Now, A Few Words from the Wise

Commencements are largely family affairs; this year's graduation ceremonies produced signal variations on the homey theme. At Boston University, Chief Justice William Rehnquist presented a law degree to his son James, who had been presented with a daughter by his wife the day before. Democratic Senator Bob Graham confessed having had trouble coming up with a theme for his address at the University of Florida until Daughter Cissy, who would receive a master's degree that day, offered a suggestion: how to get a job. At Loyola College in Baltimore, a well-known husband-and-wife team, Bob and Dolores Hope, was awarded honorary doctoral degrees -- his 53rd, in acknowledgment of which he dropped a chestnut: "Now that I am a doctor, at least I can get on the golf course on Wednesdays." At Vassar, Playwright John Guare and his spouse Designer Adele Chatfield-Taylor both spoke, after flipping a coin to see who would go first. (She did.) In a boisterous, though notably erudite, bit of counterpoint to the family theme, graduates of Harvard's School of Public Health tossed into the air hundreds of condoms encased in envelopes that bore the Latin message ad venerem securiorem. Translation: "for safe sex." Herewith a sampling of other, more formal messages to the Class of '87 from commencement speakers around the nation:

ABC Nightline Moderator Ted Koppel at Duke University, Durham, N.C.: We have actually convinced ourselves that slogans will save us. Shoot up if you must, but use a clean needle. Enjoy sex whenever and with whomever you wish, but wear a condom. No! The answer is no. Not because it isn't cool or smart or because you might end up in jail or dying in an AIDS ward, but no because it's wrong, because we have spent 5,000 years as a race of rational human beings, trying to drag ourselves out of the primeval slime by searching for truth and moral absolutes. In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder. It is a howling reproach. What Moses brought down from Mount Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions.

/ The Rev. Lawrence Jenco, released last year after being held 19 months as hostage by Lebanese terrorists, at Marist College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: Three months prior to my release, Said, one of my captors, sat on the edge of my mat and said, "Do you forgive me?" to which I responded, "Yes, Said, I do forgive you and ask your forgiveness too." For there were times when I was filled with anger and hate. And on the evening of my release, Haj ((another captor)), quoting from my letter home to my loved ones, said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." I could not help but think these were the words of Jesus, who died in peace and returns to his disciples not with anger or retaliation against them, but with the simple greeting of "Peace be with you."

Humorist Calvin Trillin at Beloit College, Beloit, Wis.: I have divided up the United States into two sections. One section is the part of the U.S. that had major league baseball before the Second World War. That's the ancien U.S., and the rest of the U.S. is the rest of the U.S. That's the second part that's called the expansion-team U.S. -- where we stand today. The way you can tell the difference is that the old U.S. still has regular European ethnic neighborhoods, and in an Italian restaurant in the ancien U.S., the waiters have names like Sal and Vinnie. But if you go to a restaurant that's an Italian restaurant and the waiter's name is Dwayne, you're in the expansion- team U.S.

Actress Joanne Woodward at the College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Me.: Age has given me the arrogance and experience has given me the urgency to tell you what time looks like from this side of the river. My generation was the first to know we might not have any time at all, and yours was the first to be born knowing it. With each second you have after this one, you have to find a way to guarantee that time itself can live. We must choose to be custodians of this lovely planet that suckled us and led us peaceably forward with all the rest of nature for millions of years and could go on for its allotted billions more if we tell our time what to do. Otherwise, time and the earth could go out like a candle.

Conservative Columnist William F. Buckley Jr. at St. Thomas College, St. Paul, Minn.: I think we need a democratic Anti-Defamation League, and I urge you to found such an institute. ((It)) would monitor and hand down grades to men and women responsible for political utterances -- whether delivered over radio, television, orally before a live audience, or written in books or billboards. I would like to see your democratic Anti-Defamation League defend the honor of democracy by attacking those who abuse that venerable convention of self- government by public travesties of even semi-orderly thought. How fine if we succeeded in convincing American voters that an index to the political health of the nation depended not on the density of the vote but on the thoughtfulness of it.

Feminist Barbara Ehrenreich at Reed College, Portland, Ore.: One question that I can answer is the question, Is there a man shortage? And the answer is no! There is not a man shortage. There is actually a man excess. Look at the House of Representatives. Look at the Senate. Look at the tenured faculty in any American college. And you will see an appalling man excess, which means a woman shortage. So for all the young women graduating today, I want to say you have your work cut out for you.

Former Senator J. William Fulbright at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Fla.: There's no way of eradicating the knowledge of nuclear weapons from the human race. Some way, therefore, must be found to change the attitudes of the people who wish to use them. The educational exchange program is not a panacea, but it's the right way to approach the problem. Instead of expecting to restrain forever the capacity to wage war, you've got to change the attitude of the people who control these warmaking machines and who make the decisions to use them. We have to understand the Russians, among others, and ourselves better than we have in the past.

Democratic Representative Michael Espy, the first black elected to Congress from Mississippi since Reconstruction, at Jackson State University, Jackson, Miss.: In the area of civil and human rights, it is said that your class and your generation are tired, that you have no appreciation for what your parents and grandparents went through to get you here. I don't believe this is true. I've talked with you. I visited your classes. You know that racism and discrimination have not vanished into history, that they are as much in the present as in the past, and that your goal is to not let it pass into the future. You know that as long as our children are denied equal access to the American Dream, your work must go on.

Science-Fiction Writer Ray Bradbury at Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, Calif.: * Sometimes we need to fuse our lives again with those people who seem at times to be antagonists -- you young men especially, because it is hard for us men to profess our love. It is quite often very difficult for your fathers and for you. So for you young men, when the ceremony is over, I want you to run over to the old man. Grab him, hug him and kiss him and say, "Dad, I love you and I thank you for all the years." That's part of the ceremony. I demand that of you when this is all over. It will save you a lot of trouble getting to know your father ten years from now.

Pulitzer-Prizewinning Historian Michael Kammen (Children of Paradox) at the University of Louisville: You must keep in mind that the meaning of personal liberty has altered repeatedly over time, in part because the concept is not explicitly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. Insofar as it has variously meant liberty of conscience, opposition to chattel slavery, freedom from physical restraint, freedom of political association, freedom from surveillance where no threat to the state is involved, and a right to privacy that includes control over one's body, it has drawn upon both of the great traditions of liberty in the history of Western thought: negative freedom as well as positive freedom, freedom from as well as freedom to.

Lake Wobegone Chronicler Garrison Keillor at Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pa.: Being a parent is not something that people ever feel confident or secure about. When you were tiny children, we started to read about tremendous advances in prenatal education. And when you got a little bit older, we started reading great books about early childhood and fantastic things that parents can do. We've always been a step behind in bringing you up . . . We wanted to bring you up with information about sex that we never had. Our parents only told us that if we listened to rock 'n' roll, we would have babies -- and they were right. You are them."

Author Joan Didion (Play It as It Lays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem) at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.: What I want to tell you today is not to move into that world where you're alone with your self and your mantra and your fitness program or whatever it is that you might use to try to control the world by closing it out. I want to tell you to just live in the mess. Throw yourself out into the convulsions of the world. I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't believe progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it, to look at it, to witness it. Try and get it. Take chances, make your own work, take pride in it. Seize the moment.

Retired Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, developer of COBOL, the most widely used computer business language, at Trinity College, Washington: There's always been change, there always will be change . . . It's to our young people that I look for the new ideas. No computer is ever going to ask a new, reasonable question. It takes trained people to do that. And if we're going to move toward those things we'd like to have, we must have the young people to ask the new, reasonable questions. A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. And I want every one of you to be good ships and sail out and do the new things and move us toward the future.

Harvard Professor Robert Coles, child psychiatrist and author (Children of Crisis), at St. Joseph College, West Hartford, Conn.: Now our children are witnesses to scandal in politics, scandal in business, scandal in religion, cheap sleaze all over our newspapers. What is wrong with a decent and honorable country that has to go through this kind of great depression? One can only hope and pray for all of us that we will yet again find our way and be worthy of what this country is all about: a decent respect for people, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And an end, perhaps, to the phoniness and corruption that we have been witness to in recent times.

Television Talk Show Host Oprah Winfrey at Tennessee State University, Nashville: It is always difficult to be meaningful and relevant, because there's just not enough time. Time to think seriously is hard to come by. I have been working all this past week in Los Angeles on a new television pilot for a prime-time series. I left the taping at 4 o'clock this morning your time, chartered a plane and flew all morning to get here by 10. So I just want to tell you, if I fall asleep, don't worry, don't panic and don't disturb me.