Words of Hope and Warning

Diversity is the dominant theme for the class of '84

Among the waves of mortarboards at commencements across the U.S. this year, several, as usual, bore signs and greetings. One at the University of California at Berkeley offered a proud--and significant--variation on the customary HI, MOM. It read: HI, I AM MOM. The message aptly symbolized the presence of older generations among 1984's 1.37 million graduates, Mario Savio, 41, a leader of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964, finally earned a physics degree, summa cum laude, from San Francisco State University. At Lehman College of City University of New York, Joseph Lipner, 83, was named to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with high honors. Foreign-born students, too, went to the head of their classes. New York's City College valedictorian, Chi ("Christopher") Luu, of Viet Nam, entered this country only five years ago, unable to speak English. Commencement speakers, an unprecedented number of whom were women, reflected the notable diversity of the graduates and ranged widely over topics from the dangers of nuclear war to the merits of wandering. Nor did the speakers neglect some themes that spring eternal. At Middlebury College in Vermont, Actor Burgess Meredith urged: "Make love! Propagate!" A commencement sampler:

Behavioral Scientist B.F. Skinner at Colby College in Waterville, Me.: "Orwell painted a strange portrait of what the world would be in 1984, and across this nation this spring, commencement speakers will be comparing that prediction with what has actually happened. Do we believe that war is peace? That freedom is slavery, that ignorance is strength? We used to have a Department of War and a Secretary of War; now we have a Department of Defense and a Secretary of Defense. But we have not gone as far as Orwell predicted and renamed it the Department of Love and the Secretary of Love. It's true we are watched all the time by television cameras when we go into our bank even though we are not planning to rob it or go into a supermarket even though we are not planning to do any shoplifting. But we've not yet learned to love Big Brother as Orwell predicted, and we are not quite ready to believe that two and two are five."

Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Thomas J. Watson at the University of Vermont in Burlington: "Are you satisfied that no progress has been made on nuclear treaties in three years? Are you satisfied that Soviet-American relations are at an alltime low? I talked to a Russian last week whom I knew quite well in Moscow. He was over here on a visit. He said, 'You know, Tom, we always looked at you as competitors; we sometimes looked at you as adversaries; now you have forced us to look at you as enemies.' The Soviets will never be our friends. On the other hand, they're here on this small planet with you and me, and we've got to learn to live with the Soviets or we're surely going to destroy each other."

Actress Jane Alexander at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y.: "We are in a society where there are no leaders of any note because there are no followers. There are no followers because most of us are operating on independent initiative and in small clusters. Privately we do have our heroes and heroines, but we don't talk about them much publicly. How do you share with others that you secretly admire Marge tremendously because not only does she care wonderfully for her family but she has the best vegetable garden in Yonkers, she led the coalition to the town council for a clean-water bill, and last year she managed to climb Kilimanjaro with a group of bird watchers? These are our leaders: local heroes."

Law Professor Geoffrey R. Stone at the University of Chicago: "This spring marks the 30th anniversary of the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Brown vs. Board of Education. It is difficult to conceive that only 30 years ago blatant, open and legally enforced racism, with its degrading humiliations, was a fact of life in more than one-third of our nation. Brown was a triumph for the Justices of the United States Supreme Court, whose vision and understanding enabled them fundamentally to recast our constitutional law. You must remember that you too hold beliefs that your children or your children's children will rightly regard as naive, foolish, or perhaps even obscene. You must be prepared to reform your world, just as the Justices in Brown were willing to reform theirs. You must challenge 'the nature of things.' "

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith at American University in Washington: "The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture. There is the problem of the audience: its members' thoughts, inevitably on this day, are divided between nostalgic reflection on the joyful years just past and a justified sense of trepidation over the tasks, the travail, even the terrors, of the years to come. There are also the stern constraints on commencement oratory. It must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech; speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum."

Peace Corps Director Loret Miller Ruppe at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.: "Be involved in your family, in your community, in your job. Give it your all. Even as the Peace Corps Act mandates sharing America's talents and skills with that big world out there, please share your talents and skills with the world around you. Some of you might take the step of joining our work in helping the developing world, but all of you should help in development work in your own homes, churches and communities."

Ford Foundation President Franklin A. Thomas at Cooper Union in New York City: "Our generation, the offspring of immigrants, seems to be more tolerant of other cultures and creeds. Perhaps pluralism begets pluralism. In our time immigration policy is an extension of foreign policy. In America's struggle for influence in the world, our most potent tool is not the ideological pamphlet or the shipment of arms or even economic aid. It is the example of a free, tolerant and prosperous America. Other countries may triumph at global conferences where world representatives vote with their hands. But America seems to win every contest whenever the world's people have an opportunity to vote with their feet."

National Education Association President Mary Hatwood Futrell at George Washington University in Washington:"I want to see our brightest students intellectually challenged to their utmost. I also want to see more students exposed to rigorous math and science courses. But I don't want to see America's educational system become an educational assembly line. Education should serve to increase rather than decrease human differences in one's ability to contribute to society. Our students must know how to compute. But they also must be able to factor in the social implications of their computations."

Connecticut Representative Barbara B. Kennedy at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass.: "Our nation no longer has the luxury of deferring women's full participation at every level of government. Our very future, our children's future depend on this nation's beginning to listen and to incorporate women's intellectual and moral attitudes into its decision-making bodies. Please do not interpret my remarks to mean that I am trying to resurrect some 19th century stereotype of women being better than men, angels posed on pedestals. Rather I simply note that women, perhaps because of our long history of being powerless, do seem to have a different attitude toward power, an attitude that goes beyond the traditional male concept that every conflict reaches resolution when there is a winner and a loser. In nuclear conflict, there are no winners, only losers."

Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago, at Emory University in Atlanta: "I am neither blind to the danger nor sympathetic to the imposition of an alien ideology in Central America. We have an obligation to resist this. But the means used to oppose such a possibility must be consistent with our constitutional and cultural traditions. Today the face we show the world in Central America does not reflect the best of either of those traditions. My plea is for perspective and purpose in keeping the nuclear peace and building a secure and just peace in Central America. Such an effort surely requires policy wisdom, but it also requires a certain quality of citizen vision."

South African Playwright Athol Fugard at Georgetown University in Washington: "I am talking about the living of a life at the most mundane level, and what I am saying is that at that level--at the level of our daily lives--one man or woman meeting with another man or woman is finally the central arena of history."

Civil Rights Leader Coretta Scott King at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif.: "I believe the dramatic increases in voter registration we have recently seen provide hope that we can begin to turn this nation around. When we make politics a crusade, politicians will begin to understand that they must serve all of the people and not just a select few. When we make politics a crusade, we can put a stop to this insane, suicidal nuclear arms race which is destroying our economy and terrifying our children. When we make politics a crusade, we can make the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution the law of the land. We can elect a new generation of political leaders committed to creating a society free from race and sex discrimination."

Psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prizewinner Robert Coles at Beloit College in Wisconsin: "The people who gave us America were people who stood up and said, 'I believe what I believe, and I'm ready to die for that faith.' Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln? The only thing that makes this life worth living is some kind of moral self-respect, which in turn connects with what we believe in."

Joan Bennett Kennedy at Manhattanviile College in Purchase, N.Y.: "The most important thing I can share with you is the personal knowledge that decisions are not irrevocable, that choices do come back, sometimes in different forms and in different ways, but they can be remade. And there is time, time to shape a balance between family and friends, work and career. Life is not only knowing what you want but what you'll settle for."

King Juan Carlos of Spain at Harvard: "Nineteen ninety-two will be the 500th anniversary of one of the most important happenings in human history: the arrival in America of the three Castilian caravels chartered by my ancestors, the Catholic monarchs, and commanded by Christopher Columbus. It is not so much a historic commemoration as a horizon on which together we must fix our sights. Nobody can deny that there are enormous and highly complex problems in Hispanic America. But there are new leaders today who are determined to tackle the most intractable of them. An example of an important achievement in this respect is the restoration of democratic institutions in Argentina, which has been a cause for rejoicing among all the Hispanic nations. There is an obvious need for dialogue between the two Americas, a dialogue that would be beneficial for both of them, and, in fact, for the entire world."

Naturalist and Author Ann H. Zwinger at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.: "Wandering is one of the most sensible things in the world to do. I highly recommend the pursuit of happiness from east to west, bending and stooping, pausing, enjoying, not going anywhere in particular except down a beach or around a pond, always knowing that there is something wonderful just ahead. City street or country lane, for the naturalist there is always something to see: lichen puddled on the granite, a new fern frond uncurling like a mainspring, a pad of brilliant green moss studded with a scarlet mite. Ask why, and for every question you answer you'll have a bouquet of another dozen questions. And herein lies sanity." qed