Graduation Speeches: Follow Your Dreams and All That Crap

Quick – who was the commencement speaker at your graduation from high school or college?  And if by some chance you actually remember who the speaker was, what did they have to say?

Can’t remember?  Neither can I.  Not the name of the famous honored person, nor any pearls of wisdom. 

President Obama gave three graduation speeches this past week.  He gives a lot of speeches, but he chose at these three schools to unveil bold new foreign policy, condemn shameful actions by the military, and call on black men to love and respect their love partners, female or male.  I don’t usually watch his speeches, but when I heard about these I watched them later on You Tube.  I expect these I’ll remember for some time to come.  Impressive, gave me some faith in my sad nation.

But a friend told me that while he was watching one of those Obama speeches, working out at the gym, some of his fellow exercisers, older guys self identified by T-shirts as retired military men (we have a lot of that here in Monterey), were yelling at the screen and giving their Commander in Chief the finger.  Didn’t like that he was calling for an end to the War on Terror and closing Guantanamo Prison. 

I guess some people do pay pretty close attention to graduation speeches.

Come to think of it, I do remember something about my high school graduation in 1969.  Not the speaker.  But that we young ladies protested also.  No fingers extended.  We even followed school tradition and wore white dresses and carried one red rose.  But radicals that we were, a few of us also wore black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War.

When it was my daughter’s time to graduate from high school, I do recall the message.  The speaker, one of her teachers, encouraged the students “to persist in being curious.”  And just as all of us were thinking he meant “don’t ever stop asking and learning about new things,” he said, “What I mean by that is – never give up being odd.” 

Persist in being odd.  Curiouser and curiouser.  Was Alice a commencement speaker at Wonderland U?

Good life advice, especially for young people battered from all sides by pressure to conform.  Stay odd!

May and June are graduation season, hence graduation speech season.  After watching Obama’s speeches, I found a new You Tube indulgence: watching other graduation speeches.  It made me happy and hopeful, young people full of promise, parents and faculty visibly relieved.  Not an extended finger in sight.

My favorite: J.K. Rowling at Harvard. Very heartfelt about lessons she learned from failure and from working at Amnesty International.  I also watched Meryl Streep at Barnard, Jon Stewart at William and Mary and Stephen Colbert at Northwestern.  Interesting tales of their student days at these their alma maters, but sort of predictable jokes and truisms about following your dreams, be real, serve others, thank your parents. 

Often a famous speaker receives an honorary degree for their troubles, I mean, wisdom, as did Winston Churchill in 1948 when he gave his famous “Iron Curtain” speech at a small college in Fulton, Missouri, aptly named Westminster College.

Sitting Presidents get many invitations to speak at graduations, and they chose carefully which invitations they accept and what they say.  Some historic speeches and new policies began as graduation speeches, like John F. Kennedy’s call for a nuclear test ban treaty, at American University in 1963. 

President Obama’s three graduation speeches this week, all important, were well covered in the news.  Well, two of them were covered well, at military academies, addressing military issues.

At The National Defense University our Professor in Chief gave a signature, hour-long, well researched, thoughtful new vision for American foreign policy.  We should stop fighting the so-called War on Terror, he said, and instead engage in diplomacy and foreign aid as world influences.  He acknowledged that drone warfare needs to be limited and waged not, as now, by the CIA, but by the military.  He vowed again to close Guantanamo Prison.  These are all issues for which he has been soundly criticized.  He honestly proposed bold new directions. 

Two days later at Annapolis Naval Academy he spoke forcefully about the widespread disgrace of sexual assaults in the military (a reported 26,000 last year) and a culture of acceptance and silence.  He called on the military grads to follow their “inner compass” of responsibility. 

Proud parents probably expected to hear a graduation speech on the children’s promising military careers, rather than a call to cut back overseas action and an admonishment not to rape their fellow service members. 

Who knows, maybe some fingers were extended obviously or surreptitiously toward our commander in chief at these two military graduations.  Military conduct is not what it used to be, and racism is alive and well in our nation.

But my favorite of Obama’s three graduation speeches this week was at Morehouse College, a 145-year-old historically black private men’s college in Atlanta.  Not as well reported on.  Watch it here.

Like many graduation speakers, he reminds them of illustrious alumni, in this case, “Morehouse Men” like Martin Luther King Jr., who enrolled at Morehouse at age 15, still living at home, called “Suit” by his classmates for his regular attire, and then, like so many others (Howard Thurman, Spike Lee, Maynard Jackson) going on to a life of service. They must carry on this responsibility to better society as well as themselves.

"As Morehouse Men, many of you know what it's like to be an outsider; know what it's like to be marginalized; know wht it's like to feel the sting of discrimination. And that's an experience that a lot of Americans share. Hispanic Americans know that feeling when somebody asked them where they come from or tell them to go back. Gay and lesbian Americans feel it when a stranger passes judgment on their parenting skills or the love that they share. Muslim Americans feel it when they're stared at with suspicion because of their faith. Any woman who knows the injustice of earning less pay for doing the same work - she knows what it's like to be on teh outside looking in."

Obama encourages them also to be honorable and respectful in their personal relationships, no matter what their sexuality.

"Keep setting an example for what it means to be a man. Be the best husband to your wife, or your boyfriend, or your partner. Be the best father you can be to your children. because nothing is more important."

Wise words, for young and old, for all Americans. Commence!

Copywrite © 2013 Deborah Streeter