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.
Bill Nye: 'Turn your fear into excitement', Goucher College - 2019
24 May 2019, Goucher College,
Thank you all so much, thank you so much for including me today. Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished faculty, distinguished speakers, alumni, parents, boys, girls, kids of all ages, and especially graduates. Congratulations, you made it. Nicely done. Yes. Now, you might be thinking, those parents and all those older adults, they can’t get me now. Well, it’s too late people, they already did.
Now, we want you to go out there and, dare I say it, change the world. As you may have heard a moment ago, I was awarded an honorary doctorate from Goucher 20 years ago. So when I’m here at Goucher especially, you can trust me, because I’m a doctor.
For your entire life, I imagine, you’ve heard people say you are the future. And there’s a reason for that. Trust me, you are the future. And right now in the spring of 2019, your future looks both exciting, full of astonishing promise, and, trust me, it also looks terrifying for everyone on Earth.
You have access to more human knowledge, more computing power, and more fun, in your electric phone machines than your ancestors could imagine, let alone make use of. And it sure looks like information, transportation, and agricultural technologies are going to get better and better. The future is full of astonishing promise.
But our world is changing. There are now so many of us living increasingly energy-intensive lives and burning ancient plants to get that energy that we are changing the climate of a whole planet. You might say the world is on fire, and these are scary times for everyone on Earth.
Speaking of scary times for everyone on Earth, as you may have heard a moment ago, my mother graduated from Goucher in 1942, and in the winter of 1941 and 1942, everyone around here, in the United States, was terrified. They could see the troubles in Europe and Asia were about to become troubles for everyone on Earth. The first such conflict, the first big war to end all wars—which it didn’t—was rekindled and the U.S. was once again going to be dragged into the deadliest war ever, or maybe just so far: the Second World War.
That winter, my mother’s boyfriend disappeared, captured by the Japanese navy from Wake Island, a tiny atoll 5,000 nautical miles west of Pearl Harbor. That spring, my mother, along with several other Goucher women, class of 1942, became cryptanalysts, the codebreakers. They all went on to have remarkable careers; they all helped win the war. But back then, so did everyone. Everyone in the U.S., most people everywhere, went to work to solve a global conflict. I mean, win the war and get back to work—and they did. It was an extraordinary time because everyone was scared. Everyone pitched in, and in five short years, they got ‘er done.
Now all of you aren’t facing a global war, or, at least, not yet. Instead, you’re facing a global change of life itself. Our world is warming, and the living things around us are changing and dying at an unprecedented rate. So you are going to have to make big changes in the way you and your kids live. At the start of the Industrial Revolution, after James Watt came up with a very practical steam engine, we had about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Today, we have nearly 415, a change by a factor of one and a half in just two-and-a-half centuries. We’re not talking about two million years; we’re talking about 200 years. The only other times climates have changed this fast here on Earth are associated with the occasional asteroid impact. There’s never been anything like it in all of human history.
When my grandmother, who grew up in Washington, DC, went to see the Wright Brothers aeroplane fly in College Park, MD, in 1909, there were a few more than one-and-a-half billion people on Earth. Today, there are almost six times that many. We are burning and breathing an atmosphere that’s so thin…how thin is it? It’s so thin, if you can drive straight up, you’d be in outer space in an hour. On 695, it would be two and a half hours.
With every passing second, there are four more people born on Earth. By the time you all reach your billionth second on this planet, a little over halfway into your 31st year, we will have nine billion people, we may have close to 10 billion people, on Earth.
We, by that I mean you, are going to find ways to feed us all. And you will, with technology derived from science, and with policies that support innovation investment in the greater good, policies based on facts. It is no longer a matter of only keeping the air and water clean, curtailing the accidental creation of plastic trash, like straws, and hoping that will be OK. No. Nowadays we, by that I mean you, are going to have to steer our spaceship, take charge of Earth. It’s no longer a matter of just being good stewards. From now on, we humans will have to deliberately control what we do to our atmosphere, the land and sea, to ensure that we maintain as much biodiversity as possible, while taking care of all of us.
Now when it comes to changing the world, don’t be scared. Don’t freak out. When you have to perform doing anything, be it a final exam, dressing for a date, winning a world war, or managing a planet, you might be nervous. You might be scared. And that fear can stop you cold. But don’t let it. As we say in the theater, and on television, take that fear and turn it into excitement. You’re Goucher graduates, for crying out loud. You can do this, people! Take a chance, make a difference. It’s what everyone here wants you to do in every challenge you face—turn your fear into excitement and change the world.
If you could, in Harry-Potter-magic-wand-ical fashion, make one sweeping change to the world that would address climate change, it would be this. You would raise the standard of living for girls and women worldwide. That’s a fact. My mom was a woman, for example. Now instead of a magic wand, let us provide these three things for everyone on Earth. And women of the world, they’ll be educated, they’ll have fewer kids, and the kids they do have will be educated, healthy, and productive, so here we go.
First, we want clean water for every citizen in the world. Water enables us to be healthy. It enables us to have agriculture, feed our populations. Second, we want energy for everybody. In general, when we say energy, we mean renewably produced reliable electricity for everyone on Earth. Electricity is magical. You can use it to light a room, navigate by satellite, produce TV shows, make instant-grams, or you can use it to make toast. It’s versatile, it’s transmittable, it’s efficient. Third, we want access to the internet, or whatever you kids call internet in the coming decades, to provide global information for everyone in the world. By connecting everybody electronically, landline or a constellation of low-orbiting satellites, we can change things.
When I think about those three big, big ideas, I sense some tough challenges. But I’m filled with optimism. This is as good a moment as any in our time together to talk about advice. Just regular advice. It’s a good idea, for example, to always wear shoes in a factory where they make thumbtacks. When crossing a highway in a car or especially on foot, it’s a good idea to look up from your phone once in a while. Once in a while! And it’s good to read the label on a can of paint—before you drink it. You see, you should be paying attention. It’s just what I’m talking about.
Now when I was in college, and for twenty more years in the workforce, if I wanted to know something fun, like the atomic number of rubidium, or if I wanted to know something important, like the score of the Orioles game, I had to look it up in a printed source, a newspaper, a journal, a chemical handbook. But now, facts like those are available in a few milliseconds from several generally very reliable sources. I mean, it’s not that likely that someone is going to create a website on which they deliberately state that rubidium has 38 protons instead of 37. Ha, that would be funny. Oh, man.
But people do make up a lot of misleading and just plain wrong things and post them on the internet. The skill we all need now is that of critical thinking. It’s what we used to call reasoning or logic, the ability to reason, whether or not something is reasonable, and then to find a way to check it, to verify it.
Now here’s something else I hope you’ll carry with you as long as you live. Everyone you’ll ever meet knows something you don’t. Everyone. Farmers know things about plants that most of us, even botanists, never will. Bricklayers have an intimate knowledge of what it takes to lay bricks. Cooks know how to use copper bowls to control egg proteins, and that’s cool. Respect that knowledge and learn from others. It will bring out the best in them, and it will bring out the best in you.
Keep in mind, everyone, that if you couldn’t choose where to be born on Earth, but you could choose when, this would be the time to be born. This is the most exciting time in human history. Life is better now, for more of us, than ever before in history. As strange as it may seem, this really is the best time. The opportunities before us are amazing. No matter what else is going on, everyone, please be optimistic. People who are not optimistic don’t get very much done. They get spun up and worn down by their own self-doubt, and they’ll bring you down with them.
When my grandparents joined our merry band here on Earth, no one had any idea what relativity was or is. They saw the creation of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. My grandmother was alive when the first Wright brothers’ flight took place, which would later fit in the cargo version of a 747 airplane that I worked on. The whole flight would fit inside, height and distance.
Your mobile phone uses both special and general relativities so that it can tell you what side of the street you’re standing on. And speaking of relativistic physics, you were all in college when gravitational waves were proven to exist. You were in first grade or so when the universe was shown to be not only expanding but accelerating outward. And dark matter and dark energy are responsible. And you know what dark matter and dark energy are? Nobody knows!
Understanding those currently mysterious forces may lead to everyday technology like a mobile phone and will be in your lifetime. And by the way, I’m predicting right now that gravitons, particles of gravity, will be measured or even isolated. So will darkons. Darkons—particles of dark. It’s just a word I kind of made up there. Mark my words, or my word. Darkon, well, they’ll be dark.
And what I’m saying is, as troublesome as some of our global problems seem to be, you are all up to the challenges. You know more physics than Isaac Newton or Copernicus, you know more about evolution, biology, and genetics than Darwin or Wallace did, or even could. Those guys didn’t even know there was DNA.
And speaking of biological acronyms (who isn’t?), Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, or CRISPR, is going to change the way we farm, treat diseases, and give birth. In your lifetime, we may discover evidence of life on Mars or the ocean moon of Jupiter, Europa. The future, your future, is going to be extraordinary.
As graduates, I imagine more than a few of you are concerned about what’s next. What you’re going to do for a living. What you’re going to do for the rest of your life. My advice: Just get started. Just get started. As you may know, I worked on a TV show intended to get young viewers excited about science so in the future we’d have a more scientifically literate society and, of course, more scientists and engineers. But please, keep in mind, I’m not advocating for everyone to become a scientist, and I’m certainly not asking that everyone become an engineer. The fashion consequences alone would be very troubling.
I got here today by taking a good job in the aerospace industry. I started writing jokes for a local comedy show. I left my full-time regular engineering job October 3, 1986 roughly, to pursue a career in television. I just got started and one thing led to some other pretty good things. So turn any concern you have, any time you have it, about your future into excitement.
Wait, wait, there’s one more thing that’s not really advice, people. I guess it’s the closest thing I can provide to a command. Vote! You have to vote. Thank you! I’m glad this is not controversial. Hang on, there’s just a little more! Voting is how we influence policymakers, it’s how we make big changes, it’s how we get things done. If you don’t want to vote, will you please just shut up, so the rest of us can get on with changing things for the better.
To me, the Founding Fathers, the people who wrote the U.S. Constitution, were nerds. They were trying to come up with a system that would always work for people who, for some reason, don’t always get along. And built in is change. That’s the key, and for me, the key to the progress—to the process—of science. And I remind you, Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution refers to the progress of science and useful arts. And that, to me, reflects this insight that our Founding Fathers had. Change is what you have to have in order to adapt. And that’s what you all are going to do as you go out to, dare I say it, change the world.
As Bruno Mars remarked, before we leave, I’d like to tell you a little something. Take a moment and consider what you have accomplished here at Goucher, and what you’ll be able to accomplish on account of your Goucher days. Whatever it cost, it’s priceless. Your diploma will be worth more tomorrow than it is today. It’ll be worth even more, far more, ten years from now. You have a liberal arts education. This enables you to understand the world in ways that many other people choose not to. So class of 2019, here’s wishing you excitement, optimism, and joy in what you do. Use your knowledge and your abilities to bring out the best in those around you, and let them bring out the best in you. We are all excited about your future because you can, and you will, dare I say it, change the world! This has been an honor. Thank you, thank you so much. Thank you. Woo!
Mindy Kaling: 'I just whispered, 'why not me?', Dartmouth - 2018
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.
Barack Obama: 'The ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt,', Notre Dame University - 2009
17 May 2009, South Bend, Indiana, USA
Well, first of all, congratulations, Class of 2009. (Applause.) Congratulations to all the parents, the cousins — (applause) — the aunts, the uncles — all the people who helped to bring you to the point that you are here today. Thank you so much to Father Jenkins for that extraordinary introduction, even though you said what I want to say much more elegantly. (Laughter.) You are doing an extraordinary job as president of this extraordinary institution. (Applause.) Your continued and courageous — and contagious — commitment to honest, thoughtful dialogue is an inspiration to us all. (Applause.)
Good afternoon. To Father Hesburgh, to Notre Dame trustees, to faculty, to family: I am honored to be here today. (Applause.) And I am grateful to all of you for allowing me to be a part of your graduation.
And I also want to thank you for the honorary degree that I received. I know it has not been without controversy. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but these honorary degrees are apparently pretty hard to come by. (Laughter.) So far I’m only 1 for 2 as President. (Laughter and applause.) Father Hesburgh is 150 for 150. (Laughter and applause.) I guess that’s better. (Laughter.) So, Father Ted, after the ceremony, maybe you can give me some pointers to boost my average.
I also want to congratulate the Class of 2009 for all your accomplishments. And since this is Notre Dame —
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Abortion is murder! Stop killing children!
AUDIENCE: Booo!
THE PRESIDENT: That’s all right. And since —
AUDIENCE: We are ND! We are ND!
AUDIENCE: Yes, we can! Yes, we can!
THE PRESIDENT: We’re fine, everybody. We’re following Brennan’s adage that we don’t do things easily. (Laughter.) We’re not going to shy away from things that are uncomfortable sometimes. (Applause.)
Now, since this is Notre Dame I think we should talk not only about your accomplishments in the classroom, but also in the competitive arena. (Laughter.) No, don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about that. (Laughter.) We all know about this university’s proud and storied football team, but I also hear that Notre Dame holds the largest outdoor 5-on-5 basketball tournament in the world — Bookstore Basketball. (Applause.)
Now this excites me. (Laughter.) I want to congratulate the winners of this year’s tournament, a team by the name of “Hallelujah Holla Back.” (Laughter and applause.) Congratulations. Well done. Though I have to say, I am personally disappointed that the “Barack O’Ballers” did not pull it out this year. (Laughter.) So next year, if you need a 6’2″ forward with a decent jumper, you know where I live. (Laughter and applause.)
Every one of you should be proud of what you have achieved at this institution. One hundred and sixty-three classes of Notre Dame graduates have sat where you sit today. Some were here during years that simply rolled into the next without much notice or fanfare — periods of relative peace and prosperity that required little by way of sacrifice or struggle.
You, however, are not getting off that easy. You have a different deal. Your class has come of age at a moment of great consequence for our nation and for the world — a rare inflection point in history where the size and scope of the challenges before us require that we remake our world to renew its promise; that we align our deepest values and commitments to the demands of a new age. It’s a privilege and a responsibility afforded to few generations — and a task that you’re now called to fulfill.
This generation, your generation is the one that must find a path back to prosperity and decide how we respond to a global economy that left millions behind even before the most recent crisis hit — an economy where greed and short-term thinking were too often rewarded at the expense of fairness, and diligence, and an honest day’s work. (Applause.)
Your generation must decide how to save God’s creation from a changing climate that threatens to destroy it. Your generation must seek peace at a time when there are those who will stop at nothing to do us harm, and when weapons in the hands of a few can destroy the many. And we must find a way to reconcile our ever-shrinking world with its ever-growing diversity — diversity of thought, diversity of culture, and diversity of belief.
In short, we must find a way to live together as one human family. (Applause.)
And it’s this last challenge that I’d like to talk about today, despite the fact that Father John stole all my best lines. (Laughter.) For the major threats we face in the 21st century — whether it’s global recession or violent extremism; the spread of nuclear weapons or pandemic disease — these things do not discriminate. They do not recognize borders. They do not see color. They do not target specific ethnic groups.
Moreover, no one person, or religion, or nation can meet these challenges alone. Our very survival has never required greater cooperation and greater understanding among all people from all places than at this moment in history.
Unfortunately, finding that common ground — recognizing that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a “single garment of destiny” — is not easy. And part of the problem, of course, lies in the imperfections of man — our selfishness, our pride, our stubbornness, our acquisitiveness, our insecurities, our egos; all the cruelties large and small that those of us in the Christian tradition understand to be rooted in original sin. We too often seek advantage over others. We cling to outworn prejudice and fear those who are unfamiliar. Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game. The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice. And so, for all our technology and scientific advances, we see here in this country and around the globe violence and want and strife that would seem sadly familiar to those in ancient times.
We know these things; and hopefully one of the benefits of the wonderful education that you’ve received here at Notre Dame is that you’ve had time to consider these wrongs in the world; perhaps recognized impulses in yourself that you want to leave behind. You’ve grown determined, each in your own way, to right them. And yet, one of the vexing things for those of us interested in promoting greater understanding and cooperation among people is the discovery that even bringing together persons of good will, bringing together men and women of principle and purpose — even accomplishing that can be difficult.
The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm. The gay activist and the evangelical pastor may both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts. Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in an admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son’s or daughter’s hardships can be relieved. (Applause.)
The question, then — the question then is how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without, as Father John said, demonetizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?
And of course, nowhere do these questions come up more powerfully than on the issue of abortion.
As I considered the controversy surrounding my visit here, I was reminded of an encounter I had during my Senate campaign, one that I describe in a book I wrote called “The Audacity of Hope.” A few days after I won the Democratic nomination, I received an e-mail from a doctor who told me that while he voted for me in the Illinois primary, he had a serious concern that might prevent him from voting for me in the general election. He described himself as a Christian who was strongly pro-life — but that was not what was preventing him potentially from voting for me.
What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my website — an entry that said I would fight “right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose.” The doctor said he had assumed I was a reasonable person, he supported my policy initiatives to help the poor and to lift up our educational system, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. He wrote, “I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words.” Fair-minded words.
After I read the doctor’s letter, I wrote back to him and I thanked him. And I didn’t change my underlying position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my website. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that — when we open up our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe — that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground. That’s when we begin to say, “Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any woman is not made casually, it has both moral and spiritual dimensions.”
So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions, let’s reduce unintended pregnancies. (Applause.) Let’s make adoption more available. (Applause.) Let’s provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term. (Applause.) Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women.” Those are things we can do. (Applause.)
Now, understand — understand, Class of 2009, I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. Because no matter how much we may want to fudge it — indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory — the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.
Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words. It’s a way of life that has always been the Notre Dame tradition. (Applause.) Father Hesburgh has long spoken of this institution as both a lighthouse and a crossroads. A lighthouse that stands apart, shining with the wisdom of the Catholic tradition, while the crossroads is where “¼differences of culture and religion and conviction can co-exist with friendship, civility, hospitality, and especially love.” And I want to join him and Father John in saying how inspired I am by the maturity and responsibility with which this class has approached the debate surrounding today’s ceremony. You are an example of what Notre Dame is about. (Applause.)
This tradition of cooperation and understanding is one that I learned in my own life many years ago — also with the help of the Catholic Church.
You see, I was not raised in a particularly religious household, but my mother instilled in me a sense of service and empathy that eventually led me to become a community organizer after I graduated college. And a group of Catholic churches in Chicago helped fund an organization known as the Developing Communities Project, and we worked to lift up South Side neighborhoods that had been devastated when the local steel plant closed.
And it was quite an eclectic crew — Catholic and Protestant churches, Jewish and African American organizers, working-class black, white, and Hispanic residents — all of us with different experiences, all of us with different beliefs. But all of us learned to work side by side because all of us saw in these neighborhoods other human beings who needed our help — to find jobs and improve schools. We were bound together in the service of others.
And something else happened during the time I spent in these neighborhoods — perhaps because the church folks I worked with were so welcoming and understanding; perhaps because they invited me to their services and sang with me from their hymnals; perhaps because I was really broke and they fed me. (Laughter.) Perhaps because I witnessed all of the good works their faith inspired them to perform, I found myself drawn not just to the work with the church; I was drawn to be in the church. It was through this service that I was brought to Christ.
And at the time, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin was the Archbishop of Chicago. (Applause.) For those of you too young to have known him or known of him, he was a kind and good and wise man. A saintly man. I can still remember him speaking at one of the first organizing meetings I attended on the South Side. He stood as both a lighthouse and a crossroads — unafraid to speak his mind on moral issues ranging from poverty and AIDS and abortion to the death penalty and nuclear war. And yet, he was congenial and gentle in his persuasion, always trying to bring people together, always trying to find common ground. Just before he died, a reporter asked Cardinal Bernardin about this approach to his ministry. And he said, “You can’t really get on with preaching the Gospel until you’ve touched hearts and minds.”
My heart and mind were touched by him. They were touched by the words and deeds of the men and women I worked alongside in parishes across Chicago. And I’d like to think that we touched the hearts and minds of the neighborhood families whose lives we helped change. For this, I believe, is our highest calling.
Now, you, Class of 2009, are about to enter the next phase of your life at a time of great uncertainty. You’ll be called to help restore a free market that’s also fair to all who are willing to work. You’ll be called to seek new sources of energy that can save our planet; to give future generations the same chance that you had to receive an extraordinary education. And whether as a person drawn to public service, or simply someone who insists on being an active citizen, you will be exposed to more opinions and ideas broadcast through more means of communication than ever existed before. You’ll hear talking heads scream on cable, and you’ll read blogs that claim definitive knowledge, and you will watch politicians pretend they know what they’re talking about. (Laughter.) Occasionally, you may have the great fortune of actually seeing important issues debated by people who do know what they’re talking about — by well-intentioned people with brilliant minds and mastery of the facts. In fact, I suspect that some of you will be among those brightest stars.
And in this world of competing claims about what is right and what is true, have confidence in the values with which you’ve been raised and educated. Be unafraid to speak your mind when those values are at stake. Hold firm to your faith and allow it to guide you on your journey. In other words, stand as a lighthouse.
But remember, too, that you can be a crossroads. Remember, too, that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It’s the belief in things not seen. It’s beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us. And those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own.
And this doubt should not push us away our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, cause us to be wary of too much self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open and curious and eager to continue the spiritual and moral debate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame. And within our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us even as we cling to our faith to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles, and most of all through an abiding example of good works and charity and kindness and service that moves hearts and minds.
For if there is one law that we can be most certain of, it is the law that binds people of all faiths and no faith together. It’s no coincidence that it exists in Christianity and Judaism; in Islam and Hinduism; in Buddhism and humanism. It is, of course, the Golden Rule — the call to treat one another as we wish to be treated. The call to love. The call to serve. To do what we can to make a difference in the lives of those with whom we share the same brief moment on this Earth.
So many of you at Notre Dame — by the last count, upwards of 80 percent — have lived this law of love through the service you’ve performed at schools and hospitals; international relief agencies and local charities. Brennan is just one example of what your class has accomplished. That’s incredibly impressive, a powerful testament to this institution. (Applause.)
Now you must carry the tradition forward. Make it a way of life. Because when you serve, it doesn’t just improve your community, it makes you a part of your community. It breaks down walls. It fosters cooperation. And when that happens — when people set aside their differences, even for a moment, to work in common effort toward a common goal; when they struggle together, and sacrifice together, and learn from one another — then all things are possible.
After all, I stand here today, as President and as an African American, on the 55th anniversary of the day that the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Now, Brown was of course the first major step in dismantling the “separate but equal” doctrine, but it would take a number of years and a nationwide movement to fully realize the dream of civil rights for all of God’s children. There were freedom rides and lunch counters and Billy clubs, and there was also a Civil Rights Commission appointed by President Eisenhower. It was the 12 resolutions recommended by this commission that would ultimately become law in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
There were six members of this commission. It included five whites and one African American; Democrats and Republicans; two Southern governors, the dean of a Southern law school, a Midwestern university president, and your own Father Ted Hesburgh, President of Notre Dame. (Applause.) So they worked for two years, and at times, President Eisenhower had to intervene personally since no hotel or restaurant in the South would serve the black and white members of the commission together. And finally, when they reached an impasse in Louisiana, Father Ted flew them all to Notre Dame’s retreat in Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin — (applause) — where they eventually overcame their differences and hammered out a final deal.
And years later, President Eisenhower asked Father Ted how on Earth he was able to broker an agreement between men of such different backgrounds and beliefs. And Father Ted simply said that during their first dinner in Wisconsin, they discovered they were all fishermen. (Laughter.) And so he quickly readied a boat for a twilight trip out on the lake. They fished, and they talked, and they changed the course of history.
I will not pretend that the challenges we face will be easy, or that the answers will come quickly, or that all our differences and divisions will fade happily away — because life is not that simple. It never has been.
But as you leave here today, remember the lessons of Cardinal Bernardin, of Father Hesburgh, of movements for change both large and small. Remember that each of us, endowed with the dignity possessed by all children of God, has the grace to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we all seek the same love of family, the same fulfillment of a life well lived. Remember that in the end, in some way we are all fishermen.
If nothing else, that knowledge should give us faith that through our collective labor, and God’s providence, and our willingness to shoulder each other’s burdens, America will continue on its precious journey towards that more perfect union. Congratulations, Class of 2009. May God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)
James Carville: 'Failure is to success as oxygen is to life', Tulane University - 2008
17 May 2008, Tulane University, Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans
As you see, my speech will be awfully short on advice, but I do advise you that when you pick a spouse, pick one – be as lucky as I did, and pick one that fascinates you, and challenges you, and entertains you, that you enjoy like so much, as I do with Mary, and we're delighted to be returned to the city that we fell in love in, and we got married in, and now we're going to live in.
Now, I want to welcome all you "old" school fans – (Applause) – I left Louisiana in 1986 and returned in 2008, which is 22 years. To give you some idea of 22 years -- that was how long it took me to get out of undergraduate school – (Laughter) – or it's how long it took FEMA to get to New Orleans. I don't know which one, but -- (Laughter)
All of these commencements, and I've – from everywhere – from Pala Alto to Princeton, from Boulder to Boston, from Athens to Ann Arbor, all have a certain tenor, and that is that a commencement speaker is supposed to deliver some wisdom or observation, something about what they've learned, to you, and that's what's supposed to take you forward in life -- and you will get no such thing here in New Orleans. (Laughter) I'll promise you. The May air is full of such nauseating bunk. (Laughter).
But when you listen to what Dr. Cowen said – and I did the research – I thought I might use this, as the rabbis would say, as a teaching moment. And a teaching moment is not what I have to teach you. It's what "you" have taught "me," and what you have taught the world. That's right. This is about you giving me and the world an education.
The first thing you taught me – I suspected this was true, but I didn't know it. I now know it. The age of cynicism is dead. You drove a stake right through the heart of it. (Applause) Your fingerprints are all over it. You heard it. You left because of the storm. You had to disperse all over the country – 600 different schools. You heard about, "Oh, the heat, the humidity, the corruption, the crime," the this, "the geographics" – whatever -- you heard every reason that you shouldn't come back, and you did. Every cynic had every reason for you.
I want to remind you of what C.S. Lewis said in the 1943 essay. He said, "You can't go on seeing through things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To see through all things is to say is not to see." And every cynic, every person, could see through everything, but you felt – you felt that -- you felt it. And your feelings are much, much more important to you than your sight. Those are the most important things they have. And you saw it. And when this history of his generation is written – and Dr. Cowen is right, you are going to be the next-greatest generation. At the top – at the very top of this generation is going to be the Tulane Class of 2008. (Applause)
Lesson Number 2 -- in this teaching moment we're having here is: You did not fear failure. And I want to talk you a little bit about failure. Failure is to success what oxygen is to life. You say, "Wait a minute. That sounds absurd. How can -- "Failure is to success what oxygen is to life." There can be no success without failure. You instinctively understood that. Because in September of 2005, this was not an assured thing – not at all. In order to succeed you have to fail.
Let me give you an example. Now you say, "I'm a little bit skeptical of this. I need some proof." Okay. Who is the most successful American ever? Who is the person that – okay, I'll throw a name out just for the hell of it. How about Abe Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois? Pretty stout, wasn't he? Pretty stout. Who is the greatest failure in American history? Abraham Lincoln.
Let me read to you about Lincoln's failures, because I think it's very important to keep these in mind as you go forward, so you never fear failure. Lincoln failed in business as a shopkeeper. He failed as a farmer. He ran for the State legislature and lost. His sweetheart died. He had a nervous breakdown. When he finally got to the State legislature, he ran for Speaker and lost. He ran for Vice President -- lost. He ran for the Senate -- lost again. And when he was finally elected President – the nation he was elected to lead fell apart. As Commander in Chief, he was inexperienced. He lost the First Battle of Manassas, Big Bethel, Kessler's Cross Lanes, McDowell, Fort Monroe, Cross Keys, Fort Republic, Gaines' Mill, Cedar Mountain, Fair Oaks, Fairfield, Gap, Second Manassas, he pressed on, then he lost Harpers Ferry, Shepherdstown and the Battle of Fredericksburg.
And that was just a partial list of what he failed at. He was prone to depression during the war. His son, Willie, died, and his wife was the subject of bitter political attacks.
You're not going to fail as much as Lincoln (Laughter), so don't worry about it. Have no fear. Have no fear. And you've already shown – you've already shown a knack for looking failure in the eye and pressing on, and pressing on.
I also think – Lesson Number 3 -- it is completely and totally appropriate that this class graduate in this building. A little bit about the history of this building. (Applause) There is a – I think a great movie, but certainly a movie that's produced a line that defines the generation before you. A Field of Dreams, where they said, "If you build it, they will come." "If you build it, they will come." And they built this building, and they came. The Rolling Stones came here – largest indoor concert ever. President – my wife's idol, President George H. W. Bush was nominated in this building. Pope John Paul II came to this building. Six Super Bowls – more than any other – come to this building. The BCS Championship – of which my beloved Tigers have won two -- have come to this building. Mohammed Ali came here for a championship fight; he came to this building. We all have the energy of this building hosting people who had no place left to go during Hurricane Katrina. This building has a glorious history. Many great things have happened here.
But you remember this for the rest of your life: Maybe the greatest thing that happened here is that this class came here to graduate. Because the maxim, "If we build it, they will come," has now changed. And it is now, "We will come and we build it." And that marks a departure. And that's the significance of what you mean, and what you mean in this building that has hosted and seen, and been a part of so much.
So you will go on, and because of what you've learned and what you felt, and what you all have been through, you'll all go far in life. Some of you will go distant from here -- many places, many achievements, many accomplishments. What I want you to try to do is save a sliver in your heart for this magnificent university and its faculty, who educated you; for this utterly wonderful, interesting, fascinating city, who thanks you; and for this very humble and respectful commencement speaker, who loves you.
Thank you. (Applause)
Jami Miscik: 'Public Service in Divisive Times', Pepperdine University - 2019
20 March 2019, Malibu, California, USA
Before entering the private sector, Miscik had a distinguished twenty-two year career in intelligence, ultimately serving as the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy director for intelligence.
Thank you for that kind introduction and for giving me the opportunity to visit Seaver College again.
It is funny. I have briefed Presidents, I have negotiated with Afghan warlords, but there is something weirdly intimidating about coming back to speak at one’s alma mater. I don’t know why that is, but it is true.
I thank Dan for that kind introduction, and I thank you all for welcoming me back.
I want to focus my remarks on the enduring need for public service. I think this is a particularly important topic in these politically divisive times. Today, only one-half of Americans trust their government to do the right thing, and even fewer are satisfied with the way democracy is working.
Too often, I think that the American people see “politics” and think “government.” Or, they think in terms of “bureaucrats” — and have the notion that the government is filled with people who have second-class minds who couldn’t get a job in the private sector. But, next time you hear someone belittling the quality of those “bureaucrats” in Washington, remember that the federal workforce has included 69 Nobel laureates.
Clearly, public service can take many forms. For me, it was serving as an intelligence officer. And, as I make my comments here today, let me be very clear on a couple of critical points:
I am not a partisan.
I am not a Republican, nor am I a Democrat.
As a CIA officer, I was not a policymaker, and I was not a political appointee. Our duty was to serve the President regardless of who was sitting at that desk. This continues to be the case today.
In my time, I served 5 Presidents — 3 Republicans and 2 Democrats. My job was to convey our best intelligence and analytic judgments to the President and his national security team.
We weren’t there to be liked or disliked.
We were there to do our job.
Two Stories
Let me start by telling you two stories.
As I sat here in Elkins Auditorium — my go-to-spot was right over there, on the aisle, about halfway up — I had no idea that I would go into public service. I started at Pepperdine as a political science major. Along the way, I decided to become a double major in economics. I planned to go to law school and to specialize in international law. I took the LSATs, applied to 5 or 6 schools, and waited for my acceptances to roll in.
One day, Professor Caldwell asked me if I really wanted to do that? He suggested that if what I really loved was the international part, then why would I go in through the back door of law school when I could just go for it directly?
I don’t think Professor Caldwell knew he was ultimately directing me into the arms of the CIA, but he did. I hurried to apply to graduate schools of international relations. A year after getting my Masters — and after an incredibly intense vetting process by the Agency — I was offered a job as a GS-9 analyst in CIA’s Office of Global Issues. When I got the job offer, I was working at the mall in Thousand Oaks and living in Malibu Canyon Village. Clearly, I was not focused on having a “Plan B.”
I loaded up my car and started driving across country. The first night I stopped at a hotel in Gallup, New Mexico and turned on the evening news. The lead story was that a bomb had destroyed the US Embassy in Beirut. The front of the Embassy had collapsed, killing many in the CIA station. Colleagues I would never get to know had died in an instant. Later, I would be at the ceremony when their stars were etched into the Memorial Wall in the lobby of CIA headquarters. A solemn reminder of their sacrifice. From war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq to risky covert operations in denied areas, the dedication of the people I worked with was inspiring.
One of the first people I met at the Agency was a man named Bill. Bill was probably a dozen years older than me. He had served eight years in the Marine Corps. He had flown more than 75 missions over Vietnam and Laos, but for the five years before joining the Agency, he was right down the road from us, earning his Ph.D at Claremont. Bill graduated with his doctorate in government, and started working at the CIA in January 1979.
That same year, as I was sitting in here in Elkins, the news was filled with stories about the Iranian revolution:
The Shah had fled the country in January.
In February, the Ayatollah Khomeini had returned from exile.
On Valentine’s Day, the US Embassy in Tehran was overtaken over by a group of militants. This was not the famous “student” takeover … that would come later.
That summer, Bill had finished his Agency training, and in August, he was told his 1stoverseas posting would be to Tehran. The Chief of the Iranian Operations Branch told him not to worry about another embassy attack, reassuring him by saying:
The Iranians have already done it once, so they don’t have to prove anything by doing it again.
Besides, the onlything that could trigger an attack would be if the Shah was admitted into the States, and no one in this town [Washington] is stupid enough to do that.
Bill reported for duty in Tehran on the 12thof September.
A month later — at the end of October — the Shah was admitted to the United States for medical treatments.
On November 4th, the US Embassy was overrun, and Bill became a hostage.
He ultimately spent more than 400 days in solitary confinement.
After his release, Bill came back to CIA HQs and continued his public service for another 10-15 years.
People Like You
Why do I tell you these stories? Because this is your government. I want you to know that your government isn’t some distant entity. It is filled with people like you. People who sat in Elkins Auditorium or Claremont’s Davidson Lecture Hall and who chose to do public service. Like the men and women who are in our armed forces or the foreign service officers who work in our Embassies and Consulates around the world. They chooseto serve.
Why do they do it? It certainly isn’t for the pay. It isn’t for public recognition or accolades. In fact, often, they face quite the opposite. A former president once said of the Agency, “Your successes are unheralded, but your failures are trumpeted.” I personally know that to be true.
Bob Gates, one of my first bosses at the Agency and who later became Secretary of Defense for both Presidents Bush and Obama answered the question of why people went into public service by saying this:
“If you scratch deeply enough, you will find that those who serve — no matter how outwardly tough or jaded or egotistical — are, in their heart of hearts, romantics and idealists. And optimists. We actually believe we can make a difference, and [believe] that we can make the lives of others better.”
People at the Agency and throughout the government always speak in terms of “the mission.” The Agency’s mission, like that of its military counterparts, is to protect the country, andto be worthy of being entrusted with that responsibility.
Believe me, there was never a day in my years of service when I questioned whether what I was doing was important. Each time I would walk through the doors of the West Wing and into the Oval Office, I would have one of those “take your breath away” moments:
Me. A girl from Redondo Beach CA, a Redondo SeaHawk, a Pepperdine Wave — was getting ready to brief the President of the United States on the country’s most urgent national security issues.
It was Heady Stuff.
Every time.
Public Service in Divisive Times
Some may shy away from thinking about public service during these polarizing times, but the need is great and the opportunity to make a difference is high. As I said, when I was here at Pepperdine, I had no idea that I would go into public service, and I hope the same holds true for some of you.
Today, only 6 percent of federal employees are under the age of 30. I think most people just don’t think about government as a career option.
That worries me. Without people like you choosing public service, who will lead our important institutions 10 or 15 years from now?
Michael Lewis, the author of great books like The Big Short and Liar’s Poker, just wrote a book on public service called The Fifth Risk. It is worth a read to appreciate the caliber and dedication of the people who work in government, and the magnitude of the problems they are tackling. Lewis notes that the government manages a portfolio of risks that no individual or corporation could or would be willing to take on by themselves.
In one example, he talks about a 2013 incident that took place here in California near San Jose at the Metcalf Electrical Sub-Station.
On the day of the Boston Marathon bombing, 13 hours after the bombs had gone off, someone cut the communication lines to and from the Metcalf substation.
At the same time, a sniper took out 17 of the electrical transformers. They knew precisely which manhole covers would lead them to the right lines to cut, and exactly where to shoot.
This was the feeder station for Google and Apple.
For local law enforcement, the federal government, and the company, the questions were enormous: Was this the second terrorist attack of the day? Was someone trying to take down the Internet? Or was it unrelated — possibly just guys with guns, drinking beers, and shooting at things in the night?
But, then why were key cables cut?
Because there was sufficient backup on the electrical grid that night the incident didn’t get much attention unless you were one of the government’s employees who worries about attacks to our infrastructure and vulnerabilities in our electrical grid.
It took two years of sustained effort and investigations before Department of Homeland Security was able to say they believed the culprit was a former company insider.
Every year the Partnership for Public Service gives out an award called “The Sammy” — it is short for “Service to America Medals.” Michael Lewis said he was struck by the mind-blowing accomplishments of the recipients so I looked at some of the awardees over last few years. All of them were people who chose to put their world-class expertise to work for our government.
There was a PhD scientist at The Center for Disease Control who assembled a rapid response team to protect expectant mothers and their babies from the Zika virus.
Or, the woman who led a USAID team into Liberia in the middle of an Ebola outbreak and crafted a successful strategy of containment where previously there had only been chaos.
Or someone, I knew personally, a master of disguise at CIA who orchestrated the daring rescue of six US diplomats. A story that Ben Affleck turned into his Academy Award winning movie, Argo.
As a country, our citizens know disturbingly little about our government and our history. Up until the 1970s, civics and government were part of almost everyone’s mandatory education. That has changed.
A study from last October found that only one in three native-bornAmericans could pass the exam that immigrants must take to become citizens.
For those under the age of 45, the passage rate dropped to just 19 percent.
I know I shouldn’t laugh, but on the multiple choice test many of those who failed the test, answered that they thought the phrase, “The Cold War” had something to do with climate change!
With all the talk of immigration in the last few years, it is interesting to note that some of the people most drawn to public service are first-generation Americans. Coming from countries where they had first-hand experience with collapsing governments and failed states may have given them a greater appreciation for the importance of good government.
One of government’s key responsibilities is to keep its citizens safe. Whether you are a food or drug tester at the FDA, an air traffic controller, a technician at a nuclear power plant, or one of the firemen who protected Pepperdine during the Woolsey fire last year — their job is to keep you safe. Even the poor guy at the IRS is ultimately collecting taxes to help keep you safe and protected.
The goal of government is to give its citizens the opportunity to excel — be it through education, research and development, or economic growth. The presidential election in 2016 laid bare the extent to which so many Americans felt they had been denied those opportunities.
They were parents who felt the system was rigged against them, and that their children had no chance of getting ahead.
They wanted leaders who recognized that their jobs had been lost, their towns hollowed out, and their health increasingly jeopardized.
They felt patronized by elites who ignored their concerns. And now, instead of seeing education as a way up or a way out of their circumstances, they saw it as a barrier-to-entry put in place to protect the establishment and the status quo.
Their rage was not ideological. They were neither exclusively to the far-left nor to the far-right. They were more “anti-whatever-we-already-had-and-already tried.” I was stunned by how many voters turned their support from Bernie Sanders when he dropped out directly to Donald Trump. That isn’t ideological. That is a desire to find something different. They wanted to be heard, and they trusted an outsider to hear them.
Today our society is facing a multitude of forces working to drive us apart.
We choose to listen to media outlets that not only tell us what we want to hear, but reaffirm that we are right, and castigate those who disagree with us.
We choose to live in gated communities.
We allow ourselves to believe that one must be protected fromdisquieting ideas and speakersrather than to be challenged by them, and to learn from them.
You will find that opening your mind and experiences to the uncomfortable or unfamiliar is an important part of your lifelong education. When I was here at Seaver, I tutored a boy at Camp David Gonzales — the maximum security prison for juveniles that used to be up Malibu Canyon Road. Henry was serving a prison sentence for a gang-related murder, and I was teaching him math and reading. He was 16. He had a metal plate in his head where he had been shot. He was a father. He was smart, but he only had a second grade education, despite having been “passed” through every grade until he went to prison.
One day we were talking and I asked him how he came to join his particular gang? Was it based on where he lived? Or where he went to school? Henry told me it was easy for him. He had simply joined his mother’s gang. That was an eye-opening moment for me. Talk about a discomforting idea. He lived in a world so different than my own. Sadly, studies now show us that your future success can be determined by your zip code.
Had Henry grown up in a different zip code, he may well have been the one standing here talking to you today.
I make these points to underscore that we must find ways to come together as a society.
The unofficial motto of the United States is “E Pluribus Unum.”
From Many, One.”
Today, our country is in urgent need of “We.” Not us. Not them, “We.”
And public service is a great way to take up that charge.
The first time I heard the phrase “GOAT,” it didn’t stand for “Greatest of All Time.” I was in England and there they use it to mean a “Government of All Talents.” That is what we need in the United States today. We need your ideas, your energy, and your talents.
To truly be “Proud to Be an American,” — to go beyond a simple song title or slogans at a pep rally — we have to remember as responsible citizens we each have an obligation to serve our country.
The factthat our union remains imperfect should compel each of us to want to work to make it better.
Does that mean I think that everyone should go to work for the Federal government. “Absolutely not!”
Critical Thinking as a Public Service
Whatever profession you choose, one of the biggest contributions you can make to the health of our democracy is to be an informed citizen and a critical thinker.
Ignorance is not a virtue. It is just plain lazy.
Critical thinking is, in and of itself, a vital and needed public service. To be a critical thinker you need to:
• Recognize that it is much easier to be against something than to be for something. If you disagree with something, push yourself to consider what the better alternative might be. If you don’t like one solution, think of another, but don’t deny the existence of the problem altogether.
• Understand what really constitutes balanced reporting. Cable news shows that put one person on from the left and another person on from the right aren’t giving you true balanced reporting. This is what people mean when they talk about false equivalency. If one person says it is raining and another person says it is not, it is the job of the journalist to look out the window and tell you what is really happening.
• Learn to disagree with someone without demonizing them. Just because you think they are wrong, doesn’t mean they are immoral or their idea is not worthy of discussion.
• Be critical of those you agree with as well as those you don’t. When someone oversteps or stretches the truth, challenge them; when a newspaper makes judgments in what is supposed to be a factual news story, take note and recognize the difference between reporting and commentary.
• Recognize that opinion is not fact, and often, it isn’t even analysis. As intelligence officers we would analyze a complicated issue for weeks or months on end. We would agonize over the precise wording needed to capture the story and convey the caveats. We also had to ask ourselves: What are we missing? In Washington, policy makers wanted to know what we knew, but they also wanted to know what we didn’t know. Only then could they make a truly informed choice.
Finally, it is critically important to realize how much words matter.
Complex issues can’t be reduced to bumper stickers or hats. Don’t succumb to doing it yourself. Using phrases like “Fake News,” “Deplorables,” or “Deep State” isn’t helpful. The shorthand is intellectually corrupt, and the impact can be corrosive.
Those of you with a strong liberal arts education like the one you receive here at Pepperdine have an advantage. You have been taught how to assess information and reach conclusions. In your classes, you question and, hopefully challenge, your teachers. Sorry faculty!
In an era of social media, however, we have to be cognizant that we are fed a stream of information that constantly needs to be questioned and assessed.
So question actively, listen respectfully, and make informed decisions. Hold true to your principles, but let your opinions and positions change when new information is presented.
Bringing it Back to My World
Let me bring my remarks on public service back to my world of geopolitics, national security, and risk.
Dedicated public servants and informed citizens make for a powerful combination. The final piece needed to close the circle is political leadership. We need leaders who focus on meeting our challenges, and inspiring us to positive outcomes.2000, I was the first intelligence officer to go to the Governor’s Mansion in Austin to begin George W. Bush’s daily intelligence briefing. As governor of Texas, he had grappled with all sorts of complex issues, but as Governor, he never had to learn the details of a North Korean nuke or throw-weight of a ballistic missile. In 2016, when President Trump was elected he was confident in his own abilities — he was someone who trusted his gut and his instincts — but, again he had little experience dealing with the foreign policy issues he would face.
No elected official can be expected to be an expert on every issue. There are analysts, scientists, and specialists in government who have spent decades monitoring things like weapons programs, acting to slow their advancement when possible, and supporting diplomats tracking compliance with international accords. Elected officials and their political appointees should take advantage of this expertise on a daily basis.
When expertise is coupled with a leader’s strong conviction, it is a powerful force.
In fact, to achieve maximum national security effectiveness, you need to have both.
I worry when I see that the 2020 budget proposal suggests cutting the State Department’s budget by 24 percent. I would be amongst the first to agree that budgets in Washington can be trimmed, but a cut of this size would seriously jeopardize expertise and the ability of our diplomatic corps to protect US interests abroad.
Everyone who goes into public service in the national security community takes an oath to protect the country to the best of their ability. Elected officials may have the leeway to exaggerate, embellish, or add rhetorical flourishes, but national security professionals do not. If you are lucky enough to rise to a senior leadership position in the national security world, you also carry huge responsibilities.
One of the key responsibilities is that you often have to tell an elected official what they don’t want to hear. One former CIA Director said it is like being a skunk at a garden party. Picture it: The President and his political team are sitting in the Oval Office — they are happy with how things are going — and in walks an intelligence officer who says, “We have a report that Leader X who promisedyou he would do one thing is actually doing the exact opposite.” You can see the body language change and the mood darken. I suspect that President Trump recently had one of those “skunk at the garden party” moments when intelligence officers walked in with the latest reporting on North Korea.
Another responsibility for senior officials is to take a principled stand. You can’t wantthe job so much that you stop holding true to your principles. General Mattis’ recent resignation as Secretary of Defense is a perfect example. In my own case, I had to threaten to resign once when certain high-level policy makers were trying to change my intelligence analysts’ judgments to fit their political agenda.
Senior officials also have a duty to “own their own mistakes.” When we had a major intelligence failure on Iraq, on my watch, I put together a emergency task force to find out what we had missed, why we missed it, and what we should have done better.
The deputy at the time was a Naval Academy graduate so we borrowed a practice from the US Navy. When there is an incident on a nuclear submarine, they have what they call a “safety stand down”…everything stops until everyone knows what the problem was and how to fix it. We did the same thing with every CIA analyst. Whether they worked on Russia or Latin America, terrorism or finance, every one of them need to know what had gone wrong and how we proposed to fix it.
It was our responsibility to help future intel officers avoid similar mistakes.
Conclusion
The challenges we face as a country are daunting.
The world order is changing, as is our place in it. We face a rising China with its strongest leader in decades propelling it forward and doing so increasingly through one-man rule.
Our planet is fragile and in danger. The science is clear and action is needed.
Just think about how many apocalyptic Hollywood blockbuster movies start with some politician ignoring the scientists’ warnings.
I am just sayin’.
As our country pulls back from the international stage, our enemies see opportunities, and our allies are questioning our commitment to them.
For the last two generations, our global leadership has been buttressed by our strong economy. Now our fiscal deficits are ballooning and soon we will no longer be the world’s largest economy. It is folly to focus solely on short-term metrics, and ignore the long-term ramifications of these changes.
The technological transformation we face is unprecedented. Automation, robotics, autonomous systems, artificial intelligence and quantum computing will change our lives in the next 10 years. Some jobs will be created, but many more will be lost and people will be displaced during the transition.
It will be an economic upheaval on a scale not seen since the industrial revolution. And, note the use of the word “revolution.” One of my colleagues in government used to say, “Revolution is unthinkable, until it is inevitable.”
These are serious challenges and I haven’t even mentioned the Middle East, terrorism, Russia, Brexit, growing income inequality, gun violence, or cyber attacks.
We must work to find new solutions to old problems, and to spot and mitigate new risks as early as possible. We also need to recognize that meeting these challenges will not be without cost and sacrifice. Sacrifice is something we rarely want to consider. But, if we are clear about:
• What we are trying to achieve,
• What we are trying to prevent,
• And what sacrifices we are willing to make.
We can prevail.
We need our leaders and those in public service to focus not on taking us back to our past, but on preparing us to excel in the future. We need the best minds in the country, be it in public sector, the private sector, or in this room to be working to make our country a more perfect union.
Finally, I want to read you one quote:
Our government and our people have never stood so acutely in need of developing the full the talents of our ablest public servants” ….
But, a growing disdain for public service in our Nation as a whole. and in our colleges in particular, is now coupled with the trend of increasingly complex national problems.
We must secure the services of the best minds of our Nation.
This quote is 100 percent applicable today, and yet this was John F. Kennedy speaking in 1958. They had their own worries then. The Soviet Union – our Cold War rival — had just launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite, and the Space Race was on.
A few years later, in his Presidential Inaugural Address, Kennedy famously challenged Americans to:
• “Ask not what your country can do for you,” but to
• “Ask what you can do for your country.”
I would urge the same for all of you. Whatever path you have chosen for your personal pursuits make sure there is a public service commitment as well.
Pepperdine’s motto is “Freely Ye Received, Freely Give.” You are part of a privileged community. You are amongst the most able to help our country meet its challenges and prosper. It is both your responsibilityand your opportunity.
Thank You.
K. Sparks: 'A setback is just a set up for a comeback', Failure, faith, fruition', 45 PS, Clarence Witherspoon - 2019
21 June 2019, Queens, New York City, USA
Sonia Sotomayor: 'Education has a more important value than money', Manhattan College - 2019
Speech by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor begins at 1:29:50
17 May 2019, Manhattan College, New York City, USA
Hello, I’m thrilled to be a new Jasper. President O’ Donnell, i thank you and the Board of Trustees of this college of bestowing on me my honorary degree. I take great pride of joining the great Class of 2019. It is an honor for me to share this occasion with all of you. It is especially lovely for me to be here because it lets me return to my home borough, the Bronx. [cheers and applause]
A place that makes my heart smile whenever i come back to it. You can send a girl to Washington, D.C., but you can't take the Bronx out of her. [cheers].
Just notice how i have been saying ‘the Bronx’, the right way. President O'donnell, you began your tenure at Manhattan College in 2009. I became a Justice a month later in august 2009. We are both celebrating our 10th year anniversary and i congratulate you on your 10 years thus far. As a baseball fan, i am thrilled to be here at the birthplace of the seventh inning stretch. A tradition dating back to a game in the 1880's between your Jaspers and what is today New York City's second best baseball team, the Mets. Guess what team i favor. Hopefully, mr. President, we are both still in the early innings of our respective outings. You deserve to take particular pride in this College because it epitomizes the values of what i grew up here in the Bronx, commitment to education and community.
The five Christian Brothers who founded this institution back in 1853, following in the footsteps of the great educational pioneer, st. John Baptist understood that education has the power to change lives. And i do not just mean as i will explain today to change the financial conditions of people's lives, i mean also the power of education to touch minds and hearts, to help students lead lives of meaning and purpose.
As some of you already know, i grew up in the poorest area of the Bronx in a housing project in the southeastern part of that borough. Some of you may share similar backgrounds, i know our valedictorian does. My dad had finished sixth grade and my mom was a practical nurse that got her diploma as part of a grant after she left the army. My parents did not have many educational opportunities themselves growing up, but they and especially my mom made education the center value of the lives of my brother and me who my mom raised alone after my dad died when i was 9. She repeatedly, just like your mother, told me that education would open the door of opportunity.
Eventually when my brother and i were in high school, my mother was able to achieve her own lifelong dream of going to college and becoming a registered nurse. For all of the parents and even grandparents out there, it is never too late to go back to school. It was impossible for my brother and me not to study hard when we watched how hard mom studied night after night at our kitchen table. My mother made clear both some words and deeds that a good education was the key to success in life.
As is so often the case, i have learned my mother was right, so much so that the front cover of a children's book i published this year called Turning Pages has an illustration of me walking up the steps of the Supreme Court holding a key. That key i tell people of all ages represents what opened the whole world to me, reading and education.
It is what has opened the world for you and like all good things, it did not come easily. You have put in years of very hard work to get your degree today. You and likely your families have sacrificed time and money to make it possible, through triumphs and trials, sweat and fatigue, you have arrived at this moment.
While i hope you will congratulate yourself on this achievement, i hope that you also take time to thank those who helped you along the way, working together with others, you may have already discovered is one of the great secrets to achieving anything in the world. I first realized after my own time in college, which as you heard, felt a little bit like arriving in an alien country. My very first semester, i was assigned to write a midterm paper in the Introductory American History course i was taking. When i got my paper back, i saw a big red C Plus marked at the top. That was the lowest grade i had received on anything since the fourth grade. I was devastated. I went to my history professor and asked why i had received such a low grade. Her feedback that both my structure and grammar needed work could have been disabling, instead, however, i learned from it and i asked for help. Before the next essay, in addition to spending countless hours poring over basic grammar books, i sought out the assistance of my professors. By the time i graduated and as you know, summa cum laude, i have come to see that dreams come true only if you work hard to make them come true.
And they come true not just because of your own efforts, but also because other people in your life help you succeed. So thanks to a lot of hard work and help from others, you have made it here today and as you sit here about to receive your diplomas, i imagine you are both excited and a bit nervous, excited rightly about what you have accomplished, yet you may also be a little nervous about what this education has brought you.
Many academics and journalists are writing these days about the value of a college education, in terms of credentialing and income, particularly in the face of rising costs. Amid these conversations, it can be all too easy to ask whether pursuing a college education is worth it. The answer is yes. [cheers and applause]
Most say a college degree remains very important. Economic data shows that in the long run, a college degree means more long term earnings, particularly in comparison to a high school degree, the value of which has decreased over the years. So even though you may have a job or are looking for one and your pay may not be what you had imagined, you should be less nervous about the worth of your degree from a dollar and cents perspective. It will pay off.
But what all of this economic data misses is that education has a more important value than money. It is deeply important to our growth as people and as our community. I have been often asked if i ever imagined as a child being on the Supreme Court, the highest court of the United States. No, i say. When i was a child my family was poor. No lawyers or judges lived in my neighborhood. I had no idea of the Supreme Court, its work in interpreting the Constitution and the laws of the United States affects people's lives.
You cannot dream of becoming something you do not know about. You have to learn to dream big.
Education expose us to what the world has to offer, to the possibilities open to you. It teaches you how to navigate your profession and life in general. For me, education opened my eyes to what i could become. Education enriches you as a person. I often ask kids to identify the most interesting person they have met. Inevitably, they identify a person who speaks about his or her worth with knowledge, who inspires others to consider a new idea or perspective or simply amuses people with a play on words or an insightful poke of fun on a human condition.
Education expands your knowledge and your ability to relate with and in the world. Education helps you to think critically, to argue persuasively and to think about things from many different perspectives. These abilities in turn also help you navigate the difficulties that life presents, to map problems on to a broader understanding of how things work
. To paraphrase a prayer from a late theologian, you learn a way to manage the things, things that can change and wisdom to tell the difference. Those skills are the real value of education and what has made it worthwhile to you. For each of you, different courses and topics you studied here will help you navigate your lives in different ways. Whichever way these are for you, i know that they have and will help you on your journey because education empowers you to grow beyond the limits you once knew and it takes you beyond the places and ways of thinking you already know and exposes you to the greater potential that exists in the world.
My education taught me about the Supreme Court, a workplace beyond my wildest dreams as a child, but the value of an education diminishes unless you put it to use, particularly good use.
Good use includes earning a living and supporting your families. I suspect your parents are happy to hear that I'm telling you that.
It also does mean something more significant. It means that your education here at Manhattan College has underscored. It means contributing to the betterment of the community and world you live in. That betterment does not have to be in a big or public way by becoming a Supreme Court Justice.
My grandmother bettered her community by ensuring that no one around her ever went hungry.
My mom as a practical nurse would give shots to neighbors who needed them or help others with blood pressure readings or changing of bandages. I recall calling my mother endlessly, when the Senate was voting for my nomination to the second circuit, i was unable to reach her because she had taken her neighbor to a doctor's appointment. Just as i am sure you have learned, my family taught me to measure happiness, not by what i do as work, but from what i give to others.
It is the most important lesson and the deepest source of meaning i have found in life. There are many ways in which you can use your education to foster that kind of meaning in your own lives, joining your school boards, becoming members of the Board of Trustees, for example, or assisting with food or clothing collections or tutoring in local schools.
Indeed, i suspect that your time at Manhattan College has exposed you to many possibilities given the commitment of this college to service including its rikers island jail project. These are examples of ways in which education can broaden your perspective and open up new sources of purpose and meaning. In the end, however you decide to be of service, it is the willingness to put your newly gained knowledge to use that will both help you grow as an individual and also help us grow as a community and as a nation.
My decision to become a lawyer was itself an exercise in service, working in the law is a career that i have always understood to be fundamentally about helping people. Lawyers both help individual clients and our society as a whole by insuring that the rules we create to organize ourselves as a society are applied justly, neutrally, and fairly.
That is the kind of work i have always woken up to in the morning and i am excited to be able to do it. But helping people is not a feature you need to learn. It should be and is a part of every job. If you do your job, bearing that goal in mind, you will be happy and you will help people.
So as you go forth from this institution, ask yourself each day, who have i helped today, how have i made a difference today. Who did you smile at? Who did you call to find out if they're feeling ok? What have you done? If you can answer those questions each day, then you are living life in its most meaningful way. You have given and shared something of great value.
My hope for all of you here today is that you find a life filled with meaning and that you create that meaning by serving your community and the people in your life. Education, hard work, and a sense of community are what made me who i am, they are the values of Manhattan College whose ranks i am proud to join with the honorary degree you have given today and the values that will sustain your life in your future.
Class of 2019, i thank you for letting me share this day with you. Go off, dream big and accomplish much, but pause to have fun celebrating tonight and remember to thank all of the people in the audience and beyond, your family, friends, professors, and administrators and all of the others who are the unheralded heroes of today, they have labored side by side with you and a sure you, they will labor with you each step of your way forward. Please join me now, not in applauding me, they will labor with you each but in applauding yourselves and all of the people who have helped to make your dreams of today come true. [cheers and applause] thank you, and applaud all of the people in the audience. [cheers and applause]
Glenn Close: 'Your perspective is unique', College of William & Mary - 2019
11 May 2019, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA
Thank you Chancellor Gates, Rector Littel and President Rowe for this great, great honor. I am humbled and deeply moved to receive this from a community that had everything to do with who I am today. A community that challenged me, prepared me and inspired me. A community whose passions and philosophies became part of my DNA, giving me strength and resilience, as I stepped out into the world. Thank you. Thank you. I will treasure this always.
To the distinguished faculty, guests, families and — most importantly — to the graduating class of 2019, I’m proud to be here to help celebrate the women who have worked, taught and studied at this incredible institution. And I am particularly proud to be on this stage with President Katherine Rowe. I‘m pretty sure King William is spinning in his grave. God bless ‘im!
But I know the dust of Queen Mary has been fist-pumping in the nether world for the past 100 years. At a time when being part of a tribe can have negative, divisive connotations, I am deeply and forever proud to be a part of the mighty tribe of William & Mary graduates — past, present and future.
When I graduated, 45 years ago, I was the first woman in my family to earn a college degree. My mother never finished high school. She got married at 18 and had her first child two years later. Neither of my grandmothers, or great-grandmothers, went to collage. In their society, at the time, it just wasn’t done. My paternal grandmother, however, did run away from Texas and worked in a bank in order to put her sister through college. My two sisters never went to college. So being here today has an extra special significance for me.
I just want to mention briefly why I happened to end up at William & Mary. I won’t go into the complexities of the story, but suffice it to say that the first time I saw this campus was in the late 60’s when I sprinted off the girls’ bus, in my cheery travel uniform, as a member of a singing group for which I wrote songs and performed for five years after high school. The show was the offshoot of a cult-like group that my parents fell prey to when I was 7-years-old. Once off the bus, we enthusiastically set up our mics and speakers in the old Student Rec Center on Dog Street, and proceeded to sing our hearts out for whatever students paused to listen.
As I sang the simplistic songs and did the regimented choreography, I studied the students who were lounging on the furniture or leaning against the walls and there came a moment when I knew that I had to somehow leave the group and come get my education here. And you want to know why? It was because, almost to a person, they were looking at us like this … as if they were thinking — “Really?” That’s what I’d been secretly feeling for a long, long time, but I hadn’t had the courage to face it and do something about it. “Really? Is this who I really am?"
Somehow, in spite of my ignorance, I sensed that on this campus, I would find kindred souls. So eventually, against their wishes, and with no encouragement, whatsoever, I left the group and, 49 years ago, I entered The College of William & Mary in Virginia, a 22 year-old clueless freshman, with an essentially empty toolbox and a passionate determination to get a liberal arts education and become an actress. That fateful September, I walked into Phi Beta Kappa Hall and auditioned for the first play being staged that season —Twelfth Night. Professor Howard Scammon, head of the Theater Department, cast me in one of the principal roles: Olivia. He eventually understood the seriousness of my intent and was my mentor for the four years I was here. Meanwhile, I soaked up everything I could learn and, like a desert when the rains come, for the first time in my life I started to bloom. The rest is history.
I wanted to tell you about why I ended up here because I have learned how important it is to have a healthy dose of skepticism. I don’t mean cynicism or contempt, I mean the crucial ability to question and assess — from a dispassionate, objective point of view — whatever beliefs or tribes you eventually choose to espouse. It doesn’t come to me naturally. I had been raised to be a total believer, to not question. But for me, coming into this ideas-rich community, having had all my beliefs and behaviors dictated to me from the age of 7, it was vital that I learn how to question. You have a much harder time of it now than I ever had. When I graduated, there was no Internet. You wrote your papers on typewriters! There was no Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. I didn’t have the added, enormous pressure of social media against which to develop as an adult. I think my mind would have exploded. I didn’t have that insistent, seductive noise in my pocket and at my fingertips. Even now, I try to question, but how do I maintain my individuality without thinking that I am somehow not relevant, not hip enough, rich enough, not posting enough, that I don’t have enough followers?
What each of you have, and what you must believe in from this day forward, is your inherent uniqueness. Your singular point of view. No one looks out onto the world through your eyes. Your perspective is unique. It’s important and it counts. Try not to compare it to anyone else. Accept it. Believe in it. Nurture it. Stay fiercely, joyously connected to the friends you have made here, to those you love and trust. You will have each other’s backs for the rest of your lives.
I wish I were funny like Robin Williams. I wish I could make you laugh so hard you’d fall off your chairs. I’m not wise. I have had the lucky chance to learn by doing. After being in my profession for 45 years, though, I have learned a few things that I want to briefly share with you today.
In order to inhabit a character I have had to find where we share a common humanity. I can’t do characters justice if I am judging them. I have to find a way to love them. The exploration into each character I play has made me a more tolerant and empathetic person. I have had to literally imagine myself in someone else’s shoes, looking out of someone else’s eyes. I urge you to learn how to do that. You can with practice. Start by being curious about the “whys” of someone’s behavior. Before you judge someone, before you write them off, take the time to put yourself in their shoes and see how it feels.
I have been a part of collaborative companies of actors and directors for 45 years. Companies are like living organisms, extremely sensitive to the chemistry, to the contributions of all those involved. When I was in a Broadway musical early in my career, my dressing room was right next to the stage door. I wasn’t the star, but I was a co-star and I was working my ass off every night to squeeze all there was to squeeze out of what was a pretty thankless role. It was hard work. The play was a big hit, which was fabulous, but every performance I would empty myself out, emotionally and physically, onstage and every night I could hear the producers come in the Stage Door and pass by my dressing room, on their way up to schmooze the star. It really hurt that they never knocked on my door, not to schmooze or hang out, but to simply say thank you for the hard work — eight shows a week — for which they were reaping huge benefits.
I remember that hurt and because of it, when I am the member of a company, especially if I am leading that company, I am careful to notice everyone on the team, learn about what they do and thank them. People like the craft-service guy on a movie set, who gets up earlier than everyone else and leaves the set after everyone else, who hauls heavy urns of coffee and food from location to location, rain or shine. To be aware of and to sincerely appreciate the contributions of everyone on a team makes a palpable difference.
Then there is kindness. My nephew, Calen, lives with schizophrenia. He had his first psychotic break when he was 17. My sister, Jessie, Calen’s mom, lives with bipolar disorder. Ten years ago, we founded an organization called Bring Change to Mind to fight against the stigma around mental illness because they found that stigma is as hard — sometimes harder — than the diseases themselves. We decided to talk about mental illness and stigma on a national platform. Jessie and Calen were inconceivably courageous, because 10 years ago, not many people were talking about it.
The fact is that, conservatively, one in six of us in this room is touched in some way by mental illness. It makes absolutely no sense to me that we don’t talk about it like any other chronic illness. Starting the conversation is the first step. Two days ago, I was with Calen, in front of 2,000 people, listening to him talk about living with something as scary as schizophrenia. I am astounded by how he has willed himself to manage his illness. He spoke, albeit sometimes hesitantly, searching for words without losing his train of thought, talking with grace and knowledge. Someone from the audience asked him what they should do when confronted with someone who is struggling with mental health issues and Calen simply said, “Be kind.”
Kindness. It’s a simple word, but it is essential if we are to survive as a species on this planet. So I come to another thing I’ve learned. I learned, from reading the writings of the great Edward O. Wilson, that one of the core reasons we have been so successful as a species is that we evolved the capacity to empathize. That means that the tribes who espoused empathy were more successful at survival than the ones who didn’t. In order for the community, the tribe, to survive and thrive, we humans had to evolve the ability to register the emotions, the plight, the fears and the needs of other members of our tribe and to respond to them with empathy. We die without connection. Nothing is worse for us humans than to be bereft of community. Empathy evolved because two eyes looked into two eyes. It’s the most immediate and powerful way we humans communicate. Empathy evolved because we looked at each other, face to face, not on a screen. Studies have shown that the farther away we get from two eyes looking into two eyes, the harder it is to empathize. What I have learned is that if we are to remain a free and viable society, we need to spend less time looking at screens and more time looking into each other’s eyes.
To end, I thought I’d share with you bits of a letter that somehow got to me from an old William & Mary friend. I wrote it to him 42 years ago, when I had been out in the world for three years. Reading it from where I am now in my life and in my career was quite moving. I wrote:
My mind has been all over the place because of a very erratic rehearsal schedule. I did get the part of Estelle in The Rose Tattoo and am right now of the frame of mind that I should never have taken it. The scene is over before it starts. There is no time to really make any kind of statement. … any kind of progression. So one has to enter as a totally interesting and real person, be on for five minutes and leave. I really hate it, but I suppose it’s a good exercise of sorts. I’m just at the despairing stage and am feeling totally untalented. … Oh, well.
To maintain any semblance of wit and equilibrium seems to be a major feat. As life unfolds before me, I have more and more respect for anyone who survives and prevails. Just to endure is impressive enough, but to endure and to triumph — on your own terms — is the feat of a lifetime. Everyone needs so much gentleness and love. I don’t mean that idealistically; I mean it as a major means of survival. There is just too much working against sanity and civilization. … from within ourselves, to the differences between people and sexes … to the whole human comedy. Gentleness and love. I can forget so easily, but it’s always a great comfort to come back to.
I’m going to cook a hamburger and some zucchini.
Thank you.
Stacey Abrams: 'You need to know what you believe', American University School of Public Affairs - 2019
11 May 2019, American University School of Public Affairs, Washington DC, USA
[Excerpt, full transcript to come]
Stacey Abrams: Thank you. You guys are too nice to me, I may not go home. To President Burwell, to Provost Meyers, Dean Wilkins, trustees, faculty administration, family, friends, and the graduating class of 2019, thank you for having me here today. You're welcome.
As a fellow graduate in the work of public affairs, I've had more than 20 years to think about what I intended to do with my degree and where I am today. And to cut to the chase, I had no idea this is what was going to happen. I didn't imagine any of the outcomes of the last six months and I knew precious little about the proceeding 20 years, and that's entirely okay. I certainly thought I knew what was to come.
Some of you may know from my book, Lead From the Outside, when I was 18, I had a very bad breakup with a very mean boy. He said nasty things about me and how I was not going to find love because I was too committed to doing other things. I possibly said inappropriate things back to him, I don't remember that part of the conversation, but what I do remember was the sense that I was going to show him. I was going to accomplish many things and I was going to control the world and make his life very, very difficult.
And so I took myself to the computer lab at Spelman College. Thank you. This is back in 1992, so when I turned on the computer, I did not log onto the internet. I logged onto Lotus 1-2-3. I began to type out all of the things I intended to accomplish for the next 40 years. I wanted to be mayor of Atlanta. I wanted to be somewhere near Oprah. I wanted to be a writer. I knew that the way I could get those things done was to write it down, and over the last 20 years, I have tended my spreadsheet like Gollum tends his precious.
I have looked at it and cultivated it. I've made changes and edits. I've erased things and ignored others. And along the way I realized I had no idea what I was talking about. Because, you see, I made a plan for my life, but what I was trying to do was prepare to succeed. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. Because you don't have to plan your life the way I did, but in the process we have to prepare to succeed, and we do that by knowing what we believe, knowing what we want, and knowing that sometimes it might not work. First you need to know what you believe.
Our ambitions, our decisions, our responses are shaped by what we hold to be true. Beyond the easy labels of party and ideology are the deeply held convictions that shape those labels. But too often adherence to conservative or progressive, to liberal or moderate, to Democrat or Republican or Independent, to being pro this or anti that becomes an excuse for lazy thinking. It becomes an excuse for hostile action. And for today, at least, I urge you to set aside your labels and explore what your principles say about the world you wish to serve.
Because beliefs are our anchors. If they aren't, we run the risk of opportunism making choices because others do so not because we should. But those anchors should never weight us down. They shouldn't weight on our capacity for thoughtful engagement and reasonable compromise. For seven years, I served as the democratic leader in the House of Representatives and they told me about my ability to be successful because my title was minority leader. There was to be no confusion that I wasn't going to get there by myself. What they wanted me to understand, what the system is designed to do, is force compromise and force our beliefs to be lived.
And that's why I was able to work with a Republican governor to push forward the strongest package of criminal justice reform in Georgia history, and I would argue in American history. Because my belief said ... Thank you. Because my belief said that I had to set aside labels for the work that we were going to do together, and it worked. We also have to understand that it's critical to know what you believe because public policy is complicated. We're balancing the needs and desires and the arguments of many a cacophony of demands that all seem to have merit. And as leaders, you represent not only those who share your core values, but people who despise all that you hold dear. Therefore, your beliefs, your principles must be concrete and fundamental and you have to know what they are.
Be willing to distinguish between a core belief and an idea you just like a lot or it sounded good when you read it on Twitter. As public servants, you will impose your beliefs through policy and through action. So take the time to deeply examine those notions that you would call your own. Be certain you would ask others not only to share those principles, but as leaders that you would deny access or restrict someone's freedom to enforce that belief because fundamentally that's what we do. And no ancestral teachings or religious tendencies are not sufficient cause for belief. You can clap for that, it's okay.
As provost Meyers pointed out, I'm the daughter of not one but two United Methodist ministers, and one of the darkest days of my life was the day my parents said they weren't taking us to heaven with them. It was really harsh. We were coming back from church and we made some comment and my mom turned around and said, "Look, you've got to figure out what you believe because we can't take you with us." What she was telling us, what my father said even less kindly, was that we had to examine what we wanted to be true and how we were going to live our lives. That they were there as guideposts, but they were never going to be able to make our decisions for us. They wanted us to understand that we needed to hold our core beliefs because our beliefs would shape the world we would bring forth.
So if you believe something, make sure you mean it. Once you know what you believe, try not to believe in too much. I am loathe to follow folks who are absolutely certain they know everything. The ones who have a definite opinion about every headline, every decision, and they can give you the answer before you ask the question. And if you can't figure out who in your circle is that person, it might be you. But you see, beliefs shouldn't be on everything. Public policy usually isn't good or evil. Sometimes it's not even that interesting.
It's mundane and routine and it cuts across neighborhoods and nations and ideologies. But when your lens only allows for a single myopic focus, when you've already made your decision before you know the question, then you do not have the capacity to be a leader. Because you leave no room for debate and you miss the true role of government and public policy and you miss the chance to learn and become a better public servant.
Now, I do have core beliefs, but I don't have an unshakable position on every issue. I do not believe that taxes are good or evil. I do believe that poverty is an abomination and that freedom of speech must be held sacrosanct and that we have to restore justice to criminal justice. I believe climate change is real, but I don't believe there's one answer to solving the problem. And I understand most of all that I have to accept that I may not know enough about an issue to actually render judgment, which is why I have to study and read everything I can, especially counterarguments to my own position.
That's why we must always seek to understand what others believe and why. I had a good friend in the state legislature, his name was Bobby Franklin. Bobby and I both agreed that we were from Georgia. That was about it. Bobby introduced legislation every year that I would have opposed every year. But we sat together and we talked together and we learned about one another. And in the process we were able to aid one another and work together on a bill. It was about civil asset forfeiture, which is a deeply scintillating topic.
But when Bobby and I introduced an amendment together, it was so startling and surprising to the body that the speaker actually called it up without falling the process and we think it passed just because people were too stunned to say no. But it was because I listened to Bobby's concerns and he listened to mine that we were able to figure out how to address an issue that affected his rural white community and my urban black community. We were able to move beyond our positions and hear each other's arguments and find a solution together.
The truest road to good decision making is acknowledging that the other guy might have a point, even if it's not yours. And if it turns out that the new information alters your thinking, the terrifying reality may be that you are accused of flip-flopping. I know, that's the death sentence to any ambition. But as a society that seeks to champion knowledge, we must accept that a person can change where he or she believes as long as that change is authentic and grounded in a true examination of philosophy and reality. Changing who you are to accommodate others or to advance your career, that is craven and is not worthy of real leaders.
But hear me clearly in this day and age, when evolution is based on investigation and interrogation, when people are willing to admit they made a mistake and are willing to write their wrongs, then that should be celebrated and welcomed. It makes us smarter. It makes us better. It makes us stronger. As you enter the world of public affairs for the first time, or on a return ticket, be careful to know if you are evolving or caving in because the internet will never let you forget. And whether you leave here destined to be an administrator or a policy maker or an active citizen, always keep clear in your mind the difference between principle and policy between belief and behavior.
Policy is what we should do. Principle, belief is why we do it. So know what you believe, know why you believe it, and be willing to understand the other side. So know what you believe and the next, know what you want. Some of you may have heard that in 2018, I ran for governor of Georgia. And the first few weeks after I announced my candidacy, I did what you're supposed to do in politics, which is reach out to your friends and your family to start to raise the absurd amounts of money it takes to try to become an elected official.
My family has no money, so I was mostly calling friends. And in the course of this process, I raised over $42 million, the most raised by any candidate in Georgia history. But it didn't start out that way. You see, I started calling friends, people who'd invested in me when I ran legislature in 2006, people who invested in me when I stood to become minority leader, people who supported the new Georgia project and organization I started to register more than 300,000 people of color in the state of Georgia. People who stood with me at every turn. But over and over again I would call and I would hear, "Stacey, we think you're so talented. Stacey, I think you're so qualified, but you're a black woman."
I was like, "I know." But they whispered it to me as though they were giving me a terminal diagnosis. Because you see, they had decided what I was capable of based on what they saw, not based on what they knew. People I'd known for years kept telling me that I wasn't ready for this. In fact, it was suggested that I support the other person running and just ask for a role in her administration. That didn't work for me then and it doesn't work for me now. I was told that I needed to wait until Georgia was ready for me. I was told to wait my turn.
And after a while listening to people who supported me for so many years, I started to wonder if they were correct. If maybe I was pushing too far too fast, if maybe what I wanted wasn't real or possible. I listened to their doubts and I started to internalize their diminution of my capacity until I reminded myself that I knew what I wanted and I had a plan to get it. Because when you aim high, when you stretch beyond your easiest conceptions, the temptation to pare back your ambitions will be strong, especially when there are those who don't share them. Hear me clearly. Do not edit your desires.
You are here in this space. You are entering this world to want what you want regardless of how big the dream. You may have to get there in stages. You may stumble along the way, but the journey is worth the work. And do not allow logic to be an excuse for setting low expectations. You know, this occurs when we allow ourselves to be less because we think if it were possible someone would've done it before, but the fact is no one ... The fact is no one can tell you who you are, and the fact that no one has done it before doesn't mean it can't be done. I became the first black woman to be a major party nominee for governor in our nation's 242 year history.
Now, let's be clear. I realize I am not the governor. That's a topic for another day. But what I do not ask is why hasn't anyone else done it? What I ask is how do I get it? Because if we have the ambition to save our world, we have to ask how we do it, not why it hasn't been done before. That's why you're here and that's what you're going forth to do. How? By writing it down and making a plan. If it's simply an idea in your head, it's easy to forget. It's easy to let it float away in a femoral idea that doesn't have concrete meaning and doesn't have concrete action.
If you just see a title on a roster, but you don't make a plan to get there, you'll be regretting it for the rest of your life. If you know what you want, force the question by plotting how you get there. By knowing what you believe, you have the reason and by knowing what you want, you can start to draw the map. But if you know what you believe and you know what you want, you need to be prepared to know it might not work. Otherwise, known as Stacey 2019. Because the thing is our beliefs may close off avenues that are available to others. Our ambitions may be too audacious or too different for traditional paths, and our very persons may challenge the status quo more than the quo is ready to accommodate. Plus, you might just screw it up and have to try again. But opportunity is not a straight road, and to take full advantage, we must be prepared to fail, to stumble, or to win in a way that looks nothing like you imagined.
For those of us who are not guaranteed access, we must realize that not all worlds operate the same. We are required to discover the hidden formulas to success and too often opportunity looks nothing like we expected. But to hack this very real possibility, look for unusual points of entry. I began my career by learning how to do the various jobs it would take to get me to my ultimate goals. I needed to know how to manage a team, how to raise money, how to make tough choices. So, I volunteered to fundraise when no one else wanted to. I showed up in places I wasn't expected and I asked to do the jobs that others avoided. Each of you harbors a dream that seems outsized, maybe even too big to admit to yourself. You see, I've talked about my dreams publicly and I've been discouraged for doing so that I wanted to be the governor of Georgia, that one day I intend to be the President of the United States and that in between-
But in between my responsibility is to do the work to make those things real, not only for myself, but for the person who was sitting there thinking, "I want that too," but they're afraid to say it aloud. We lead not only for ourselves, we lead for others and our stumbles are opportunities to lay a path for others to follow. And we have to that knowing what we believe in, knowing what we want means that sometimes there are going to be obstacles to us getting there. But I will tell you that if you are willing to put in the effort to accept the grunt work that lets you prove your mettle to dare to want more than you previously imagined, it will come. It may not be in the form, in the shape that you expected, but sometimes it leads you to standing on a stage addressing a group of people you didn't know you'd have a chance to meet because your stumble led you into falling into new opportunities.
To get there, I need you to utilize your networks. You are joining an extraordinary community of graduates from the American University. While you may not know everyone, most of the help you need is only a few degrees away. Ask for it. And if you don't get what you need, ask for it again. Broaden your understanding of who knows whom and who can help, and broaden your understanding of where power actually lies. Don't ignore the IT guy or the administrative assistant, the housekeeping staff or that mid-level associate you haven't quite figured out what they do.
Because the thing of it is, it's the administrative assistant who can squeeze you on to that calendar when you're trying to get in to see someone. It's the janitor who can open that office when you forgot to do something that needs to be done before anyone notices. And it's the person, the intern that you ignore who can help you finish that last minute project. Regardless of status, those who share our space are part of our networks. Show them respect and they can show you the way. But when you learned that it might not work, embrace the fail and search for new opportunities.
In the wake of my campaign for governor, for about 10 days, I wallowed in my despair and then I reminded myself of why I got into this in the first place. I grew up in poverty in Mississippi, a working class poverty my mom called the genteel poor. We had no money, but we watch PBS and we read books. I grew up in a family where my parents would wake us up on Saturdays to go and serve, to take us to soup kitchens and homeless shelters, to juvenile justice facilities and nursing homes. And when we would point out that the lights were off at home, that we didn't have running water, my mother would remind us that no matter how little we had, there was someone with less and our job was to serve that person. My dad would just say having nothing is not an excuse for doing nothing.
I ran for governor of Georgia because I believe in a better world. I believe that we can educate our children and guarantee economic security. I believe that we can provide access to justice and a clean environment. I believe more as possible for all of us. I believe you can center communities of color and acknowledge the marginalized and not exclude those who have opportunity and access. I believe that we can be an inclusive society without relegating ourselves to notions of identity as a bad thing, but instead, using identity to say we see one another, we see your obstacles and we will make you better and stronger because of it. That is why I ran.
And so, in the wake of not becoming governor of Georgia, I had the opportunity to sit back and wallow, to worry and to fret, or to simply be angry. But instead I decided to found Fair Fight Action because I believe voter suppression is real and the threat to our democracy and we will fight for voter rights and for electoral integrity because I believe in the United States of America. That is what we're going to do. I also launched Fair Count because I know the 2020 census is the story of America for the next decade and we have to make certain everyone is counted because if they're not, they will not count. That is our opportunity.
Neither role is where I expected to be today and there are other roles that wait for me. Maybe before 2020 and maybe after, but for me the responsibility is to act as though today is the last day. To do the work I know needs to be done, not because of the position I hold, but because of the work that awaits us. And that is your charge. That is your calling. That is your obligation. When life doesn't work, when the fail seems permanent, acknowledge the pain but reject the conclusion.
Our principles, our beliefs exist to sustain us. Our ambitions are there to drive us, and our stumbles exist to remind us that the work endures. Public service is a passion play. It's the drama of how we shape the lives of those around us, how we allocate resources and raise hopes and ground our dreams in robust reality. You stand as the architects of our better lives. Those who don't fret and worry, who don't just stand on the sidelines and watch but get into the scrum and make it work. You are here because you believe that more is possible and you have been trained to make more a reality. You are here today because you have accepted your destiny as public servants, as leaders for our current age.
Our nation is grappling with existential questions, and our allies and our enemies watch to see how we respond. The tension of elections pull against the urgency of governance and we cannot forget that they are not the same thing. You might be tempted to harden yourself, to cast your lot with what you know ,and to wall yourself off from people and ideas that challenge your direction. But you are here in this school because you understand the deeper calling of our obligations. To serve the grace that is our social contract. To build a better, stronger, more resilient world.
And you are the embodiment of the most deeply held belief of everyone here. That American University, that the school of public affairs, that your friends and your family and your classmates and I all hold today, a singular belief that she'll illuminate us today and forward. We believe in you. Thank you. And congratulations.
Kristen Bell: 'When you lead with your nice foot forward, you'll win', USC School of Dramatic Arts - 2019
10 May 2019, University of Southern California, California, USA
[Excerpt]
When you respect the idea that you are sharing the earth with other humans, and when you lead with your nice foot forward, you’ll win, every time. It might not be today, it might not be tomorrow, but it comes back to you when you need it,” she said. “We live in an age of instant gratification, of immediate likes. and it is uncomfortable to have to wait to see the dividends of your kindness. But I promise you, it will appear exactly when you need it.
Ken Jeong: 'Find your passion,' University of North Carolina Greensboro - 2019
10 May 2019, University of North Carolina Greensboro, USA
[Excerpt]
What is your act II? Everyone here has a different timeline. Everyone here has a unique story. Figure out what your act II is, and embrace the change, embrace the twists and the unexpected turns. They’ll be good and they’ll be bad, but embrace that. There’s always downsides to every journey, but because of my education, I have this core stability that makes me unshakeable no matter what happens. I’m also able to take the good with the bad … They say everything happens for a reason. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know everything happens, and it’s up to you to maximize the reality of your situation.
Oprah Winfrey: 'Success is a process', Colorado College - 2019
19 May 2019, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
I’m here to tell you that your life isn’t some big break, like everybody tells you that is. It’s about taking one big life transforming step at a time.
You can pick a problem, any problem—the list is long. There’s gun violence, and inequality, and media bias...and the dreamers need protection...the prison system needs to be reformed, misogyny needs to stop. But the truth is you cannot fix everything. What you can do here and now is make a decision, because life is about decisions—and the decision that you can make is to use your life in service. You will be in service to life, and you will speak up, you will show up, you will stand up, you will volunteer, you will shout out, you will radically transform whatever moment you’re in, which will lead to bigger moments.
The truth is, success is a process—you can ask anybody who’s been successful. I just passed on the lane up here here, successful restauranteur Danny Meyer, who’s sitting here with his family—Charles is graduating today. Ask Danny or anybody who’s successful, you go to any one of his restaurants—Shake Shack, love it!—Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern—you will be impressed by not only the food, but the radical hospital and service. Service is not just about when you’re getting served.
When I started my talk show, I was just so happy to be on television. I was so happy to interview members of the Ku Klux Klan. I thought I was interviewing them to show their vitriol to the world, and then I saw them using hand signals in the audience—and realized they were using me, and using my platform. Then we did a show where someone was embarrassed, and I was responsible for the embarrassment. We had somehow talked a man who was cheating on his wife to come on the show with the woman he was cheating with and, on live television, he told his wife that his girlfriend was pregnant. That happened on my watch.
Shortly after I said: I’m not gonna do that again. How can I use this show to not just be a show, but allow it to be a service to the viewer? That question of "How do we serve the viewer?" transformed the show. And because we asked that question every single day from 1989 forward—with the intention of only doing what was in service to the people who were watching—that is why now, no matter where I go in the world, people say "I watched your show, it changed my life." People watched and were raised by that show. I did a good job of raising a lot of people, I must say. That happened because of an intention to be of service.
Your anxiety does not contribute one iota to your progress.
So I live in this space of radical love and gratitude. Truly, I live the most beautiful life that you can imagine. I sit around trying to imagine: Who can have a better life? Whatever you imagine my life to be like…it’s always ten times better than whatever you think! It’s true! It’s not because I have wealth—although I love money, money’s fabulous, I love it—and that I get a lot of attention, which is also good...sometimes. It’s because I had appreciation for the small steps, the seeds that were planted, the maps of my life that unfolded because I was paying attention. You have to pay attention to your life, because it’s speaking to you all the time. That led me to a path made clear.
So that is what I’m wishing for you today: Your own path made clear. I know there’s a lot of anxiety about what the future holds and how much money you’re gonna make, but your anxiety does not contribute one iota to your progress, I gotta tell you. Look at how many times you were worried and upset—and now you’re here today. You made it. You’re going to be okay.
Look at how many times you were worried and upset—and now you’re here today. You made it.
Take a deep breath with me right now and repeat this: Everything is always working out for me. That’s my mantra—make it yours. Everything is always working out for me. Because it is, and it has, and it will continue to be as you forge and discover your own path. But first: You do need a job. And may I say, it doesn't have to be your life’s mission, our your greatest passion, but a job that pays your rent and lets you move out of your parents house—because yes, they are tired of taking care of you, and they’re hoping this CC education will pay off! And it will in ways that you can’t imagine.
I do a lot of graduations, lecturing, talking, and exchanging with the girls, we talk about passion and purpose and realizing your dream. But I realized I was confusing them and their expectations were out of wack. One of my daughter girls two years ago graduated with an internship, bought a used a car, all with no help from me. She’d only been working about six months and called me and said "Mama O, they want to give me a promotion, and I don’t want to take it because I don’t think it fulfills my purpose.” And I said “Your purpose right now is to keep that job! To do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do." (I borrowed that line from the great debaters.)
For years at graduations I’ve said there’s no such thing as failure. But there is.
For years, I had a job, and after years of doing what I didn’t want to do, I ended up finding my life’s calling. My job ended when I was 28 years old. I got my first job in radio at 16, got on tv at 19, and every day I said "I don’t know if this is what I’m really supposed to be doing." But my father was like: ‘You better keep that job!" At 28, it wasn’t working out on the news because I was too emotional. I would cry while interviewing someone who had lost their home. I was told that I was going to be talking on the evening news and put on a talk show, and that was a demotion for me at the time. But that actually worked out for me.
For years at graduations I’ve said there’s no such thing as failure. But there is. I’ve also said failure is life pointing you in a different direction, and it indeed does. But in the moment when you fail, it really feels bad. It’s embarrassing…and it’s bad, and it’s going to happen to you if you keep living. But I guarantee you it also will pass, and you will be fine. Why? Because everything is always working out for you.
I realized this during the struggle of my life trying to build a network at the same time as running a show. I did not have the right leadership, and everything is about having the right people around you to support you. All of my mistakes were in the media—I can’t do anything privately. So when everything is about struggle-struggle, I had to say: What is this about? What is this here to show you? That is now my favorite question in crisis: What is this here to teach you or show you?
Jack Canfield in Chicken Soup for the Soul says “The greatest wound we’ve all experienced is being rejected for being our authentic self. And then we try to be what we’re not to get approval, love, acceptance, money...but the real need for all of us is to reconnect with the essence of who we really are…we all go around hiding parts of ourselves." He said he was with a Buddhist teacher years ago who said, “Here’s the secret: If you were to meditate for 20 years, here’s where you’d finally get to: Just be yourself, but be all of you.”
I’ve made a living—not a living but a real life—by being myself, using the energy of myself to serve the purpose of my soul. That purpose, I’m here to tell you, gets revealed to you daily. It is the thread that’s connecting the dots of who you are.
At 19, I was just happy to have a job. But later through experience, trial, failure, I realized my true purpose was to be a force for good, to allow people to be themselves. so that becomes my legacy. I remember when I finished the [Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls] school, and I went to my friend Maya Angelou’s house, and Maya was making biscuits and teaching me to make the biscuits. I said "I’m so sorry you weren’t able to be there to see the school open..it’s going to be my greatest legacy.” And she put down what she was making and said “Baby, you have no idea what your legacy will be, because your legacy is every life that you touch.”
And that I repeat everywhere, because it’s true. It’s not one thing, it’s everything, and the most important thing is how you touch other people’s lives. Every day, you’re carving out the path, even when it looks like you’re not. Every action is creating equal and opposite reactions. How you think and what you do is being done unto you—that is my religion, I live by that. That is creating a blessed and spectacular life.
If I could teach a class in how to live your best life, it would include some gems I've gotten from world leaders. But also some I have not. Yes, it does pay to floss. Yes, you need to look people in the eye when you speak to them. You need to keep your commitments, you need to make your bed every day because when you do, it makes your whole house look better. And you need to leave your cell phone away at the dinner table.
I put so many of those in a book that I did for graduates like you. I wrote The Path Made Clear with gems of wisdom from thought leaders. Since I know you just wanna get that diploma, I’m gonna save all my wisdom for my book…You get a book and you get a book and you get a book! Everybody gets a book! Congratulations class of 2019!
Robert F. Smith: 'We're going to put a little fuel in their bus', Morehouse College - 2019
6 June 2019, Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
This speech became a news story because Robert F Smith pledged to pay off the student debts of every member of the Class of 2019 at Morehouse, estimated at $40 million.
Classmates. Class of 2019. You look beautiful. You look beautiful.
First of all, President Thomas, Board of Trustees, Faculty Staff and Morehouse Alumni, the extraordinary Angela Bassett, the distinguished Professor Dr. Edmund Gordon, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, family and friends, and most of all to my classmates, congratulations.
Earning a college degree is one of the most impressive and greatest accomplishments of life. But success as many parents and as hard as each of you have worked and have achieved today you’ve had a lot of help along the way. We are all the product of a community, a village, a team and many of those who’ve made contributions for you to arrive at this very moment today are with us.
So first and foremost, I’m going to ask you one more time you’re going to stand up. You’re going to turn around and you’re going to celebrate all these people — our community, our family who are here to celebrate you.
All right. Come on sit down class. We got a lot — we got a long way to go. So I want to make sure you got some stretching in.
So standing here before you is one of the great honors of my life. I’m so proud to share it with you, with my mother Dr. Sylvia Smith, a lifelong educator and the greatest role model of my life who is here with me today.
This is a special week for us. We celebrate three graduations this week. My niece is graduating from my alma mater Cornell. My daughter’s graduating from high school and headed off to Barnard this fall. My eldest Zoe is graduating from NYU with honors this week. She is a fifth generation in my family to graduate from college and the fourth to graduate with honors.
So first of all, I want to thank the Morehouse administration for timing this perfectly so I could attend all of those graduation ceremonies.
Morehouse was built to demand excellence and spur the advancement and development of African-American men. I’ve always been drawn to its rich history and I’m optimistic for its bright future. The brothers from Morehouse I’ve met over these years, I’ve revered; they understand the power of education, the responsibility that comes with it.
Willie Woods, Chairman of the Board, he and I have been friends for over 20 years, and I want to thank Chairman Woods for assembling a great class and a great organization of administrators and faculty to help you young men go forward.
In our shared history as a people and as a country, the Morehouse campus is a special place. The path you walked along Brown Street this morning to reach this commencement ceremony was paved by men of intellect and character and determination. These men understood that when Dr. King said “The arc of the moral universe bends towards justice”, he wasn’t saying it bends on its own accord. It bends because we choose to put our shoulders into it together and push.
The degree you earn today is one of the most elite credentials that America has to offer. But I don’t want you to think about it as a document that hangs on the wall or reflects the accomplishments you’ve made up to now. That degree is a contract. It’s a social contract. It calls on you to devote your talents and energies to honoring those legends on whom shoulders both you and I stand.
Lord knows you’re graduating into a complex world. Think about we faced in the last few years of your time here at Morehouse. We’ve seen the rise of Black Lives Matter lending voice to critical issues that have been ignored by too many for too long. We’ve seen the Me Too movement shining a spotlight on how far we still have to go to achieve real gender equality.
We’ve also seen the unapologetic public airing of hate doctrines by various groups. We’ve seen the implications of climate change become impossible to ignore and become even more severe. And our connected world has now to grapple with the new questions about secrecy, privacy, the role of intelligent machines in our work and in our lives.
And we witnessed the very foundation of our political system shaken by the blurring of the sacred line between fact and fiction, right and wrong. Yes, this is an uncertain hour for our democracy and our fragile world order but uncertainty is nothing new for our community.
Like many of yours, my family has been in these United States for eight or nine generations. We have nourished the soil with our blood. We’ve sown the land with our sweat. We protected this country with our bodies, contributed to the physical, cultural and intellectual fabric of this country with our minds and our talent. And yet, I’m the first generation in my family to have secured all my rights as an American citizen.
Think about it. 1865 was the first time most African-American families had a hint of access to the greatest until now wealth generating platform in America, that’s land. The Freedmen’s Bureau was supposed to deliver 850,000 acres of land to these formerly enslaved and then that program was cancelled and replaced by the Freedman’s Savings Bank which was then looted. Essentially that recompense was reneged upon.
We didn’t have broad access to the Homestead Act or the Southern Homestead Act where indeed 10% of America’s land was essentially given away for less the filing fee. And it was until 1868 after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment that my family actually had the birthright to be American citizens.
Then when American decided to create a social safety net — Social Security in 1935, they created the Social Security program. Yet that program had one exclusion — two categories of people: maids and farmworkers which effectively denied benefits to 66% of African Americans and 80% of Southern African Americans.
It was until 1954 that my family had a right to equal education under the protection of the law with Brown versus Board of Education. And while the Fifteenth Amendment gave my family to right to vote, the men at least, starting in 1890 those rights were rolled back in the south and remained suppressed until the passage of the Voter Rights Act of 1965.
Even today more than half a century after that, the struggle still continues to ensure true integrity at the ballot box. All these landmark extensions of our rights and subsequent retrenchments set the stage for new policy of forced desegregation, utilizing school busing that basically went in effect when I reached the first grade in my hometown of Denver, Colorado.
Our family lived in Northeast Denver, and back then, Denver, like most American cities, remained extremely divided by race, both politically and geographically. In my community, my neighbors were mostly educated, proud, hardworking and ambitious. They were dentists, teachers, politicians, lawyers, Pullman porters, contractors, small business owners and pharmacists. They were focused on serving the African-American community and providing a safe and nurturing environment for the kids in our neighborhood.
They were on the front lines of the civil rights movement. We were sacrificing our sons to the Vietnam War. They mourned the death of a King, two Kennedys and an X. And despite all they gave they had yet to achieve the fullness of the American dream. But they continued to believe that it was only a matter of time and if not for them, then surely for their children.
So I was among a small number of kids from my neighborhood who were bused across town to a high-performing, predominantly white school in Southeast Denver. Every morning we loaded up on Bus Number 13 — I’ll never forget it – that was taken over to Carson Elementary School.
That policy of busing only lasted to my fifth-grade year when intense protests and political pressure brought the end to forced busing. But those five years dramatically changed my life.
The teachers of Carson were extraordinary. They embraced me, challenged me to think critically and start moving towards my full potential. In turn, I came to realize at a young age that the white kids, the black kids, the Jewish kid and that one Asian kid were pretty much all the same. It wasn’t just a school itself; it was a community that I lived in that embraced and supported all that we were doing.
Since most of the parents of my neighborhood were working, a whole bunch of us walked over to Mrs. Brown’s house every day after school and stayed there until our parents got home from work. Mrs. Brown was incredible. She kept us safe, made sure we did our homework the right way, gave us nutritious snacks and taught us about responsibility.
Because her house was filled with children of all ages, I had suddenly older kids all around me who acted as role models, who were studying hard and believed in themselves. Mrs. Brown also happened to be married to the first black lieutenant governor of our state. So we saw the possibilities first-hand.
Amazingly almost every single student on Bus Number 13 went on to become a profession. I’m still in touch with many of them as they make up the bedrock of our community today. They’re elected officials, doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, professors, community organizers and business leaders — an incredible concentration of black men and black women from the same working-class neighborhood.
Yet when I looked at the extended community that I lived in and those kids who didn’t get a spot on Bus Number 13, their success rate was far lower, and the connection is inescapable. Everything about my life changed because of those few short years but the window closed for others just as fast as it opened for me. And that’s the story of the black experience in America.
Getting a fleeting glimpse of opportunity and success just before the window is slammed shut. The cycle of resistance to oppression followed by legislation, followed by the weakening of that legislation, followed by more oppression and more resistance has affected and afflicted every single generation. And even as we’ve seen some of the major barriers come crashing down in recent years, we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we didn’t acknowledge just how many of these injustices still persist.
Where you live shouldn’t determine where you get it whether or not you get educated. Where you go to school shouldn’t determine whether you get textbooks. The opportunity to access — the opportunity for access should be determined only by the fierceness of your intellect and the courage and your creativity, and should be fueled by the grit that allows you to overcome expectations that weren’t set high enough.
We’ve seen remarkable breakthroughs in medical research, yet race-based disparities in health outcomes still exist. You’re 41% more likely to die of breast cancer if you’re an African-American woman in America than if you were white. You’re 2.3 times more likely to die of prostate cancer for an African-American man than if you were white.
If you are African American, you’re more likely to be stopped by the police, more likely to be issued a ticket when you’re stopped, more likely to be threatened with force than when you were white. That’s our reality. This is the world you’re inheriting.
Now I’m telling you things as I don’t want you to think that I’m bitter, nor do I want you to be bitter. I call upon you to make things better. Because the great lesson of my life is that despite the challenges we face, America is truly an extraordinary country and our world is getting smaller by the day and you are equipped with every tool to make it your own.
Today for the first time in human history, success requires no prerequisite of wealth or capital, no ownership of land or natural resources or people. Today success can be created solely through the power of one’s mind, ideas encouraged. Intellectual capital can be cultivated, monetized and instantaneously distributed across the globe.
Intellectual capital has become the new currency of business and finance, and the promise of brain power to move people from poverty to prosperity in one generation has never been more possible. Technology, the world that I live in, is creating a whole new set of on-ramps to the 21st century economy and together we will help assure that the African-American community will acquire the tech skills and be the beneficiaries in a sector that is being automated.
Black men understand that securing the bag just is the beginning, that success is only real if our community is protected, our potential is realized, and if our most valuable assets, our people, find strength in owning the businesses that provide economic stability in our community.
This is your moment, graduates. Between doubt and destiny is action. Between our community and the American dream is leadership. That’s your leadership, that’s your destiny.
This doesn’t mean ignoring injustice; it means using your strength to write order. And when you are confronted with racism, listen to the words of Guy Johnson, the son of Maya Angelou who once wrote: “Racism was like gravity. You got to just keep pushing again against it without spending too much time thinking about it.”
SO HOW DO YOU SEIZE YOUR AMERICAN DREAM?
Let me get specific and give you a few rules to live by because I understand that once you cross a stage, we may not be able to tell you much.
RULE 1: NOTHING REPLACES ACTUALLY DOING THE WORK
Rule number one: You need to know that nothing replaces actually doing the work.
Whenever young person tells me they aspire to be an entrepreneur, the first question I ask him is why. For many they think it’s a great way to get rich quick. I’m going to write an app, I’m going to build a company, make a few million dollars before I’m 25. Look that can happen but frankly that’s awfully rare.
The usual scenario is that successful entrepreneurs spend endless hours, days, years, toiling away for little time, little pay and zero glamor. And in all honesty, that’s where the joy of success actually resides.
Before I ever got into private equity, I was a chemical engineer. And I spent pretty much every waking hour in windowless labs during the work that helped me become an expert in my field. It was only after I put in the time to develop this expertise and the discipline of the scientific process that I was able to apply my knowledge beyond the lab.
Greatness is born out of the grind, so embrace the grind. A thoughtful and intentional approach to the grind will help you become an expert in your craft.
When I meet a black man or woman who’s at the top of their field, I see the highest form of execution. That’s no accident. There’s a good chance it took that black leader a whole lot more grinding to get them where they are today. I look at the current and former black CEOs who inspired my life. I have to tell you they blow me away every time I meet with them. People like Bernard Tyson, Ken Frazier, Ken Chenault, Dick Parsons, Ursula Burns and the late Barry Rand.
They may not have attended Morehouse but they had the Morehouse spirit. They knew that being the best meant grinding every single day. It means putting in the 10,000 hours necessary to become a master of your craft and I’ll tell you one of the great leaders of our time Muhammad Ali once said:
“I hated every minute of training but I thought to myself suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.”
So grind it out and live your life as a champion.
RULE 2: TAKE THOUGHTFUL RISKS
My next rule is to take thoughtful risks. My granddad took a particular interest in my career. He couldn’t have been prouder when I had a stable job at Kraft General Foods as an engineer, because for him they had that kind of job security of my age was a dream come true.
When I was — when I told him I was thinking about leaving to go to grad school, he frankly was worried. Then you can imagine how worried he became so many years later when I told him I was leaving Goldman Sachs. I said “I’m going to start my own private equity firm, granddad, to focus on enterprise software.”
He thought I’d gone crazy. But I respected my granddad and his wisdom and his thoughtfulness and frankly his protectiveness over me. But I’d done my homework, I calculated the risks and I importantly knew that I was going to invest in one of the most important things and gather the fundamental design point of the American dream and that was to be a business owner.
So I decided with confidence I was going to make a one big bet on the asset that I knew best: myself. There are always reasons to be risk averse. As you know graduating from Morehouse can make you risk-averse. The path that you’re on, if you just take a conservative path, your outcomes and choices would probably be pretty good. But that doesn’t mean that you should gamble with your career or couriering from job to job frankly because it looks — the grass always looks a little greener; it does mean that you should evaluate your options.
You should be taking business and career risks, do the analysis and most importantly trust your instincts. When you bet on yourself, that’s likely a good bet.
RULE 3: BE INTENTIONAL ABOUT THE WORDS YOU CHOOSE
My third rule is always be intentional about the words you choose.
I know Morehouse has taught you all that what you say matters and what you say carries with it enormous power. Be intentional about the words you speak, how you define yourself, what you call each other, the people you spend time with and the love you create. This all matters immensely, it will define you.
RULE 4: YOU ARE ENOUGH
My fourth rule, which is actually my favorite, is to always know that you are enough. I mentioned that before going to investment banking at Goldman Sachs, I was working as an engineer at Kraft General Foods. One day I was at a meeting with the number of my department heads going through our divisional strategy and sitting around a conference table lining up what were the most important strategic imperatives.
When I looked at those six initiatives, I was leading five of them. I was half the age of everybody in that room and I know making a third of everybody in that room. And I said to myself I’m either doing something really right or really wrong. And frankly it was a little bit of both.
So that became a lesson to me in realizing my worth and self-worth. It isn’t just about salary, although that does matter. It’s about demanding respect from others and from yourself. A realization and respect for all the skills and talents you bring to the table. When you have confidence in your own worth, you’ll become the one to raise your hand for that next assignment and it may be hard. That made me putting in time on nights and weekends and it also means you’ll be gaining incremental skills and experiences that enhance your craftsmanship and earn your respect through your body of work.
Let the quality of your work products speak of your capabilities. Know that you are only bound by the limits of your own conviction because you are Morehouse man. There is no room on this earth you can’t enter without your head held high. You will encounter people in your life, as I have, who will want to make you feel like you don’t belong. But when you respect your own body of work, that’s all the respect you need.
In the words of the great Quincy Jones and Ray Charles:
“Not one drop of my self-worth depends on your acceptance of me.”
You are enough.
RULE 5: WE ALL HAVE THE RESPONSIBILITY TO LIBERATE OTHERS
The fifth and final lesson for you all today is as follows. We all have the responsibility to liberate others so that they can become their best selves in human rights, the arts and business and in life. The fact is as the next generation of African-American leaders, you don’t want to just be on the bus. You want to own it, you want to drive it and you want to pick up as many people along the way as you can.
Because I will tell you more than the money, the awards, the recognition, and the titles, we will all be measured by how much we contribute to the success of the people around us. How many people will you get on your Bus Number 13?
We need you to become the elected leaders who step up and fix the laws that engender discrimination and set a tone of respect in our public discourse. We need you to become the C-suite executives who change corporate culture, build sustainable business models and make diversity and inclusion a core and unshakeable value.
We need you to become the entrepreneurs who will innovate inclusively, expand wages for all Americans and lower the unemployment rate in our communities. We need you to be the educators who set the standards and demand the resources to deliver on those standards and inspire the next generation and we need you to invest the real estate and businesses in our communities and create value for all of us in those communities.
No matter what profession you choose, each of you must become a community builder. No matter how far you travel you can’t ever forget where you came from. You’re responsible for building strong safe places where our young brothers and sisters can raise children and grow in confidence. Watch and learn from positive role models and they believe that they too are entitled to the American Dream.
You men of Morehouse are already doing this. I know your own student government, in fact, send students on a bus to underserved communities to actually empower young black men and women to seize their own narrative and find their own power in their own voice. This is exactly the kind of leadership I’m talking about.
Remember that building a community doesn’t always have to be about sweeping change either but it does have to be intentional. You just can’t be a role model sometimes.
I’m cognizant of the fact that every time I’m in public, people are observing my actions. The same goes for you. Building community can’t be insular. The world has never been smaller but we need to make and help our communities think bigger.
I’ve invested particularly in internship programs because I’ve observed the power of exposing young minds to opportunities that work in their neighborhoods so they can see what they can become.
Help those around you see the beauty of this vast world. Help them believe that they too can capture that dream. And remember community can be anywhere. Back in the 1960s and ‘70s, community was a few blocks around where I grew up. Today we — you can create communities of people all around the world.
Merging the physical and digital communities will be one of the great opportunities that you have and you will have in these years going forward. And finally, don’t forget that communities thrive in the smallest of gestures. Be the first to congratulate a friend on their new job. Buy their new product posted on social media and tell everybody how great it is and be the first to console them when they face adversity.
Treat all people with dignity even if you can’t see how they’re going to help you. And most important of all whatever it takes, never ever forget to call your mother. And I do mean call, don’t text. Texts don’t count.
So speaking of mothers, let me allow me a point of personal privilege to end with a story that speaks volumes about mine.
Summer 1963, when I was just 9 months old, my mother picked me and my brother up and hauled 1700 miles away from Denver to Washington DC so we could be there for a Morehouse Man speech. My mother knew that her boys were too young to remember that speech but she believed that the history that we witnessed that day would forever resonate and become part of the men that we would one day become.
My mom was right as usual. I still feel that day in my bones and it echoes around us here at Morehouse. Decades after that cross-country trip I had the privilege to take my granddad to the opposite side of the National Mall to celebrate the inauguration of the first African-American President.
As we sat in that audience in that cold morning, he pointed to a window just behind the flag in the Capitol Building, he said, “You know grandson, when I was a teenager I used to work in that room right there. It’s the Senate Lounge, I used to serve coffee and tea and take hats and coats for the Senators.” He said “I recall looking out that window during Franklin Roosevelt’s inauguration.” He said “Son, I did not see one black face in the crowd that day.” He said “So here we are, you and I watching this.” He said “Grandson, you can see how America can change when people have the will to make a change.”
The beautiful symmetry of our return to the nation’s capital under such different circumstances were not lost on us. The poetry of time and soul that Lincoln called the mystic chords of memory resonated in both of our hearts. You cannot be a witness to history as I have or walk the halls of Morehouse as you have without profound respect for the unsung everyday heroes who generation after generation little by little nudged, shoved and ultimately bent that arc of the moral universe a little closer to justice.
This is a history and the heritage you inherit. This is a responsibility that now lies upon your broad shoulders. True wealth comes from contributing to the liberation of people and the liberation of communities we come from depends upon the grit and the determination and the greatness inside of you, using your skills and your knowledge and your instincts to serve to change the world in only the way that you can.
You great Morehouse men are bound again only by your limits of your own convictions and creativity. You have the power within to be great, be you, be unstoppable, be undeniable and accomplish the things that people thought you never would. I’m counting on you to load up your bus and share that journey.
Now let’s not forget what Dr. King said in his final moments in his famous sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church: “I want to be on your right side and on your left side, in love and in justice, in truth and in commitment so that we can make this old world a new world.”
So graduates, look to your right, look to your left. Actually take a moment; stand up. Give each other a hug. I’m going to wait.
Men of Morehouse, you are surrounded by a community of people who have helped you arrive at the sacred place and on this sacred day. On behalf of the eight generations of my family who have been in this country, we’re going to put a little fuel in your bus.
Now I’ve got the Alumni over there, and this is the challenge to you Alumni. This is my class, 2019.
And my family is making a grant to eliminate their student loans.
Now I know my class will make sure they pay this forward, and I want my class to look at these alumnus, these beautiful Morehouse brothers and let’s make sure every class has the same opportunity going forward.
Because we are enough to take care of our own community. We are enough to ensure we have all the opportunities of the American Dream and we will show it to each other through our actions and through our words and through our deeds.
So Class of 2019, may the Sun always shine upon you. May the wind always be at your back. And may God always hold you in the cradle of her hand.
Tim Cook: ' If you’ve built a chaos factory, you can’t dodge responsibility for the chaos', Stanford University - 2019
Speech commences on video at 1:12:30
16 June 2019, Stanford University, Stanford, California
Good morning, Class of 2019!
Thank you, President Tessier-Lavigne, for that generous introduction. I’ll do my best to earn it.
Before I begin, I want to recognize everyone whose hard work made this celebration possible, including the groundskeepers, ushers, volunteers and crew. Thank you.
I’m honored and frankly a little astonished to be invited to join you for this most meaningful of occasions.
Graduates, this is your day. But you didn’t get here alone.
Family and friends, teachers, mentors, loved ones, and, of course, your parents, all worked together to make you possible and they share your joy today. Here on Father’s Day, let’s give the dads in particular a round of applause.
Stanford is near to my heart, not least because I live just a mile and a half from here.
Of course, if my accent hasn’t given it away, for the first part of my life I had to admire this place from a distance.
I went to school on the other side of the country, at Auburn University, in the heart of landlocked Eastern Alabama.
You may not know this, but I was on the sailing team all four years.
It wasn’t easy. Back then, the closest marina was a three-hour drive away. For practice, most of the time we had to wait for a heavy rainstorm to flood the football field. And tying knots is hard! Who knew?
Yet somehow, against all odds, we managed to beat Stanford every time. We must have gotten lucky with the wind.
Kidding aside, I know the real reason I’m here, and I don’t take it lightly.
Stanford and Silicon Valley’s roots are woven together. We’re part of the same ecosystem. It was true when Steve stood on this stage 14 years ago, it’s true today, and, presumably, it’ll be true for a while longer still.
The past few decades have lifted us together. But today we gather at a moment that demands some reflection.
Fueled by caffeine and code, optimism and idealism, conviction and creativity, generations of Stanford graduates (and dropouts) have used technology to remake our society.
But I think you would agree that, lately, the results haven’t been neat or straightforward.
In just the four years that you’ve been here at the Farm, things feel like they have taken a sharp turn.
Crisis has tempered optimism. Consequences have challenged idealism. And reality has shaken blind faith.
And yet we are all still drawn here.
For good reason.
Big dreams live here, as do the genius and passion to make them real. In an age of cynicism, this place still believes that the human capacity to solve problems is boundless.
But so, it seems, is our potential to create them.
That’s what I’m interested in talking about today. Because if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that technology doesn’t change who we are, it magnifies who we are, the good and the bad.
Our problems – in technology, in politics, wherever – are human problems. From the Garden of Eden to today, it’s our humanity that got us into this mess, and it’s our humanity that’s going to have to get us out.
If you want credit for the good, take responsibility for the bad
First things first, here’s a plain fact.
Silicon Valley is responsible for some of the most revolutionary inventions in modern history.
From the first oscillator built in the Hewlett-Packard garage to the iPhones that I know you’re holding in your hands.
Social media, shareable video, snaps and stories that connect half the people on Earth. They all trace their roots to Stanford’s backyard.
But lately, it seems, this industry is becoming better known for a less noble innovation: the belief that you can claim credit without accepting responsibility.
We see it every day now, with every data breach, every privacy violation, every blind eye turned to hate speech. Fake news poisoning our national conversation. The false promise of miracles in exchange for a single drop of your blood. Too many seem to think that good intentions excuse away harmful outcomes.
But whether you like it or not, what you build and what you create define who you are.
It feels a bit crazy that anyone should have to say this. But if you’ve built a chaos factory, you can’t dodge responsibility for the chaos. Taking responsibility means having the courage to think things through.
And there are few areas where this is more important than privacy.
If we accept as normal and unavoidable that everything in our lives can be aggregated, sold, or even leaked in the event of a hack, then we lose so much more than data.
We lose the freedom to be human.
Think about what’s at stake. Everything you write, everything you say, every topic of curiosity, every stray thought, every impulsive purchase, every moment of frustration or weakness, every gripe or complaint, every secret shared in confidence.
In a world without digital privacy, even if you have done nothing wrong other than think differently, you begin to censor yourself. Not entirely at first. Just a little, bit by bit. To risk less, to hope less, to imagine less, to dare less, to create less, to try less, to talk less, to think less. The chilling effect of digital surveillance is profound, and it touches everything.
What a small, unimaginative world we would end up with. Not entirely at first. Just a little, bit by bit. Ironically, it’s the kind of environment that would have stopped Silicon Valley before it had even gotten started.
We deserve better. You deserve better.
If we believe that freedom means an environment where great ideas can take root, where they can grow and be nurtured without fear of irrational restrictions or burdens, then it’s our duty to change course, because your generation ought to have the same freedom to shape the future as the generation that came before.
Graduates, at the very least, learn from these mistakes. If you want to take credit, first learn to take responsibility.
Be a builder
Now, a lot of you – the vast majority – won’t find yourselves in tech at all. That’s as it should be. We need your minds at work far and wide, because our challenges are great, and they can’t be solved by any single industry.
No matter where you go, no matter what you do, I know you will be ambitious. You wouldn’t be here today if you weren’t. Match that ambition with humility – a humility of purpose.
That doesn’t mean being tamer, being smaller, being less in what you do. It’s the opposite, it’s about serving something greater. The author Madeleine L’Engle wrote, “Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.”
In other words, whatever you do with your life, be a builder.
You don’t have to start from scratch to build something monumental. And, conversely, the best founders – the ones whose creations last and whose reputations grow rather than shrink with passing time – they spend most of their time building, piece by piece.
Builders are comfortable in the belief that their life’s work will one day be bigger than them – bigger than any one person. They’re mindful that its effects will span generations. That’s not an accident. In a way, it’s the whole point.
In a few days we will mark the 50th anniversary of the riots at Stonewall.
When the patrons of the Stonewall Inn showed up that night – people of all races, gay and transgender, young and old – they had no idea what history had in store for them. It would have seemed foolish to dream it.
When the door was busted open by police, it was not the knock of opportunity or the call of destiny. It was just another instance of the world telling them that they ought to feel worthless for being different.
But the group gathered there felt something strengthen in them. A conviction that they deserved something better than the shadows, and better than oblivion.
And if it wasn’t going to be given, then they were going to have to build it themselves.
I was 8 years old and a thousand miles away when Stonewall happened. There were no news alerts, no way for photos to go viral, no mechanism for a kid on the Gulf Coast to hear these unlikely heroes tell their stories.
Greenwich Village may as well have been a different planet, though I can tell you that the slurs and hatreds were the same.
What I would not know, for a long time, was what I owed to a group of people I never knew in a place I’d never been.
Yet I will never stop being grateful for what they had the courage to build.
Graduates, being a builder is about believing that you cannot possibly be the greatest cause on this Earth, because you aren’t built to last. It’s about making peace with the fact that you won’t be there for the end of the story.
You won’t be ready
That brings me to my last bit of advice.
Fourteen years ago, Steve stood on this stage and told your predecessors: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
Here’s my corollary: “Your mentors may leave you prepared, but they can’t leave you ready.”
When Steve got sick, I had hardwired my thinking to the belief that he would get better. I not only thought he would hold on, I was convinced, down to my core, that he’d still be guiding Apple long after I, myself, was gone.
Then, one day, he called me over to his house and told me that it wasn’t going to be that way.
Even then, I was convinced he would stay on as chairman. That he’d step back from the day to day but always be there as a sounding board.
But there was no reason to believe that. I never should have thought it. The facts were all there.
And when he was gone, truly gone, I learned the real, visceral difference between preparation and readiness.
It was the loneliest I’ve ever felt in my life. By an order of magnitude. It was one of those moments where you can be surrounded by people, yet you don’t really see, hear or even feel them. But I could sense their expectations.
When the dust settled, all I knew was that I was going to have to be the best version of myself that I could be.
I knew that if you got out of bed every morning and set your watch by what other people expect or demand, it’ll drive you crazy.
So what was true then is true now. Don’t waste your time living someone else’s life. Don’t try to emulate the people who came before you to the exclusion of everything else, contorting into a shape that doesn’t fit.
It takes too much mental effort – effort that should be dedicated to creating and building. You’ll waste precious time trying to rewire your every thought, and, in the mean time, you won’t be fooling anybody.
Graduates, the fact is, when your time comes, and it will, you’ll never be ready.
But you’re not supposed to be. Find the hope in the unexpected. Find the courage in the challenge. Find your vision on the solitary road.
Don’t get distracted.
There are too many people who want credit without responsibility.
Too many who show up for the ribbon cutting without building anything worth a damn.
Be different. Leave something worthy.
And always remember that you can’t take it with you. You’re going to have to pass it on.
Thank you very much. And Congratulations to the Class of 2019!
Viola Davis: 'Living life for something bigger than yourself is a hero’s journey', Barnard College - 2019
20 May 2019, Barnard College, New York City, New York, USA
[Someone shouts, "I love you!"]
Thank you. I love you, too. And I’m going to show you how much I love you. This speech, these pages have all of my breakfast items on it. Avocado toast, jelly, everything. [Laughs]
President Beilock, distinguished faculty, alumnae, family, friends, the 657 or so sisters in the audience, graduating class. I’m going to make it plain: “History is not the past. It is the present. We carry history with us. We are our history.”
In other words: You’re a product of your environment. Now that term is usually relegated to people from low-income, crime-infested areas…but why? We all are a product of our environment.
Your existence is an amalgamation of every triumph, every hard-won battle, every woman who had an idea and massaged it, and had the courage to use it to change the world. Every person who survived slavery, Jim Crow and the black codes, to the Trail of Tears, wars…and passed their dreams on to you—of love, of hate. Yup, you are also the product of the other: Of silence, of apathy, a school built on stolen ground. Of women, a parent, grandparent, ancestor who suppressed dreams and ideas, who died with lost potential and horrific memories of sexual assault, mental illness, who didn’t feel good enough, or pretty enough or ENOUGH. Even your anxiety is part of your history…and yet here you are. Privileged, blessed…to do…what?
There are two roads that I see that people usually take: The choice to think that your path is all about you and your success, how high you can climb in your career and your status. Or, the so-called “save the world” approach, where you have a vision for the world and, by God, you will change it because you’re different. The first road requires you to mistake your presence for the event, to be in complete denial; and, the second requires you only to deny the really bad stuff. It requires you to forget racism, not see color, intersectionality, poverty… “but maybe I’ll take the sexism because it pertains to me.” Forget any evidence in my family of mental illness, of violence. Forget anything in me that will get in the way. Forget my fear, my pain. BOTH dead end. Both result in well-intentioned, very bright, enthusiastic people doing NOTHING.
How about this as a novel idea: How about owning it? Owning ALL of it—the good and the bad. Own the fact that the 39 delegates who wrote the greatest document, with the greatest mission statement, wrote it when slavery was an institution, Native Americans were being slaughtered and women were fighting for their lives. Own the 100 years of Jim Crow that were implemented after the 13th Amendment, restricting the rights of people who were a quarter black, an eighth black, black-black, Native Americans, Malays, Hispanics, Jews. Own every gun-toting, violent, hate-filled shooter. And own the fact that THAT is America. Own every heroic deed, great idea. Own the mission statement of THIS school. Own all of your memories and experiences, even if they were traumatic. Own it! Own IT! The world is broken because we’re broken. There are too many of us who want to forget. Who said that all of who you are has to be good? All of who you are is who you are. It hurts, you rage, battle it out, ask, “Why?” Then you forgive, reconcile and use your heart, your courage and vision to fix, to heal and then, ultimately, to connect, to empathize. And that empathy creates a passion for people and it all is the fuel of the warrior—a brave, experienced soldier or fighter.
It’s like Thomas Merton said, “If you want to study the social and political history of modern times, study hell.” Power concedes nothing without a demand. Know what that means? Women are under siege: suicide rates have skyrocketed, our reproductive rights are seriously in jeopardy, as is our pay, our healthcare, our safety, our worth. Sex trafficking has risen by 846 percent in the last five years and three-quarters of the victims are women of color. And in the greatest country in the world, we’ve seen a 26.6 percent increase in women dying during childbirth, and a 243 percent increase amongst black women.
You are graduating from a school whose mission it is to not just hand you a diploma, but a sword. You either start wielding it or you put it away as a conversation piece. Because there is a cap to success. Now everybody tells you that’s what you got to hit, that’s the best of the best that you can have in life. And then you hit it and then comes disillusionment, exhaustion, isolation, the imposter syndrome and a loss of passion. Because no one talks about the real final cap, the real ceiling—and that’s significance.
That living life for something bigger than yourself is a hero’s journey. That answer to your call, to adventure and journeying forth with mentors and allies, and facing your greatest fears, where you either die or your life as you know it will never be the same. And then you seize the sword, the insight, the treasure. The hero at that stage must put all celebrations aside to prepare for the final battle. The road back. The road back is the moment where the hero goes back to the ordinary world, where she must choose between her own personal objective and that of a higher cause. The reward? Your gift to the ordinary world? [sighs] That is the Holy Grail, the elixir.
What’s your elixir?
You know, my testimony is one of poverty. You know, you heard I grew up in Central Falls, Rhode Island. And let me tell you something about poverty: You’re invisible. Nobody sees the poor. You have access to nothing. You’re no one’s demographic. You know what my “a-ha” moment was? I had a memory when I was nine years old, and I remember my parents fighting in the middle of the night. It was so bad that I started screaming at the top of my lungs, and I couldn’t stop. My older sister Dianne told me to go in the house or people would hear me. I ran in the house. I ran to the bathroom, screaming still, just couldn’t stop. And got down on my knees, and closed my eyes, I put my hands together and said, “GOD! If you exist, if you love me, you’ll take me away from this life! Now I’m going to count to 10 and when I open my eyes, I want to be gone! You hear me?!” And I put my hands together and I was really believing it. “One!” And then I got to eight. “Nine! 10!” And I opened my eyes … and I was still there. But, He did take my life. He left me right there so when I gained vision, and strength, and forgiveness, I could remember what it means to be a child who was hungry. I could remember what it means to be in trauma. I could remember poverty, alcoholism. I could remember what it means to be a child who dreams and sees no physical manifestation of it. I could remember because I lived it! I was there! And that has been my biggest gift in serving.
“You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.”
And you know what? In the words of Joseph Campbell, you have not even to risk the adventure alone, because the heroes of all time have gone before you. The labyrinth is fully known; you have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where you had thought to find an abomination, you shall find a god. And where you had thought to slay another, you shall slay yourself. And where you had thought to journey outward, you shall come to the center of your own existence. And where you had thought to be alone, you shall come to be with all the world.
Now, you know, I jumped out of a plane recently—lost my mind for half an hour. But, you know, when you’re flying up in the plane, you’re anticipating the jump, your heart is beating, you’re praying, you’re doing everything possible and then your instructor says, “It’s time.” And this is usually my Wakanda salute to my sisters, okay? [Puts both hands up in front of her and keeps them up for the remainder of the speech.] So, this is how I’m going to end it: when you put your legs outside of that plane, he tells you to “put your hands up, put your head back, and then you fall.” So with my hands up, what I’m saying is that on this day of your genesis, your leap, your commencement, your mark in your history, perhaps your elixir is simply this: that you can either leave something for people or you can leave something in people. Thank you.
Peggy Noonan: ''Break up big tech", University of Notre Dame - 2019
19 May 2019, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, USA
Good morning all, Father Jenkins, Board of Trustees, esteemed faculty, students, distinguished fellow honorees. I thank you for this from the bottom of my heart. Father, I must say I found the tribute you just read to be almost embarrassingly flattering, but that's because I wrote it. So I guess factor that in. Normally I just say I don't deserve those kind words, but then I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either. So what the heck?
I want you to know, Father John, I count it as a great compliment of my life that you said I sound like I went to Notre Dame. This makes me want to go to old Finney’s and have a Natty Light. Let’s all meet there. We’ll get through this. We’ll meet there.
I must begin — I note, a remarkable thing to begin with, this great institution is 177 years old, which of course makes it younger than some of this year’s presidential candidates. But in all those years, it has never quite happened in an utterly formal sense that the class valedictorian, salutatorian and commencement speaker were all women.
Now, this reminds me of a story. A few years ago, a boy came home from grade school and told his father that he was second in his class and that a girl had won top place. So his father started to tease him and he said, “Surely, Tommy, you’re not going to be beaten by a mere girl.” And Tommy said, “You know, Dad, girls aren’t nearly as mere as they used to be.”
So it is a delight to be with these strong, smart women who are not at all mere, with Annalise and Sofia, and who along with Notre Dame’s strong, smart men make this University the great thing that it is.
And so I am honored to address the great and fabled class of 2019. This is your day. We honor not only you, the graduates, but your parents, your families and all the overflow rooms, your friends, grandparents, aunts and uncles, everyone who made the triumph of a Notre Dame degree possible. Nothing happens alone, or no great personal achievement does. So all honor to whatever little platoon helped you land on this shore.
I mean to be brief today. I’m going to try to be at least as interesting as the redacted Mueller report.
I do not wish to take part in any campus controversies, though I note that under our gowns, many of us up here are wearing leggings. Even Father Jenkins.
But I must say there is a tenderness to the sight of all of you today. It’s a corny thing to say, but I want to say it. When people show unhidden joy in their accomplishments and good fortune and blessings, witnessing it feels almost intimate, and that is why all graduations, for all the pomp and ceremony and brass bands, all of them are so personally moving every year. I remember Bobby Kennedy saying — of another bright class at another time — he said in a commencement address, “You’re about to enter the great world with all its splendor, but all its challenges and hardships and tests also,” and he said, “and so my advice to you is don’t go. Stay here. It’s nice here.”
I found I too have only one piece of advice for you, and it is for when you yourselves, if you choose, and if you are blessed, become parents. That advice is: Never put a child wearing Superman pajamas on the top bunk. Just don’t do it. Nothing good will happen. You’ll thank me one day.
Now, you are well used to great praise for this great school. I join it. You are a great private institution and a great Catholic university. You have a mighty endowment, access to the best, a rich field of scholars and thinkers. You are an intellectual powerhouse, but it is also true that Notre Dame occupies a very special piece of terrain in the American psyche. If you are perhaps of a certain age, certainly Irish Catholic, Notre Dame lives in your head whether you’ve ever been here or not. It is now and always, as you know, Knute Rockne. It is the soundtrack from “Rudy,” that rousing music when they carry him on their shoulders off the field. Notre Dame is Touchdown Jesus, the Hail Mary Pass, the Fighting Irish, the Four Horsemen, the Golden Dome. It is Ted Hesburgh. It is what we have been as Americans, how we’ve seen ourselves and wish still to be — heroes living and working together.
Now, if you worked for Ronald Reagan, as I did, of course you think of George Gipp, whom Reagan played in “Knute Rockne, All American.” Now Reagan’s attachment to this University, as you well know, was such that it was the first school he visited after he’d been shot in March of 1981, but he’d made a commitment to speak at graduation and he kept it, marking what he called the first time he ever turned in a college assignment on time. You gave him an honorary degree. He said he always thought the first one was honorary. But on that day, May 17, 1981, Notre Dame having a sophisticated sense of what he had been through — it had been worse than had been said by the White House. You knew it. Having had a sophisticated sense of what he’d been through, Notre Dame wore its heart on its sleeve, greeting him with a standing ovation and great spontaneous cheers. Now the president that day said a university like this is a storehouse of knowledge, mostly because the freshmen bring so much in and the seniors take so little away.
He said the thing that had interested him most when he was a young man about the story of George Gipp is the fact that the students, the team had never known Gipp. He’d been a few years older than all of them. They didn’t know his story until coach Rockne told it to them in the locker room on that terrible day when they were losing so bad. Now they were a fractious team. Reagan said apparently they didn’t get along, but they went back onto the field and turned the game around, not out of affection for Gipp, whom, again, they hadn’t known, but out of loyalty to the idea of having a heart of hanging together, working together, coming through — out of loyalty to the idea of loyalty itself.
Reagan that day touched on the great themes of 20th-century conservatism — man and the state. He raised high the individual.
But he also said these words: “Government has certain legitimate functions which it can perform very well." It can be "responsive" to the people, it can be "humane and compassionate". But when it tries to do things that are not its "proper province", it will not do them so well. It has a tendency to fail there. He wasn’t saying find the balance. He was saying, use your discernment, use your judgment. And he was speaking not in a partisan way, but to both parties.
So today I want to speak briefly about that phrase, "proper province".
Reagan respected reality. The spirit of Reaganism was in line with the real need of the era. The economy was stagnant with double-digit inflation and unemployment — a mess. He knew the America of his time was in need of being unleashed, of rising, of throwing off unhelpful barriers so the country would flourish. That was the urgent need.
To me, and at its best, conservatism, which of course is one of America’s two great political tendencies — conservatism is not a reaction, but a reminder from a wise old friend. It is not the antidote to progressivism. It is not the antidote to anything. It is its own vivid and particular mood, or attitude. It is an attempt at wisdom, grounded in knowledge of human history and human nature. It lacks the shine of newness, but perhaps that’s because it has withstood the test of time. Its weathered look is testament to its enduring power. Edmund Burke spoke of an unseen compact between the living, the dead and the unborn. Margaret Thatcher was less poetic. She said the facts of life are conservative.
Conservatives are always still trying to define conservatism, which suggests it is a lively thing — dynamic, still changing, finding new expressions in new eras.
Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker has just written a good book about what he calls the moral adventure of liberalism. And that’s good. I think he is in part trying to free liberalism from a feeling of mere ideology. He says liberalism finds its best expression in a thousand small sanities.
So I ask, how does conservatism find its best expression now, in the 21st century? What are its small sanities?
I happen to see wisdom in the words of Oscar Hammerstein, the great Broadway lyricist. Asked in a TV interview 60 years ago by Mike Wallace if Eastern media folk weren’t mostly or all liberal, Hammerstein wasn’t defensive at all. He said, “Yes, we are.” He said, “Yes, I am.” And yes, he said, this affects the view of the world that Americans are given. But he figured liberals need conservatives to hold them back, and conservatives need liberals to pull them forward.
And in our history that has been pretty much true.
Now, there are many conservatives right now who, looking down the road to future presidential cycles, to moments beyond this one, who long to return to the twentieth century arguments for smaller government and spending. And I understand. You don’t want government bigger than it has to be. You always want taxes lower rather than higher. You don’t want to dishearten people. In an age of deficits you want to keep your eye on spending.
But I believe that limited style of conservatism, while very right for its time, is not now enough in and of itself because it is not fully in line with the crises of this moment or of its reigning facts.
I believe the need now is not so much for unleashing as undergirding — steadying, strengthening, supporting so that America can flourish.
The federal government will not likely become smaller and less expensive in our lifetimes. There’s almost no political will for it in Congress — they privately admit this — or within the parties, where they'll privately admit it. What we have now and for the foreseeable future is two parties of large government, one leaning a little this way on the issues, the other that.
And to me now the important question is what that government does.
I believe America needs help right now and America knows it. The reasons are so obvious that we’ve almost stopped saying them. But we’ve been living through an ongoing cultural catastrophe for the last 30 years. You know all the words that I will say now — illegitimacy, the decline of faith, low family formation, child abuse and neglect, drugs, poor education. But all of that exists alongside of and is made worse by an entertainment culture from which the poor and neglected are unprotected and which is devoted to violence and nihilism.
Politically as a people, we are constantly bitterly pitted against each other along racial, religious and many other lines. Culturally we are force-fed a picture of America as an ugly, racist, misogynist nation — 'fruit of the poison tree,' as somebody said. So even honest love of country isn’t allowed to hold us together so much anymore. I believe we’re losing, through all these things, some higher sense of ourselves.
America right now has a strong economy, growth is solid, unemployment is way down, employment is way up, thank God. But underneath that America is, as Father John quoted, a torn-up, wounded place in need of repair. And honestly I’m not fussy about where the repair comes from, what levels, what entities, and I don’t think the American people are either. I just think they want it to come soon.
And all of this to my mind comes within a certain historical fact. You can’t see all the world’s weapons, all its mischief, it's malice, it's accidents too, and not know that someday we as a country will face a bad day or a series of bad days. And everything will depend on our ability to hold together and hold fast. A strong people will make their way through it, together, and to the other side. But with so much tearing us apart now, will we have that sense of cohesion and solidarity? This is often on my mind.
So my belief is that whatever holds us together now, whatever makes us stronger, brings us together, binds us close right now is good and necessary and must be encouraged with whatever it takes.
Conservatives pride themselves on being earthbound, and that’s nice. They respect gravity. But I would say — they haven’t asked — but I would say they should step up. Just step up a few steps higher, change the vantage point, see the country more clearly. Don’t be battling right now to make government smaller, don’t be talking about that, I mean don’t make believe that’s what you’re doing. Instead, make government more helpful, more pertinent to all of the urgencies around us.
Shift focus — direct government toward conservative ends. Focus on conserving.
We are hearing now and listening to those running for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. They would, most of them come forward and say they would shift things more towards progressive ends. And they will talk about it and they have many interesting thoughts on global climate change, Medicare for all, reparations debates and such. Fine. Let those debates commence and continue.
But what would a government aimed at conservative ends look like? I can’t fully say because we can’t go too long in a commencement address, but these are just a few things that my mind went to:
First of all, whatever might help families form, grow and endure. Whatever will help, do it. Make it a matter of national policy.
America is in a severe, and each year growing, mental health crisis. Let’s try to solve it. Help give families what they need. They don’t have enough recourse now when somebody inside the family is turning sick.
My goodness, teaching the lost boys of the working and middle class how to live — the infrastructure bills floating around Washington are good in themselves to me, because we need better bridges, tunnels and roads, and because we need the pride as a nation that comes from making them better. Like Eisenhower’s building of the U.S. highway system in the 1950s, a spirit of “we can still do that.”
But I am most for infrastructure because it could provide a great national setting for breakthrough mentorship in which men teach boys how to do something. I swear they should go out and recruit in the most difficult and detached neighborhoods and towns, dragging teenage boys out of the house integrating them into a world of dynamism and competence.
Couldn’t we work a little bit harder on helping our immigrants become Americans? However the illegal immigration crisis is resolved or not resolved, there are tens of millions of immigrants, legal and illegal, already here. Who helps them love America? Who can teach them lovingly our history and what it means to be part of this great project called America? It is a tragedy of the past 15 years in immigration debates that we've lost sight of a central fact that has everything to do with our future. We, America, we have the best immigrants in the world. Let’s just try to help them a little bit more. Thank you.
Only two more.
What can be done to focus more on threats to religious freedom? They are real and will get real. You know this. The polls are interesting. They say Americans are not always breaking down the doors to go to church, but they respect religious life. They intuitively understand the crucial nature of religious institutions, and they don’t want to see them under siege. They don’t want long-held religious beliefs compromised or trampled by the state. I feel I’ve known America a long time. Deep down it actually respects you when the dogma lives loudly within you.
That was my shout-out to Amy Barrett. Thank you. Thank you, Amy.
You know, just for fun, break up big tech. You know all the reasons. Deliberate abuse of privacy, deliberately addicting people, monopoly. They turned a convenience into a utility. Fine. Regulate it. At this point, do it to prove we are not passive observers of the corruption of our society, but active combatants against it. We would be showing, as in the highways and I hope in the infrastructure, we can still do something big, and together, as a people.
So there's many more points. I mean, you could all do your 10-point system if you wanted to because you live in America and look at it every day and you know what's not working.
But to me, really the point of conservatism is to conserve. It is to protect and strengthen, to focus on ends not abstract and notional but immediate and concrete.
Everyone in politics always want to go through the old motions because everyone in politics wants to be safe. They figure what worked in the past will work in the future. But challenges change, eras change. It does no good to repeat old mantras, especially when you don't even mean to enact them.
So be far-sighted, I would say to my friends 'see America’s real state and real plight'.
If a government will be a large, it will need sober-minded stewards. If a government will be large, it will require protecting the system that made our wealth and allowed us to be generous with the world and with ourselves. And that is free-market capitalism. Conservatives especially don’t just accept that system, they actually love it. And you fight hard for what you love.
And so let me add only one more thing from the writer and thinker Yuval Levin. He said conservatives have to stop hating our institutions. A conservatism that despises it society's institutions is self-destructive. He is exactly right.
In our political life, both sides have big sins. But you cannot hate and denigrate government, the press, the courts, our institutions and claim that the same time that you are trying to be constructive. You are not. You cannot hate the other side and claim you are trying to help. You are not. Fight failures, fight oversteps, fight arrogance and high-handedness. But we must do it in a spirit of repair.
The secret of successful politics: Be moved more by what you love than what you hate.
And so I am done. But I would say all of this is a matter of "proper province". All of this to me is being loyal to the team. All this to me is being loyal to the idea of loyalty itself.
And so I thank you. It has been an honor to be here on this great day, May 19, 2019, in South Bend, Indiana, at the University of Notre Dame in the house that Rockne built, and Ted Hesburgh too. May God bless you and keep you, the class of 2019. Thank you.
Hazel Edwards: 'Have patience, in time even an egg will walk', Monash University - 1998
16 April 1998, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Hazel Edwards O.A.M. is the bestselling author of ‘There is a Hippopotamus on Our Roof Eating Cake’, an Australian classic. This is a rerecording of her Graduation Occasional Address to Monash University in 1998 .
Hazel Edwards O.A.M. writes quirky, thought-provoking fiction and fact for adults and children. Celebrant Sleuth is her latest for adults. Check out her website. www.hazeledwards.com
Tara Westover: 'Your avatar isn't real, it isn't terribly far from a lie', The Un-Instagrammable Self, Northeastern University - 2019
3 May 2019, Northeastern University, Massachusetts, USA
Hello and good morning. President Aoun, members of the board, faculty, staff, and of course, graduates: it’s an honor to be with you this morning to celebrate this milestone. This huge achievement. For you graduates, it’s a celebration of the last several years and all the work you put in. For your parents, it’s a celebration of work put in your whole lives. Maybe even before your lives. Let’s take a moment, and thank them for that.
First, I’d just like to say, that my being awarded this degree for a few minutes of public speaking in no way diminishes the many years of hard work that you had to put in to get yours.
Actually, I’ve never given a commencement speech before. In fact, this is the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to, by about ten times. You can imagine, then, that I was a little tense about it. I’m not all that much older than you, ten years maybe, and this is a scary gig. So what I did is, I looked up last year’s commencement speaker to see how I would measure up. I’m a published author, with a book on the New York Times list, so, you know, I thought would measure up pretty well.
Welll….Here is what I found. Last year’s speaker was an Emmy-nominated actor. Okay, that’s okay I thought. Then I kept reading. She is also a sprinter, who broke several world records. Wait for it. She is also a double-below-the-knee amputee (just wait, there’s more) who pioneered the technology for her own prosthesis. Which of course is now the international standard for prosthetics. It also casually mentioned that she’s a runway model and was recently inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
If I were going to tailor-make a nightmare act to follow, she would be it.
I, in contrast, am not a model. I’ve overcome no major surgeries, and I’ve developed no technology to help others. My athletic abilities are pitiable, but probably better than my acting skills. Still, here I am. And you’re stuck with me for the next 15 minutes.
So. Looking out at you all in your black caps and gowns, I’m reminded of my own graduation, which wasn’t that long ago. I was twenty-one years old. I remember that back then I was an avid Facebook user, and that like everyone, when the ceremony ended, I uploaded photos to my page. Specifically, I uploaded three photos. One of me, standing alone, in my cap and gown. Another of me with my mother, and a third of me with both my mother and father.
There was nothing unusual about the photos. In them we were smiling, or near enough to it. In them I was just another happy graduate full of promise, embracing my happy parents. But this was a fiction, and I knew it. In fact, it was because the photos were untrue, and not in spite of it, that I wanted them online. Because they showed my life as I wanted it to be, rather than as it was.
Here are four things that I remember about that day. Four things you can’t see in the photos, but that tell the real story.
Number one. That it was my first graduation ceremony. That unlike my classmates, I had neither a high-school diploma, nor a GED. I’d been raised in the mountains of Idaho by parents whose radicals beliefs meant that I had never been allowed to go to school. (I was sort of the equivalent of a kindergarten dropout.) It was a miracle that I’d made it to that university at all, let alone that I was leaving with a degree.
Number two. That although I was graduating from a Mormon university, I no longer believed in Mormonism. All of the previous year, I had struggled to hold on to the beliefs of my childhood—to the faith I shared with my parents as well as with every other person I cared about, every brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin. I was, at the moment I walked across the stage to get my diploma, still wondering what the loss of my faith would mean. Could I be a good person, even without my faith? It sounds strange now, but I really did think that without Mormonism, I might turn out to be an ass.
Number three. That I was alone. Although my parents are standing next to me in the picture, they had not been at the graduation ceremony. At least, I don’t think they were there. I had quarreled with my father some weeks before on some point of ideology, and he had declared that he wasn’t coming. That morning he had changed his mind, and he and my mother had raced down from Idaho, but they were too late. They missed the ceremony, and were, in fact, only present for the photo.
Number four. That my apartment was empty. I’d been up all of the previous night packing every item I owned either into boxes for storage or suitcases, which now sat packed by the door. I was leaving that night for the University of Cambridge in England, a country about which I knew very little.
Adding these four things together, I don’t believe there was any part of my life that I felt secure in, or proud of. The prospect of Cambridge terrified me. I’d grown up in a junkyard; I felt deeply that I didn’t belong in that place.
Faith was the rock I’d built my life on, and now that rock was turning to sand before my eyes.
My family was a tangle of love and radicalism and what I now suspect was mental illness. The love was real, but so were the other things, and I didn’t yet know how I was going to navigate them.
That was who I was, but that is not who I uploaded to Facebook. I uploaded a happy woman, a woman who was all joy and smiles. Who was “fun.” Even though I was terrified. Even though I spent most of that day just trying to get through it, and wishing it was over.
Something strange happened in the weeks and years that followed my graduation. Something bizarre. Which is that I came to think of my graduation photos as my graduation. I came to identify more with the woman in those pictures than I did with my actual self.
We humans have always struggled with two identities. There has always been a difference between who we are when we are with ourselves and who we are when we are with others. But now we have a third self: The virtual avatar we create and share with the world.
For most people, “sharing themselves” online means carefully curating an identity that exaggerates some qualities while repressing others that they consider to be undesirable. Online, no one has acne or dark circles or a temper; no one washes dishes, does laundry or scrubs toilets. Mostly, we brunch. And we take exotic, rarified vacations. We pet sea turtles. We throw ourselves from airplanes.
They are beautiful, unblemished lives. But sometimes I think that when we deny what is worst about ourselves, we also deny what is best. We repress our ignorance, and thus we deny our capacity to learn. We repress our faults, and thus we deny our capacity to change. We forget that it is our flawed human self, and not our avatar, who creates things and reconsiders and forgives and shows mercy.
But ultimately the real problem, as the writer Zadie Smith has pointed out, is that sharing a self is not the same thing as having a self. Your avatar isn’t real. It’s a projection. It’s not terribly far from a lie. And like all of the lies that we tell, the real danger isn’t that others will believe it but that we will come to believe it ourselves. That we will come to identify with our virtual self (who looks so beguiling in photographs, whose life is bright and free and literally filtered).
In this way we become alien to ourselves. Who is this person who spends so much time studying? Washing dishes? Taking care of grandma? This is not how I see myself.
I learned at my own graduation that over identifying with your idealized self is a deeply alienating experience. It is a form of self-rejection. Because what you are saying to yourself is: I’m not good enough the way I am.
So today, I would like to pause for a moment to appreciate the parts of you that you don’t put online. I would like to mount a defense of them. Of your boring, internal, book-reading, dishwashing, thought-having life. Of the parts of you that can’t be captured by any technological medium. It’s a concept that I’m going to call “the un-instagramable self.”
Here’s something I truly believe: everything of any significance that you will do in your life will be done by your un-instagramable self. It is, for example, your un-instagramable self who is graduating today. I say this with confidence because I’ve yet to see a Facebook or Instagram account which is dedicated to photos of someone studying or attending lectures or writing essays.
All of the most substantive experiences that you will have in your life will be had by the boorish slob you are trying to edit out of existence. The you who falls in love at your dingy entry-level job will not be the glamorous and airbrushed you who will appear in your wedding photos. And parenting will be nothing like you will represent it to be online. For one thing, there will a lot more actual shit than you will ever post on Instagram. There will be sleep deprivation and petty standoffs and moments of self-doubt. But the moments of love and tenderness and belonging will touch you more deeply than anything you will find in the virtual world.
You will look wonderful in the photos you will post of you and your children. You will look wonderful because you will make sure that you look wonderful, and you will delete the ones in which you look harassed and depleted because your five-year-old woke screaming from a nightmare at 3am. You will not look wonderful as you crouch on your hall floor in stretched-out pajamas and rock your child back to sleep. You will look like hell. But you will remember the weight of your son on your chest long after the perfectly staged portraits have faded from all relevance.
And in twenty-five or thirty years, when your daughter graduates from a university, and she is sitting where you are now, and some random commencement speaker tells her to thank her Mom and Dad, she will not be thinking of your avatar—of the carefully chosen cover photo that obscures the lines in your face and the grey in your hair. She will be thinking of you. Creased and sweaty, with thinning hair and warts and liver spots and whatever other signs of decay that you’ve got going on by then.
So. Class of 2019. March up here, and claim your degree, and give the camera your best smile. But tonight, as you upload that photograph, take a moment to check in with your un-instagramable self—and thank them for getting you this far, and for taking you the rest of the way.
Thank you.