. You know, sometimes your grades don’t give a real indication of what your greatness might be. So, it really is okay. For others it was financial. You and your family struggled to make ends meet. Every semester of your matriculation you had to stand in one line to get to another line, to get to another line for somebody that might help you. You had to work an extra job, or two, but you are here.

For a lot of you, not all, but a lot of you, your hardest struggle was social. Some of you never fit in. You were never as cool and as popular as you wanted to be, and it bothers you. So, your social struggles here became psychological. Even though you made it up to hill, you carried the baggage of rejection with you, but you are here.

Some of you went through something traumatic. You made it to the top of the hill but not without scars and bruises. Some of you fit in too much. You were on the yard rapping on your frat block when you were supposed to be in class. Or you got caught up into DC party life. I know how that is. I mean, we are right here in the midst of the city. Sometimes you forgot you were in school. You probably could have graduated with honors, but instead you are getting an “Oh yeah” degree today. Oh yeah, I have class. Oh yeah, I have that paper due. Oh yeah, I have a final. You were literally too cool for school. You waited until the last minute to do your best work and it’s a wonder that you made it up the hill at all because you carry the baggage of too much acceptance.

Most of you graduating here today struggled against one or more of the impediments or obstacles I’ve mentioned in order to reach this hilltop. When completing a long climb, one first experiences dizziness, disorientation and shortness of breath due to the high altitude, but once you become accustomed to the climb, your mind opens up to the tranquility of the triumph.

Oftentimes, the mind is flooded with realizations that were, for some reason, harder to come to when you were at a lower elevation. At this moment, most of you need some realizations because right now you have some big decisions to make. Right now, I urge you in your breath, in your eyes, in your consciousness — invest in the importance of this moment and cherish it. I know some of you might’ve partied last night. You should, you should celebrate, but this moment is also a part of that celebration. So, savor the taste of your triumphs today. Don’t just swallow the moment whole without digesting what has actually happened here. Look down over what you conquered and appreciate what God has brought you through.

Some of you here struggled against the university itself. This year, students protested and took over the A building, formulated a list of demands and negotiated with our president and administration to determine the direction of our institution. It’s impressive. Similarly, during my years here at Howard, we also protested and took over the A building in order to preserve Howard’s alum, in order to preserve Howard’s annual appropriations from Congress. President H. Patrick Swygert decided to reduce the number of colleges at the university. By his plan, engineering would need to merge with architecture. Nursing would merge with allied health and the fine arts, my school, will be absorbed by arts and sciences. That’s how we saw it, absorbed.

For many of us in fine arts, this signaled to us that our curriculums, all the curriculums of students following us, might become watered-down concentrations. This undermined the very legacy we were proud to be a part of and aimed to continue. The fine arts program had produced Phylicia Rashad, Debbie Allen, Isaiah Washington, Richard Wesley, Donny Hathaway, Roberta Flack, just to name a few. We felt that… Yes, yes. You could go on and on. You can go on and on. You can go on and on. We felt that we could compete with students from Juilliard, NYU and Carroll Arts as long as we continued to have a concentrated dosage that rivaled a conservatory experience, but without it…

Although we took over the A building for several days and presented our arguments to President Swygert and the administration, the schools were still merged. Thus, the current collection or formation of schools exists. That’s why I view your recent protest as such an accomplishment for both sides of the debate, student and administration. I didn’t come here to take sides. My interest is what’s best for the school.

A Howard University education is not just about what happens in the classroom, students. In some ways, what you were able to do exemplifies some of the skills you learned in the classroom. It takes the education out of the realm of theory and into utility and practice. Obviously, your organizational skills were unprecedented. I’m told that you organized shifts so that you could at least continue some of your classes. We missed all our classes. We were in the A building. I’m told that through donations, there was always an ample helping of food. I probably ate a slice of pizza during the entirety of our three-day protest.

Your organization and planning was impeccable. You received the majority of your demands, making a significant impact on those who came after you. As is often the case, those that follow most often enjoy the results of the progress you gained. You love the university enough to struggle with it. Now, I have to ask you that you have to continue to do that even now that you received your demands. Even if you are walking today, you have to continue to do that. Everything that you fought for was not for yourself. It was for those that come after. You could have been disgruntled and transferred, but you fought to be participants in making this institution the best that it can be. But I must also applaud President Wayne Frederick and the administration for listening to the students.

Your freedom of speech was exercised in a way where you can contribute to this place. It also shows that you can contribute to the democracy. The administration and the campus police at the time when I was protesting were not nearly as open-minded as this current one. I know this was a difficult time, but because of both of you, I believe Howard is a few steps closer to the actualization of its potential, the potential that many of us have dreamed for it. Students, your protests are also promising because many of you will leave Howard and enter systems and institutions that have a history of discrimination and marginalization. The fact that you have struggled with this university that you love is a sign that you can use your education to improve the world that you are entering.

I was on a roll when I entered the system of entertainment, theater, television and film. In my first New York audition for a professional play I landed the lead role. From that play, I got my first agent. From that agent, I got an on-screen audition. It was a soap opera. It wasn’t Third Watch. It was a soap opera on a major network. I scored that role, too. I felt like Mike Tyson when he first came on the scene knocking out opponents in the first round. With this soap opera gig, I was already promised to make six figures, more money than I had ever seen. I was feeling myself. But once I got the first script, with soap operas you very often get the script the night before and then you shoot the whole episode in one day with little to no time to prepare.

Once I saw the role I was playing, I found myself conflicted. The role wasn’t necessarily stereotypical. A young man in his formative years with a violent streak pulled into the allure of gang involvement. That’s somebody’s real story. Never judge the characters you play. That’s what we were always taught. That’s the first rule of acting. Any role played honestly can be empowering, but I was conflicted because this role seemed to be wrapped up in assumptions about us as Black folk. The writing failed to search for specificity. Plus, there was barely a glimpse of positivity or talent in the character, barely a glimpse of hope. I would have to make something out of nothing. I was conflicted. Howard had instilled in me a certain amount of pride and for my taste this role didn’t live up to those standards.

It was just my luck that after filming the first two episodes, execs of the show called me into their offices and told me how happy they were with my performance. They wanted me to be around for a long time. They said if there was anything that I needed, just let them know. That was my opening. I decided to ask them some simple questions about the background of my character, questions that I felt were pertinent to the plot. Question number one: Where is my father? The exec answered, “Well, he left when you were younger.” Of course. Okay. Okay. Question number two: In this script, it alluded to my mother not being equipped to operate as a good parent, so why exactly did my little brother and I have to go into foster care? Matter-of-factly, he said, “Well, of course she is on heroin.”

That could be real, I guess, but I didn’t want to assume that’s what it was. If we are around here assuming that the Black characters in the show are criminals, on drugs and deadbeat parents, then that would probably be stereotypical, wouldn’t it? That word stereotypical lingered. One of the execs pulled out my resume and began studying it. The other exec wore a smile and was now trying to live up to what they had promised me only a few moments before — “If there is anything you need, just let us know.” She said, “As you have seen, things move really fast around here, but we are more than happy to connect you with the writers if you have suggestions.”

“Yeah,” I said, “that would be great.” I said, “because I’m just trying to do my homework on this. I didn’t know if you guys have decided on all the facts, but maybe there are some things we could come up with, some talent or gift that we can build. Maybe he is really good at math or something. He has to be active. I’m doing my best not to play this character like a victim.”

“So, you went to Howard University, huh?” the exec holding my resume interrupted, peeking over the pages. “Yes,” I said proudly. He slid my resume back in his desk and said, “Thank you for your concerns. We will be watching you.”

I left the office. I shot the episode I had come in to shoot on that day. Probably the best one I did out of the three because I got one that was bothering me off my chest. I was let go from that job on the next day. I got a phone call from my agent. They decided to go another way. The questions that I asked set the producers on guard and perhaps paved the way for less stereotypical portrayal for the Black actor that stepped into the role after me.

As the Scripture says, “I planted the seed and Apollos watered it, but God kept it growing.” God kept it growing. Yet and still, when you invest in a seed, watching it grow without you, that is a bitter pill to swallow, a bitter pill. Anybody that has ever been fired knows what I’m talking about. Even if you really don’t want the job, when they let you go, it’s like any break-up, you act like you don’t care. I didn’t need that damn job anyway. I didn’t need them.

But when you have those moments alone, you start to wonder if there was a better way to handle it. If you could have handled it better maybe you could help your family. Then before you know it, you are broke. You find yourself scraping together change just so you can ride the subway, so that you could get the next job. Maybe if you could book something else that would eclipse the feeling of doubt that’s building, but it seems like you can’t pay them to hire you now.

My agents at the time told me it might be a while before I got a job acting on screen again. Well, that was fine because I never wanted to act in the first place. And I definitely didn’t want to be caught dead going after a fake Hollywood pipe dream. I’m more of a writer, director anyway, so forget their stories. I can tell my own stories. But am I actually blackballed? “We are hesitant about sending you out to some people right now because there is a stigma that you are difficult.” As conflicted as I was before I lost the job, as adamant as I was about the need to speak truth to power, I found myself even more conflicted afterwards. I stand here today knowing that my Howard University education prepared me to play Jackie Robinson, James Brown, Thurgood Marshall and T’Challa.

But what do you do when the principle and the standards that were instilled in you here at Howard closed the doors in front of you? Sometimes you need to get knocked down before you can really figure out what your fight is and how need to fight it. At some point, my mind reverted back to my experiences here, to the professors that challenged me and struggled against me, Professor Robert Williams, Doctor Singleton, George Epstein, to name a few, the ones that will fail you out of the goodness of their hearts.

This may be hard to grasp for some of you right now, but I even considered President Swygert and how negotiating with him was practice for a world that was considerably more cruel and unforgiving than any debate here, one that had no interest in my ideals and beliefs. How would I maneuver through all of this?

Finally, I thought of Ali in the middle of the yard in his elder years, drawing from his victories and his losses. At that moment I realized something new about the greatness of Ali and how he carried his crown. I realized that he was transferring something to me on that day. He was transferring the spirit of the fighter in me. He was transferring the spirit of the fighter to me. He was transferring the spirit of the fighter to me. Sometimes you need to feel the pain and sting of defeat to activate the real passion and purpose that God predestined inside of you. God says in Jeremiah, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Graduating class, hear me well on this day. This day, when you have reached the hilltop and you are deciding on next jobs, next steps, careers, further education, you would rather find purpose than a job or career. Purpose crosses disciplines. Purpose is an essential element of you. It is the reason you are on the planet at this particular time in history. Your very existence is wrapped up in the things you are here to fulfill. Whatever you choose for a career path, remember, the struggles along the way are only meant to shape you for your purpose. When I dared to challenge the system that would relegate us to victims and stereotypes with no clear historical backgrounds, no hopes or talents, when I questioned that method of portrayal, a different path opened up for me, the path to my destiny.

When God has something for you, it doesn’t matter who stands against it. God will move someone that’s holding you back away from the door and put someone there who will open it for you if it’s meant for you. I don’t know what your future is, but if you are willing to take the harder way, the more complicated one, the one with more failures at first than successes, the one that has ultimately proven to have more meaning, more victory, more glory then you will not regret it.

Now, this is your time. The light of new realizations shines on you today. Howard’s legacy is not wrapped up in the money that you will make but the challenges that you choose to confront. As you commence to your paths, press on with pride and press on with purpose. God bless you. I love you, Howard. Howard forever!

Natalie Portman: 'Achievement is wonderful when you know why you’re doing it', Harvard University - 2015

27 May 2015, Harvard, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Hello, Class of 2015.

I am so honored to be here today. Dean Khurana, faculty, parents, and most especially graduating students, thank you so much for inviting me.

The Senior Class Committee, it’s genuinely one of the most exciting things I’ve ever been asked to do. I have to admit primarily because I can’t deny it as it was leaked in the WikiLeaks release of the Sony hack, that when I was invited, I replied, and I directly quote my own email, “Wow! This is so nice! I’m going to need some funny ghost writers. Any ideas?”

This initial response, now blessedly public was from the knowledge that at my class day we were lucky enough to have Will Ferrell as class day speaker, and that many of us hungover, or even freshly high, mainly wanted to laugh.

So I have to admit that today even 12 years after graduation, I’m still insecure about my own worthiness. I have to remind myself today you’re here for a reason. Today I feel much like I did when I came to Harvard Yard as a freshman in 1999 when you guys were, to my continued shock and horror, still in kindergarten.

I felt like there had been some mistake that I wasn’t smart enough to be in this company, and that every time I opened my mouth, I would have to prove I wasn’t just a dumb actress.

So I start with an apology. This won’t be very funny. I’m not a comedian. And I didn’t get a ghost writer. But I am here to tell you today Harvard is giving you all diplomas tomorrow. You are here for a reason.

Sometimes your insecurities and your inexperience may lead you, too, to embrace other people’s expectations, standards, or values. But you can harness that inexperience to carve out your own path, one that is free of the burden of knowing how things are supposed to be, a path that is defined by its own particular set of reasons.

The other day I went to an amusement park with my soon-to-be 4-year-old son. And I watched him play arcade games. He was incredibly focused, throwing his ball at the target. Jewish mother that I am, I skipped 20 steps and was already imagining him as a major league player with what is his aim and his arm and his concentration.

But then I realized that when he won, he was playing to trade in his tickets for the crappy plastic toys. The prize was much more exciting than the game to get it.

I, of course, wanted to urge him to take joy and the challenge of the game, the improvement upon practice, the satisfaction of doing something well, and even feeling the accomplishment when achieving the game’s goals. But all of these aspects were shaded by the little 10-cent plastic men with sticky stretchy blue arms that adhere to the walls. That — that was the prize.

In a child’s nature, we see many of our own innate tendencies. I saw myself in him and perhaps you do, too. Prizes serve as false idols everywhere, prestige, wealth, fame, power. You’ll be exposed to many of these, if not all.

Of course, part of why I was invited to come to speak today beyond my being a proud alumna is that I’ve recruited some very coveted toys in my life, including a not so plastic, not so crappy one: an Oscar.

So we bump up against a common trope I think of the commencement address people who have achieved a lot telling you that the fruits of the achievement are not always to be trusted. But I think that contradiction can be reconciled and is in fact instructive. Achievement is wonderful when you know why you’re doing it. And when you don’t know, it can be a terrible trap.

I went to a public high school on Long Island, Syosset High School. Ooh, hello, Syosset! The girls I went to school with had Prada bags and flat-ironed hair. And they spoke with an accent I who had moved there at age 9 from Connecticut mimicked to fit in — Florida Oranges, Chocolate cherries.

Since I ’m ancient and the Internet was just starting when I was in high school, people didn’t really pay that much attention to the fact that I was an actress. I was known mainly at school for having a backpack bigger than I was and always having white-out on my hands because I hated seeing anything crossed out in my notebooks.

I was voted for my senior yearbook “most likely to be a contestant on Jeopardy” or code for nerdiest. When I got to Harvard just after the release of Star Wars: Episode 1, I knew I would be staring over in terms of how people viewed me. I feared people would have assumed I’d gotten in just for being famous, and that they would think that I was not worthy of the intellectual rigor here.

Michelle Obama: 'Over these last couple of months our foundations has been shaken', virtual commencement speech - 2020

9 June 2020, Washington DC, USA

Hey everybody. It is an honor to be here with you to help celebrate this amazing milestone in your lives. Graduation from college or high school is a culmination of years of hard work. So please enjoy this moment. You deserve this celebration. Congratulations. This is an important time of transition in light of the current state of our country. I struggled to find the right words of wisdom for you today. So I am here today to talk to you, not as the former first lady, but as a real life person, a mother, a mentor, a citizen concerned about your future and the future of our country. Because right now, all that superficial stuff of titles and positions, all of that has been stripped away.

A lot of us are reckoning with the most basic essence of who we are. Over these past couple of months, our foundation has been shaken, not just by a pandemic that stole too many of our loved ones, up ended our daily lives and sent tens of millions into unemployment. But also by the rumbling of the age old fault lines that our country was built on the lines of race and power that are now once again. So nakedly exposed for all of us to grapple with.

So if any of you are scared or confused or angry or just plain overwhelmed by it all, if you feel you’re searching for lifeline just to steady yourself, you are not alone. I am feeling all of that too. I think we all are. So I want you to know that it’s okay to be confused. It’s okay if you don’t understand exactly what you’re feeling, we’re all sorting through this in real time. But here’s the thing, while this period is certainly unprecedented, it is not a complete anomaly, simply some random coincidence to be dismissed. Now what’s happening right now is the direct result of decades of unaddressed, prejudice, and inequality. The truth is when it comes to all those tiny stories of hard work and self determination that we’d like to tell ourselves about America.

Well, the reality is a lot more complicated than that because for too many people in this country, no matter how hard they work, there are structural barriers working against them that just make the road longer and rockier. And sometimes it’s almost impossible to move upward at all, because if you’re required to work during a pandemic, but don’t have enough protective equipment or health insurance from your employer or paid sick leave, what is more essential, your work or your life. If you don’t feel safe driving your own car in your own neighborhood or going for a jog or buying some candy at 7-eleven or bird watching. If you can’t even approach the police without fearing for your life. Well, then how do you begin to chart your own course?

And as so often as the case, these questions compound upon themselves, see if you’re struggling already just to keep your head above water. If you’re living in a constant state of fear, how much farther behind will you be after months in quarantine and without a job. These are uncomfortable questions, questions that have dogged this country for generations, but are now staring us in the face. Every time we look at our phones or hear helicopters circling our neighborhoods. The tough part is nobody has all the answers. If my generation did trust me, we’d have fixed the whole of this long time ago, but that doesn’t mean we should feel hopeless. Just the opposite, because what we finally do have is focus. We see what’s happening in stark relief. We see how these inequalities are playing out on our streets, and it’s not just the communities most affected by these challenges that see it now.

It’s folks all across the country who for too long have had the luxury and privilege of looking away. We all have no choice, but to see what has been staring us in the face for years, for centuries. So the question is, how will we respond? Like I said before, I don’t have any easy answers for you, but I do have some lessons I want to share about how to move forward in these tumultuous times. The first is this life will always be uncertain. It is a lesson that most of us get the chance to learn over the course of years and years, even decades, but one that you’re learning right now. This is a time in your life when it feels like everything is turned upside down and perhaps you’re wishing that things could just go back to the way they were. Look, I’ve been there many times in my life.

I felt it most profoundly when my father and my best friend died within a year of each other. I was in my late 20s. Oh and it felt like my whole world was collapsing in on itself. I would have given anything, anything to bring them back. But that experience gave me a kind of clarity with everything and pieces around me, I had to forge a new path. A path, fortunately, more focused on meaning and service. So graduates, I hope that what you’re going through right now can be your wake up call that it pushes you, not just to think about what kind of career you want to build. What kind of person do you want to be? Here’s the thing, you have the opportunity to learn these valuable lessons faster than the generations before you. You can learn them together as a cohort of young people ready to take on the world, no matter how tumultuous it may be.

That leads me to my second lesson, in an uncertain world time tested values like honesty and integrity, empathy and compassion. That’s the only real currency in life. Treating people right will never ever fail you. Now, I’m not naive. I know that you can climb a long way up the ladder selling falsehoods and blaming others for your own shortcomings, shunning those with less privilege and advantage. But that is a heavy way to live. It deadens your spirit and it hardens your heart may seem like a winning strategy in the short run. But trust me, graduates that kind of life catches up to you. You rob yourself of the things that matter most. Deep and loving connections with others, honest work that leads to lasting contributions to your community. The vibrancy that comes from a diversity of ideas and perspectives, the chance to leave this world a little better than you found it.

Don’t deprive yourselves of all that. There is no substitute for it. Instead, make a decision to use your privilege and your voice for the things that really matter, which is my third lesson today, to share that voice with the rest of the world. For those of you who feel invisible, please know that your story matters, your ideas matter, your experiences matter, your vision for what our world can and should be matters. So don’t ever, ever let anyone tell you that you’re too angry or that you should keep your mouth shut. There will always be those who want to keep you silent. To have you be seen, but not heard. Maybe they don’t even want to see you at all, but those people don’t know your story. If you listen to them, then nothing will ever change. So it’s up to you to speak up when you or someone, you know isn’t being heard, it’s up to you to speak out against cruelty, dishonesty, bigotry, all of it. It’s up to you to march hand in hand with your allies to stand peacefully with dignity and purpose on the front lines, in the fight for justice.

Here’s the last part. It’s up to you to couple every protest with plans and policies, with organizing and mobilizing and voting and that’s my final piece of advice. Graduates, anger is a powerful force. It can be a useful force, but left on its own it will only corrode and destroy and sow chaos on the inside and out. But when anger is focused, when it’s channeled into something more, oh, that is the stuff that changes history. Dr. King was angry. Sojourner Truth was angry. Lucretia Mott, Cesar Chavez, the folks at Stonewall, they were all angry, but those folks were also driven by compassion, by principle, by hope.

So they took advantage of whatever resources they had in their own time, thundering from the pulpit and the convention floor, penning letters from a jail cell, standing up for their rights in the face of police violence. They built coalitions with folks like them and different from them. They got fluent in the language of power. They sat down with leaders they disagreed with because they knew that if they wanted their vision to be made real, it needed to be made law. It needed to be voiced, not just on the streets, but in the halls of power. It needed to be carried, not just by the housekeeper and the shift worker, but by the senator and the congresswoman and yes the President of the United States.

So graduates, it is your time now and look, our democracy isn’t perfect. But I have traveled the world and seeing the governments and people in so many other countries. I can tell you that our democracy is sturdy and yes, it still works, but it doesn’t work if you silence yourselves. It does not work if you disengage from the process. We’re seeing the consequences of that right now. But if you hold strong with the same faith that carried all of those giants before you toward real measurable progress, you will change the course of history. So what does that mean for your time? It starts where change always starts in your own home, in your own social circles, in your own neighborhoods, at your own dinner tables. Sometimes it’s easy to stand with strangers that are protests than it is to challenge someone in your own backyard.

So if you hear people expressing bigoted views or talking down to those people, it is up to you to call them out because we won’t solve anything. If we’re only willing to do what’s easiest, we’ve got to make hard choices and sacrifices in our own lives. So if you’re spending a lot of time, just hashtaging and posting right now that’s useful, especially during a pandemic, but it’s only a beginning. Go further, send all your friends a link to register to vote, text everybody you know to join you in exercising, their constitutional right to protest. Ask yourself, do you know where your polling place is? Do you know when your primary elections are held? Do you know how to request a mail in ballot? Who are the incumbents and the candidates at every level of government, not just president, but state representative, city council, prosecutors, sheriff.

And don’t just ask yourselves these questions. Ask your friends, your family, ask everyone you see in your neighborhood. And while we’re reaching out, please let’s give everyone who’s working toward progress space to be themselves. Everybody has got to vote when the time comes, but the activism that leads up to that day comes in many forms. Some want to march right up in front, others prefer to stay back, some kneel in the pews, others on the street corner, some canvas their neighborhoods, others run for office. Some do an honest day’s work and raise good kids. Others choose to focus on their education and use that degree to address these issues and build a better life for themselves and those around them. Graduates, it’s all important and we need every bit of it. So we cannot allow our hurt and our frustration to turn us against each other, to cancel somebody else’s point of view. If we don’t agree with every last bit of their approach.

That kind of thinking only divides us and distracts us from our higher calling, it is the gum in the wheel of progress. Graduates this is how you can finish the work that the generations before you have started, by staying open and hopeful, even in the tough times. By channeling that discomfort you feel into activism and a democracy that was designed to respond to those who vote. Here’s the thing, I know you can do it because over these many years, I’ve seen exactly who you are. I’ve seen your creativity and your talent and your resourcefulness. I’ve seen you speaking out in gun violence and fight climate change. I’ve seen you gathering donations for those in need during this pandemic.

I’ve seen you marching with peace and with purpose and that is why even in tough times like these, you continue to be what gives me hope. Graduates, you all are exactly what we need right now and for the years and decades to come, you’re learning so much so quickly. I know that not only can you do better than those who came before you, you will. So it’s your time. I love you all. I believe in you all. I want you to be safe and I can’t wait to see you take the reins. Congratulations again on your graduation. God bless you.

DeShauna Barber: 'Do not fear failure, but please be terrified of regret', Virginia State University - 2018

20 December 2018, University of Virigina, Virginia, USA

And she says the most offensive things to me that you can say to a person of colour in the United States of America, she asked me, "Were you born in this country?" And I was immediately offended. I put my hands on my hips and I said, "Yeah, I was born in this country." She then goes on to ask me, "How old are you?" I said, "19 years old." She says, "Are you married?" I said, "No, ma'am." She says, "Do you have any kids?" I said, "No, ma'am. May I help you find something?" She then goes on to tell me something that changed my life forever. She says, "You look like you could be the next Miss USA." And I laughed at this woman hysterically. I said, "Lady, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm going into my sophomore year at Virginia State. I'm about to commission in three years, go on active duty, be a military officer."

Somehow this crazy woman convinced me to meet her at Starbucks the very next day. She brought this foot tall stack of pageant books and she goes on to convince me to compete in my very first pageant. I compete in my first pageant three months later and I lose.

I go back the second year, compete in my state pageant and I lose. I go back the third year, compete in my state pageant and I lose. Go back the fourth year, compete in my state pageant and lose. Go back the fifth year, compete in my state pageant and lose. But guess what happens the six year. I lose.

I called her on the phone six years after our Target conversation and I said, "You told me I could be the next Miss USA." And she says, "Deshauna, keep trying, keep trying, keep trying."

In June of 2015, this amazing kind of coocoo woman passes away from leukaemia. In December 2015, I win Miss District of Columbia USA. In June 2016, I'm crown the first soldier to win Miss USA. And last January in Manila, Philippines, I walked the Miss Universe stage in place top nine amongst 86.

Do not fear failure, but please be terrified of regret. When you walk out this door into the real world, you'll receive a lot of shut doors, a lot of turndown applications. You'll hear way more no's than you hear yeses.
Giving up is something I did a lot of growing up and I don't think I really challenged myself to stick anything through until I joined the track team in middle school. I remember having to ask my mom after tryouts and making it to the team for my very first pair of track shoes. Now at the time she walks into our house and she has a bag that has a nice Nike check sign on it. So I get excited because I wasn't getting new shoes very often. I go to take the shoe box out the bag, and I noticed that it says a size nine on it. Mind you, in the seventh grade, I was a size five. I opened the box and I slide my feet into the shoe and I look at my mother and I said, "These shoes are too big." She says, "I know I did that on purpose." I was like, "Why would you buy shoes that are too big on purpose, mom?" And she says, "Because I know that you're going to grow into them."

Coach has us line up on the starting line and he wants us to run a lap around the track. As we go to take off, I immediately fall to the ground, twist my ankle because the shoes are entirely too big. See, I couldn't run at the speed that I wanted to because I didn't fit the shoes I was wearing at the time.

Now, many of us have goals we're trying to achieve, but the person we are right now is not the person that we need to be when we cross the finish line to our dreams. So we must walk and pace ourselves on this journey to our goals because we haven't grown enough in ourselves to fit the shoes that we need to achieve our aspirations. But let me tell you something. If I have won Miss USA, my very first year, I would not have been Miss USA. I would not have been the version of myself that I needed to be to properly handle a national title.

Many of us aren't ready to walk the race. But understand that as we walk this race, we pace ourselves and as we pace ourselves, we grow, and as we grow, our foot gets bigger, and as our foot gets bigger, our shoes begins to fill. As our shoes begin to fill, we can now run a little bit faster and as we pick up the pace, we get to the finish line at the exact time we are destined to cross it.

Do not fear the word no, but be afraid of the possibility of a yes that you have prematurely destroyed because you decided to quit before the clock strikes 12. There are a lot of questions that is going to keep you up at night, but I guarantee there isn't one question that will keep you up longer at night than the question, "What if I didn't give up?"

I am here to tell you in a nutshell that it's okay to walk sometimes. We can dream, we can be ambitious, that is a must when it comes to succeed, but we must also be realistic with where we are in correlation with the person that we need to be so properly execute the goals that we have set in front of us. Well, I'm going to teach you all some new thing.

Barack Obama: “This is your generation’s world to shape”, Virtual Commencement speech - 2020

17 May 2020

Hi, everybody. Aniyah, thank you for that beautiful introduction. I could not be prouder of everything you’ve done in your time with the Obama Foundation.

And of course, I couldn’t be prouder of all of you in the graduating Class of 2020 — as well as the teachers, and the coaches, and most of all, parents and family who guided have you along the way.

Now graduating is a big achievement under any circumstances. Some of you have had to overcome serious obstacles along the way, whether it was an illness, or a parent losing a job, or living in a neighborhood where people too often count you out. Along with the usual challenges of growing up, all of you have had to deal with the added pressures of social media, reports of school shootings, and the specter of climate change. And then, just as you’re about to celebrate having made it through, just as you’ve been looking forward to proms and senior nights, graduation ceremonies — and, let’s face it, a whole bunch of parties — the world is turned upside down by a global pandemic. And as much as I’m sure you love your parents, I’ll bet that being stuck at home with them and playing board games or watching Tiger King on TV is not exactly how you envisioned the last few months of your senior year.

Now I’ll be honest with you — the disappointments of missing a live graduation — those will pass pretty quick. I don’t remember much from my own high school graduation. I know that not having to sit there and listen to a commencement speaker isn’t all that bad — mine usually go on way too long. Also, not that many people look great in those caps, especially if you have big ears like me. And you’ll have plenty of time to catch up with your friends once the immediate public health crisis is over.

But what remains true is that your graduation marks your passage into adulthood — the time when you begin to take charge of your own life. It’s when you get to decide what’s important to you: the kind of career you want to pursue. Who you want to build a family with. The values you want to live by. And given the current state of the world, that may be kind of scary.

If you’d planned on going away for college, getting dropped off at campus in the fall — that’s no longer a given. If you were planning to work while going to school, finding that first job is going to be tougher. Even families that are relatively well-off are dealing with massive uncertainty. Those who were struggling before — they’re hanging on by a thread.

All of which means that you’re going to have to grow up faster than some generations. This pandemic has shaken up the status quo and laid bare a lot of our country’s deep-seated problems — from massive economic inequality to ongoing racial disparities to a lack of basic health care for people who need it. It’s woken a lot of young people up to the fact that the old ways of doing things just don’t work; that it doesn’t matter how much money you make if everyone around you is hungry and sick; and that our society and our democracy only work when we think not just about ourselves, but about each other.

It’s also pulled the curtain back on another hard truth, something that we all have to eventually accept once our childhood comes to an end. All those adults that you used to think were in charge and knew what they were doing? Turns out that they don’t have all the answers. A lot of them aren’t even asking the right questions. So, if the world’s going to get better, it going to be up to you.

That realization may be kind of intimidating. But I hope it’s also inspiring. With all the challenges this country faces right now, nobody can tell you “no, you’re too young to understand” or “this is how it’s always been done.” Because with so much uncertainty, with everything suddenly up for grabs, this is your generation’s world to shape.

Since I’m one of the old guys, I won’t tell you what to do with this power that rests in your hands. But I’ll leave you with three quick pieces of advice.

First, don’t be afraid. America’s gone through tough times before — slavery, civil war, famine, disease, the Great Depression and 9/11. And each time we came out stronger, usually because a new generation, young people like you, learned from past mistakes and figured out how to make things better.

Second, do what you think is right. Doing what feels good, what’s convenient, what’s easy — that’s how little kids think. Unfortunately, a lot of so-called grown-ups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way — which is why things are so screwed up.

I hope that instead, you decide to ground yourself in values that last, like honesty, hard work, responsibility, fairness, generosity, respect for others. You won’t get it right every time, you’ll make mistakes like we all do. But if you listen to the truth that’s inside yourself, even when it’s hard, even when its inconvenient, people will notice. They’ll gravitate towards you. And you’ll be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

And finally, build a community. No one does big things by themselves. Right now, when people are scared, it’s easy to be cynical and say let me just look out for myself, or my family, or people who look or think or pray like me. But if we’re going to get through these difficult times; if we’re going to create a world where everybody has the opportunity to find a job, and afford college; if we’re going to save the environment and defeat future pandemics, then we’re going to have to do it together. So be alive to one another’s struggles. Stand up for one another’s rights. Leave behind all the old ways of thinking that divide us — sexism, racial prejudice, status, greed — and set the world on a different path.

When you need help, Michelle and I have made it the mission of our Foundation to give young people like you the skills and support to lead in your own communities, and to connect you with other young leaders around the country and around the globe.

But the truth is that you don’t need us to tell you what to do.

Because in so many ways, you’ve already started to lead.

Congratulations, Class of 2020. Keep making us proud.

Kate Mulvany: ''Go out there and be human beings doing', Curtin University - 2017

3 September 2017, Perth, Western Australia, Australia

Wow, thank you. I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered on Aboriginal land and recognise the strength, resilience, and capacity of the Noongar people in this land. We pay our respects to them, and their cultures, and to elders both past and present.

Good afternoon, Vice-Chancellor Professor Deborah Terry, Acting Chancellor Ms. Sue Wilson, members of the University Council, distinguished guests, faculty members, graduates, and your friends and families, my mom, Glynnis, my sister, Tegan, and dads. Happy Father's Day.

It's an absolute joy to be here today to celebrate alongside you the end of one adventure and the beginning of another. It is also a great privilege to have been awarded the Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the Council of Curtin University of Technology as the university celebrates its 50th year of innovation.

So congratulations on making it this far, fellow humanists. As humanities graduates, you are the documenteers of the human experience. You are the observers, the scribes, the historians, the educators, the performers, the critics, the architects of culture, communication, and community. Without humanists, there is no humanity, and we are at a time where we need more than ever to question what it is to be a human being, what we are human doing, if you will. We need empathy, emotional intelligence, rigorous self-questioning, awareness of our own privileges, and powerlessness. But more than anything, as human beings and humans doing, we need our imaginations. You, sitting here today, have that in spades.

Now, when I talk about imagination, I'm not talking about fairy tales, or John Lennon lyrics, or glittery wall hangings with "Imagination" printed on them that have been ironically mass-produced in a sweatshop somewhere. I'm talking about our ability as humans to form new ideas and concepts that challenge our own senses and expectations. Imagination is a gift that tends to be scoffed at, at this day and age, dampened and diminished.

The word "imagination" is often mistaken for ambition which it's not, dreams which it's not, infantile which it's not, intangible which it's not. Imagination is an ever-unfurling, ever-developing, ever-challenging, ever-available human trait, and I'm here today to encourage you, as you leave your studies, to embrace your education, your experience, and your ambition, but to always remember the imagination that you have at your beck and call wherever you are, whoever you are, no matter what human you're being, no matter what kind of human you are doing.

I was taught from a very early age the importance of imagination. My country town of Geraldton was a glorious community of cultures. Noongar, Greek, Vietnamese, African, Indian all made up my English-Irish dad's original Sicilian soccer team. The stories, accents, and ideas that would fly around that team and their families were hilarious and heartbreaking. They challenged the way I saw my small town community and my place within it, and therefore my place within the world.

Later, as you've heard, I spent a large portion of my childhood battling cancer inherited from my dad's exposure to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. In a stark Perth hospital ward in the early 1980s, there were no video games or Netflix, no Channel 7 Telethon hosted by Basil Zempilas to tell the outside world that we were there, no Make-A-Wish Foundations to whisk us away to Disneyland. All we had in that ward were each other, families surviving together.

A hospital ward, like a good soccer team or a good university, also knows no cultural boundaries. It is a microcosm of the world around us, and it too is a melting pot of cultures and faiths, hopes and ruminations, stories and storytellers. It was a ward of human beings doing all they could to get by, and the tales I heard in there from my hospital bed were courageous and compelling, and an incredible escape from my family's own predicament.

So whether I was at home in Geraldton or in my ward at Princess Margaret Hospital, I learned from these storytellers, and what I learned most was to listen. Listen to the histories, the fables, the truths, the lessons offered by the people around me. A Sicilian grandfather chewing on an olive could take me to his homeland with a wave of his hand. A Noongar elder could whisper in her ancient language and compel me to know more about this country, its people, my part in their history, and their part in mine. My own father would polish his work shoes, and I would see the conscripted Vietnam veteran in him.

But most of all, my childhood taught me that imagination is not a plaything, although it can be, of course. But it's not about fairytales and mythologies. Imagination can take you to wonderful places. Your imagination can relieve your pain. Your imagination can help you work out things about the world that you may not necessarily understand and change the things that you feel are wrong. Your imagination helps you find new ways in and if you need it, new ways out. It is a deep, extensive, playful, truthful thought process. When I returned to Perth in 1994 from Geraldton and started my studies at Curtin University, I learned that my imagination could also find me the best friends I've ever had and a career I could only dream of.

When I was a student at Curtin University majoring in Theatre and Scriptwriting, my fellow students and I had a theory that we'd never have to pay off our HECS debt because no one would ever employ us anyway. Yet, we said this as we worked up to 18 hours a day writing scripts, directing shows, performing in everything from pinter to pantomimes, building sets, ripping sets down, bumping in shows, bumping out shows, literally watching paint dry, sewing together costumes, rigging lighting, rewiring sound boards, and telling the great stories from the masterful chroniclers of human history, William Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, Dorothy Hewett, whilst trying so hard at the same time to realise our own.

We worked so hard in that theatre on the hill. We'd climb on the roof and watch the sunset while sharing a barbecued chook and some coleslaw that we'd scraped our money together to buy from Karawara Coles. Sometimes we'd sleep up there on that roof when we weren't working a couple of part-time jobs to pay the rent. For the record, I sold scratchies and slick picks at the Bull Creek Shopping Centre Lotto Kiosk and also dressed head-to-toe as a bilby for the Fremantle Museum. That was when I wasn't writing, directing, and performing at Curtin's Hayman Theatre. But the point is we worked. We worked so hard on campus and off. We were human beings doing.

All of us have paid off our HECS debts, I think, just. I have never met a workforce like the ones I met at Curtin, but it was a workforce that was built on our collective imaginations. Our conversations often went like this. "So I'm going to stage an adaptation of Women of Troy. I have to use the first years as crew and equal amounts of second and third years to fill a cast of 20. I want it to be set in a futuristic underground cabaret lounge with an electro metal band I saw playing at the Rosemount a few weeks ago. We have to do it in the style of Bertolt Brecht to earn credit points. We'll rehearse it for four weeks, and it will run for two weeks in the small theatre at lunch times and on Sundays, and we have an $80 budget. Who can help me?"

"Well, I've got Barbara Dennis this afternoon for theatre history. I can see if she has access to any Greek translations." "My mom's got an awesome outdoor setting we can use. She's in Bali. She won't even know it's gone." "I can be a reader at auditions, if you like. I need the practise." "Oh, I play electro metal. I'll be happy to play for you. I just have to get Sunday off work." "I'm not sure about the idea. Maybe it shouldn't be Women of Troy. Maybe you should try writing something yourself. Remember that story you told us about your grandma from Saigon?" So on and so forth. The sun would set, the paint would dry. The sets would go up, the sets would come down. The audiences were tiny, sometimes just small. The plays got better, I promise, because our imaginations were allowed to expand, and shift, and develop as we challenged ourselves and one another.

Now, my job is no different. I am a proud professional imaginer. Every day, I get to sit down and let my mind run wild with the stories I want to tell, the things I want to say, the dialogue I want to have with an audience and therefore the world. I started imagining as a little girl, and I learned to hone it at Curtin. There is not a day that goes by that I don't use something that I learned at Curtin in my work.

Here, today, we have graduates from culture and creative arts, design, education, and built environment. You are the innovators of this country's future. Not of tomorrow anymore, but today, and I'm so, so thrilled for you all. You are going to create, and change, and conceive, and hatch all manner of enterprises. But while that's all happening, you're going to fail. You'll be afraid. You'll change your mind. You'll be broke. You'll be broken, You will be uninspired, and you will lose heart, but don't be scared. You're prepared. You have the toolkit right here, right now, inside and all around you. I promise, and it all starts with taking a really deep breath and saying to yourself those magic words, "Imagine if I... Imagine if we..."

As you leave today, please take the time to say thank you to the educators that encouraged you, the classmates that inspired you, the family and friends that supported you. This is important because your imagination can sweep you away, but so can life itself. So make sure you take the time to take the time. Just so you don't think I'm some strange Willy-Wonka-style woman standing up here extolling a world of pure imagination theme, as all you need to get through, I'm going to borrow from the great imaginative thinkers who might better pertain to you to back up what I've said.

For the architects, and builders, and shapers of our environment out there, I offer you this from Frank Lloyd Wright, "Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own earth."

For the designers amongst you, from Mark Twain, "You cannot depend on your eyes if your imagination is out of focus."

For the educators among you, and I'm particularly in awe of you because my mom was a teacher for 45 years, and I saw firsthand the changes she made to lives, I'm going to quote from that other wonderful teacher, Elizabeth Jolley. You might have heard of her. "I want you to imagine how marvellously, malevolently mischievous you can be in order to tell me your story." For the performers out there, from anonymous, "If you get scared, just imagine your audience naked."

For the writers among you, from Shakespeare, my personal favourite, "The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven, and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination."

For all of us here, no matter who you are, "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will get you everywhere." Albert Einstein. Congratulations all, chookers, as we say in the theatre. Go out there and be human beings doing. Never stop learning. Never stop listening. I wish you the best in life, but I imagine you'll have even more. Thank you.

Ted Baillieu: 'Imagine a blood red thread drawn from the poppies outside', Pharmacy College Commemoration - 2019

April 30 2019, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

April is a very Melbourne Month.
No matter the long noon shadows. Or the foreboding bleak. Summer’s loves are settled.
Here it is a month of optimism. A month of defiance.
The skies are clear. The light is sharp. The colours bright. The air is still. The nights may be cold
But In April, it is still possible to walk down the street and be buoyed by the day.
To feel your chest chilled in the shade and moments later, a cheek seared in the sunshine.
It is a bridge of the seasons, and in football terms it is the hope of the season.
It has been just so these last few weeks, notwithstanding terrors elsewhere.
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105 years ago, 1914, Melburnians were in their April mood.
They had no thoughts of war.
In fact for more than 70 years, Melbourne had been one of the go to places in the world for the young and adventurous. Not without challenges, but amongst the fastest growing Cities anywhere and Australia’s Capital. The world’s young came this way. Aspirations came with them.
Even 104 years ago, 1915, the April mood was still the same.
War had been declared 8 months before. Many Victorians enlisted immediately. Understanding they would be home by Christmas.
There was huge enthusiasm for this great adventure.
And for the first time, in a grand reversal, our young had gone to the world. Their dreams went with them
The first assaults to our North changed little
The thousands of troops assembled in Egypt remained upbeat in their correspondence.
But on this April 30 day, 104 years ago, Australians had no idea of the tragedy unfolding at Gallipoli.
After the war, TS Elliot in his seminal “The Waste Land” began:
“April is the cruellest month”.
It was reference to the false hopes of April and the slaughter on those Spring days of Europe
And so it was for our troops.
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This day, April 30, was Day 6 of the Gallipoli hell.
But 21 year old Alan Couve’s family had no idea the young pharmacy student had been fatally wounded on April 25th 1915 at the Gallipoli landing. On Day 1. The very first day.
They had no idea his brother Tom would be killed just a few days later.
In fact it was several years before the family had confirmation of Alan’s death.
Frank Cahir’s family had no idea of the ordeal he faced from that first day, in the cold and the rain, night and day, rescuing the dead, the dying and the wounded. The toll that experience had on Frank was devastating.
It was months before the scale of the Gallipoli tragedy was understood.
It was years before the slaughter on the Western Front and beyond ceased.
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April remains a very Melbourne month but it has also become our Commemoration month.
Anzac Day is well attended. It is marked now with story telling and ritual.
On Anzac Day the ode concludes: “At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.” And we respond “We will remember them”.
And yet if asked what happened on Anzac Day, few can recall. We sang the Anthem. The last post was played. We stood in silence. Heard a speaker. The flag was raised. We observed the rituals.
The Commemoration was honoured.
But what do we take away? We recommit “We will remember them”. But who are “them”?
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Not long ago a Year 9 student asked me “Why should we bother. It was so long ago?” It was an honest question.
The message is simple. Mere story telling and ritual is not enough.
We have to find contemporary connections to those who served, the people, places and events involved and their significance.
If we are to pass the torch to future generations we have to ensure those generations can pick up these threads of connection for themselves. Give them the tools to do so. And ensure they own, and understand those threads. That was our Centenary Committee’s mission.
When I first met with Bill Charman and Andrew McIntosh on this project, I challenged them to go beyond the commemoration and to search for these connections.
They embraced the concept and, as you can see, have done an extraordinary job.
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They have shone a light on the deep and personal links of the College to Sir John Monash. The Pharmacy College has revealed the amazing story of what must be one of the greatest handshakes in Australian History. When Sir John Monash congratulated ‘Weary’ Dunlop on his best student award in 1927.
They have engaged closely with the Monash family. Prompted the reveal of extraordinary Monash material long archived at the University.
The greatest Australian of all time, Sir John Monash, is now forever connected to the College.
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They have given air to the role of Pharmacists in the AIF. And we honour today the 200 plus pharmacists who served, and whose names appear on the board above.
They have given new dimensions to one of the great professions. Uncovered the most amazing connections and enriched our history
They have honoured 5 very special former students. Each of whom paid the ultimate price.
They found families. Not always easy 3 and 4 generations on. As names change and families move.
Many are with us today - with connections anew in hand. And tears in their eyes
They helped those families discover material previously unknown. Here and abroad.
They have gone to print and social media to reach a wider audience. Telling stories but making new connections. And they have brought us together today. And what a gathering it is.
They reached out to the 5000 Poppies Project which set out to honour the late respective WW2 fathers of its Melbourne founders but has now seen around 1.0m of these poppies hand knitted by 10s of 1000s of volunteers. Each poppy different. Each dedicated with love to an original Anzac. Each thread a connection. And seen in London, Fromelles, Canberra, War Graves across the world, at the Shrine, Federation Square and the Flower Show. And here today.
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They have had me intrigued too. Eric Bisset’s brother Alan is buried at Vlamertinghe Cemetery near Ypres just a few metres from my grandfather. On our family’s next visit we will replace the knitted Poppies at Bill Knox’s grave and add some to Alan’s.
Gordon Jewkes father lived in Loch St St Kilda. Where 8 others also enlisted. Imagine the emotion in the street as the horrors unfolded. The homes are still there. Perhaps Loch St could embrace their connections with plaques and ceremonies relevant to their boys, 2 of whom were killed.
St James Anglican Church in Dandenong boasts a beautiful board honouring Alan and Tom Couve and others, and a window honouring the wife of the Vicar of the day, the mother of Alan’s heartbroken fiancé Millie. What did become of Millie Veale?
Tom and Alan played Football for Dandenong. May their Club ever connect.
Malcolm Jones’ brother Murray flew in the same squadron as one of our family members. They left Melbourne together in March 1916 on the same ship Orsova.
The College can now invite every Pharmacy across Victoria to put their arms around one of the 200, as a fellow professional.
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Now shut your eyes, if you will. Picture the 5 boys we honour today. Imagine a blood red thread drawn from the poppies outside. Roll it out across the world to where they lie now. And to all the places they served and visited. To their homes. To their gardens. Their schools and churches. Their sporting Clubs. The streets they walked. The beaches where they swam. The pharmacies where they worked. The homes of their loved ones. Their friends. And to this College. And to you.
Such long thin threads. But what a tapestry it is. Not just ritual. Not just story telling. But intimate personal connections
They are our sons, our brothers, our fathers, mothers, families Our towns, schools, colleges. Our jobs, our communities, streets, and our homes, gardens, bedrooms. Our loves, our dreams.
That is why we bother.
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To the VC, Bill and Andrew and their team, thank you. This will connect generations. It’s timeless.
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And let me note in conclusion.
On this day 100 years ago. April 30, 1919, as the peace process slowly ground on, a further 66 allied troops died as a result of their service. As Frank’s family can attest, the pain ground on too.
They included one Victorian – Percy Harold Ostler. At the age of 21 Percy made his April landing at Gallipoli 4 years earlier. He was returned to Australia in just 3 months. No doubt his care included the best from AIF Pharmacists. But Percy never recovered from neurasthenia (Shell Shock).
April was Percy’s cruellest month. His home, not far from here, at 683 Brunswick St stands - still.
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Who are ‘them’? ‘Them’ are us! We are all connected.
Commemoration is important. Stories will be told. Rituals observed. Very much so in our Aprils.
But Connection is forever. Connection is for every going down of the sun. Every morning. Not just in April.
Lest we forget – we must connect.

Photo James Thomas

Randy Pausch: 'We don’t beat the reaper by living longer. We beat the reaper by living more fully', Carnegie Mellon - 2008

18 May 2008, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

I’m glad to be here today. Hell, I’m glad to be anywhere today. President Cohen asked me to come and give the charge to the graduates. I assure you it’s nothing compared to the charge you have just given me. This is an incredible place. I’ve seen it through so many lenses. I saw it when I was a graduate student that didn’t get admitted and then somebody invited me back and said that “Okay, we’ll change our mind.” I saw it as a place that hired me back to be on the faculty many years later and then gave me the chance to do what anybody wants to do which is follow their passion follow their heart and do the things they’re excited about. The great thing about this university unlike almost all of the other ones I know of is that nobody gets in your way when you try to do it and that’s just fantastic. To the degree that a human being can love an institution I love this place and I love all of the people and I’m very grateful to Jerry Cohen and everyone else for all the kindness that has been shown to me.

Last August I was told it was likely that I had three to six months to live. I’m on month nine now and I’m not going to get down and do any pushups but there will be a short pickup basketball game later. Somebody said to me, in light of those numbers, “Wow, so you’re really beating the Grimm Reaper.” and what I said without even thinking about it is that we don’t beat the reaper by living longer. We beat the Reaper by living well and living fully, for the Reaper will come for all of us. The question is what we will do between the time we’re born and the time he shows up, because when he shows up it’s too late to do all the things that you always want to kind of get around to.

I think the only advice I can give you on how to live your life well is first off remember, it’s a cliché but I love clichés, it is not the things we do in live that we regret on our deathbed. It is the things we do not. I assure you I’ve done a lot of really stupid things and none of them bother me. All of the mistakes and all of the dopey things and all of the times I was embarrassed, they don’t matter. What matters is that I can look back and say pretty much anytime I got a chance to do something cool I tried to grab for it. That’s where my solace comes from.

The second thing that I would add to that and I didn’t coordinate on the subject of this word, but I think it’s the right word that comes up, is passion. You will need to find your passion. Many of you have already done it. Many of you will later. Many of you may take until your 30’s or 40’s but don’t give up on finding it because then all you’re doing is waiting on the Reaper. Find your passion and follow it. If there is anything I have learned in my life you will not find that passion in things and you will not find that passion in money because the more things and the more money you have the more you will just look around and use that as the metric and there will always be someone with more.

Your passion must come from the things that fill you from the inside. Honors and awards are nice things but only to the extent that they regard the real respect from your peers. To be thought well of by other people that you think even more highly of is a tremendous honor that I’ve been granted.

Find your passion, and in my experience, no matter what you do at work or what you do in official settings that passion will be grounded in people. It will be grounded in the relationships you have with people and what they think of you when your time comes. If you can gain the respect of those around you and the passion and the true love, and I’ve said this before, I waited until 39 to get married because I had to wait that long to find someone whose happiness was more important than mine. If nothing else I hope that all of you can find that kind of passion and that kind of love in your life. Thank you.

Angela Merkel: 'Letting go of the old is part of a new beginning', Harvard University - 2019

President Bacow, Fellows of the Corporation, Members of the Board of Overseers, Members of the Alumni Board, Members of the Faculty, Proud Parents, and Graduates:

Today is a day of joy. It's your day. Many congratulations. I am delighted to be here today and would like to tell you about some of my own experiences. This ceremony marks the end of an intensive and, probably also, hard chapter in your lives. Now the door to a new life is opening. That's exciting and inspiring.

The German writer Hermann Hesse had some wonderful words for such a situation in life. I'd like to quote him and then continue in my native language. Hermann Hesse wrote:

In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.

These words by Hermann Hesse inspired me when I completed my physics degree at the age of 24. That was back in the year 1978.

The world was divided into East and West. It was during of the Cold War. I grew up in East Germany, in the GDR, at a time when that part of my homeland was not free, in a dictatorship. People were oppressed and monitored by the state. Political opponents were persecuted. The government of the GDR was afraid that the people would run away to freedom. And that's why the Berlin Wall was built. It was made of concrete and steel. Anyone who was discovered trying to overcome it was arrested or shot. This wall in the middle of Berlin divided a people -- and it divided families. My family was divided too.

My first job after graduation was as a physicist in East Berlin at the Academy of Sciences. I lived near the Berlin Wall. On the way home from my institute I walked past it every day. Behind it lay West Berlin, freedom. And every day, when I was very close to the wall, I had to turn away at the last moment -- and head towards my apartment. Every day I had to turn away from freedom at the last minute. I don't know how many times I thought, I couldn't stand it anymore. It was really frustrating.

I was not a dissident. I did not run up and bang against the wall, but neither did I deny its existence because I did not want to lie to myself. The Berlin Wall limited my possibilities. It was literally in my way. But one thing that this wall could not do in all these years: It could not impose limits on my own inner thoughts. My personality, my imagination, my yearnings -- these could not be limited by prohibitions and coercion.

Then came the year 1989. Throughout Europe, the shared will for freedom unleashed incredible powers. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the GDR. The people demonstrated and brought down the wall. What many people had not thought possible -- even me -- became reality. Where once there had been a dark wall, a door suddenly opened. The moment had come for me, too, to step through that door. I did not have to turn away from freedom at the last minute any longer. I could cross that line and venture out into the great, wide open.

During these months, 30 years ago, I personally experienced that nothing has to remain as it is. This experience, dear graduates, is the first thought I would like to share with you today for your future: What seems fixed and unchanging can in fact change.

And in matters both large and small, every change begins in the mind. The generation of my parents had to learn this most painfully. My father and mother were born in 1926 and 1928. When they were as old as most of you here today, the rupture of civilization that was the Shoa [Holocaust] and the Second World War had just ended. My country, Germany, had brought unimaginable suffering upon Europe and the world. How likely would it have been for the victors and the vanquished to remain irreconcilable for many years? But instead, Europe overcame centuries of conflict. The result was a peaceful order based on common values rather than supposed national strength.

Notwithstanding all the discussions and temporary setbacks, I am firmly convinced that we Europeans have united for the better. And the relationship between Germans and Americans shows how former enemies in war can become friends.

It was George Marshall who gave a significant contribution to this with the plan which he proclaimed in this very place at a Commencement Address in 1947. The transatlantic partnership with our values of democracy and human rights has given us a time of peace and prosperity to the benefit of all that has lasted for over 70 years. And today? It will not be long now before the politicians of my generation are no longer subject to the program of "Exercising Leadership," but at most will be dealt with in "Leadership in History."

Dear Harvard Class of 2019: Your generation will face the challenges of the 21st century in the coming decades. You are among those who will lead us into the future. Protectionism and trade conflicts endanger free world trade and thus the foundations of our prosperity. The digital transformation covers all areas of our lives. Wars and terrorism lead to displacement and forced migration. Climate change threatens our planet's natural resources. It and the resulting crises are caused by humans. So we can and must do everything humanly possible to really get this challenge to humanity under control. This is still possible. But everyone has to do their part and -- I say this self-critically -- get better. Therefore, I will do my utmost to ensure that Germany, my country, will reach the goal of climate neutrality by 2050.

Change for the better is possible if we tackle it together. Going it alone, we will not succeed. And so this is my second thought for you: More than ever we have to think and act multilaterally instead of unilaterally, global instead of national, cosmopolitan rather than isolationist. In short, together instead of alone.

You, dear graduates, will in the future have quite different opportunities for this than my generation did. After all, your smartphone probably has far more computing power than the IBM mainframe replicated by the Soviet Union, which I was allowed to use in 1986 for my dissertation in the GDR.

Today, we use Artificial Intelligence to scan millions of images for symptoms of disease -- for example, to better diagnose cancer. In the future, empathic robots could help doctors and caregivers to focus on the individual needs of individual patients. We can not say what applications will be possible, but the opportunities that come with [AI] are truly breathtaking.

Class of 2019, it is essentially up to you as to how we will take advantage of these opportunities. It will be you who will decide how our way of working, communicating, moving, and even developing our way of life will evolve.

As Federal Chancellor, I often have to ask myself: Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing something because it is right, or just because it's possible? You should ask yourself that again and again -- and that is my third thought for you today: Do we set the rules of technology or does technology determine how we interact? Do we focus on people with their dignity in all its many facets, or do we only see the customer, the data sources, the objects of surveillance?

These are difficult questions. I have learned that answers to difficult questions can be found if we always see the world through the eyes of others; if we respect the history, tradition, religion, and identity of others; if we firmly stand by our inalienable values and act accordingly; and if we do not always follow our initial impulses, even with all the pressure to make snap decisions, but instead stop for a moment, keep quiet, think, take a break.

Of course, that takes a lot of courage. Above all, it requires being truthful to others and perhaps most importantly to ourselves. Where better to begin with it than here, in this place, where so many young people from all over the world come to learn under the motto of Truth -- to do research, and discuss the questions of our time? This implies that we do not describe lies as truth and truth as lies.2 As well, it implies that we do not accept grievances as our normality.

But what, dear graduates, could stop you -- what could hinder us from doing that? Again, there are walls: walls in the mind, walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They exist between members of a family as well as between social groups, between those of different skin colors, peoples, religions.3 I would like us to break down these walls -- walls that repeatedly prevent us from communicating about the world in which we want to live together.

Whether we succeed is up to us. Therefore, dear graduates, my fourth thought is this: Take nothing for granted. Our individual freedoms are not self-evident; democracy is not self-evident; neither is peace nor prosperity.

But if we tear down the walls4 that restrict us, if we open the door and embrace new beginnings, then everything is possible. Walls can collapse. Dictatorships can disappear. We can stop global warming. We can overcome hunger. We can eradicate diseases. We can give people, especially girls, access to education. We can fight the causes of displacement and forced migration. We can do all this.

So let us not ask first what is wrong or what has always been. Let us first ask what is possible and look for something that has never been done before.5

It was these exact words I spoke in 2005 during my very first policy statement, as the newly elected Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, as the first woman in this office, in the German Bundestag, the German Parliament.

And with these words I would like to share with you my fifth thought: Let us surprise ourselves with what is possible -- let us surprise ourselves with what we can do.

In my own life, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall that allowed me to step out into the open almost 30 years ago. At that time, I left behind my work as a scientist and went into politics. It was an exciting and magical time, just as your lives will be exciting and full of magic. But I also had moments of doubt and worry. For we all knew what lay behind us, but not what might lie ahead. Perhaps you're feeling a bit like that today amidst all the joy of the occasion.

Therefore, as my sixth thought, I can also tell you this: The moment you stand out in the open is also a moment of risk. Letting go of the old is part of a new beginning. There is no beginning without an end, no day without night, no life without death. Our whole life consists of this difference, the space between the beginning and the ending. What's in between, we call life and experience.

I believe that we must always be ready to finish things to feel the magic of beginnings and to make the most of our opportunities. That was my experience in study, in science, and it's what I have experienced in politics. And who knows what's in store for me after life as a politician? It is completely open. Only one thing is clear: It will again be something different and something new.

That's why I want to leave this wish with you: [1] Tear down walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness, for nothing has to stay as it is.

It's six things [to remember]:

[2] Take joint action in the interests of a multilateral global world.
[3] Keep asking yourselves: Am I doing something because it is right or simply because it's possible?
[4] Don't forget that freedom is never something that can be taken for granted.
[5] Surprise yourself with what is possible.
[6] Remember that openness always involves risks. Letting go of the old is part of the new beginning.

And above all, nothing can be taken for granted; everything is possible.

Thank you!

John Krasinski: 'Lean all the way in', Brown University - 2019

25 May 2019, Brown Univeristy, Providence, Rhode Island, USA

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Guys, this is insane. What is happening? Why am I up here? Truly. No, I'm dead serious, why am I up here? To be asked to come back to this place, to speak to a graduating class of an institution that truly meant the world to me and still is the leading aspect of my entire life and career, it is the cornerstone of my life and career, is an astonishing honor. So thank you for being here, I mean that. I really really do.

It is also an honor that I almost immediately regretted saying yes to. Because look at this. Look at this church. Look at these people. Supposedly there are more people on the green. They only just told me that. Yes. There's people in Solomon? No, no engine 93? Okay. Nothing for Solomon. All right. I love you Solomon. Luckily a few days after I said yes, a rescue call was sent. I was to get on the phone with one of our phenomenal hosts of today's incredible ceremony, the one that only Reverend Janet Cooper Nelson, is down here. Yep. Rockstar, put this all together. Her job was pretty simple, to harness any and all spiritual guidance. Reach out over that phone, metaphorically grabbed me by the hand and weighed me through the rough waters of sheer terror. The end result, she made things way worse.

Janet, I love you, but in attempting to give me advice and pointers on what I should say in my speech, she started referencing these indelible speeches from other people who had already spoken. Yeah. You want to know what you led off with? "I remember when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was here". I don't mind telling you I peed a little. I did. The class of 2002 had a Supreme court justice talk to them. Okay. And as I was checking my pants to see if they need to dry cleaning, I heard her say, or maybe the funniest moment had to be when the Dalai Lama was here, and I blacked out. I mean, full unconscious blacked out. Head hit the table out because let me be honest guys, the Dalai Lama spoke. Okay. I mean, he was the funniest? I can't contend with the Lama on a bad day, but to know that he brought his A game. He had a tight 15 minute comedy set? No. No, thank you.

So I'd like to start here today by addressing the parents of the class of 2019. And to you, I would like to say I hear you. Don't worry. I have already had the T-shirts made up. My kid just graduated from Brown and all I got was the dude from the office. Good. Glad you think that's funny. That's really funny. Let me tell you what's really funny. The Notorious RBG, his holiness, they didn't go to Brown, not smart enough. You know who did go to Brown? The dude from the office. It's me. That's ridiculous. It actually sounded awful just coming out.

And because of that I am specifically and acutely aware of just what an astounding honor it is to be here today. So to the graduates of the class of 2019 tomorrow, I say thank you. Thank you for letting me be here today. Truly thank you for letting me be a part of your day. This is your day and you are graduating tomorrow. How cray is that? Does anyone say cray anymore? Okay. I'm ancient. Who's nervous? Let me see a show of hands of people in the ... Really? A lot of outliers here. Well, I look forward to your world domination. I was terrified because all the people came up to me and said, the future belongs to you. Whoa. What! I am currently searching for an apartment trying to keep the number of roommates in single digit. Literally nothing belongs to me.

Take a deep breath. Let's all take a breath. Wow, you actually did it. You're going to be great. There are many sides to being nervous and a whole lot of them are wildly useful and for the ones that aren't so useful, well, let me see if I can walk you through some of those. Believe it or not, they asked me to come up with the title of this speech. Yes. Just characterized, it says a speech and yes, they think it's good enough to come up with a name. What's so hard to understand? The name I came up with off the top of my head was, what do I know? Pretty good. And oddly enough, that line went from being some jokey device I was using to deflect my own fears of being up here to a genuine challenge to myself. What do I know that I can tell you guys about that could possibly illuminate the future that stands in front of you?

Well, I know that tomorrow you've all received a piece of paper that says you've gotten one of the best educations there is to get period. I also know that that education did not necessarily happen in the classroom. The funniest thing about me is my getting into Brown, I didn't feel I deserve to get in. So I made it my mission to deserve to graduate. That was my thing. I came to Brown as a midyear. I don't know if that program exists anymore, but yes, one person? Nope. Okay. It's gotten smaller since I was here, but I was one of 32 kids that were not accepted in the fall with everyone else. Thanks. Anyway. But rather we came in alone, hungry and cold in January.

I remember immediately trying to find my place, to find a group, to find my people. There was a moment where I even thought I might try to play basketball here. Don't laugh yet, don't laugh yet. My brother Paul was actually the captain of the basketball team, so I had communicated with the coach a couple of times about potentially walking on, still no laughter, please. And it was January, so it was mid season. I walked up to the gym one day to meet with the coach. I opened the door as the door swung open, by the time it reached the end, and it was coming back, I went, no. Nope. These dudes were too big. They were too good and it was just after lunch and they were on their second practice. No, thank you. No, thank you.
So I turned around and walked straight through the campus toward my dorm. When something caught my eye. I saw a flyer for a sketch comedy group called Out of Bounds. Yes, you can all clap for them. That's how big we were too. It's funny because I think the flyer caught my eye because it was nailed to a tree. And I remember thinking like, "Whoa, I haven't been at Brown very long, but protecting trees is kind of like one of your things".

So I went in for the audition and my entire life changed. Nope, not because I got in, not because I started acting. It was through that group that I found my way into this community. It was through that group that I met my people and all of a sudden I was surrounded by the most inspiring peers. I mean, every single one of them seemed way smarter than me, way cooler than me, way more interesting. And one of the best decisions I made in my life was just to lean all the way in. Nope, not to acting. Are you kidding. I mean, I really wasn't good enough to be here. I don't know if you're listening. These kids were amazing. Truly by the end of senior year, the only parts I had ever gotten were like arm guard number four or terrified hostage guest number two. Yeah, that's right. When I was at Brown, we did die hard the musical. Yep. You guys really missed out. I can promise you that. My parents were right here. They'll tell you, you missed out. They didn't miss out. It was ridiculous. Okay. You still have your shirts that say, my kid went to Brown and all I got was diehard to musical. That seems harsh, but we'll talk about it later.

No, I didn't get to throw everything in acting, but I did throw everything I had into this unparalleled pool of brilliant people. People often ask me how I got into acting. The truth is I didn't get into acting. I got into everything. Believe it or not. When I got to Brown, I really hadn't listened to any music that wasn't on the radio, seen any movie that wasn't in the multiplex. One day I asked a small group of friends to each give me, one of their favorite movies, favorite albums, and they did, every single week for four years. Yeah. Cry. Okay, I'm back. It was the experience of my life. One of the most mind blowing, mind expanding experiences and no drugs were necessary.

It was without a doubt the beginning of everything. For the next four years I wanted to be a part of it all. I formed a new way of thinking, a new way of executing those thoughts. I leaped out of my comfort zone, then stayed there and then left again. I experienced firsthand the powerful shift in doing something out of love rather than out of necessity. I learned what it meant to believe. I took chances, I failed and I took more chances. So yes, in the classroom I received one of the greatest educations one can possibly get, true, but the piece of paper I got at graduation also represents that education. The piece of paper I got not only says where I was educated, but who I was educated with and it declares that I am a member of that community of people to be relied upon, to take risks, provoke thought, and to be committed participants in this world.

The piece of paper I got represented every facet of my experience and the piece of paper I got is the exact same piece of paper you're going to get tomorrow. The piece of paper I got, I live my life every single day by, because when looking at this sense of nervous that you're feeling now, ask yourself, what's it based in? Is it based in the unknown? Because my question to you is up until now, how else have you approached each new tomorrow? And if your nerves are based in fear of failure, well, my question is up until now, how have you defined success because in this community, without the presence of financial gain, isn't success simply defined as you're just being onto something, taking an idea farther that it never been before? Why does it ever need to change? It doesn't.

Or if your nerves are based on something bigger, a fear of something bigger. The world at large. Well, to that I do say yes, it's true there are right. The future does indeed belong to you, but the abstract weight of responsibility to change it over night very much does not. Real change is organic. You're the only responsibility you all have is to hold fast to everything that you have lived right here. To not conform. To realize that when you're out there, you've done all this before, right in here. Remember fondly the discomfort you felt when you were asked to push yourself farther than you were ever. Sure. You could go.
In the wash of elation when you finally got there. Remember to be scared. You've been there, scared before. You'll be scared again. Find more of your people. Lean all the way in. Take chances, fail big and take chances again, listen to music. Remember to believe in something and fall in love as many times as it takes. And remember before you do something special, just do something. The truth can almost seem too simple, but the simple truth is the program you ran here is the same program. Just run it again and again and again. That's what I know. Thank you to this class, to this institution is my honor. Thank you.