Claremont Graduate University
Commencement Address
May 17, 2008
Richard Tapia
Claremont Graduate University administration, faculty, graduating students,
family and friends it is a pleasure and an honor to share this day with you. We are all
proud of you, the graduating students, and congratulate you on your accomplishments.
This is a good time to pause, celebrate, and reflect. Reflection is important. It will help
prepare you for future decisions and will help you to guide those that come after you. In
our few minutes together I will share with you things that I have learned from my own
life, and believe that you should know. Now, you may already know many of these things,
but you may not know that you know them.
I am a Chicano (Mexican American) and a mathematician. My mother came from
Mexico to Los Angeles at the age of eleven, entrusted with the care of her ten year old
sister. They came alone. My father came from Mexico with his two older brothers at the
age of seven. My parents told me that they came to the United States in search of
education for themselves and hopefully for future children. Times were tough, they had
to support themselves, and were not able to graduate from high school. However, their
educational dreams were fulfilled through their children, out of five, four of us have
graduate degrees, albeit, two of us are lawyers. My father taught the value of inclusion—
he loved everyone and they loved him. My mother taught me that pride in being Mexican
American, hard work, and education can take you any place you want to go. She was
aware that her message was in contrast to more widely held beliefs in our community and
spent a good amount of time dealing with this conflict, helping us to maintain our pride
and belief that we could: si se puede. I used to think that she was rather naïve with this
belief, but I have learned that she was right. I tell you today—mothers are always right.
My family was my support system.
You are here today in part because of your support system; your family, your
friends, the faculty. Graduation is an important opportunity to formally acknowledge this
support system and let them share with you the joy and satisfaction of your
accomplishments. Formal ceremonies and celebration are wonderful parts of life. They
give us closure, a time to reflect, and a time to appreciate. Forty years ago when I
received my PhD from UCLA, it was the late 60s and some of us thought that we should
forego graduation ceremonies. I was very wrong, as my wife has been telling me for all
these years. So, it is with great pleasure that today I become an honorary member of the
Claremont Graduate School PhD class of 2008, and acknowledge my wife who is here to
share this experience with me. I am proud to have as honorary class mates the
distinguished Robert Merton and the distinguished Sheila Widnall.
You must realize by now that your entire life consists of a sequence of tasks, one
right after the other—high school, undergraduate school, graduate school, and career
development. Moreover, each subsequent task is much less structured and therefore
offers more challenge and requires more original thought and creativity; intelligence
alone is not sufficient. Yet with each step comes the opportunity for a broader impact.
As you move through these tasks of life, do not expect the balance of good and
bad, or success and adversity, to be uniformly distributed across the population. The
statement –I have had my bad, now comes my good–is at the very best, wishful thinking.
My wife Jean and I were married while I was a sophomore at UCLA. She had just
graduated from high school. Our daughter, Circee, was born when I was a junior. Since
we were young parents the three of us grew up together. Jean’s passion was dance and
mine was math. Jean danced in various Hollywood shows and with several companies.
Circee acquired a passion for dance and academics. I received a PhD from UCLA the
same year that our son Richard was born. The four of us went off to the University of
Wisconsin Madison and then to Rice University in Houston, Texas to conquer the world.
We had more than our share of successes in Houston. Jean had a very successful
dance studio, I received tenure in record time, Circee was a dance and academic star and
danced with a company in New York before returning to Houston to study at Rice. In
1977 Jean was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and in 1979 with myasthenia gravis. She
had to give up her studio and navigate life from a wheelchair. Three years later, Circe
was killed in an automobile accident. Jean said that these were three strikes for her and
she was out—her life was over. Finally, I convinced her that she still had much to
contribute. She started an exercise program for people in wheelchairs called “Coming
Back” and won national recognition for her work.
I was the first Hispanic elected to the prestigious National Academy of
Engineering, I was appointed to the National Science Board by President Clinton, and I
was appointed to the position of University Professor at Rice University, only the sixth
person to be so honored in the history of the school. Both Jean and I would trade these
awards and honors, and she would suffer multiple sclerosis many times over, just to have
Circee back with us.
But we do not have that choice. Our only choice is to give up or play the hand
that we were dealt. The choice is easy. Life has its strange twists. I am now an expert on
things that I really never wanted to know about, like wheelchairs and how to travel with a
person in a wheelchair.
I share this personal story to tell you this: when you encounter obstacles and
adversity, learn to look both ways. Your challenge is to handle adversity. Prosperity is
quite easy to handle. Remember that failure is a part of every successful person’s life.
True success is not the education that you have, but what you do with this
education. It is not the hand that you are dealt, but how you play it. At each stage of your
life and career, continue to dream and work to make your dreams come true, but learn to
cope and still enjoy life if they do not come true.
I have now been on the Rice faculty for almost four decades and have been
involved in addressing inequities, both for women and underrepresented minorities at all
levels—university, state and nation—for literally all of those years. I did not plan on
doing this—it was just something that had to be done, and I knew that I could help.
Nowhere does the job description of a Rice mathematician include this work. And for
most of you, your job description won’t say, “make the world a better place”. Yet I
implore you to care about this and do a part to solve current critical societal and
educational problems. Realize that we, the United Sates, no longer set the bar on national
well being including protection of the environment, health care, and public K-12
education; indeed we share the bottom with a host of third world nations .
Our national image has deteriorated world wide to an unprecedented low level.
Whether or not we won the war, all must agree that we have paid a huge price in losing
the peace, we could have done a much better job.
Violence today is at a frightening level. Drugs, disrespect, anger, and hate are the
characteristics of the times. Little by little we have let TV, the media, and the internet
define the value system for today’s youth. As a nation we can not let this continue. Yes,
you will be the leaders of tomorrow, but this youth will be the leaders of the day after
tomorrow. To not care, to not speak out, to not reach back would be the most unpatriotic
action you could perpetrate upon your country.
On health care and violence I share the following personal story. Diana, a
Mexican American single mother, cleaned our house for us once a week. I befriended her
son Fernando, who was going to high school part time. I convinced him to go to school
full time and move on to college. He helped me around the yard and with my show cars.
He was quite smart. Diana was diagnosed with stomach cancer, she had no health
insurance, and by the time she could be seen at a free clinic, it was too late; she died at
the age of 35 about four years ago. Her death was very hard for Fernando and I stayed
close to him in the interim. Last weekend while drafting this talk, I received a call saying
that Fernando had been killed in a drive by shooting. At his funeral I thought about
things that I have included in this address.
Fifty years or so ago, California set the standard for quality public education.
Today as a nation, we are a country of richly different racial and ethnic people. Today
California and Texas are majority minority states. As such we face unprecedented
potential and challenges. I offer the following universal educational axiom:
Race and ethnicity should not dictate educational destiny.
Unfortunately, today they do. As such we maintain a class system that follows along
racial and ethnic lines. This endangers the entire health of the country. My warning is that
the rate at which the minority population is growing outpaces the rate at which we are
improving our effectiveness in educating this segment of the population.
Not unrelated to our education failure, it is with great sadness and frustration that
I acknowledge that a growing contemporary challenge in big city American society is the
escalation of violence and killing in the relationship between African Americans and
Latinos; here, my home town Los Angeles arguably leads the nation. This frustration is
magnified by the fact that I have worked very hard to have my legacy be that of bringing
Blacks, Browns, and other groups to the table to work together. The two conferences that
carry my name, The David Blackwell-Richard Tapia Mathematics Conference and The
Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, are strongly modeled
along these lines.
California and Texas have the potential to either lead the nation in creative and
innovative solutions of these complex educational problems or lead the nation down a
path of public education disaster.
Dr. Donna Nelson, a chemist at the University of Oklahoma, recently conducted a
study concerning the gender and racial distribution of faculty in the nations top 50
science and engineering departments. She found that not only is there a shortfall in the
faculties of these departments in terms of women and underrepresented minorities, but
there is also a short fall in terms of American white males. The hires are going to
individuals from foreign countries. Even on our academic home court we can not
compete with those from other countries.
You may say that we have left you with these problems, and I would answer that
this is true. But we can't re-deal the hand, your challenge is to play well what you have
been dealt. The future of the world’s scientific and societal health is in your hands.
Many of you will distinguish yourselves with prestigious awards and recognition,
including a possible Nobel or Pulitzer Prize, or a Field's Medal. This will be of significant
value to America's scientific health and bring you great prestige, but this alone will not be
enough. It will not bring you the satisfaction of helping those less privileged to live
better lives, and improving the health of the nation. It is not someone else's job, it is now
your job.
Finally, life and people around you are beautiful, reach for them. They need you
and you need them. I wish you all the best of luck
Thank you.