Good afternoon. I am Bob Kerrey and I am- as described by the New York Times: “The embattled President of The New School.”
It is my great pleasure to welcome you, on behalf of the Board of Trustees, to the 73rd commencement exercises of The New School. The wonderful processional music was performed by our Music Wind and Brass Ensemble from Mannes College the New School for Music. Thank you!
Congratulations on making it here. By itself the biology and physics of your presence is a miracle worthy of celebration. Today, however, we do not celebrate your mere existence or your evolutionary survival. Today, we celebrate the values, the effort, the talent, the energy, the vision, and the intelligence it took for you to declare to one and all: I am a graduate of the New School.
This is an exceptional and a wonderful accomplishment. You deserve to feel good. Just as important - perhaps more so - those who have supported, encouraged and in some cases pushed you deserve to feel good: your parents, your husbands, your wives, and families. Make them feel better. Graduates please rise and show your appreciation with a great round of applause.
Another large group who feels pride in you today is the faculty of this university. They have helped you acquire new knowledge, new skills, and, hopefully, new habits that will enable you to think critically over the course of your post-graduate lives. They want you to find success and work that makes you happy. They want you to have good and honorable careers. They want you to use the power of your knowledge to stand up for justice, engage in the great debates, and do your part in making our world safer, fairer, healthier, and more peaceful. Please, let your faculty know how grateful you are for their dedication and determination.
New School faculty have not sought to fill your mind with just more facts, skills, and theory, but rather sought to open your mind in a way that allows you to question all you have learned. They have not told you what you should know or what you should think but instead challenged you to allow for tolerance when hearing others views, to respect and find value in allowing others to think and act differently.
The New School has always been a place of disciplined experimentation. The New School is a place where you can safely speak your mind. There are no parents to punish you, no boss who may fire you, only professors and peers who encourage you to think freely and, in the process, find your voice.
I hope we have also given you the humility to change your mind when evidence proves that something you believe to be true is false. I hope we have given you the courage to stand firm in your beliefs even when you stand alone with your opinion against a crowd - perhaps even an angry one - who denounce you for your views.
I hope that as the events of your lives unfold and unanticipated circumstances challenge your thinking and offer you opportunities to unlearn what you know, you will see this as a good and not a bad thing.
I hope that you have learned that just because someone else thinks differently doesn’t make their thinking wrong, and even if their thinking is wrong, it doesn’t necessarily make yours right.
I hope you will learn by seeking counsel from those who think differently than you as often as you do from those who think like you. I hope you have learned to look for the entire picture by viewing it from all angles so that with your own powerful voice, you will find strength to act on your beliefs even in the face of adversity.
I hope we have taught you to keep your sense of humor especially for those moments when it is your behavior and actions that are laughable. I am afraid it happens to all of us. Don’t let these failures get you down.
I hope we have also taught you not to claim victory before you cross the finish line. Abraham Lincoln said that the smartest animal on earth was the chicken. The chicken, he said, was smart enough to know never to cackle until after the egg had appeared.
I hope we have taught you to be kind. Love is still the most powerful force known to Mankind.
I hope we have taught you the value of doing the job well. Competency is a vastly underrated contribution to the great advance of humanity.
Your generation is marked by greater tolerance and greater indifference to racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual difference. You are more technically proficient, more socially adept, and more globally oriented than any other generation. Sometimes you confuse and wear us out with your energy and optimistic spirit. But you have also taught us and changed us at times as much as we have taught and changed you.
We are glad you chose the New School.
We are happy for your success.
And we are confident in your capacity to make choices that will - you knew I would eventually say it - make our world a better place after all.
Today’s honorary degree recipients have all forged social change and attempted efforts that not everyone thought possible or agreed with.
John Whitehead, as a former deputy secretary of state, was a champion of human rights. He stepped in with great efforts to begin the revitalization of our downtown area after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Certainly this was a time of much anxiety and confusion and wildly varying opinions on what should be done.
Kwame Anthony Appiah invites us through his writings and public lectures to re-think identities which are based on race, nationhood, religion, and sexuality. He exposes our common humanity to show how a conversation across boundaries can create the threshold for change.
Eve Ensler has shown what an incredibly powerful weapon art can be in the struggle for social justice. As an activist she has used her written words to give voice to the voiceless, in the process she created awareness worldwide.
Regina Resnik, who upon performing the leading soprano roles in innumerable master operas, made the stretch to perform the leading mezzo-soprano roles. She has taken this lesson of stretching your abilities and talents and dedicated herself to sharing it by teaching young artists and advocating for access to education for all.
And Harold Hongju Koh, a strong advocate for the world’s victims of human rights abuse, goes a step further to challenge students to not only decide what they stand for but then to take that stand and dedicate themselves to a career of service, a career in righting social injustice.
As students, you can make a change; your voices can be heard. As graduates, you will find your way on the path to creating social change. You join arms with others, some who think like you and some who do not. Tolerance, appreciation of diversity, and the willingness to open your mind over and over again to not only learn something you did not know but, more importantly, to think something you previously did not think.
I congratulate you on this important accomplishment. I hope you will come back to The New School to further your education, to support and guide us as alumni, possibly to join us as faculty or staff members. We value your voice and wish you the best of luck in expressing it in an effort to impact social change.
