9 June 2018, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
Good morning to the Class of 2018, the faculty, the parents, the grandparents, fellow honorees, and the paid laughers I have scattered throughout the audience.
It is an honor to join you this morning for this special occasion.
It is also an honor to speak to you today from behind this gigantic tree stump. Like some sort of female Lorax with an advanced degree. That’s right, you guys; I’m hitting Dr. Seuss hard and early in this speech. Because Dartmouth grads have a privilege unique among all the Ivy League: We will be forced to be mini-experts on Dr. Seuss for our entire lives.
On my deathbed, I’ll be saying, “Did you know that his real name was Theodor Geisel? Did you know he was editor of the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern?” And yes, while no U.S. Presidents have gone to Dartmouth, we can at least lay claim for the wonderful Dr. Seuss.
Another notable alumnus is Salmon P. Chase, the man on the $10,000 bill. A symbolically powerful piece of paper that’s largely useless in the real world. Like a degree in playwriting which I received from this very institution. Thank you for paying for that, Mom and Dad!
It’s a thrill to be back here in New Hampshire, the Granite State, known for two things: the place where you can legally not wear your seatbelt, and Adam Sandler’s birthplace.
New Hampshire has one of the best mottos of any state: “Live Free or Die.” For outsiders, it sounds like an exciting declaration of freedom; but when you’re here in January, “die” actually sounds like a pretty good option.
I remember the days when it was so cold your sneeze would become an ice sculpture before it hit the ground. In Los Angeles, where I live now, if I sneeze, I just call my doctor and have my blood replaced with that of a teenage track star. That’s normal there. I’m mostly track star right now.
Before I get any further, I should actually probably clarify who I am for the parents and grandparents in the audience who are thinking to themselves, “Who is this loud Indian woman? Is that the girl from Quantico? She looks so much worse in person.”
No, no, I’m not Priyanka Chopra, not even Padma Lakshmi. I’m the other Indian woman we have allowed to be on television, Mindy Kaling. Thank you, thank you.
You may remember me from my role on The Office as Kelly Kapoor, who internet commenters said was—quote—“shrill” and—quote—“took up valuable time that could have gone to Steve Carell.”
I then created and starred in my own TV show, The Mindy Project. Thank you, thank you very much. It was an uphill battle to get the show on the air, but it was worth it, because it enabled me to become Dartmouth’s most successful female minority show creator who has spoken at commencement!
Oh wait, no. Shonda Rhimes went here. Yup, and she’s created like 10 more shows than me, so great. No, cool. Cool, cool, cool, Shonda. Friggin’ role model, good for you.
But today is not about famous alumni. No, no. It’s about the men and women who have toiled in obscurity for years so that they might better our country. I speak, of course, of the 51 percent of Dartmouth grads who will go into finance—highest in the Ivy League! Look left. Look right. All three of you will be spending at least ten years in a white collar prison.
I know that going into the real world sounds scary, but it’s exciting too. Finally, you’ll be in control of your own lives. No longer will there be an irrational Board of Trustees telling you you can’t have hard liquor on campus, for the ridiculous reason that they don’t want you to die. Come tomorrow, no one can stop you from filling your apartment with $4.99 handles of Uncle Satan’s Unfiltered Potato Vodka. Go crazy.
It’s a real moment of reflection for me to be standing here speaking to all of you now, because it makes me harken back to my own time at my Dartmouth graduation. Madeleine Albright was my commencement speaker; and while I don’t remember any specific quotes she said, or even a general gist of what she was talking about, I do remember thinking: “I wonder what it will be like to have my own cell phone?”
How things have changed. For all I know, at this very moment, most of you are posting this speech on your Instagram stories with a GIF of Winnie the Pooh twerking. If you are, please at least use my official hashtag, MindyGoesBigGreenTwentyEighteen. Thank you.
I bet none of you remember a time before the internet. Hell, you probably don’t even remember a time before the Facebook page, “Dartmouth Memes for Cold AF Teens.” Yeah, yeah. I know about that. Made me feel like a real creep researching it. “Hello, I’m a 38‑year‑old woman who wants to join your teen Facebook group. It's for research, I swear!”
Meanwhile, when I was in college we didn’t even have Google. If you wanted to find out, say, how tall Ben Affleck was, you were out of luck. You just had to sit there, not knowing, and your entire day would be ruined.
Or, say I wanted to meet up with a friend—I couldn’t just text her. I had to walk outside and hope I accidentally bumped into her. Or, I “blitzed” her. Ah, BlitzMail. You know that feeling you have when you tell your friends that you “blitz” and they don’t get it and you roll your eyes all smug like “Oh, it’s a Dartmouth thing.” That ends today. You try to say “blitz” one hundred yards east of White River Junction and you will get laughed back to your one-room triple in the Choates.
Fun fact: In 2001, the year I graduated, a pinkeye epidemic broke out amongst my classmates because we were all using public BlitzMail iMac terminals and not washing our hands. Those are just the kind of the sexy stories indicative of my time at Dartmouth.
You have so many cool new things here now. Like, look at the new logo, the D-Pine. It’s beautiful. It reminds me of what college-aged Mindy thought a marijuana leaf might look like but I was too scared to actually find out. And this new House System sounds really cool! It's so Hogwarts-y! You know, you're sorted into your little Gryffindors and Ravenclaws, except they’re called … South House. West House. School House.
Okay, come on guys. School House? Really? We’re just saying what we see? That’s the laziest name I’ve ever heard in my life, and I've spent over a decade working on shows called The Office and The Mindy Project.
Still, I remember sitting where you’re sitting. I was so full of questions like, “When is this thing going to end?” and “How many friends can I invite to dinner and still have mom and dad pay?” And, most importantly, “Why didn’t I wear any clothes underneath my gown?”
Now we’re reaching the part of the speech where I am supposed to tell you something uplifting like “follow your dreams.”
In general, advice isn’t actually an effective way to change your life. If all it took to make your life great was hearing amazing advice, then everyone who watched TED Talks would be a millionaire.
So don’t trust any one story of how how to become successful. As Madeline Albright said at my Commencement—see, I don’t remember anything. And I did just fine.
So here is some practical advice that you may or may not remember at the end of this speech because, hey, that’s the gig:
1. First off, remove “Proficient at Word” from your resume. That is ridiculous. You’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel of competency there. This is how you become proficient at Word: You open Word on your computer.
2. Most of your post-college life is simply filling out forms. Car insurance, health insurance, W-2s. W-4s, 1099s. Guess what? None of us know what any of those forms mean, but you will fill out a hundred of them before you die.
3. You never need more than one pancake. Trust me on this. Cartoons have trained us to want a giant stack of those bad boys, but order one first and then just see how you feel later.
4. This one is just for guys: When you go on dates, act as if every woman you’re talking to is a reporter for an online publication that you are scared of. One shouldn’t need the threat of public exposure and scorn to treat women well; but if that’s what it’s gonna take, fine. Date like everyone’s watching, because we are.
5. And this might be the most important—buy a toilet plunger. Trust me on this. Don’t wait until you need a plunger to buy a plunger.
Commencement is a time of transition for parents, too. That empty nest you were enjoying these past four years? Gone as soon as this speech is over. I hope you like full‑time lodgers who don’t pay rent, don’t do laundry, eat all the food in your fridge, and binge Family Guy on your sofa for weeks. That is your life now.
Although some of your graduates will be making more money than you—51% to be exact. And to the parents of those investment bankers, consultants, and hedge fund analysts—congratulations. Your kids will be fabulously wealthy but still somehow sharing your cell phone plan because it—quote—“saves everybody money.”
Okay, now let’s get real. Let me rip off the Band-Aid for all you, the ’18s. Next year, the next year of your life is going to be bad. You have been in the comfortable fleece-lined womb of mother Dartmouth for four years now, and you’re gonna go out in the cold, hard world.
Out there in the real world, there will be a target on your back. People will want to confirm their expectations of Ivy League graduates—that you’re a jerk, that you’re spoiled, that you use the word “summer” as a verb. Those stereotypes exist for a reason. I mean come on, the guy from the ten-thousand-dollar bill went to this school.
You’re graduating into a world where it seems like everything is falling apart. Trust in institutions are at a record low; the truth doesn’t seem to matter anymore; and for all I know, the president just tweeted us into a war with Wakanda, a country that doesn’t exist.
So, Class of 2018, you are entering a world that we have toppled—we have toppled—like a Jenga tower, and we are relying on you to rebuild it.
But how can you do that with the knowledge that things are so unstable out there? I’ll tell you my secret, the one thing that has kept me going through the years, my superpower: delusion.
This is something I may share with our president, a fact that is both horrifying and interesting. Two years in, I think we can pretty safely say that he’s not getting carved onto Mount Rushmore; but damn if that isn’t a testament to how far you can get just by believing you’re the smartest, most successful person in the world.
My point is, you have to have insane confidence in yourself, even if it’s not real. You need to be your own cheerleader now, because there isn’t a room full of people waiting with pom‑poms to tell you, “You did it! We’ve been waiting all this time for you to succeed!”
So, I’m giving you permission to root for yourself. And while you’re at it, root for those around you, too. It took me a long time to realize that success isn’t a zero-sum game. Which leads me to the next part of my remarks.
I thought I might take a second to speak to the ladies in the audience. (Guys, take a break; you don’t have to pay attention during this part. Maybe spend the next 30 seconds thinking about all the extra money you’ll make in your life for doing the same job as a woman. Pretty sweet.)
Hey girls, we need to do a better job of supporting each other. I know that I am guilty of it too. We live in a world where it seems like there’s only room for one of us at the table. So when another woman shows up, we think, “Oh my god, she’s going to take the one woman spot! That was supposed to be mine!”
But that’s just what certain people want us to do! Wouldn’t it be better if we worked together to dismantle a system that makes us feel like there’s limited room for us? Because when women work together, we can accomplish anything. Even stealing the world’s most expensive diamond necklace from the Met Gala, like in Ocean’s 8, a movie starring me, which opens in theaters June 8th. And to that end, women, don’t be ashamed to toot your own horn like I just did.
Okay, guys, you can listen again. You didn’t miss much. Just remember to see Ocean’s 8, now playing in theaters nationwide. Ocean’s 8: Every con has its pros.
Now I wanted to share a little bit about me, Mindy Kaling, the Dartmouth student. When I came to Hanover in the fall of 1997, I was, as many of you were: driven, bright, ambitious, and really, really into The Black Eyed Peas.
I arrived here as a 17-year-old, took the lay of the land, and immediately began making a checklist of everything I wanted to accomplish. I told myself that by the time I graduated in 2001, I would have checked them all off.
And here was my freshman fall checklist: be on Hanover crew, on Lodge crew, be in an a cappella group, be in an improv troupe, write a play that’s performed at the Bentley, do a cartoon for the D, and try to be in a cool senior society. And guess what? I completed that checklist. But before you think: “Wait, why is this woman just bragging about her accomplishments from 17 years ago?”—keep listening.
Then, I graduated. And I made a new checklist for my twenties: get married by 27, have kids at 30, win an Oscar, be the star of my own TV show, host the MTV Music Awards (this was 2001, guys; it made more sense then), and do it all while being a size 2.
Well, spoiler alert: I’ve only done one of those things, and I’m not sure I will ever do the others. And that is a really scary feeling. Knowing how far that I’ve strayed from the person that I was hoping to be when I was 21.
I will tell you a personal story. After my daughter was born in December, I remember bringing her home and being in my house with her for the first time and thinking, “Huh. According to movies and TV, this is traditionally the time when my mother and spouse are supposed to be here, sharing this experience with me.” And I looked around, and I had neither. And for a moment, it was kind of scary. Like, “Can I do this by myself?”
But then, that feeling went away, because the reality is, I’m not doing it by myself. I’m surrounded by family and friends who love and support me. And the joy I feel from being with my daughter Katherine eclipses anything from any crazy checklist.
So I just want to tell you guys, don’t be scared if you don’t do things in the right order, or if you don’t do some things at all. I didn’t think I’d have a child before I got married, but hey, it turned out that way, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I didn’t think I’d have dessert before breakfast today, but hey, it turned out that way and I wouldn’t change a thing.
So if I could impart any advice, it’s this: If you have a checklist, good for you. Structured ambition can sometimes be motivating. But also, feel free to let it go. Yes, my culminating advice from my speech is a song from the Disney animated movie, Frozen.
I’ve covered a lot of ground today, not all of it was serious, but I wanted to leave you with this: I was not someone who should have the life I have now, and yet I do. I was sitting in the chair you are literally sitting in right now and I just whispered, “Why not me?” And I kept whispering it for seventeen years; and here I am, someone that this school deemed worthy enough to speak to you at your Commencement.
Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something, but especially not yourself. Go conquer the world. Just remember this: Why not you? You made it this far.
Thank you very much, and congratulations to the Class of 2018.
Rex Tillerson: 'Freedom to seek the truth is the very essence of freedom itself', Virginia Military Institute - 2018
16 May 2018, Virginia Military Academy, Virginia, USA
Maintain and protect who you are, and remember that being a person with integrity is the most valuable asset you have. Don’t ever let anyone take it from you. Carefully consider the values and the culture of the organizations in which you seek to work. Look for employers who set high standards for personal conduct and who reward ethical leadership. Identify mentors who exemplify integrity and leadership excellence. Developing as a leader largely comes from also practicing good followership.
Michael Blomberg: 'To be honourabe, you must be honest', Rice University - 2018
12 May 2018, Rice University,. Houston, Texas, USA
David thank you for those kind words.
Good morning, everyone and Members of the Board, faculty, staff, parents and family – it really is an honor to be with you to celebrate the great Class of 2018. How about a nice round of applause for them again?
Today, you’re ready to go ‘beyond the hedges’ -- and who knows what the future holds for you.
Rice alumni have been Nobel Prize winners, cabinet members, astronauts, titans of industry, award-winning artists, and everything in between -- including the two scientists who discovered Bucky balls.
And I’m glad to say that one member of the Class of 2018 has already begun working for my company, bringing the total number of Owls at Bloomberg LP to 13, so I’m doing my part, and many of you have similar exciting plans lined up I’m sure, and that's great.
But if you don't yet know what you're going to do for the rest of your life, don't spend a lot of time worrying about it. Leave that to your parents! As excited as they are today, they'll be even more excited if you don't move back home into their basement.
So let's give a big round of applause to all the parents and families who supported you and made this day possible!
Now for the serious stuff. When I was deciding what I really wanted to say today, I kept thinking about a Rice tradition that's an incredibly important part of student life here. No, I'm not talking about Willy Week. I'm talking about the honor code.
When you first arrived on campus for O-week, you attended a presentation on the Honor Code. Your very first quiz tested your knowledge of the code, you had to say what it was about, and so today, I thought it would be fitting for you as graduates to end your time here the same way you began it: by hearing a few words about the meaning of honor.
Don't worry: There’s no quiz involved. But there will be a test when you leave this campus -- one that will last for the rest of your life. And that's what I want to explain today -- and it actually starts with the opposite of honor.
As a New Yorker, I was surprised to learn that an act of dishonor in my hometown almost blocked Rice from coming into existence. William Marsh Rice was murdered at his home in Manhattan, just a few blocks from my company's headquarters, by two schemers who tried to re-write his will.
They were caught, his money went where he wanted it to go, the university was built, and fittingly, an honor code was created that has been central to student life here from the beginning.
And ever since you arrived here on campus, on nearly every test and paper you submitted, you signed a statement that began, ‘On my honor.’ But have you ever stopped to think about what that phrase really means?
The concept of honor has taken on different meanings through the ages: chivalry, chastity, courage, strength. And when divorced from morality, or attached to prejudice, honor has been used to justify murder, and repression, and deceit. But the essence of honor has always been found in the word itself.
As those of you who majored in Linguistics probably know, the words ‘honor’ and ‘honest’ are two sides of the same coin. In fact, the Latin word ‘honestus’ can mean both ‘honest’ and ‘honorable.’
To be honorable, you must be honest. And that means speaking honestly, and acting honestly, even when it requires you to admit wrongdoing -- and suffer the consequences. The commitment to honesty is a responsibility that you accepted as an Owl. It is also, I believe, a patriotic responsibility.
As young children, one of the first things we learn about American history is the story of George Washington and the fallen cherry tree. ‘I cannot tell a lie,’ young George tells his father. ‘I cut it down.’ That story is a legend, of course. But legends are passed down from generation to generation because they carry some larger truth.
The cherry tree legend has endured because it's not really about George Washington. It's about us, as a nation. It's about what we want for our children -- and what we value in our leaders: honesty.
We’ve always lionized our two greatest presidents -- Washington and Lincoln -- not only for their accomplishments, but also for their honesty. We see their integrity and morals as a reflection of our honor as a nation.
However, today when we look at the city that bears Washington's name, it's hard not to wonder: What the hell happened?
In 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary's word of the year was ‘post-truth.’ And last year brought us the phrase, ‘alternative facts.’ In essence, they both mean: Up can be down. Black can be white. True can be false. Feelings can be facts.
A New York Senator known for working across the aisle, my old friend Pat Moynihan, once said: ‘People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.’ That didn’t used to be a controversial statement.
Today, those in politics routinely dismiss any inconvenient information, no matter how factual, as fake -- and they routinely say things that are demonstrably false. When authoritarian regimes around the world did this, we scoffed at them. We thought the American people would never stand for that!
For my generation, the plain truth about America -- the freedom, opportunity, and prosperity we enjoyed -- was our most powerful advantage in the Cold War. The more communists had access to real news, the more they would demand freedom. We believed that -- and we were right.
Today, though, many of those at the highest levels of power see the plain truth as a threat. They fear it. They deny it. And they attack it -- just as the communists once did. And so here we are, in the midst of an epidemic of dishonesty, and an endless barrage of lies.
The trend toward elected officials propagating alternate realities -- or winking at those who do -- is one of the most serious dangers facing democracies. Free societies depend on citizens who recognize that deceit in government isn’t something to shrug your shoulders at.
When elected officials speak as though they are above the truth, they will act as though they are above the law. And when we tolerate dishonesty, we get criminality.
Sometimes, it's in the form of corruption. Sometimes, it's abuse of power. And sometimes, it's both. If left unchecked, these abuses can erode the institutions that preserve and protect our rights and freedoms -- and open the door to tyranny and fascism.
Now, you might say: There’s always been deceitful politicians and dishonest politicians -- in both parties. And that's true. But there is now more tolerance for dishonesty in politics than I have seen in my lifetime. And I've been alive for one-third of the time the United States has existed! I know, you find that hard to believe. So do I, but if you do the math, that’s what it is.
My generation can tell you: The only thing more dangerous than dishonest politicians who have no respect for the law, is a chorus of enablers who defend their every lie.
Remember: The Honor Code here at Rice just doesn’t require you to be honest. It requires you to say something if you saw others acting dishonestly. Now that might be the most difficult part of an honor code, but it may also be the most important, because violations affect the whole community.
And the same is true in our country. If we want elected officials to be honest, we have to hold them accountable when they are not -- or else suffer the consequences.
Now, don't get me wrong: honest people can disagree. That's what democracy is all about! But productive debate requires an acceptance of basic reality.
Take science for example: If 99 percent of scientists whose research has been peer-reviewed reach the same general conclusion about a theory, then we ought to accept it as the best available information -- even if it's not a 100 percent certainty.
Yes, climate change is only a theory -- just like gravity is only a theory. And the fact that Newton's theory of motion didn’t take into account Maxwell’s observations on the speed of electromagnetic waves as a constant and that Einstein’s special theory of relativity better described motion when things move very fast -- doesn’t mean that if I let go of this pen it won’t fall to the ground.
That, graduates, is not a Chinese hoax. It's called science -- and we should demand that politicians have the honesty to respect it.
Hard though it is to believe, some federal agencies have actually banned their employees from using the phrase ‘climate change.’ If censorship solved problems, today we’d all be part of the old USSR, and the Soviets would have us speaking Russian.
Of course, it's always good to be skeptical and ask questions. But we must be willing to place a certain amount of trust in the integrity of scientists. If you aren’t willing to do that, don't get on an airplane, don't use a cell phone or microwave, don't get treated in a hospital, and don’t even think about binge-watching Netflix.
Scientific discovery permeates practically every aspect of our lives -- except, too often, our political debates.
The dishonesty in Washington isn't just about science, of course. We weren’t tackling so many of the biggest problems that affect your future – from the lack of good jobs in many communities, to the prevalence of gun violence, to the threats to the economy and threats to the environment -- because too many political leaders are being dishonest about facts and data, and too many people are letting them get away with it.
So how did we get here? How did we go from a president who could not tell a lie to politicians who can not tell the truth? From a George Washington who embodied honesty, to a Washington, D.C. defined by deceit?
It’s popular to blame social media for spreading false information. I for one am totally convinced that Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber are still dating, but the problem isn't just unreliable stories. It's also the public's willingness -- even eagerness -- to believe anything that paints the other side in a bad light. That's extreme partisanship -- and that is what's fueling and excusing all this dishonesty.
Extreme partisanship is like an infectious disease. But instead of crippling the body, it cripples the mind. It blocks us from understanding the other side. It blinds us from seeing the strengths in their ideas -- and the weaknesses of our own. And it leads us to defend or excuse lies and unethical actions when our own side commits them.
For example: In the 1990s, leading Democrats spent the decade defending the occupant of the Oval Office against charges of lying and personal immorality, and attempting to silence and discredit the women who spoke out. At the same time, leading Republicans spent that decade attacking the lack of ethics and honesty in the White House.
Today, the roles are exactly reversed -- not because the parties have changed their beliefs -- but because the party occupying the Oval Office has changed.
When someone's judgment about an action depends on the party affiliation of the person who committed it, they're being dishonest with themselves and with the public. And yet, those kinds of judgments have become so second nature that many people -- in both parties -- don't even realize that they are making them.
Now, I know it's natural to root for your own side -- especially when the other side is the Houston Cougars. But governing is not a game.
When people see the world as a battle between left and right, they become more loyal to their tribe than to our country. When power -- not progress -- becomes the object of the battle, truth and honesty become the first casualties.
You learned here at Rice that honesty leads to trust and trust leads to freedom -- like the freedom to take tests outside the classroom. In democracy, it's no different. If we aren't honest with one another, we don't trust one another, then we place limits on what we ourselves can do, and what we can do together as a country.
It's a formula for gridlock and national decline -- but graduates, here's the thing: It doesn't have to be that way.
When I was in city government, I didn't care which party proposed an idea -- and I never once asked someone his or her party affiliation during a job interview, or who they voted for. As a result, we had a dream team of Democrats, Republicans, and independents. That diversity made our debates sharper, our policies smarter, and our government better.
Arguments were won and lost on facts and data -- not parties and polls. That was why we had success. And it's been great to see other mayors around the country taking that same kind of approach. But at the national level, in Washington today, partisanship is everything. And I think the dishonesty that it produces is one of the greatest challenges that your generation will have to confront.
Of course, partisanship is not a new problem. George Washington warned against it in his Farewell Address. He referred to the ‘dangers of parties,’ and called the passion that people have for our parties, quote, ‘worst enemy’ of democracy -- a precursor to tyranny. Washington urged Americans to, quote, ‘discourage and restrain’ partisanship. Sadly, in recent years, the opposite has happened.
There is now unrestrained, rabid partisanship everywhere we look. It’s not just on social media and cable news. It's in the communities where we live, which are becoming more deeply red or more deeply blue. It’s in the groups and associations and churches we join, which increasingly attract like-minded people. It’s even in the people we marry.
Fifty years ago, most parents didn't care whether their children married a member of another political party, but they didn't want them marrying outside their race or religion, or inside their gender.
Today, thankfully, polls show a strong majority support for inter-racial, inter-religious, and same-sex marriage and that is progress. But unfortunately, the percentage of parents who don't want their children marrying outside of their political party has doubled and the more people segregate themselves by party, the harder it becomes to understand the other side, and the more extreme each party grows.
Studies show that people become more extreme in their views when they are grouped together with like-minded people. And that’s now happening in both parties. And as a result, I think it's fair to say the country is more divided by party than it has ever been since the Civil War.
Last month, legislators in South Carolina -- which was the first state in the Union to secede back in 1860 -- introduced a resolution that contemplated a debate on secession. Now it's easy to dismiss that as a fringe idea -- and let’s hope it never happens. But in like-minded groups, fringe ideas can gather momentum with dangerous speed – just remember Germany in the late 1930s.
If that continues to happen here, America will become even more divided, and our national anthem may as well become the Taylor Swift song: ‘We are never, ever, ever, getting back together.’
So why do I bring this up as you finish your time at this great university?
Well, I'm hoping you graduates will draw more inspiration from a song by a different artist: Zedd, Maren Morris, and Grey: ‘Why don't you just meet me in the middle? I'm losing my mind just a little.’
Bringing the country back together I know won't be easy. But I believe it can be done -- and if we are to continue as a true democracy, it must be done, and it will be up to your generation to help lead it.
Graduates, you're ready for this challenge. Because bringing the country back together starts with the first lesson you learned here at Rice: Honesty matters. And everyone must be held accountable for being honest. So as you go out into the world, I urge you to do what honesty requires.
Recognize that no one, nor either party, has a monopoly on good ideas. Judge events based on what happened, not who did it. Hold yourself and our leaders to the highest standards of ethics and morality. Respect the knowledge of scientists. Follow the data, wherever it leads. Listen to people you disagree with -- without trying to censor them or shout over them. And have the courage to say things that your own side does not want to hear.
I just came yesterday from visiting an old friend in Arizona, who has displayed that kind of courage throughout his life: Senator John McCain, who is currently fighting brain cancer.
Now, John and I often don’t see eye to eye on issues. But I have always admired his willingness to reach across the aisle, when others wouldn't dare.
He bucked party leaders when his conscience demanded it. He defended the honor of his opponents, even if it cost him votes. And he owned up to his mistakes -- just like that young kid with the cherry tree.
Imagine what our country would be like if more of our elected officials had the courage to serve with the honor that John has always shown on the battlefield, in Washington and in his personal life.
Graduates, after today, you will no longer be bound by the Rice honor code. It will be up to you to decide how to live your life -- and to follow your own honor code.
This university has given you a special opportunity to learn the true meaning of honor to base that code on. And now, I believe, you have a special obligation to carry it forward -- into your work places, your communities, your political discussions, and yes, into the voting booth because the greatest threat to American democracy isn't communism or jihadism, or any other external force or foreign power. It's our own willingness to tolerate dishonesty in service of party, and in pursuit of power.
So let me leave you with one final thought: We can all recite the inspiring words that begin the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident --
But remember that the Founding Fathers were able to bring those truths to life only because of the Declaration's final words: ‘We mutually pledge to each other, our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.’
That pledge of honor and that commitment to truth is why we are here today. And in order to preserve those truths, and the rights they guarantee us, every generation must take that same pledge, and it's now your turn.
Earlier today, I told President Leebron that I'd like to make a donation to Rice. His eyes lit up! But I said, ‘No, not a financial donation.’ I told him I'd like to donate a cherry tree to be planted here on campus with a plaque that reads: ‘In Honor of the Class of 2018.’
And when you come back to campus as alumni, if you pass by the tree, I hope you'll remember why it's there -- and what it represents to our great country. And throughout your life, when you chop down a cherry tree, as we all do from time to time, admit it -- and demand nothing less from those who represent us.
Graduates, you have earned this great celebration. So tonight, have one last Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit. And tomorrow, carry the values of this great university with you, wherever you go.
You will never regret it. I make that pledge to you on my honor.
Congratulations -- and go Owls!”