PRESS RELEASE
Clark University
University Communications
Jane Salerno
Senior Associate Director, Media Relations
950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610-1477
Tel: 508-793-7635
email: [email protected]
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Below is text from the Sunday, May 18, Clark University Commencement
address, by Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation of
New York.
Gregorian is a historian, educator and author. As president of
Carnegie Corporation, a grant-making institution founded by Andrew
Carnegie in 1911, he has worked for the past 10 years to promote
Carnegie’s vision of philanthropy by building on his two major
concerns: advancing education and international peace.
Born in Iran of Armenian parents, Gregorian was educated in Iran and
Lebanon before entering Stanford University where he earned his
B.A. in 1958 and Ph.D. in 1964. After teaching history at several
American universities, he joined the University of Pennsylvania, where
he was appointed founding dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
(1974), becoming that institution’s 23rd provost four years later. He
went on to become the president of The New York Public Library (1981-
89), where he raised over $300 million, and president of Brown
University (1989-97), where he nearly tripled the University’s
endowment.
Among Gregorian’s numerous awards and fellowships are the Ellis Island
Medal of Honor (1986), the American Academy of the Institute of Arts
and Letters’ Gold Medal of Service to the Arts (1989), the National
Humanities Medal (1998), awarded to him by President Bill Clinton and
the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award (2004). He
serves on the boards of many institutions, including Brandeis
University, Central European University, The Museum of Modern Art and
Human Rights Watch and has been a board member of the J. Paul Getty
Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He has been decorated
by governments around the world.
Gregorian is the author of "The Road To Home: My Life And Times,"
"Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith," and "The Emergence of Modern
Afghanistan, 1880-1946."
The speech, photos and more about Clark’s event can be found online:
Cla rk University Commencement Address
Vartan Gregorian
Sunday, May 18, 2008
President John Bassett, Chairman William Mosakowski, Trustees of Clark
University, Provost David Angel, deans, distinguished faculty,
dedicated staff, proud parents, wonderful students, Senior Class
Speaker Emily Zoback, grateful benefactors who have invested so much
and so wisely in Clark University, fellow honorees-Christopher
Collier, Arthur Remillard, Diana Chapman Walsh-and ladies and
gentlemen. . .
I want to pay tribute to Clark University for not abandoning
Worcester, for not walking away from Worcester; for not giving up on
K-12 education but providing models for its renewal; for not giving up
on local communities but rather forming productive partnerships such
as Clark Park; for Clark’s conviction that democracy and excellence
are not mutually exclusive.
Commencements are special, symbolic, solemn, and joyous occasions
marking the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another. As
I look out today, I am delighted that there are so many people to
celebrate this wonderful day with you. In 1958 when I graduated from
Stanford University, I had no family in this country, and indeed I had
no one to attend my graduation ceremony. So I did not march. In 1964
when Ph.D. degrees were awarded, I was teaching. I had once again no
opportunity to attend that ceremony either. So today it is with envy,
great enthusiasm, and admiration that I am participating in your
commencement, and, for the first time, my sister and brother-in-law
from Iran and my nephew from Boston are attending my graduation.
Rest at ease. I am not a politician in search of votes or in need of
yet another platform to "clarify," once again, my previous positions
on a variety of issues. Thank God I am not one of those who is famous
for being famous. I am here as an academic, to witness this solemn
day of your commencement, your new beginning that marks the sacrifice
of your parents, dedication of your professors and, most importantly,
your own sustained hard work, faith, determination, and
accomplishments.
Commencement speeches mark a rite of passage. While I am honored to
be part of your celebration and the class of 2008, I have no illusion
about my role. After all, hardly anyone remembers their commencement
speech, or even who gave it, unless it was a celebrity like Jennifer
Anniston, Quentin Tarantino, Bruce Willis, Orlando Bloom, Oprah
Winfrey, or even the President of the United States. . .
I checked to see what have been the most memorable commencement
speeches ever given so that I would not be off the mark. Looking back
half a century, I was astonished to find that, according to The
Washington Post, there were three unforgettable commencement
addresses: one was given in 1947 by U.S. Secretary of State George
Marshall, who announced the legendary U.S. plan to rebuild Europe
after World War II. Another was given in 1963 by President John
F. Kennedy, who announced a moratorium on nuclear weapons tests. The
third one, however, which had no news value at all, was given in 1997.
It featured my late friend Kurt Vonnegut. It began with a famous
line: "Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97. Wear sunscreen."
Other bits of advice included injunctions to "floss," "sing,"
"stretch" and "don’t mess too much with your hair." My favorite line
was: "Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you
succeed in doing this, tell me how." Thank God the so-called
"Vonnegut Speech," which set a new tone for commencement speeches,
turned out to be an internet hoax. . .
I have also come here today to pay tribute to American higher
education and one of its exemplary institutions, Clark University, to
Clark’s amazing legacy, its outstanding faculty, its remarkable
leaders. I am here to pay homage to you, students, to your growth as
educated, cultured citizens, to your metamorphosis into the kind of
people-human beings-who have developed the ability at least to try to
comprehend the incomprehensible; to make sense out of confusion;
wrestle some logic out of the illogical; and challenge even ugliness
to show some glimmer of beauty somewhere deep within its core. You
have spent the last four, five or six years at Clark University in
order to learn how to analyze, synthesize and systematize information
and knowledge; to separate the chaff from the wheat; subjectivity from
objectivity; fact from opinion; public interests from private
interests; manipulations from influence; and "spin" from corruption.
I hope you have learned to be flexible in your thinking, adaptable in
your analysis of issues, and appreciative of the complexities that
comprise almost every aspect of daily life-both on the human and
global scale. I’m sure you don’t yet realize just what an
extraordinary skill you have developed, how well it will serve you in
the future, and how desperately the world needs people who are not
paralyzed by complexity but welcome the opportunity it brings to think
new thoughts, develop new ideas, and find new ways to solve problems.
I am sure you are, and always will be, mindful of the great American
humorist H. L. Mencken’s warning that: "there is always an easy
solution to every human problem: neat, plausible…and wrong!"
I am sure your Clark University education has prepared you to begin to
understand the relationship of the unique and individual self to the
social, political, and cultural world around you. I hope it has also
given you the courage to think those big, imponderable thoughts that
are our companions throughout our lives, such as: what is our
relationship to universal order? What is our place as a human being
amongst the great sea of mankind? Though you may never answer these
and other questions for yourselves, and perhaps they will always be
unanswerable, they will help you create a framework for the way you
live your lives.
In this difficult time when many of us worry about our country and its
direction, about its values, its promise and its future, I’m still
convinced that while America is not perfect, it is still
perfectible. It is still a land of opportunity for immigrants and for
international students, not only Americans alone. … Many of you in
the audience today are proof of that as well. It’s amazing, isn’t it,
that until recently two-thirds of all students studying abroad have
been attending American colleges and universities?
But with the opportunity we have all had to study at America’s great
institutions of higher learning, comes responsibility, as well. What
we have learned in school we must find ways to put into action. We
cannot retreat from the big issues of society and the world and our
time into the pygmy world of private piety. Nor can we become cynics
paralyzed by our own disdain, and we must not become-we cannot afford
to become-social, political and moral isolationists.
That is especially true for those of us who are foreign or current
international students. Whether we remain here or to return to our
native countries, we have the obligation to build bridges between our
nations, our societies and the United States, and vice versa,
especially now. And those who come from developing countries have yet
another obligation, and a very weighty one, to work toward creating a
better quality of life for those at home and to advance the
opportunities that are available to them. After all, you represent
their hopes for a better future.
For those of us who were born elsewhere but were educated here and
then became American citizens, we have reason to be doubly
grateful. One, because we received our education in America, not to
mention financial support. And two, because America granted us the
privilege of citizenship in a country whose Constitution proclaims
that "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain
unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness."
These are lofty aspirations. Remember, however, that America has
always been and will always be a work in progress. Every generation
has and must contribute to that ongoing progress. As John Gardner once
said, it is important to be both a loving critic and a critical
lover. America needs all of us to be both.
And now let me come back to you! Clark marks the beginning of your
latest wonderful, arduous journey. It has provided you with the means
to be on your way. It has given you not only an education, a
profession and all the skills and confidences you need to do well in
the world, but it has also given you choices and the ability to
choose. Sometimes you may find you have so many choices that all the
possibilities available to you will be overwhelming. This morning I’d
like to share with you three lessons I have learned that may-I stress
may-assist you in making your choices.
The first lesson, actually, is a well-known one. I believe, if I’m not
mistaken, it was Sir William Osler, professor of medicine at Oxford
University in the early years of the 20th century, who said that young
men-and women-should be careful in the selection of their ambitions
because they’re likely to realize them. Since you have the education,
the knowledge and the training to realize your ambitions, be as sure
as you can that your ambition also reflects what you really love to
do.
Speaking of your ambition, sometimes you may be masters of it, but
watch out. Sometimes you may be its slave, and watch out. Other times
you may be a victim of hubris. No matter what, try to bear in mind the
next lesson: don’t confuse a job with a career. In the past I used to
say to students that in your life, you will have many jobs but only
one career. Now, however, if we keep on the way we are going in terms
of how long we can expect to live, many of you will be octogenarians,
some of you may even be centenarians, so you may have not only many
jobs, but also many careers as well. I haven’t quite reached either
age category as yet, but I have worked in a number of fields, as it
was mentioned-academia, libraries and now philanthropy-and I can share
with you the fact that people often ask me, "Which job did you like
best?" But they’re asking me the wrong question. I’ve never considered
any of the positions I’ve held as jobs. In fact, I even think of them
as more than careers. To me, they have been missions in which teaching
and learning are primary ingredients, with me as the primary student.
So even though this is probably the last thing you want to hear today,
I want to remind you that whether you like it or not, in order to
survive and thrive, you will have to be lifelong students and lifetime
learners. And yes, there are and always will be difficult times when
you will think you have come to a dead end in your life or in your
career, even an apparent point of no return, but let me tell you as
one who has experienced those events once or twice, when that happens,
think of what the author Gabriel Garcia Marquez once said when he
spoke of the condition that human beings are not born once and for all
on the day their mothers gave birth to them, but that life obliges
them to give birth to themselves over and over again. Time,
experience, knowledge, education, love, one’s values, all these can
and do affect us and change us, and enable us to reinvent ourselves. I
have invented myself many times and I’m sure you will do the same
thing.
For me, Marquez’s words have a particular resonance because they
reinforce values that were taught to me by my maternal grandmother, an
illiterate peasant woman. She raised me. My grandmother was an
illiterate peasant, a poor one at that. I don’t believe that she knew
where Greece was, nor Rome, nor the United States. She certainly did
not know who Plutarch was, but even so she taught me the same lesson
as Plutarch highlighted in his celebrated Lives almost 2,000 years
ago, when he said, essentially, that character makes the man and
woman. My grandmother was my first teacher. She instructed me in the
moral lessons of life and the "right way," through her sheer
character, stoic tenacity, formidable dignity, individuality and utter
integrity. She was for me the best example of what good character
means. In spite of many adversities and tragedies, wartime ravages,
poverty, deprivation and the deaths of her seven children, she never
became cynical, never abandoned her values and never compromised her
dignity. Indeed, it was from my grandmother that I learned that
dignity is not negotiable. Your reputation is not for sale and must
not be mortgaged as a down payment on your ambitions. It was my
grandmother’s living example that shaped the very foundation of my
character. Between what I have learned from Plutarch and my
grandmother-a combination of forces I would dare anybody to
challenge!-I feel confident in telling you that in the coming years
you will meet people who are more powerful than you, richer than you,
smarter than you, even handsomer or more beautiful than you, but what
will be your distinguishing mark will always be your character. And
what will define your character? Your conduct, your ability to live by
principles you believe in, even if that means fighting tenaciously for
what is right over what you know to be wrong.
Nobody goes through life without encountering obstacles,
disappointments, and problems. Nobody can keep from making mistakes or
taking a wrong turn. Nobody can escape illness or avoid the specter of
failure. Let me point out that coping with success is easy. How you
deal with adversity, with failure, and with setbacks will reveal your
true character. How nimble you are about getting back on your feet
after some large or small disaster or defeat will help you to
determine just how far those feet of yours will take you in the world.
But that’s where your upbringing, the texture of your education and
your values will help you to develop a distinctive attitude toward
life, an attitude that persistently seeks meaning and perspective, an
attitude that exudes adaptability and resilience in a relentlessly
changing and perplexing world, an attitude of moral courage and
steadfastness in the face of overwhelming human need and
suffering. How to develop and maintain such attitudes in an age where
"individualism" has become a cult and celebrities, icons-where people
are famous for being famous-is not an easy task. We must be reminded
time and time again that we are not mere
consumer/entertainment/socio-economic/socio-b iological and information
units, to be processed. We are not numbers. We are unique, rational,
spiritual and social beings full of competing sentiments, insatiable
yearnings, dreams, imagination, quests and ties that bind us to the
past and the future.
It might be helpful to remind ourselves that it was Alexis de
Tocqueville who in the 1830s coined the word "individualism," to
describe the self-reliant character of Americans. But he also went on
to extol Americans’ generosity, their proclivity to create voluntary
citizens associations and the fact that volunteers and altruists have
played a critical role in preserving and strengthening what he called
the modern world’s first nation that did not have a ruling class. In
that way, he made clear that both the private and public realm,
private good and public good, are interdependent. One without the
other will diminish the bonds of community and creativity. Some 125
years later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put it more succinctly: "We
may have all come in different ships but we are in the same boat now."
Today we must be reminded that what is unique about each of us should
be celebrated and cherished, that we must not forget that we also
belong to a larger community, society and, indeed, humanity. As
Americans and as human beings we have an obligation to contribute to
the well-being of our communities; hence, to the public good.
I hope as you climb the ladder of success, you will always remember
the dictum "From those to whom much has been given, much is expected."
In conclusion, I would like to offer you just one last thought about
our shared human condition. Today information floods over us, and a
millisecond later in comes another flood of data and information, and
then another and another. Images of pleasure and pain, fear and joy,
love and hate assault us from all the angles. The world around us is
full of raucous chatter and noise. Amid all this cacophony, it’s hard
to see ourselves as part of a larger whole, a continuing eternal
harmony, that music of the spheres that the ancients thought we would
hear only in our inner ear. Well, today I would like to remind you of
your connection to history. Try to listen with your inner ears to
those who went before you, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents
and on and on, who all wanted to be good ancestors to you.
As an historian, educator and a fellow student, I feel bound to remind
you that the time has come for you to return the favor. You have to
learn to be good ancestors to the future.
Today’s commencement marks the beginning of many other beginnings for
you, many other commencements in your life. Many mornings, many
beginnings are before you. The future is waiting for you with open
arms. I wish you good luck, great success and great humanity. Thank
you very much.
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