VOLUME
VITAL
SPEECHES
LXXIX
No. 08 / August 2013
Impartial. Constructive. Authentic.
of the day
Special Commencement Speech Issue
242
Dreams Are Fleeting, but
Passion Endures
JOHN LASSETER, Chief Creative Officer, Walt Disney and
Pixar Animation Studios
244
Economic Prospects for
the Long Run
BEN BERNANKE, Chairman, Board of Governors,
Federal Reserve System
247
When You Really Commence
CARL BERNSTEIN, Journalist
250
How to Make Your Own
“Wonderful Life”
MARY SUE COLEMAN, President, University of Michigan
252
It’s All Out There Waiting
FLOYD D. LOOP, retired Chairman and Chief Executive
Officer, Cleveland Clinic
253
Standing on the Sun
MITCH ANDERSON, 2013 Salutatorian, Belton High School
254
Three Types of Courage
PHILIP BENESCH, Associate Professor of Political Science,
Lebanon Valley College
256
You Do Not Pass Through This
Life, It Passes Through You
JOSS WHEDON, Writer and Film Director
258
What to Worry About
(and What Not To)
DAVID BROOKS, Columnist, The New York Times
261
To Participate, and to Persevere
BARACK OBAMA, President, United States of America
242
Vital speeches of the day
DREAMS
ARE
FLEETING,
BUT
PASSION
ENDURES
When your dreams get shattered and you trust your passion, guess what: You get a lot more dreams,
and they will come true.
Commencement Address by JOHN LASSETER, Chief
Creative Officer, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios
F
irst, congratulations to the Eckerd
College Class of 2013!!
Thank you President Eastman,
Trustees and esteemed Eckerd
faculty; I’m honored by this recognition. I also want to thank you for
this amazing school. You see, I am a
proud parent of a graduating senior,
Paul Lasseter. To witness the growth
and blossoming of our son here was
amazing to watch. Your encouragement his freshman year to take a
trip in his winter term changed his
life. He discovered Italy. Today he is
graduating with a degree in International Business and a minor in
Italian. Thank you to Professor Morris Shapero for being such a great
teacher and mentor, and an inspiration to our son. PJ, we are so proud
of you.
Today I want to talk to you about
dreams. Everyone says to follow your
dreams... I did.
I loved cartoons my whole life,
even when it wasn’t cool. When my
friends were spending all their time
on sports and girls, I would race
home after school to watch Bugs
Bunny cartoons. I was a freshman
in high school when I found out that
people actually made cartoons for a
living, and at that moment I knew my
life’s dream: to be an animator for the
Walt Disney Studio. I wrote to the
studio while I was in high school, and
when they sent me a letter my senior
year and told me they were starting
a Disney animation program at the
California Institute of the Arts, it
seemed like fate was rolling a path to
that dream—right out in front of me.
I was the second student admitted,
and when I actually began attending
classes, I couldn’t believe my luck.
First of all, the studio had coaxed
VSOTD.COM
Delivered at Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Fla.,
May 19, 2013
these great Disney artists out of
retirement to be our teachers. On top
of that, my fellow students were the
likes of Tim Burton, Brad Bird and
John Musker. We were so amped by
what we were learning that we didn’t
want to leave class at the end of the
day. We’d get together in the evenings
and watch 16mm prints of the great
Disney movies, talking about them
into the wee hours—we learned as
much from each other as we did
from our teachers—and all the while
dreaming about working for Disney
ourselves some day.
When I landed a job at Disney
after graduation, I was so excited.
I arrived at the studio that first day
convinced that my dream had come
true and I was about to start my
lifelong career there. I and my fellow
CalArts alums were chomping at the
bit, with the film revolution of the
70’s happening—I mean, Star Wars
had come out! The Godfather, Close Encounters, Raging Bull, The Shining, Raiders
of the Lost Ark! We were eager to show
that animation could do great things
too. But I soon found that the reality
at Disney wasn’t anything like what
I had been dreaming of. The studio leadership was not interested in
hearing what we had to say, or seeing
what we could do. After making a
suggestion on how to improve a scene
one day, I was literally told, “keep
your opinions to yourself, and do
what you’re told. If you don’t want
to, there are lots of people out there
who are willing to take your place.” While all this was going on
though, I started seeing the beginnings of computers making pictures,
and it really lit a fire in me. The
passion in me started building up,
because I knew this was the future.
You see, one of the things I had
always admired about Disney was its
innovative spirit. Walt Disney had
been a great advocate of the new,
and many groundbreaking developments in film technology had their
origins at his studio. I felt that computer animation was what Walt had
been waiting for. I threw myself into
suggesting projects that would show
how the computer could be used to
take Disney Animation to the next
level; I even did a test. It seemed like
a natural extension for this studio
that had always been so innovative.
I kept getting the answer, “No, that’s
not how it’s done.” But I kept trying,
I wouldn’t let go of the idea that
computer animation was something
Disney should be doing, because I
knew it would make the studio and
its films better. Then one day, the
manager of the Animation Dept.,
Mr. “No” himself, called me into his
office—and fired me.
I was devastated. My dream was
shattered. I didn’t know what to do.
I had had this dream of working for
Disney for so long and without it, I
felt lost. I felt like such a failure, that
I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone
what had happened. In fact, it wasn’t
until just a few years ago that I could
tell people that I was actually fired
from Disney.
Soon after being fired, I was at a
computer graphics conference on the
Queen Mary, and I ran into a guy I
had met when I was trying to set up
the computer animation projects at
Disney. We chatted a bit and later
in the day he sought me out to offer
me some freelance work in the San
Francisco area. Since I didn’t have
anything else going on, I agreed.
The initial gig was for a month’s
243
JOHN LASSETER
work, and it turned out so well, I’ve
never left.
That guy’s name was Ed Catmull,
and the group I went north to work
with was the Lucasfilm Computer
Division. Ed had gathered most of
the best computer graphics researchers in the world to work with him—
I was amazed. I asked Ed how he
was able to get them all here, and
he said simply, “It’s easy; I just try
to hire people that are smarter than
myself.” What a difference from the
creatively stifling Disney I had just
left. Everyone here was so creatively
supported and challenged to aim for
greatness. The work was so innovative and cool that I’d stay in my office
animating for days on end, sleeping
on a futon under my desk. I blossomed there. Steve Jobs was so impressed
at what Ed and all of us had built
that he tried to get Apple to buy
us, but they said “No.” A short
time later Apple fired Steve and he
ended up buying our group himself
from Lucasfilm, and in 1986, we
formed Pixar.
We all have dreams we follow.
Often, we build large parts of our
lives around pursuing those dreams.
So when there comes a point at
which a door gets slammed in your
face—and there inevitably will—it
can be crushing. But what I’m here
to say is... how you react to these setbacks can end up defining you more
than the pursuit of the dream itself.
Getting fired from Disney was really painful, but it was one of the best
things that ever happened to me.
I want to share with you two lessons that I learned from it.
First... trust your passion.
When you get shut down it’s easy to
doubt yourself, or even be tempted
to throw in the towel altogether. But
it’s in those moments that it’s most
important for you to hold on to the
things that inspire you, the things
that you love to do. If I had stopped
pursuing computer animation and
just done what I was told at Disney,
I would not be where I am today.
I know that not everyone finds their
passion early like I did. But everyone has that little voice inside, that
intuition. Follow that intuition, head
towards the work that feels meaningful and satisfying—and it will lead
you to where you’re meant to be.
Second... when bad things come
your way, stay positive. Learn what
not to do in negative situations. I
got squished at Disney by someone
who told me to keep my mouth shut
and do what I was told, and at that
moment I told myself that if I was
ever in charge, I would never ever
say to anyone what that person just
said to me. Life is too short to hang
out with squishers like that. Years
after I left Disney, the studio came
back to me and offered me a job as
a director paying 4 times what I was
making at Pixar. But I stayed with
Pixar, even though at the time it was
a small company that was barely
staying afloat. I did it because we
were doing this incredible groundbreaking work that no one had ever
done before. But just as importantly,
I did it because Pixar was a place
that enabled people, that trusted
people, that hired the best people
in the world, let them do what they
were great at, and always challenged
them to be better. If I hadn’t learned
how important it was to be around
people who lift you up and make
you better, I would never have ended
up who I am today. When I refused
to leave Pixar, Disney eventually
came back and offered to make a
project with us—at Pixar—and that
project became the first computer
animated feature film in history. That
project became Toy Story.
It is important to follow your
dreams, but it is more important
to follow your passion. Because
when your dreams get shattered and
you trust your passion, guess what:
you get a lot more dreams, and they
will come true.
Thank you and good luck to the
Class of 2013.
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august 2013
244
Vital speeches of the day
ECONOMIC
PROSPECTS
FOR
THE
LONG
RUN
History suggests that economic prospects during the coming decades depend on whether the most recent
revolution, the IT revolution, has economic effects of similar scale and scope as the previous two. But will it?
Commencement Address by BEN BERNANKE, Chairman,
Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System
L
et me start by congratulating
the graduates and their parents.
The word “graduate” comes from
the Latin word for “step.” Graduation from college is only one step on a
journey, but it is an important one and
well worth celebrating.
I think everyone here appreciates
what a special privilege each of you
has enjoyed in attending a unique institution like Simon’s Rock. It is, to my
knowledge, the only “early college” in
the United States; many of you came
here after the 10th or 11th grade
in search of a different educational
experience. And with only about 400
students on campus, I am sure each
of you has felt yourself to be part of
a close-knit community. Most important, though, you have completed a
curriculum that emphasizes creativity and independent critical thinking,
habits of mind that I am sure will stay
with you.
What’s so important about creativity and critical thinking? There are
many answers. I am an economist, so
I will answer by talking first about our
economic future—or your economic
future, I should say, because each of
confidence we will overcome—to
speak, for a change, about economic
growth as measured in decades, not
months or quarters.
Many factors affect the development of the economy, notably among
them a nation’s economic and political institutions, but over long periods
probably the most important factor is
the pace of scientific and technological progress. Between the days of the
Roman Empire and when the Industrial Revolution took hold in Europe,
the standard of living of the average
person throughout most of the world
changed little from generation to
generation. For centuries, many, if not
most, people produced much of what
they and their families consumed and
never traveled far from where they
were born. By the mid-1700s, however, growing scientific and technical knowledge was beginning to find
commercial uses. Since then, according to standard accounts, the world
has experienced at least three major
waves of technological innovation and
its application. The first wave drove
the growth of the early industrial era,
which lasted from the mid- 1700s to
What does the future hold for the
“working
lives of today’s graduates?
you will have many years, I hope, to
contribute to and benefit from an
increasingly sophisticated, complex,
and globalized economy. My emphasis
today will be on prospects for the long
run. In particular, I will be looking beyond the very real challenges
of economic recovery that we face
today— challenges that I have every
VSOTD.COM
Delivered at Bard College at Simon’s Rock,
Great Barrington, Mass., May 18, 2013
”
the mid-1800s. This period saw the
invention of steam engines, cottonspinning machines, and railroads.
These innovations, by introducing
mechanization, specialization, and
mass production, fundamentally
changed how and where goods were
produced and, in the process, greatly
increased the productivity of workers
and reduced the cost of basic consumer goods. The second extended
wave of invention coincided with the
modern industrial era, which lasted
from the mid-1800s well into the years
after World War II. This era featured
multiple innovations that radically
changed everyday life, such as indoor
plumbing, the harnessing of electricity for use in homes and factories, the
internal combustion engine, antibiotics, powered flight, telephones, radio,
television, and many more. The third
era, whose roots go back at least to the
1940s but which began to enter the
popular consciousness in the 1970s
and 1980s, is defined by the information technology (IT) revolution, as
well as fields like biotechnology that
improvements in computing helped
make possible. Of course, the IT revolution is still going on and shaping our
world today.
Now here’s a question—in fact, a
key question, I imagine, from your
perspective. What does the future hold
for the working lives of today’s graduates? The economic implications of
the first two waves of innovation, from
the steam engine to the Boeing 747,
were enormous. These waves vastly
expanded the range of available products and the efficiency with which they
could be produced. Indeed, according
to the best available data, output per
person in the United States increased
by approximately 30 times between
1700 and 1970 or so, growth that has
resulted in multiple transformations
of our economy and society. History
suggests that economic prospects during the coming decades depend on
whether the most recent revolution,
the IT revolution, has economic effects of similar scale and scope as the
previous two. But will it?
245
BEN BERNANKE
I must report that not everyone
thinks so. Indeed, some knowledgeable
observers have recently made the case
that the IT revolution, as important
as it surely is, likely will not generate
the transformative economic effects
that flowed from the earlier technological revolutions. As a result, these
observers argue, economic growth and
change in coming decades likely will
be noticeably slower than the pace to
which Americans have become accustomed. Such an outcome would have
important social and political—as well
as economic—consequences for our
country and the world.
This provocative assessment of our
economic future has attracted plenty
of attention among economists and
others as well. Does it make sense?
Here’s one way to think more concretely about the argument that the
pessimists are making: Fifty years ago,
in 1963, I was a nine-year-old growing
up in a middle-class home in a small
town in South Carolina. As a way of
getting a handle on the recent pace
of economic change, it’s interesting to
ask how my family’s everyday life back
then differed from that of a typical
family today. Well, if I think about
it, I could quickly come up with the
Internet, cellphones, and microwave
ovens as important conveniences that
most of your families have today that
my family lacked 50 years ago. Health
care has improved some since I was
young; indeed, life expectancy at birth
in the United States has risen from
70 years in 1963 to 78 years today,
although some of this improvement is
probably due to better nutrition and
generally higher levels of income rather than advances in medicine alone.
Nevertheless, though my memory may
be selective, it doesn’t seem to me that
the differences in daily life between
then and now are all that large. Heating, air conditioning, cooking, and
sanitation in my childhood were not
all that different from today. We had a
dishwasher, a washing machine, and a
dryer. My family owned a comfortable
car with air conditioning and a radio,
and the experience of commercial
flight was much like today but without
the long security lines. For entertainment, we did not have the Internet or
video games, as I mentioned, but we
had plenty of books, radio, musical
recordings, and a color TV (although,
I must acknowledge, the colors were
garish and there were many fewer
channels to choose from).
life expectancy at birth in 1913 was
only 53 years, reflecting not only the
state of medical science at the time—
infection-fighting antibiotics and
vaccines for many deadly diseases
would not be developed for several
more decades—but also deficiencies in sanitation and nutrition. This
was quite a different world than the
Is it true then, as baseball player Yogi Berra
“ said,
that the future ain’t what it used to be?
The comparison of the world of
1963 with that of today suggests quite
substantial but perhaps not transformative economic change since
then. But now let’s run this thought
experiment back another 50 years,
to 1913 (the year the Federal Reserve
was created by the Congress, by the
way), and compare how my grandparents and your great- grandparents
lived with how my family lived in
1963. Life in 1913 was simply much
harder for most Americans than it
would be later in the century. Many
people worked long hours at dangerous, dirty, and exhausting jobs—up
to 60 hours per week in manufacturing, for example, and even more in
agriculture. Housework involved a
great deal of drudgery; refrigerators,
freezers, vacuum cleaners, electric
stoves, and washing machines were
not in general use, which should
not be terribly surprising since most
urban households, and virtually all
rural households, were not yet wired
for electricity. In the entertainment
sphere, Americans did not yet have
access to commercial radio broadcasts and movies would be silent for
another decade and a half. Some
people had telephones, but no longdistance service was available. In
transportation, in 1913 Henry Ford
was just beginning the mass production of the Model T automobile,
railroads were powered by steam,
and regular commercial air travel was
quite a few years away. Importantly,
”
one in which I grew up in 1963 or in
which we live today.
The purpose of these comparisons is to make concrete the argument made by some economists,
that the economic and technological
transformation of the past 50 years,
while significant, does not match
the changes of the 50 years—or, for
that matter, the 100 years—before
that. Extrapolating to the future, the
conclusion some have drawn is that
the sustainable pace of economic
growth and change and the associated improvement in living standards
will likely slow further, as our most
recent technological revolution, in
computers and IT, will not transform
our lives as dramatically as previous
revolutions have.
Well, that’s sort of depressing. Is
it true, then, as baseball player Yogi
Berra said, that the future ain’t what
it used to be? Nobody really knows;
as Berra also astutely observed, it’s
tough to make predictions, especially
about the future. But there are some
good arguments on the other side of
this debate.
First, innovation, almost by definition, involves ideas that no one has
yet had, which means that forecasts
of future technological change can
be, and often are, wildly wrong. A safe
prediction, I think, is that human innovation and creativity will continue;
it is part of our very nature. Another
prediction, just as safe, is that people
will nevertheless continue to forecast
august 2013
246
the end of innovation. The famous
British economist John Maynard
Keynes observed as much in the midst
of the Great Depression more than
80 years ago. He wrote then, “We are
suffering just now from a bad attack
of economic pessimism. It is common
to hear people say that the epoch of
enormous economic progress which
characterised the 19th century is over;
that the rapid improvement in the
standard of life is now going to slow
down.” Sound familiar? By the way,
Keynes argued at that time that such a
view was shortsighted and, in characterizing what he called “the economic
Vital speeches of the day
costly patient care than we have today,
including greater responsiveness of
medical practice to the latest research
findings.4 Robots, lasers, and other
advanced technologies are improving surgical outcomes, and artificial
intelligence systems are being used to
improve diagnoses and chart courses
of treatment. Perhaps even more revolutionary is the trend toward so-called
personalized medicine, which would
tailor medical treatments for each
patient based on information drawn
from that individual’s genetic code.
Taken together, such advances could
lead to another jump in life expectan-
The history of technological innovation and economic
“development
teaches us that change is the only constant.
”
possibilities for our grandchildren,” he
predicted that income per person, adjusted for inflation, could rise as much
as four to eight times by 2030. His
guess looks pretty good; income per
person in the United States today is
roughly six times what it was in 1930.
Second, not only are scientific
and technical innovation themselves
inherently hard to predict, so are the
long-run practical consequences of
innovation for our economy and our
daily lives. Indeed, some would say
that we are still in the early days of
the IT revolution; after all, computing
speeds and memory have increased
many times over in the 30-plus years
since the first personal computers
came on the market, and fields like
biotechnology are also advancing
rapidly. Moreover, even as the basic
technologies improve, the commercial
applications of these technologies have
arguably thus far only scratched the
surface. Consider, for example, the
potential for IT and biotechnology to
improve health care, one of the largest
and most important sectors of our
economy. A strong case can be made
that the modernization of healthcare IT systems would lead to bettercoordinated, more effective, and less
VSOTD.COM
cy and improved health at older ages.
Other promising areas for the application of new technologies include
the development of cleaner energy—for example, the harnessing of
wind, wave, and solar power and the
development of electric and hybrid
vehicles—as well as potential further
advances in communications and
robotics. I’m sure that I can’t imagine
all of the possibilities, but historians
of science have commented on our
collective tendency to overestimate the
short-term effects of new technologies
while underestimating their longerterm potential.
Finally, pessimists may be paying
too little attention to the strength of
the underlying economic and social
forces that generate innovation in the
modern world. Invention was once
the province of the isolated scientist
or tinkerer. The transmission of new
ideas and the adaptation of the best
new insights to commercial uses were
slow and erratic. But all of that is
changing radically. We live on a planet
that is becoming richer and more
populous, and in which not only the
most advanced economies but also
large emerging market nations like
China and India increasingly see their
economic futures as tied to technological innovation. In that context, the
number of trained scientists and engineers is increasing rapidly, as are the
resources for research being provided
by universities, governments, and the
private sector. Moreover, because of
the Internet and other advances in
communications, collaboration and
the exchange of ideas take place at
high speed and with little regard for
geographic distance. For example,
research papers are now disseminated
and critiqued almost instantaneously
rather than after publication in a
journal several years after they are
written. And, importantly, as trade
and globalization increase the size of
the potential market for new products,
the possible economic rewards for being first with an innovative product or
process are growing rapidly.6 In short,
both humanity’s capacity to innovate
and the incentives to innovate are
greater today than at any other time
in history.
Well, what does all this have to do
with creativity and critical thinking,
which is where I started? The history of technological innovation and
economic development teaches us that
change is the only constant. During
your working lives, you will have to reinvent yourselves many times. Success
and satisfaction will not come from
mastering a fixed body of knowledge
but from constant adaptation and
creativity in a rapidly changing world.
Engaging with and applying new
technologies will be a crucial part of
that adaptation. Your work here at Simon’s Rock, and the intellectual skills,
creativity, and imagination that that
work has fostered, are the best possible
preparation for these challenges. And
while I have emphasized technological
and scientific advances today, it is important to remember that the arts and
humanities facilitate new and creative
thinking as well, while helping us to
draw meaning that goes beyond the
purely material aspects of our lives. I
wish you the best in facing the difficult
but exciting challenges that lie ahead.
Congratulations.
247
CARL BERNSTEIN
WHEN
YOU
REALLY
COMMENCE
When you learn that daring is part of what you need to do away from the cocoon that has been your
education at home and in school, you’re really given a great opportunity.
Commencement Address by CARL BERNSTEIN,
Journalist
T
o say I’m honored is an understatement.
Thank you, President MacDowell, faculty, parents, friends, trustees,
Bishop Bambera and most especially,
members of the graduating Class
of 2013.
I’m honored to be here again at
this wonderful institution. And I’m in
awe of you, the graduates, both for
your youth and your accomplishment,
and I realize that such a salutation—to
be honored at commencement—is
commonplace at such events, but on
this occasion, on this splendid spring
day, the words are especially true and
heartfelt because I speak them as a
college drop-out.
My experience in college makes
me all the more appreciative of your
achievements as graduates and what
you’ve accomplished these years here
at Misericordia.
Let me begin by telling you that
no decision I’ve ever made as been
more important or right for me than
that decision in the early 1960s to
drop out of the University of Maryland. After only a few semesters,
semesters of very little academic
accomplishment in the next state
over, that decision to drop out kept
me, happily, on the professional path
that I’ve been on for more than half
a century since. And it has also made
me aware of the knowledge that I
lack in so many areas that I’ve had to
school myself in. And also to understand something about what you, you
graduates, bring to the world that’s so
extraordinary in the way of youthful
wisdom and having been exposed to
great writings, to great teachings, to
great learning, to great ideas. And
let me say something else today to
Catholic social teaching, one of the
Delivered at Misericordia University, Dallas, Pa.,
May 19, 2013
great contributions to mankind. To
have had that experience…. I cannot
tell you how lucky I think you are to
have grown up with that tradition,
and to absorb it, and to consider it,
and to bring it forth into the world
and into the problematic and difficult
era which you will go into when you
leave here today. That grounding in
Catholic social teaching is one of the
great gifts. Use it and cherish it.
In addition, I was lucky. I discovered at a very young age what I loved
to do. And I’m still loving it and learning from it and crafting it and getting
it right sometimes, and when it’s not
right, it’s not from lack of trying or
having learned the wrong lessons. And
so it will be for you. Because you’ve
learned the right lessons here, not
just in the classroom, and now you’re
ready to shape your own destiny, fulfill
your own dreams. You’re no longer
required to follow the expectations of
others, neither your parents nor your
teachers. I made that decision a little
early, to my parents consternation,
when I was 16 years old, in my junior
year of high school—and I should
say it was in Silver Spring, Maryland,
where I got to know the Sisters very,
very well at St. Bernadette’s. I went
to work at a great institution, almost
full time when I was 16, a Washington
newspaper called the Washington Star,
the town’s afternoon paper in those
days. I grew up and was educated in
that newsroom, not in a college, by
a wonderful group of people, all of
them older than I was, who understood what the press—this calling of
journalism and reporting—was about.
And they knew how to have the time
of lives doing what they loved in a collegial environment that teemed with
excitement and drama.
Part of you leaving here today is
about finding that path to do what
you love and what excites you and
exhilarates you and challenges you.
In 1960 when I went to work at the
Star, John Kennedy was running for
president. Since then it’s been my
privilege and good luck to report
on each succeeding president of the
United States. To write books about
them and about a great Pope and
about a woman who may be the
next president or may not be, Hilary
Clinton, and about the history of our
time. And also, for more than
40 years now, to travel around this
country, especially between the two
coasts, to every state and to learn
about the magnificent people who
are too often forgotten in Washington, both in our politics and our
journalism. Especially our working
people, our working class people,
our middle class people who struggle
every day increasingly.
The greatest lesson that I learned
at the Washington Star has been
the underpinning of my work since
at the Washington Post as well and
since, I hope, in everything else I
have done: the idea that two notions
inform what we journalists ought to
do and which have larger implications, it seems to me, for our country,
for our culture and for your roles as
well in this society.
The first rule is that the press exists
for the public good. Not just to make
money or entertain or to merely cause
controversy. And secondly, that our
primary function as reporters and editors and publishers and news providers, whether online or in print or in
TV or video, is to give our readers and
viewers the best attainable version of
the truth.
august 2013
248
I’m going to come back to that very
basic term again. The best attainable
version of the truth. Because almost
a half century after I went to work, in
your era today, it’s clear that something is not working in America today.
That our system is straining. Both our
journalism and our politics certainly
strained as never before since I went
to work that half century ago. The
notion of the public good, which I
Vital speeches of the day
the great and complex questions of
our day as you’ve been taught here at
Misericordia.
So part of the blame, part of
this cultural phenomenon, which
you find yourself in the midst of,
inheriting, goes all around. Not just
the politicians, but also to much of
our people. Today the picture of
our society is rendered in our media
and our politics in America. It’s too
in this country today are not look“…ingtoo formanythepeople
best attainable version of the truth …
”
fervently hope that you graduates will
embrace in whatever you choose to
involve yourself in professionally, and
in terms of civic avocation after you
left Misericordia, that notion of the
public good, particularly as the underpinning of our politics and our media,
has been in my lifetime undermined
and overwhelmed by self interest and
careerism, by partisan assertion, and
above all, by ideological and cultural
warfare -particularly in Washington
where I was born and raised—at the
expense of the national interest.
I think one of the things that I
see throughout the country today
amongst young people like yourselves
is this great desire to move beyond this
cultural, ideological warfare, which my
generation and its immediate successors has placed upon your generation
as a yoke. This difficult business of the
best attainable version of the truth as
an underpinning of our politics and
our media, is not our priority enough
anymore, neither as providers of news
nor as participants in our politics.
Indeed, as consumers of news and information in media, too many people
in this country today are not looking
for the best attainable version of the
truth, but rather going to sources of
information to buttress their already
previously held prejudices, ideologies,
partisan beliefs, religious beliefs. Not
open to truth, not open to the kind of
inquiry and openness and delving into
VSOTD.COM
often illusionary and delusionary,
disfigured, unreal, out of touch with
truth, disconnected from the true
context of your lives and of all of our
lives. It’s disfigured by manufactured
controversy. By celebrity. By celebrity
worship. By sensationalism. By denial
of our society’s real conditions, good
and bad. And especially by this social
and political discourse that we—
meaning the press, the politicians and
the people of my generation—have
allowed to devolve into a cacophony
of name calling, ideological warfare, and easy answers to the tough
questions that you should be asking
and that you should be demanding
answers to.
“Washington,” a great journalist named Leslie Gelb wrote in his
last column for the New York Times
around the time that most of you were
born, he said and I quote: “Washington is largely indifferent to truth.
Truth has been reduced to a conflict
of press releases and a conflict of handlers. Truth is judged not by evidence
but by theatrical performance. Truth
is fear, fear of opinion polls, fear of
special interests, fear of judging others
for fear of being judged, fear of losing
power and prestige. Truth has become
the acceptance of untruths. “
And that from 20 years ago. Think
of the past week in Washington.
And that, too, is sadly the world into
which you will be immersed after you
leave this bright, wonderful campus.
But with your values, with Catholic
social teaching, with your smarts, with
the values of a 21st century liberal
education I believe you, graduates of
Misericordia, won’t accept untruths for
the basis of our public life, won’t accept
untruths for the basis of your lives.
The truth is often complex. The
best attainable version of the truth is
partly about context and complexity,
and this is perhaps the most egregious example of the single failing of
our journalism and media today and
certainly of our politics. For too much
of it, maybe even most of it, is utterly
without context and complexity the
way it is presented. Facts by themselves, as you learned in your classes
here, are not the truth. And that is a
lesson, too, of life beyond graduation.
That complexity is really the stuff of
real life. That not everything is reducible to a pure extract.
The other day I was asked in an interview why hasn’t the press been able
to topple the government like Watergate. To which I said, “It’s not the job
of the press to topple governments. It’s
the job of the press to report on the
real, existing conditions of a culture,
a society, a government, a campus,
a sports event, not to bring about
the desired result of the reporter or
newspaper editor or owner or website.
It’s the job of the people, the job of
legislature that they elect, to topple
the government if that is what’s to
happen. The job of the larger system,
the institutions and the people of the
country, and to help in a constructive
way, the government and those who
serve in it, and those whom are elected
to go into state legislature and to
Washington. In Watergate, if you have
studied, we saw democratic principles,
American principles, succeed in a way
that reaffirmed our common belief in
the ideas of government that serves
its citizens, in the rule of law—an
example we may have hoped for, but
not seen in your lifetime.
In your lifetime, we’ve seen a failure of truth, overwhelmed by misinformation. A failure of competence,
249
CARL BERNSTEIN
overwhelmed by incompetence in
government. A failure of institutions
to deal with the problems and, yes,
greatness of our working class and
middle class people. When I went to
college—as brief as it was—a college
education might have cost a thousand
dollars. Yours, riddled with student
debt that my generation has placed
on your experience.
What I’m getting to is that the
absolutism and dogmatism and demagoguery of our politics, particularly in
the United States Congress today, is
at the heart of a breakdown of one of
the three essential branches of government which has failed utterly to solve
the greatest problem of your inheritance and that is whether we are going
to become a nation of the wealthy, for
the wealthy, by the wealthy and the
privileged, at the expense of the great
majority of our people.
Ten percent of the people that live
within the distance that you and I can
see when you were processing in here
are unemployed. My generation is
responsible for that. And your generation is going to have to be responsible
for solving the failures of my generation. Because what we are doing today
is allowing plutocratic values, not
Catholic social teaching, not meritocracy, to begin to overwhelm the great
traditions and opportunities in this
country that my parents enjoyed, that
I enjoyed, and that you now have to
struggle for harder than we did.
So Class of 2013, what can I, a
drop-out of the Class of 1965, tell you
that might help you as you graduate from this stage of your life to the
beginning of the rest? How might my
rather unusual path and experience
be useful to you? Here are a couple
lessons that I’ve learned and pass on
briefly today.
First, the essential rule of reporting that has paid off time and time
again for me and that I think pays off
in almost all aspects of life: be a good
listener. Don’t be bound by preconceived notions and ideas. Let those
preconceived notions and ideas be
the beginning of an inquiry, but don’t
think you know the answer without
going out and doing the work of finding out and inquiring and delving and
looking for the best attainable version
of the truth.
I worry a lot these days that we’ve
evolved in this country a culture in
which mistakes or failure are not
really permitted. Many years ago, I
met the great American artist Robert
Rauschenberg and I was fascinated by
what Rauschenberg had as a kind of
counter-intuitive way of doing things
and what mattered most to him. And I
quote Robert Rauschenberg. “Screwing things up is a virtue,” he said an
interview when he was 74 years old.
He went on, “Being correct is never
the point. I have an almost fanatically
correct assistant and by the time she
re-spells my words and corrects my
punctuation, I can’t read what I wrote.
Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”
That’s part of the spirit of being
a graduate and commencing into the
world beyond this place. Failure is very
often—pardon me if I say this—the
way we learn best. If were not permitted to fail, we’re not permitted to dare.
So I say to you on your graduation
to challenge and break very carefully.
Know why you’re bending them and
challenging them and even breaking
them and the possible consequences
of doing that. But risk is rewarded. I
don’t know of many great men and
women in history or people I’ve encountered who’ve led really fulfilling
lives who simply followed the rules.
They questioned them very seriously.
They spoke out and they listened
carefully, respectfully, and they
learned, but they expressed themselves with all the iconoclasm and
genius and force that a really good
education, like you’ve gotten here at
Misericordia. A really good education, however we come by it, allows
us to to dare.
So, when you learn to go beyond
fear of losing something, fear of not
getting what you think you want.
When you learn that daring is part of
what you need to do away from the
cocoon that has been your education
at home and in school, you’re really
given a great opportunity. Because that
fear, you can now say, is no longer going to govern what I do. When you’re
able to do that, to move through that
fear, you really commence.
good education, however we
“ A really
come by it, allows us to dare.
”
day, don’t leave this place playing safe.
Leave this place ready to dare and
ready to stumble and ready to fall and
learn from it, and to get up again.
Some of my greatest lessons of
life, difficult as they might have been,
have come from mistakes and stumbles and failures. And yet, in daring,
in acknowledging the possibility of
failure, you’re able to experience the
incredible joy and fulfillment and
exhilaration and have the best of life
by trusting yourself, your instincts,
not necessarily what others have told
you. So yes, leave here, understand
the rules beyond this Eden-like idyllic
setting, but pick the rules you want
So my hope today is that you leave
this wonderful place, remember it,
cherish it, and say, “I’m going to find,
like this commencement speaker that
I heard, what I loved to do. I’m going
to find a path in life and a calling,
whether it’s a job or an interest or a
service that I love, and I am going to
take what I have learned up through
this commencement and apply it to
that, and then I’m going to dare to do
it my way. That’s what I’ve learned
at Misericordia. That’s why I’ve been
here. I’m ready.”
Class of 2013, congratulations,
I salute you. I’m in awe of you.
Thank you.
august 2013
250
Vital speeches of the day
HOW
TO
MAKE
YOUR
OWN
“WONDERFUL
LIFE”
See the rainbow. Feel the rain. And hear the laughter.
Commencement Address by MARY SUE COLEMAN,
President, University of Michigan
G
ood morning.
I want to thank President
Chameau and the Board of Trustees
for the honor and privilege of addressing the Class of 2013.
Thank you, also, to the families,
for supporting these students emotionally, spiritually and—ever important—financially throughout their
Caltech careers.
And a special thank you to the
graduates, for believing in yourselves
and believing in our collective future.
I realize I’m the only thing standing between you and that future, so
I will take just a little of your time to
muse about what your achievements
here might portend.
You are entering the next chapter of your lives with an incredible
advantage: a degree from one of the
world’s great universities, one with an
outsized reputation for excellence—
one that can claim Nobel laureates,
JPL and the “Big Bang Theory.”
As president of the University of
Michigan, I can report that Caltech
alumni make a significant impact at
our institution. Nearly 50 members
of our faculty have Caltech ties,
with one-third holding Michigan’s
most distinguished professorships in
research and teaching.
That includes chemist Melanie
Sanford, truly one of our star professors, who has won numerous prizes
for undergraduate teaching, is a fellow of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, and a
MacArthur Foundation “genius”—
all before the age of 40.
And James Duderstadt, a nuclear
engineer who served as Michigan’s 11th
president, who continues to think and
act on the future of higher education.
And mathematician Philip Hanlon, who concluded a distinguished
VSOTD.COM
Delivered at the California Institute of Technology,
Pasadena, Calif., June 14, 2013
27-year career at Michigan to this
week begin a new assignment: president of Dartmouth College.
We cannot talk about Caltech at
Michigan and not mention Charles
Munger, whose philanthropy is transforming graduate and professional
education on our campus.
Now this is just the world of
Caltech in Ann Arbor. Multiply this
influence nationally and globally, and
you have every reason to be proud of
a university that today becomes your
alma mater.
With this reputation comes obligation. It’s one thing to be smart—which
you are. You know that, and Caltech
knew it when they admitted you.
It’s quite another achievement to
make a lasting impression with your
intellect.
One of the great graduates of
this institute was Frank Capra.
He was the Steven Spielberg of
his generation. Given that we’re
in the backyard of Hollywood,
I think Capra’s remarkable career
provides worthy life lessons—lessons
about creativity, humanity and
impact—some 95 years after his
commencement.
He left this campus in 1918,
armed with a bachelor’s degree in
chemical engineering. He joined
the Army, and planned to make a
name for himself on the front lines
of France. The Army had other
plans and sent him only as far as San
Francisco and a classroom, where he
taught math to GIs.
Shortly thereafter, the end of the
war brought a glut of veterans and
no job prospects.
So he spent three years being, in
effect, a bum. Those are his words,
not mine. He hopped trains throughout the Southwest, played poker,
hustled a bit as a salesman, and
crashed in flophouses.
I realize this is probably not the
best scene to paint for newly minted
graduates, and certainly not one your
parents want to see become reality.
But know that young Frank Capra
answered a newspaper ad from a man
who wanted to build a movie studio.
What the heck, he thought, leaning
on a Caltech class where he studied
emulsions and learned a few things
about cameras and film.
He talked himself into his first real
job—one that involved the science of
entertaining people.
“Odd,” he said years later, “how
many ways an education—any kind
of education—comes in handy.”
So this is the close of the first
scene, where our hero—a bit down
and out, but drawing on his Caltech
education—shows a flair for innovation and creativity.
Do not be afraid to take yourself
in an unknown direction. A little
ingenuity—and the critical thinking
skills of your college education—will
set you on a path of discovery. And
you may never look back.
Scene two: Frank Capra loved
making movies. Loved telling a story
and focusing on people, exploring
their dreams and disappointments.
He called this new filmmaking
experience “the hashish of creativity,” and he was hopelessly addicted.
Fifty years after first walking into that
makeshift movie studio, he said he
still felt goose bumps looking through
the camera’s viewfinder.
It’s magical.
There is a power in film, and stories, and human emotion that should
always inform your work as scientists,
doctors and engineers, no matter how
clinical or technical.
251
sue coleman
At Michigan we recently hosted
a national conference on the role of
the humanities at research universities. Authors, historians, filmmakers
and artists sometimes feel they are
on the academic sidelines when there
is so much emphasis on—and need
for—innovation and entrepreneurship at places like Caltech, Michigan,
Stanford and beyond.
But the truth is, the humanities
are at the core of creativity. The
world’s thorniest problems turn
on the human condition, and the
humanities equip us to explore that
very state.
I studied chemistry at a small liberal arts college, but my degree was a
B.A., not a B.S., because I wanted to
sample a broader range of subjects.
I assure you I didn’t suffer one
bit from not taking another chemistry course. And I learned to see the
world in interesting new ways because of independent studies in metalsmithing and design. It made such
an impression that I designed and
made the wedding rings my husband
and I wear, nearly 48 years after we
graduated and married.
I can honestly say I could not do
what I do today—lead a major university steeped in research—without
a liberal arts background.
Every undergraduate here took
humanities courses, along with
plasma physics, fluid dynamics
and polymer chemistry. You leave
today with degrees in engineering,
math, science and more, but the
humanities—art, literature, history
and more—will allow you to fully
experience the world.
Always let the human story—
what Capra called the worth of the
individual—be part of your life work.
You will be richer for it.
We now come to the third and
final scene.
Frank Capra has just finished
filming “It’s a Wonderful Life.” By
now he is famous, having directed
“It Happened One Night,” “Mr.
Deeds Goes to Town,” and other
Oscar winners.
But he believes this movie, “It’s a
Wonderful Life,” is his best work. In
fact, he thinks it is the greatest film
anybody has made.
He did not lack for confidence.
The critics liked the movie,
but didn’t love it. It lost money at
the box office. And despite five
Academy Award nominations, there
were no Oscar statuettes for the
movie.
But Frank Capra was right. “It’s
a Wonderful Life” is his best work
because of its powerful message that
each of us touches more people than
we can appreciate. And that the loss
of anyone—with their talent, their
enthusiasm—cripples our progress as
a global community.
That has never been truer than
with your generation.
Our world is about to experience
the ramifications, good and bad, of
a youth bulge—the largest wave of
young people in human history.
Half of the world’s population is
30 and younger. In Africa, the number is almost 70 percent.
Eighty-five percent of the world’s
young people live in developing
countries.
These are the workers, the citizens,
and the decision-makers of tomorrow. These are people who will want
and need decent housing, clean water,
access to health care, and outlets for
their ideas and creativity.
Yet unlike you, most of these
young people—your global peers—
have little or no connection to higher
education or decent-paying jobs.
Unemployed and undereducated,
they have taken their angst and anger
to the streets, from Egypt and Libya
to Syria and Turkey.
Let me share this observation from
experts at the World Bank:
“Such large numbers of young
people living in developing countries
present great opportunities, but also
risks. These young people must be
well-prepared in order to create
and find good jobs.”
This is the world you must
now understand and navigate, as
scientists, astronomers, professors
and entrepreneurs.
This is the world you must change,
and for the better.
It is a place that, of course, has
seen immense progress since Frank
Capra and 1918, with the spread of
democracy and the advancements
of science.
But today’s challenges are no
less daunting. There is the growing
dilemma of personal privacy versus
national security. One nation wrestles
with childhood obesity, while others
face food insecurity. And the pressure
to build sustainable, green-friendly
communities is immense.
Some of these challenges will be
solved with science and engineering.
But technology cannot fix everything,
and this is where you must—absolutely must—keep the human dimensions in full accord.
This is where the worth, and the
impact, of every individual is essential.
Frank Capra made such a difference in society that today we define
something that is positive and socially
uplifting as “Capraesque.” It is an
immense legacy, and one you—as
fellow alumni—must carry forward in
your careers.
Follow his script, which went like
this: “I always felt the world cannot
fall apart as long as free men see the
rainbow, feel the rain and hear the
laugh of a child.”
See the rainbow: the unexpected
vista that comes with following new
paths, answering an unusual job
posting, or applying your talent in
completely different ways.
Feel the rain: the emotion of a
Monet painting, the reality of a
Steinbeck novel, and the brilliance of
a Shakespeare comedy.
And hear the laughter: of tomorrow’s citizens, living in a world made
better because of science, technology and the compassion of educated
young people like the Caltech Class
of 2013.
Congratulations, and thank you
again for letting me share such a
special day with you.
august 2013
252
Vital speeches of the day
IT’S
ALL
OUT
THERE
WAITING
We enter this profession to discover something—for ourselves, for our patients and for humanity.
Commencement Address by FLOYD D. LOOP,
former Chairman and CEO, Cleveland Clinic
I
hope you have the same attitude I
had when I graduated from GW…
an immature, unbridled desire for
unmanaged freedom . . . and that you
maintain a sense of independence
throughout your career. That attitude
is often a sign of talent as long as you
use it wisely.
There is a lot of noise about health
care. The old guard will tell you about
the uncertainties ahead. But any
change, good or bad, always brings
new opportunities. The future beats
the past every time. You have entered
this profession at an excellent time.
We are in an era of physiciandirected healthcare which will improve
data integration, deliver more effective care and speed the translation of
new science into clinical medicine.
Doctors as the natural leaders in
healthcare are able to interact with
physicians and scientists better than
lay executives. A physician in leadership is superbly qualified to represent
a medical organization, large or small,
and to determine strategy. It is a lot
easier for a physician to appreciate the
fundamentals of business than for a
businessman to learn medicine. But
most important, physicians leading the
profession help to assure that medicine
does not devolve into a commodity
that stifles innovation.
The experts want to humanize medicine but they also want to commoditize
it. Healthcare that is shaped only by
economic and political forces may be
cheaper and more evenly distributed.
But something will be sacrificed …
and that will be humanism.1 When we
are patients, we don’t want politicians,
lawyers or bankers to dictate the treatment. We want the best doctors with
the greatest experience to manage our
care ... the highest achievable quality
for the lowest justifiable price.
VSOTD.COM
Delivered at George Washington University School of
Medicine, Washington, D.C., May 19, 2013
There is an Arabian proverb that
reminds us that four things don’t come
back: the spoken word, the sped arrow,
the past life, and the neglected opportunity. There is no security in life, only
opportunities. You have successfully
navigated one of these opportunities.
After residency, the next opportunity
will be to make the right decision
about where to practice medicine.
Whatever your lifestyle preferences,
knowledge at the top of your field
gives you the ability to practice with a
natural ease, to grow intellectually, and
for vigilance, imagination, humanism
and accountability. The challenge is
how to keep learning and adapting
effectively throughout your career.
Intellectual development requires
study above one’s own level, not below.
Those that excel will become great
leaders and educators. As Charles
Mayo said, “…a patient is safest in the
hands of a person engaged in teaching
medicine. In order to teach, the doctor
must always be a student.”
There are many opportunities
in medicine … perhaps more than
other professions. Chances are that
you will align yourself with a health
system. Wherever you choose, look
for the best place to receive care, the
best place to practice medicine, and
the best place to work. The synergy
among doctors, hospitals, research
and education has the potential to
strengthen the individual physician
and establish an ideal, creative environment. Some would say that amounts
to surrendering your independence.
Not at all. Sound interdisciplinary care
enriches the clinical experience and
makes the individual physician wiser,
more efficient and secure.
You should look for a collaborative, not a competitive environment;
one that is safe for your patients;
where you are relatively free from
administrative hassle, and where you
are consulted regularly about overall
performance. It is the collective genius
of the organization that differentiates
one health system from another.
A medical enterprise is like a
beautiful flowering tree with a wide
canopy. The visible part is always
impressive: the buildings, the business
model, the hard assets, and often the
colleagues who we would work with
and for. What we don’t see immediately are the intangibles: the mission,
the vision and the values that comprise the organization. They are not
on the balance sheet. They are the
roots of the enterprise. They nurture the intellectual energy, ingenuity, teamwork and reputation of the
organization.
So when it comes time to choose
how and where you practice, look
closely at these roots. Observe how
the organization is led and managed. For academics—does it offer a
real system for scientific discovery ...
for progressive education? Does the
organization welcome innovation or
is it stagnant and complacent? Are
your new colleagues at the top of
their specialties? Great scientists and
great doctors make great medical
centers. The purpose of this discovery is to find a system or group that
has true unity of purpose, in effect, a
commonwealth of intellect, a republic of ideas and your best choice for
physician-directed healthcare.
It’s true that healthcare is a service
industry and that it is businesslike today. However, business should not put
finance before access, quality and clinical acumen. Henry Ford said it best
... “thinking first of money instead of
work brings on a fear of failure and
this blocks every avenue and makes
253
floyd d. loop
man either afraid of his competition
or afraid to change his methods. Yet
the way is clear for anyone who thinks
first of service, of doing the work the
best possible way.”
And I add that to feel rewarded
in any collaboration you have to give
more than you take. Fame is what you
take; character is what you give.
You are fortunate to practice at this
time and in this country. America is a
nation like no other and that’s why it
leads the world. We were not founded
on nationality, ethnicity, tribalism, or
religion but on ideas—the concept
of personal and economic freedom,
liberty and human rights. We are a
free people and our free enterprise
encourages economic growth, professionalism, innovation and a liberal
democracy.
When I began my medical education we had a welcoming speaker who
was the Chancellor of the University
of Kansas. He quoted from Kipling’s
“The Explorer.”
“Something hidden.
Go and find it.
Go and look behind the Ranges—
‘Something lost behind the Ranges.
Lost and waiting for you. Go!’”
I still remember that first day in
medical school.
We enter this profession to discover
something—for ourselves, for our
patients and for humanity. It’s all out
there waiting. And at the end of your
career it’s all about whether you have
made a difference; whether you had
the courage to lead your life the right
way, the risks you took, the values you
had and the people you helped along
the way.
As you start this journey, we hope
that you have a good voyage and that
it is full of adventure and discovery.
STANDING
ON
THE
SUN
Learning how to love and celebrate yourself is one of the most crucial and difficult aspects of life. …
So now, I can say, I’m gay.
Salutatorian Address by MITCH ANDERSON
L
earning how to love and celebrate yourself is one of the most
crucial and difficult aspects of life.
To know who you truly are is the first
step to enlightenment, to happiness.
It sounds so facile, yet discovering
and accepting who you are meant
to be requires introspection and a
willingness to submerge yourself into
darkness. And that is what makes the
task so daunting, so terrifying, if approached with complete authenticity.
For the longest time, I was forced to
live fractured, refusing to look at who
I thought I was and then refusing
to accept who I thought I might be.
The journey into the soul is not for
the faint of heart. Fear will naturally
creep in, but those who use the fear
to force themselves onward will succeed. After much dread and countless
hours devoted to soul searching, for
the first time, you will be able to love
who you are.
But the task does not end there.
If you know yourself, but incessantly
crave an empty approval of others,
you will be forever sorrowful. This
Delivered to Belton High School Class of 2013,
Belton, Texas, June 7, 2013
is wherein the true challenge lies.
As Madonna has said, “If your joy
is derived from what society thinks
of you, you’re always going to be
disappointed.” You must be able to
bare yourself to the world, and then
let it be. You cannot be timid; you
cannot be anxious. In a situation that
seems so pyrrhic, you must evaluate
what the costs and gains really are.
You may think that hiding yourself
is worth some superficial praise by
society, or you can choose to learn
that being who you are is vastly more
important and rid yourself of those
who cannot bring themselves to allow
you to be you.
I myself am guilty of self-doubt,
relying on others to give my life definition. But that time has passed, and I
feel the moment has arrived for me to
be publically true to my personal identity. So now, I can say, I’m gay. It is
both a significant portion of who I am
and an inconsequential aspect. It’s as
natural and effortless to me as breathing. I couldn’t change myself even if I
wanted, and believe me, I have.
I have been bullied a lot. I’ve been
called unspeakable things and relegated
to a place of lower class. I have been
made to feel worthless, unneeded,
a blight on the world. People have
mocked me, said that I was virtually
subhuman. So, for a while, I was in a
very dark place. I had no concept of
self-worth, and frequently pondered
suicide. I became so dejected, that
many times I thought of killing myself
not just because I saw no point to life,
but because I had been convinced that
doing so would actually make the world
better. And so, for many years, I continued the cyclical, destructive thought
patterns. This happened both before
and after I thought about my sexuality.
And after I had realized I was gay, I
hated myself. I wished and prayed endlessly that I could just go on with life
normally, that I could be like everyone
else. Being different felt like a curse, an
unfair sentence to the life of an outcast.
There were moments when I
believed I was next to nothing. But I
learned that what others think of you
is not nearly as meaningful as what
august 2013
254
you think of yourself. You cannot
owe the quality of your existence to
other people. You must evaluate your
life and give it purpose. You must
recognize that you are an expression
of the divine, a being made perfect
through celebration of your perceived imperfections.
Once you love yourself, you can be
the best version of yourself. You will
find success and happiness. You will
find that being different is a wholly
wonderful and joyous thing, because
it will mark you for greatness. Wish
not to be one of the million, but one
in a million. Find your idiosyncrasies,
find what will make you unique, and
run with it. You will make far fewer
mistakes if you allow your inner and
truer feelings to guide you.
And when you feel like you will be
abandoned, alienated, and cast out,
ignore the sources of such toxicity. I
believe Zachary Quinto put it best by
saying, “If people don’t want to work
with me because of my sexual orientation, then I have no interest in working
with them to begin with.” This statement can be applied to any situation
you encounter where someone is put
off by your expressing yourself. Sur-
Vital speeches of the day
round yourself with those who will
be supportive of you, and remind
yourself that you are beautiful in your
own way.
The people who tear you down,
who spit vitriol and ire, pity them.
They lash out because they have
intrinsic flaws that they refuse to face.
They have unresolved deficiencies
within that cause them to inflict harm
on others. They have no external
peace because internally there is a
want of harmony.
The world could use a little bit
more love. Let us all not be so quick
to judge. We ought to be a bit kinder
to others. Be not afraid of what you
do not know, because more often than
not, it’s probably incredibly similar
to what you know. And when you
disagree with someone, hate is not
a form of love. Think for a moment
about what damage your words would
do before speaking.
I invite everyone to be more reflective, more meditative. I ask everyone
to give themselves a good hard look
and define what they like about themselves. I ask all of you to learn what
it means to love yourself, if you
haven’t already.
Please, embrace self-empowerment.
You gain confidence, an unswerving
belief that you matter and the ability
of your existence to make an indelible
mark on the world. You gain compassion and empathy. You will love and
be loved. Most importantly, you will
finally start living the life that you
were always meant to live.
I would be remiss, however, if
I failed to incorporate a Harry
Potter reference to the theme of
my speech, so I will. Be a Luna
Lovegood, not a Pansy Parkinson.
Be a little bit strange and off-kilter,
and not so desperate to be popular.
Strive for legitimacy, and skirt what
makes you vapid. Find fellowship
with everyone, not those you have
preordained.
I have a few final, closing thoughts,
before I turn over the podium. First,
I find Zachary Quinto’s eyebrows
very attractive. Second, I would like
to be friends with Lady Gaga and
Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. And third,
I would like everyone to remember
that “Starships were meant to fly,
Hands up and touch the sky, Can’t
stop ’cause we’re so high, let’s do this
one more time.”
THREE
TYPES OF COURAGE
Global citizenship requires courage in inquiry, courage in self-transformation and political courage.
Commencement Address by PHILIP BENESCH, Associate
Professor of Political Science, Lebanon Valley College
M
ost of the students graduating
today were born in 1991, and
that, coincidentally, was the same year
I came to live in the United States.
Together, they and I have experienced
the great American journey during
these past 22 years.
I have attended eight graduation
ceremonies and have grown to appreciate the moment of Commencement
at Lebanon Valley College. Here we
get to know our students very well, to
grow fond of them, and to be thrilled
by their development. I’m delighted to
VSOTD.COM
be able to celebrate this moment with
you, as our students commence the
next stage in their lives.
My theme today is “courage”—
the courage that comes from a
liberal education. Education at a
liberal arts college will not make us
physically-brave, but it may equip us
with a different sort of courage that
should serve us well as we navigate
life’s challenges.
At a liberal arts college we prepare
a student not only for a profession
but also for active and responsible
Delivered at Lebanon Valley College,
Annville, Pa., May 11, 2013
membership in a global civilization. I
maintain that active and responsible
global citizenship requires three types
of courage:
• courage in inquiry,
• courage in self-transformation
• political courage
First, Courage in Inquiry:
Education should never be regarded as a simple accumulation of facts
or techniques. The path to knowledge
always starts with an initial question but almost never ends in a final
255
PHILIP BENESCH
answer. Because, along with the new
knowledge our students acquire,
they develop new questions and
new frameworks for understanding
their experience.
In the pursuit of knowledge there
is no wide chasm separating the sciences from the humanities and the
arts. The scientific method is itself
a normative scheme, a commitment
to rational inquiry. All theories must
be treated as reviewable and criticizable. In every academic discipline, we
advance by building new conjectures
upon earlier, well-reviewed theories.
We make intellectual progress by offering and testing creative conjectural
solutions to theoretical and practical
problems within each field. As the
philosopher Karl Popper has pointed
out, this method of conjecture and
refutation applies as well to reconstructing a damaged text as it does to
constructing a theory of radioactivity.
Both the creative moment and the
critical method apply in all fields in
the liberal arts.
When a student takes a first step
in a given subject, it is important
to introduce him or her to the accumulated wisdom of the field of
study. The student is inducted into
traditional practice built by generations of scholars in the discipline.
This is an important initiation, but it
has its dangers. If the induction is too
successful, we may convince the initiate that the field is settled and that
passive assimilation of the wisdom
and styles passed along by authorities
is sufficient for genuine knowledge.
Since the fifth or sixth century BC,
passive inter-generational transmission of traditional knowledge has
been increasingly supplemented by
a secondary tradition, a tradition of
criticism that reopens the bounds to
novel and creative contributions even
in fields that have well-established
primary traditions. If academic
disciplines are to avoid fossilization
we need to sharpen the critical and
creative capacities of our students.
We should embolden them to question their teachers and to endeavor to
contribute to a discipline that remains
open to growth and open to innovation. This requires an intellectually
courageous approach by the student
for which a liberal-arts education,
with exposure to multiple critical traditions, provides an ideal preparation.
Now to the second aspect of courage: Courage in Self-Transformation
History is very important and we
must learn from its riches. But history
should not be regarded as destiny, nor
even as identity.
strengths developed by our students’
participation in off-campus experiences such as Study Abroad, internships
and student research presentations at
professional conferences.
I regard experiential learning as
transformative of the student—fortifying his or her self-confidence and
self-reliance, enabling him or her to
formulate mature working relationships, and, most importantly, permitting the student to recognize the
power that a competent, articulate,
History is important, and we must
“
learn from its riches. But history should not be
regarded as destiny, nor even as identity.
”
We are not in the business of
producing even approximate replicas
of ourselves, still less would we desire
ideological clones. We endeavor to
produce unique individuals who will
progress to be unlike ourselves and
who will continue to grow autonomously, seeing things as we have not
been able to see them and finding
solutions to problems we were not
able to solve.
We live in a globalized civilization. To a great extent, globalization demonstrates the strength and
vitality of the American ideal. The
American ideals of rule of law and
the equal moral dignity of individuals
are widely admired and emulated. We
should look to a world in which future
generations of Americans move across
the globe with the same ease they do
across the continental vastness of the
United States, as each follows his or
her chosen plan of life. A liberal arts education must
enhance the independent capacity of
each student to situate him or herself
in the world, transforming it while
performing within it. At LVC we find
Courage in self-transformation fortified through on-campus performance
in many fields. And Courage in selftransformation is one of the central
educated person may exercise in
effecting change in the community.
These are experiences preparatory to
a student’s post-graduate life.
Students should not leave College
as they came in. Graduation is more
than a certification of knowledge, it
celebrates a student’s independent
capacity to steer his or her own course
and make his or her own contribution. To borrow a turn of phrase from
Winston Churchill, graduation from
College is not the end, it is not even
the beginning of the end; it is merely
the end of the beginning.
And so, to the third aspect of courage: Political Courage.
Democracy necessitates the education of each citizen, so that he or she
may play a part in checking the power
of leaders and evaluating the multiple
viewpoints available. It is here that a
liberal arts education is so useful
A liberal education enables us to
have the intellectual confidence to
permit our views to be challenged,
and possibly altered, by dissenting views. Thus, the majority must
have the courage to moderate its use
of power—it takes self-restraint to
continue debate when, as the majority, you could use power to silence
dissenters.
august 2013
256
A liberal education teaches the
skills required for reasoned and
respectful discourse, and for effective
presentation. For it also takes courage for dissenters to persevere in their
conscientious dissent and to articulate
viewpoints that they fear may seem
distasteful, erroneous, or even absurd
to the majority.
And, in our hyper-connected world
of instant communications, where
the right of each to speak and publish
may yield a cacophony of poorlyinformed opinion, a liberal education
equips each reader or listener with
the critical skills to separate the wheat
from the chaff.
Vital speeches of the day
In these ways, liberal education
prepares us for the free competition
of ideas.
The motto of this College, that “the
truth shall set you free,” recognizes
that through our education we achieve
liberty. Though we each continue to
be fallible, we may, through respectful
communication with others, identify
at least some of our intellectual errors,
move closer to truth, and continue the
process of enlightenment.
In 1784 Immanuel Kant observed
the intimate connection between
enlightenment and freedom. He
declared that the first step on the path
to liberty “lies in the resolution and
courage to use reason without direction from another.” Liberty is not license; we must
bear the full weight of responsibility for our actions and abide by the
democratic rule of law. But within
these limits, the future, your future,
should not be excessively bound by
the horizons of the past.
My parting message to you is this:
It is you, and the generations that
follow you, who must take charge,
and must find the courage to continue
the great project of seeking truth and
securing liberty as best you determine.
Have intellectual confidence in yourself and be your own leader.
YOU DO NOT PASS THROUGH THIS LIFE, IT PASSES
THROUGH
YOU
You experience it, you interpret it, you act, and then it is different. That happens constantly. You are changing
the world. You always have been. And now it becomes real on a level that it hasn’t been before.
Commencement Address by JOSS WHEDON,
Writer and Film Director
“T
wo roads diverged in a wood
and…” No! I’m not that lazy.
I sat through many graduations.
When I was sitting where you guys
[Wesleyan class of 2013] are sitting
the speaker was Bill Cosby. He was
very funny and he was very brief and I
thank him for that. He gave us a message that I really took with me, and that
a lot of us never forgot, about changing
the world. He said, “You’re not gonna
change the world, so don’t try.”
That was it! He didn’t buy that back
at all. And then he complained about
buying his daughter a car and then we
left. And I remember thinking…you
know I think I can do better. I think I
can be a little more inspiring than that.
So, what I’d like to say to all of you
is that you are all going to die.
This is a good commencement
speech! Because I’m figuring…it’s got
to go up from here, right? It can only
get better. This is good. It can’t get
VSOTD.COM
more depressing. You have, in fact,
already begun to die.
You look great. Don’t get me wrong.
And you are youth and beauty, you
are at your physical peak. Your bodies
have just gotten off the ski slope at the
peak of growth and potential! And now
comes the black diamond mogul run to
the grave.
And the weird thing is… your body
wants to die. On a cellular level that’s
what it wants. And that’s—probably?—
not what you want. I’m confronted by
a great deal of grand and worthy ambition from this student body. You want
to be politicians, social workers, you
want to be artists. Your body’s ambition? Mulch. Your body wants to make
some babies and then go in the ground
and fertilize things. That’s it!
And that seems like a bit of a contradiction. That doesn’t seem fair. For
one thing, we’re telling you to go out
into the world exactly when your body
Delivered at Wesleyan University,
Middletown, Ct., May 25, 2013
is saying, “Hey, let’s bring it down a
notch.” And it is a contradiction, which
is actually what I’d like to talk to you
about: the contradictions between your
body and your mind, your mind and
itself. I believe these contradictions and
these tensions are the greatest gift we
have and hopefully I can explain that.
But first let me say that when I talk
about contradiction I’m talking about
something that is a constant in your life
and in your identity. Not just in your
body, but in your own mind in ways
that you may recognize and that you
may not.
Let’s just say that, hypothetically,
two roads diverged in a wood and you
took the path less traveled. Part of
you is going, “Look at that path over
there! It’s much better! Everybody’s
traveling on it and it’s…it’s paved
and there’s like a Starbucks every 50
yards… This is wrong. This path’s got
nettles and Robert Frost’s body and…
257
JOSS WHEDON
somebody should have moved that,
right? It feels weird.”
Not only is your mind telling you
this, it is on that other path. It is
behaving as if it is on that path, it is
doing the opposite of what you are
doing. And for your entire life you will
be doing, on some level, the opposite
of not only what you are doing but of
what you think you are. That is just
going to go on.
And what you need to do is to honor that. To understand it. To unearth
it. To listen to this other voice.
You have, which is a rare thing,
the ability and the responsibility to
listen to the dissent in yourself. To at
least give it the floor. Because it is the
key, not only to consciousness, but to
real growth.
To accept duality is to earn identity,
and identity is something that you are
constantly earning. It is not just “who
you are,” it is a process that you must
be active in.
And it’s not parroting your parents
or even the thoughts of your learned
teachers, it is, now more than ever,
about understanding yourself so you
can become yourself.
I talk about this contradiction and
this tension… There’s two things I
want to say about it. One, it never
goes away. And if you think that
achieving something, if you think
that solving something, if you think a
career or a relationship will quiet that
voice? It will not.
If you think happiness means
total peace, you will never be happy.
Peace comes from the acceptance of
the part of you that can never be at
peace. They will always be in conflict
and if you accept that, everything
gets a lot better!
The other reason is that because
you are establishing your identities
and beliefs you need to argue yourself down, because somebody else
will. Somebody’s going to come at
you. Whatever your belief, your idea,
your ambition…somebody’s going to
question it. And unless you have first
you won’t be able to answer back. You
won’t be able to hold your ground.
You don’t believe me? Try taking a
stand on just one leg. You need to see
both sides.
Now, if you do, does this mean you
get to change the world? All I can say,
at this point, is that I think we can all
agree that the world could use a little
changing. I don’t know if your parents
need to acknowledge and honor that
tension and the connection that that
tension is a part of. Our connection,
not just to the people we love, but to
everybody, including people we can’t
stand and wish weren’t around.
The connection we have is part of
what defines us on such a basic level.
way to understand your position and
“ Theitsonlyworth
is to understand the opposite.
”
have explained this to you about the
world but we…broke it? Ummmm,
we’re sorry? It’s a bit of a mess. It’s a
hard time to go out into it.
And it’s a weird time in our country.
And the thing about our country is…
oh, it’s nice. I like it! But it’s not long
on contradiction or ambiguity. It’s not
long on these kind of things. It likes
things to be simple. It likes things to be
pigeonholed. Good, or bad. Black, or
white. Blue, or red.
And we’re not that. We’re more
interesting than that. The way that we go
into the world understanding is to have
these contradictions in ourselves and
to see them in other people and not
judge them for it. To know that—in a
world where debate has kind of fallen
away and given away to shouting and
bullying—the best thing is not just the
idea of honest debate, the best thing is
losing a debate. Because it means you’ve
learned something and you’ve changed
your position.
The only way, really, to understand your position and its worth is to
understand the opposite. That doesn’t
mean the crazy guy on the radio who’s
spewing hate, it means the decent human truths of all the people who feel
the need to listen to that guy. You are
connected to those people. They’re
connected to him. You can’t get away
from it.
This connection is part of contradiction. It is the tension I was talking
about. Because tension isn’t about two
opposite points, it’s about the line being stretched in between them. And we
Freedom is not freedom from connection. Serial killing is freedom from
connection. Certain large investment
firms have established freedom from
connection….
But we as people never do, and
we’re not supposed to. We are individuals, obviously, but we are more
than that.
So here’s the thing about changing
the world. It turns out that’s not even
the question, because you don’t have
a choice. You are going to change the
world because that is actually what the
world is.
You do not pass through this life, it
passes through you. You experience it,
you interpret it, you act, and then it is
different. That happens constantly. You
are changing the world. You always
have been.
And now it becomes real on a level
that it hasn’t been before.
And that’s why I’ve been talking
only about you and the tension within
you. Because you are, not in a cliched
sense but in a weirdly literal sense, the
future. And after you [the graduating class] walk up here and walk back
down you are going to be the present.
You will be the broken world and the
act of changing it in a way that you
haven’t been before.
You will be so many things and the
one thing that I wish I’d known, and
want to say, is: don’t just be yourself,
be all of your selves. Don’t just live, be
that other thing connected to death. Be
life. Live all of your life. Understand it,
see it, appreciate it, and have fun.
august 2013
258
Vital speeches of the day
WHAT
TO
WORRY
ABOUT
(AND
WHAT
NOT
TO)
My job here is not to eliminate your worries. My job is to make sure you are worried about the right things.
Baccalaureate Address by DAVID BROOKS,
Columnist, The New York Times
I
t is a great honor to be here at
Sewanee: The University of the
South. I’m a long time admirer of
Sewanee and I’ve gotten to know
some of the great alumni, including
my close friend Jon Meacham, who
was the first person to be appointed
editor of Newsweek before reaching
puberty.
Graduates, I congratulate you.
I feel like I know you. To get into
a place like this you had to spend
your high school years starting four
companies, curing two formerly fatal
diseases and participating in three
obscure sports, like fencing, planking
and snow volleyball.
Since you got to Sewanee you
probably spent one spring break unicycling across Thailand while reading
poetry to lepers. You spent an exciting summer interning at a congressional office, providing your boss with
policy advice and sexual tension. You
tell your friends you like Macklemore
but secretly you like Taylor Swift.
While on campus, you have mastered new skills. You learned how
to dominate classroom discussion
even though you didn’t do any of the
reading. In lecture halls you mastered
another skill. Right now, for example,
it looks as if you are staring at me
with rapt attention, but in fact you
are all sound asleep.
Now on this big day, your life
takes an exciting turn. There are
two paths ahead of you. One leads
to a soul-crushing job as a cog in the
corporate machine. The other leads
to permanent residence in your parent’s basement.
I’m here to help you navigate these
exciting opportunities. I will start by
reminding you that you are at a beautiful spot in your lives. You are more
VSOTD.COM
Delivered at Sewanee: The University of the South,
Sewanee, Tenn., May 11, 2013
mature than the freshman. Still sexier
than the faculty.
Also, you may not have been
through college commencements
before so you may not know the etiquette. After you get your degree, it’s
customary to give Vice-Chancellor
McCardell a little tip. Ten or twenty
bucks just to show he did a good job.
It’s also customary to give the
commencement speaker a little something, though no more than $600 or
$700—or $5,000 for econ majors.
This money is not for me—I’m buying you people a cell phone tower.
You need it here.
This may be your first college
commencement, but you probably
know commencement addresses have
a certain form. The school asks a person who has achieved a certain level
of career success to give you a speech
telling you that career success is not
important.
Then we’re supposed to give you
a few minutes of completely garbage
advice: Listen to your inner voice. Be
true to yourself. First, my generation
leaves you a mountain of debt. Then
we give you career derailing guidelines that will prevent you from ever
paying it off.
Well, when I appear before fresh
graduates, I do always ladle out some
advice, but this is grade A material,
tested with the scientific method.
My advice is going to be about
what to worry about and what not
to worry about. My job here is not
to eliminate your worries. My job is
to make sure you are worried about
the right things. First, let me tell
you about the things you should not
worry about.
The first thing you shouldn’t worry
about is the question: Will I be happy?
This is not a problem. Most of
you are in your twenties. Studies
show that people get happier as they
move through their twenties. Then
happiness levels dip over the next
several years and finally bottoms out
when people are about 47 years old.
This is called having teenage children. But then happiness levels rise
again and people enjoy a big burst of
happiness in the first ten years after
retirement.
So at least for the next little while,
you’re probably going to be happy.
And it’s so easy to make sure you are.
Join a club that meets once a month.
That produces the same happiness
gain as doubling your income. Use
what money you have to buy experiences, not things. Don’t try to control
other people; you can’t. Don’t ruminate on bad events.
The daily activity that contributes
most to happiness is having dinner
with friends. The daily activity that
detracts most from happiness is commuting. Eat more. Commute less.
The second thing you shouldn’t
worry about is the question: Will I
get a good job? This is something to
hustle for. It’s not something to be
frantic about. The economy is mediocre but people with college degrees
have a huge leg up. I’ve seen millions
of people like you come this way
before. By the time you’re 30, you’ll
get good jobs and you’ll be happy
in them. Lean into risk. Believe me,
95 percent of the people who take
risks—whether it works out or not—
are glad they did it.
The third thing not to worry
about is the question: Will I find my
passion? Commencement speakers
are always telling you to find your
passion. This is the biggest load of
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david brooks
crap old people have ever foisted on
the young. No, you will not find your
passion. Your passion will find you.
Relax and wait for it.
One of my heroes is a woman
named Dorothy Day.
When she was a young woman,
Day thought she wanted to be a
writer and a bohemian. She moved
to Greenwich Village in New York.
She hung out in bars, listened to jazz
and had a lot of boyfriends. She read
Dostoyevsky as if her life depended
upon it, and sometimes seemed to
live like a character in a Dostoyevsky
novel. But something about the disorganized nature of that life bothered her.
One night she was wrongly
arrested and put in jail. She had
done nothing wrong, but to her the
arrest seemed to indict her entire
style of life.
She wrote: “It was as ugly an experience as I ever wish to pass through.
I do not think that ever again, no
matter of what I am accused, can I
suffer more than I did then of shame
and regret, and self-contempt. Not
only because I had been caught,
found out, branded, publicly humiliated, but because of my own consciousness that I deserved it.”
Then a few years later, she had a
very different experience. She gave
birth to a child. She wrote that when
her child emerged she felt like the
greatest artist or the greatest poet:
“No human creature could receive
or contain so vast a flood of love and
joy as I often felt after the birth of
my child. With this came the need to
worship, to adore.”
Her need to worship turned her
toward God. And with that came
a passion, to be among the poor.
She started a newspaper called The
Catholic Worker. She started soup
kitchens and homeless shelters and
rural communes. She didn’t serve the
way we often serve today, as affluent
people going down to give the needy
a hand. She embraced poverty and
lived in the shelters herself. For her
the service was not about the meals.
It was a form of worship and way to
honor God.
Day wasn’t one of these people
who could separate public behavior
from private morality. Day couldn’t
just do good, she had to be good.
who shows some basic admiration
for the gender. Guys, marry a
woman who is going to force you
to talk, who won’t let you retreat
into sullen silence when things don’t
go your way.
thing to worry about:
“ The first
Will I marry well?
”
This wasn’t the life she could have
envisioned for herself in college. This
was the life that was thrust upon her.
The lesson is: Don’t think about
what you want from life. Think about
what life wants from you. If you’re
observant, some large problem will
plop itself in front of you. It will
define your mission and your calling.
Your passion won’t come from inside.
It will come from outside.
OK. I’ve given you a few things
not to worry about. Now I’m going
to tell you what you should be worrying about.
The first thing to worry about:
Will I marry well? This is the most
important decision you’re going to
make in your life. If you have a great
marriage and a crappy career, you
will be happy. If you have a great
career and a crappy marriage, you
will be unhappy. I tell university
presidents that since the marriage decision is so central, they should have
academic departments on how to
marry. They should teach the neuroscience of marriage, the sociology of
marriage, the psychology of marriage. Everybody should get a degree
in how to marry.
Nobody listens to me. So give
yourself a degree. Read Jane Austen
novels or George Eliot novels. Learn
how to think about this problem from
the masters. And take your time.
They say opposites attract, but
the research suggests this is a highrisk proposition. It’s safer to marry
somebody like yourself. Ladies, marry
a guy who has some deep platonic
friendships with women, somebody
For those of you marrying somebody of your own sex, be a leader.
Show the rest of us how it’s done.
The final and most important
thing to worry about: Will I develop
my second Adam? Let me explain
what I mean.
As you may know, the world is divided into two sorts of people, those
who divide the world into two sorts
of people and those who do not. I’m
a divider. I see dualities everywhere. I
think each of us is a duality.
The best version of our individual
duality comes from a great Rabbi
named Joseph Soloveitchik.
Soloveitchik said we have two sides
to our nature, which he called Adam
I and Adam II. Adam I is majestic
Adam. Adam I wants to build, create,
produce and subdue the world. Adam
I wants to have a great career and
win victories.
Adam II is humble Adam. Adam
II wants to be enveloped by love and
security. Adam II wants to feel and
radiate joy. Adam II wants to live a
life of virtue, not to do good but to
be good, to have an inner soul that
honors God, creation and one’s own
possibilities.
Adam II is not interested in impressing society. He wants to savor
the smell of a familiar meal with family. He wants to not only to behave
well, but to behave well for the right
internal reasons. He wants to practice virtue and be the sort of person
who experiences a deep, strong and
unshakeable happiness.
Soloveitchik said we are great
because we live in the contradiction
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260
between these two Adams. They
are not reconcilable. We are forever
caught in self-confrontation. The
tension between the majestic Adam
and the humble Adam tortures us but
propels us sometimes to greatness.
Vital speeches of the day
with women, with sexting, narcissism
and greed.
They devoted everything to Adam I
and in middle age they realize they are
joyless and alone. They haven’t killed
their Adam II, or even anesthetized
end of your life I hope you’ll have
“Atthetheawesome
ability to NOT create, to
NOT discover, to NOT build.
”
These days we happen to live in
a culture that nurtures Adam I, the
external career Adam, and neglects
Adam II, the internal joyful one. We
live in a meritocratic society that
encourages us to think about how to
have a great career, how to win the
admiration of our peers, how to build
and create and discover, how to be a
good friend and neighbor.
But if you are only Adam I, you
turn into a shrewd animal, a crafty
self-preserving creature who is adept
at playing the game and who turns
everything into a game. People who
live with this disease focus exclusively
on the material world, on technology,
on management books, and career
strategies. Every day becomes a prudential strategy session as they chart
their course to success.
If that’s all you have, you lose the
ability to speak in a sophisticated
moral language. You lose the experience of inner joy, without which life
becomes unsupportable.
Maybe you’ve noticed this phenomenon. You go on a college campus and you meet a lot of amazing
21 year olds. But then you notice
that two-thirds of them will be more
boring by the time they hit 40.
Their careers are fine, but they’ve
lost their spiritual and intellectual
sparkle. I doubt their Adam II is
completely dead, but they have sent
it into hibernation.
Maybe you’ve noticed how many
how many politicians hit 40 and
suddenly make fools of themselves
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it, but it like a garden left untended.
Everything inside is chaos. They can’t
experience the equanimity to experience completion and joy.
So this is the real thing to worry
about: Will I develop Adam II every
day? Will I live the permanent selfconfrontation between worldly majesty and the moral humility?
The hard part of this confrontation is that Adams I and II live by
entirely different logics. Adam I—
the creating, building and discovering Adam—lives by a straightforward
logic. It’s like the logic of economics.
Input leads to output. Effort leads to
reward. Practice makes perfect.
Adam II lives by an inverse logic.
It’s a moral logic, not an economic
logic. You have to give to receive.
You have to be lost to be saved.
Success leads to the greatest failure,
which is pride. Failure leads to the
greatest success, which is humility and learning. In order to fulfill
yourself, you have to forget yourself.
In order to find yourself, you have to
lose yourself.
Just as you have to take an economics course to learn the logic
of Adam I, so you need to consult
textbooks to understand the logic of
Adam II.
Most people find this wisdom in
the Gospels, the Torah, the Koran
or the writings of Buddha. I have
to confess I got a glimpse of it in
college, though I didn’t know it at
the time. I went to the University of
Chicago, which is a Baptist school
where atheist professors teach Jewish
students St. Thomas Aquinas. I was
assigned the great books, written
by moral geniuses—by Thucydides,
Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, or Reinhold Niebuhr. The books were written by people fixated by the struggle
against their own sin. They are
written by people obsessed with that
great internal combat against weakness that we call character.
Over the years, I’ve lugged those
books from apartment to apartment,
house to house. These books, each in
their own changing ways, help keeps
the logic of Adam II in front of my
eyes, though understanding that logic
is the work of a lifetime. I doubt that
these books will guide you to the end
of your journey toward inner completion and joy, but they will start you on
the way.
I’ve mentioned Dorothy Day a few
times. She was a beautiful writer and
an organization builder.
It would have been natural for Day
to write a memoir at the end of her
life. And as she closed out her life,
not far from death, she thought about
doing that. She sat down one day at
her desk to write. She told Robert
Coles what happened next: “The
other day I wrote down the words ‘A
Life Remembered’ and I was going
to try to make a summary for myself,
write about what mattered most—but
I couldn’t do it. I just sat there and
thought of the Lord and His visit to
us all those centuries ago, and I said
to myself that my great luck was to
have had Him on my mind for so
long in my life.”
So as you leave Sewanee I hope
you build and create and discover and
make tons of money, but I hope you’ll
lug your books around and look at
them from time to time. And at the
end of your life I hope you have the
awesome ability to NOT create, to
NOT discover, to NOT build, but to
just experience the joy and completeness and satisfaction of an Adam II
life well lived.
Thank you.
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barack obama
TO
PARTICIPATE,
AND
TO
PERSEVERE
It was young folks like you who marched and mobilized and stood up and sat-in to secure women’s rights,
and voting rights, and workers’ rights, and gay rights, often against incredible odds, often over the course of
years, sometimes over the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
Commencement Address by BARACK OBAMA,
President, United States of America
H
ello, Buckeyes!
Thank you Dr. Gee, the
Board of Trustees, Congresswoman
Beatty, Mayor Coleman, and all of
you who make up The Ohio State
University for allowing me the honor
of joining you today. Congratulations,
Class of 2013! And congratulations
to all the parents, family, friends and
faculty here in the Horseshoe—this is
your day as well. Just be careful with
the turf. I know Coach Meyer has big
plans for fall.
Thank you, Dr. Gee, for that
eloquent introduction, although I
will not be singing today. And yes, it
is true that I did speak at that certain
university up north a few years ago.
But, to be fair, you did let President
Ford speak here once—and he played
football for Michigan!
In my defense, this is my fifth
visit to campus in the past year or
so. One time, I stopped at Sloopy’s
to grab some lunch. Many of you
were still eating breakfast. At 11:30.
On a Tuesday. So I’ll offer my first
piece of advice early: enjoy it while
you still can. Soon, you won’t get to
do that. And once you have kids, it
gets even earlier.
Class of 2013, your path to this
moment has wound you through
years of breathtaking change. You
were born as freedom forced its way
through a wall in Berlin, and tore
down an Iron Curtain across Europe.
You were educated in an era of instant
information that put the world’s accumulated knowledge at your fingertips. And you came of age as terror
touched our shores; an historic recession spread across the nation; and a
new generation signed up to go to war.
You have been tested and tempered
by events that your parents and I
never imagined we’d see when we sat
where you sit. And yet, despite all this,
or more likely because of it, yours has
become a generation possessed with
that most American of ideas—that
people who love their country can
change it. For all the turmoil; for all
the times you have been let down, or
frustrated at the hand you’ve been
dealt; what I have seen from your
generation are perennial and quintessentially American values. Altruism.
Empathy. Tolerance. Community. And
a deep sense of service that makes me
optimistic for our future.
Consider that today, 50 ROTC
cadets in your graduating class will
become commissioned officers in the
Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.
130 of your fellow graduates have already served—some in combat, some
on multiple deployments. Of the 98
veterans earning bachelor’s degrees
today, 20 are graduating with honors. And at least one kept serving his
fellow veterans when he came home
by starting up a campus organization
called Vets4Vets. As your Commander-in-Chief, I could not be prouder of
all of you.
Consider, too, that graduates of
this university serve their country
through the Peace Corps, and educate our children through established
programs like Teach for America and
startups like Blue Engine, often earning little pay for making the biggest
impact. Some of you have already
launched startup companies of your
own. And I suspect that those of you
who pursue more education, or climb
the corporate ladder, or enter the arts
Delivered at The Ohio State University,
Columbus Ohio, May 5, 2013
or sciences or journalism, will still
choose a cause you care about in
your life and fight like heck to make
it happen.
There is a word for this. It’s citizenship. We don’t always talk about
this idea much these days, let alone
celebrate it. Sometimes, we see it as a
virtue from another time—one that’s
slipping from a society that celebrates
individual ambition; a society awash
in instant technology that empowers
us to leverage our skills and talents like
never before, but just as easily allows
us to retreat from the world. And the
result is that we sometimes forget the
larger bonds we share, as one American family.
But it’s out there, all the time, every day—especially when we need it
most. Just look at the past year. When
a hurricane struck our mightiest city,
and a factory exploded in small-town
Texas. When bombs went off in
Boston, and when a malevolent spree
of gunfire visited a movie theater,
a temple, an Ohio high school, a
first-grade classroom in Connecticut.
In the aftermath of darkest tragedy,
we have seen the American spirit at
its brightest. We’ve seen the petty
divisions of color, class, and creed
replaced by a united urge to help.
We’ve seen courage and compassion,
a sense of civic duty, and a recognition that we are not a collection of
strangers; we are bound to one another by a set of ideals, and laws, and
commitments, and a deep devotion to
this country we love.
That’s what citizenship is. It’s the
idea at the heart of our founding—
that as Americans, we are blessed with
God-given and inalienable rights, but
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262
with those rights come responsibilities—
to ourselves, to one another, and to
future generations.
But if we’re being honest, as you’ve
studied and worked and served to
become good citizens, the institutions that give structure to our society
have, at times, betrayed your trust. In
the run-up to the financial crisis, too
many on Wall Street forgot that their
obligations don’t end with their shareholders. In entertainment and in the
media, ratings and shock value often
trumped news and storytelling. And
in Washington—well, this is a joyous
occasion, so let me put this charitably:
I think it’s fair to say our democracy
isn’t working as well as we know it
can. It could do better. And those of
us fortunate enough to serve in these
institutions owe it to you to do better,
every single day.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about
how we might keep this idea alive at
a national level—not just on Election
Day, or in times of tragedy, but on
all the days in between. Of course, I
spend most of my time these days in
Washington, a place that sorely needs
it. But I think of what your generation’s traits—compassion and energy,
a sense of selflessness and a boundless
digital fluency—might mean for a democracy that must adapt more quickly
to keep up with the speed of technological, demographic, and wrenching
economic change.
I think about how we might perpetuate this notion of citizenship in a way
that another politician from my home
state, Adlai Stevenson, once described
patriotism—not as “short, frenzied
outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil
and steady dedication of a lifetime.”
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. And I’m not going to offer some
grand theory—not when it’s a beautiful
day and you’ve got some celebrating to
do. I’m not going to get partisan, either,
because that’s not what citizenship is
about. In fact, I am asking the same
thing of you that President Bush did
when he spoke at this commencement
in 2002: “America needs more than
taxpayers, spectators, and occasional
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Vital speeches of the day
voters,” he said. “America needs fulltime citizens.”
And as graduates from a university whose motto is “Education for
Citizenship,” that’s what your country
expects of you. So briefly, I will ask
you for two things: to participate, and
to persevere.
After all, your democracy does not
function without your active participation. At a bare minimum, that means
voting, eagerly and often. It means
fascism and disease; to visit the Moon
and Mars; to gradually secure our
God-given rights for all our citizens,
regardless of who they are, what they
look like, or who they love.
We, the people, chose to do these
things together. Because we know
this country cannot accomplish great
things if we pursue nothing greater
than our own individual ambition.
Still, you’ll hear voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing
The founders trusted us with this
“awesome
authority. We should trust
ourselves with it, too.
”
knowing who’s been elected to make
decisions on your behalf, what they believe in, and whether or not they deliver. If they don’t represent you the way
you want, or conduct themselves the
way you expect—if they put special
interests above your own—you’ve got
to let them know that’s not okay. And
if they let you down, there’s a built-in
day in November where you can really
let them know that’s not okay.
You don’t have to run for office
yourself. But I hope many of you do,
at all levels, because our democracy
needs you. I promise you, it’ll give you
a tough skin. I know a little bit about
this. Like President Wilson once said:
“if you want to make enemies, try to
change something.”
And that’s precisely what the
founders left us: the power to adapt to
changing times. They left us the keys to
a system of self-government—the tool
to do big and important things together
that we could not possibly do alone.
To stretch railroads and electricity and
a highway system across a sprawling
continent. To educate our people with
a system of public schools and land
grant colleges, including Ohio State.
To care for the sick and the vulnerable,
and provide a basic level of protection
from falling into abject poverty in the
wealthiest nation on Earth. To conquer
more than some separate, sinister entity that’s the root of all our problems,
even as they do their best to gum up
the works; or that tyranny always lurks
just around the corner. You should
reject these voices. Because what they
suggest is that our brave, creative,
unique experiment in self-rule is just a
sham with which we can’t be trusted.
We have never been a people who
place all our faith in government to
solve our problems, nor do we want
it to. But we don’t think the government is the source of all our problems,
either. Because we understand that
this democracy is ours. As citizens, we
understand that America is not about
what can be done for us. It’s about
what can be done by us, together,
through the hard and frustrating but
absolutely necessary work of selfgovernment.
The founders trusted us with this
awesome authority. We should trust
ourselves with it, too. Because when
we don’t, when we turn away and get
discouraged and abdicate that authority, we grant our silent consent to
someone who’ll gladly claim it. That’s
how we end up with lobbyists who set
the agenda; policies detached from
what middle-class families face every
day; the well-connected who publicly
demand that Washington stay out
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barack obama
of their business—then whisper in
its ear for special treatment that you
don’t get. That’s how a small minority of lawmakers get cover to defeat
something the vast majority of their
constituents want. That’s how our political system gets consumed by small
things when we are a people called
to do great things—rebuild a middle
class, reverse the rise of inequality,
repair a deteriorating climate that
threatens everything we plan to leave
for our kids and grandkids.
Only you can ultimately break
that cycle. Only you can make sure
the democracy you inherit is as good
as we know it can be. But it requires
your dedicated, informed, and engaged citizenship. This citizenship is
a harder, higher road to take. But it
leads to a better place. It is how we
built this country—together. It is the
question President Kennedy posed
to the nation at his inauguration; the
dream that Dr. King invoked. It does
not promise easy success or immediate
progress. But it has led to success, and
it has led to progress.
That brings me to the second thing
I ask of you—I ask you to persevere.
Whether you start a business or run
for office or devote yourself to alleviating poverty or hunger, remember
that nothing worth doing happens
overnight. A British inventor named
Dyson went through more than 5,000
prototypes before getting that first
really fancy vacuum cleaner just right.
We remember Michael Jordan’s six
championships, not his nearly 15,000
missed shots. As for me, I lost my first
race for Congress, and look at me
now—I’m an honorary graduate of
The Ohio State University!
The point is, in your life, you will
fail. You will stumble, and you will fall.
But that will make you better. You’ll
get it right the next time. And that’s
not only true for your personal pursuits, but for the broader causes you
believe in as well. But don’t give up.
Don’t lose heart, or grow cynical. The
cynics may be the loudest voices—but
they accomplish the least. It’s the silent
disruptors—those who do the long,
hard, committed work of change—
that gradually push this country in the
right direction, and make the most
lasting difference.
Still, whenever you feel that creeping cynicism; whenever you hear those
voices say you can’t make that difference; whenever somebody tells you to
set your sights lower—the trajectory of
America should give you hope. What
young generations have done before
you should give you hope. It was young
folks like you who marched and mobilized and stood up and sat-in to secure
women’s rights, and voting rights, and
workers’ rights, and gay rights, often
against incredible odds, often over the
course of years, sometimes over the
tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. Even if their rights were already
secured, they fought to secure those
rights and opportunities for others.
What they did should give you hope.
And where we’re going should give
you hope. Because while things are
still hard for a lot of people, you have
every reason to believe that your future is bright. You are graduating into
an economy and a job market that
are steadily healing. The once-dying
American auto industry is on pace
for its strongest performance in 20
years—something that means everything to many communities in Ohio
and across the Midwest. Huge strides
in domestic energy, driven in part by
research at universities like this one,
have us on track to secure our own energy future. And incredible advances
in information and technology spurred
largely by the risk-takers of your generation have the potential to change
the way we do almost everything.
Still, if there is one certainty about
the decade ahead, it’s that things
will be uncertain. Change will be a
constant, just as it has been throughout our history. And we still face
many important challenges. Some will
require technological breakthroughs
or new policy insights. But more than
anything, what we will need is political
will, to harness the ingenuity of your
generation, and encourage and inspire
the hard work of dedicated citizens.
To repair the middle class; to give
more families a fair shake; to reject
a country in which only a lucky few
prosper because it’s antithetical to our
ideals and our democracy—that takes
the dogged determination of citizens.
To educate more children at a
younger age; to reform our high
schools for a new time; to give more
young people the chance to earn the
kind of education you did at Ohio
State and make it more affordable so
they don’t leave with a mountain of
debt—that takes the care and concern
of citizens.
To build better roads and airports
and faster internet; to advance the
kind of basic research and technology
that has always kept America ahead
of everyone else—that takes the grit
and fortitude of citizens.
To confront the threat of climate
change before it’s too late—that requires the idealism and initiative
of citizens.
To protect more of our kids from
the horrors of gun violence—that
requires the unwavering passion and
untiring resolve of citizens.
Fifty years ago, President Kennedy
told the class of 1963 that “our problems are man-made—therefore, they
can be solved by man. And man can
be as big as he wants.”
We are blessed to live in the
greatest nation on Earth. But we can
always be greater. We can always aspire to something more. That doesn’t
depend on who you elect to office. It
depends on you, as citizens, how big
you want to be, and how badly you
want it.
Look at all America has accomplished. Look at how big we’ve been.
I dare you to do better. I dare you
to be better.
From what I have seen of your
generation, I have no doubt you will.
I wish you courage, and compassion,
and all the strength you need for that
tranquil and steady dedication of a
lifetime.
Thank you, God bless you, and
God bless the United States of
America.
august 2013
1010 E. Missouri Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85014