Commencement Address
May 28, 2006
Let me add my congratulations to those of others this morning for the outstanding service that Chairman Van Demark and President Fergusson have provided this school. A good many years ago I was asked to deliver the commencement address at a small liberal arts college in New England. When I arrived on campus, the President of the College asked to have an urgent private word with me.
"Dr. Schulz," he said, "It grieves me to say that the College has just gone bankrupt. Immediately after the ceremony, we will be closing our doors on 132 years of history. I trust you will offer us some words of solace and inspiration."
Well, ladies and gentlemen, the fact that I need not offer you any such consolation today is tribute in good measure, I am sure, to these two remarkable people ... and especially to their fundraising prowess.
A few years ago a representative of the Development department of my own undergraduate alma mater, Oberlin College, came to see me. After a few minutes of pleasantries, I said, "You know, I understand why you're here and I'd like to make a pledge to the College's new capital campaign." The young man went pale. "Oh, no," he said. "Not yet. I'm just here to cultivate you." "Well," I said, "I'm cultivated enough and I'd like to give you a pledge." "No, please," he said. "I can't take it. I just can't take it," and sprinted out of the office.
But two years later he was back. "I think you're cultivated sufficiently by now," he said, "and I'm ready to take your pledge. "All right," I said, "What would you like me to give?" And without missing a beat, he said, "One million dollars." It is exactly that kind of imagination that keeps America's colleges solvent.
And that they are – that Vassar is indeed solvent, is a very good thing, and it is a good thing because many of the values this institution seeks to embody – that every institution of higher education seeks to embody – are under the most singular of threats today.
I heard a lovely story not too long ago about a mother cat and her three kittens who were walking along the street one day when a large and vicious dog came up. Naturally the kittens were frightened but the mother cat just arched her back and she hissed at the dog, "Bow wow! Bow wow!" and the dog, startled and frightened, turned and ran away. The kittens were much impressed and they looked up at their mother and she looked down at them and, raising one paw, she said to them, "You see, my darlings, that's the advantage of knowing a second language." But how many Americans, either literally or metaphorically, know a second language, live gladly in the world at large and not just in a narrow corner of it? One of the values of this institution that is under threat today is the conviction that truth takes a myriad of forms, that revelation is not sealed and that there is no necessary correlation between wisdom and power. Osama bin Laden doesn't believe that. Donald Rumsfeld doesn't believe that. Fidel Castro doesn't believe that. Pope Benedict doesn't believe that. Bill O'Reilly doesn't believe that. Howard Stern doesn't believe that. But it is true.
Now sometimes, I admit, I wish it weren't true. Sometimes I wish the secret of life was a lot simpler than it is. The Chinese philosopher Hung Tzu-ch-eng said, "Only those who can appreciate the least palatable of root vegetables can possibly know the meaning of life." I wish it were that easy. "What is a human being," asked the Danish novelist Isak Dinnessen, "but an elaborate machine for turning red wine into urine?" I wish that was all there was to it. But I'm afraid my sympathies lie with the rabbi who upon his deathbed was asked by the head elder to reveal the meaning of life before he passed beyond it. "Life," said the rabbi, "is like a river," and those wise words were passed on down the row of elders – the rabbi says, "Life is like a river" – until they reached the lowest of the low, the poor, stupid schlemiel. But the schlemiel was puzzled. 'What does the rabbi mean, 'Life is like a river?" he asked. And the schlemiel's question was passed on back up the row of elders until it reached the head elder who put it to the rabbi, "I'm sorry, good sir," he said, "but the poor stupid schlemiel has asked what you mean, 'Life is like a river.'" But the rabbi just shrugged: "So," he said, "Life is not like a river." Truth takes many forms; revelation is not sealed; and there is no necessary correlation between wisdom and power.
But though truth takes a myriad of forms, there is one truth that remains beyond dispute and that is that all blood flows red, that more profound than all our differences is our common suffering and that what will save us and save our planet is a recognition of the frailty we share. That truth is under threat today from the enemies of democracy and the so-called champions of it; from the purveyors of morality and the disdainers of it. And it is under threat from those very children and grandchildren of immigrants who would not be where they are today if this country had treated their forebears the way they propose to treat a new American generation.
To see beyond appearances, beyond pretense and stereotype, beyond bombast and bravado, beyond self-interest and self-righteousness, right into the authentic heart of misery, into the common bonds of suffering – the remarkable capacity that we human beings occasionally display to identify with another's pain, despite all of our brutality, to exercise a moral imagination, despite all of our pettiness – it is that upon which human rights are based and that upon which the salvation of the world depends.
In the midst of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, a group of machete-wielding militiamen attacked a girls' school in the middle of the night. The teenagers were rousted from their beds about 2:00 AM and forced to line up in the dining hall. They were ordered to separate themselves, Hutu from Tutsi, so that only the Tutsi could be slaughtered. But the girls refused to move. A second time the commander ordered them to divide up by ethnic group. But still they didn't move. And finally one of the girls found her voice and, though very frightened, this is what she said: "We cannot separate ourselves. You see, I'm sorry, sir, because in this school we are not Hutu; we are not Tutsi; we are just girls, just little Rwandan girls," at which point every one of them was slaughtered.
But what a legacy they leave! "We are not Hutu; we are not Tutsi. We are girls, little Rwandan girls." In that simple sentiment that young girl bespoke a graciousness upon which depends the salvation of the world. In a magnificent essay entitled "The Moral Necessity of Metaphor," the novelist Cynthia Ozick quotes this passage from Leviticus, chapter 19: "The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you and you shall love him as yourself because you too were once strangers in the land of Egypt," and then she goes on to say that it is exactly because we too were once strangers in the land of Egypt that we can identify with another, that "doctors have the capacity to imagine what it is to be patients. Those who have no pain can imagine what it is to suffer. Those at the center of power can imagine what it is to be outside the circle of power. The strong can imagine what it is to be weak ... And we strangers can imagine the familiar hearts of [other] strangers."
I have never been tortured, never had my arm or leg amputated, but I know of plenty of people who have and I am compelled to make a metaphorical leap from my own trivial sufferings into the hearts of strangers. And what I find there is astonishing: what I find is familiarity. Familiar hearts. Of every stranger. Friend or foe. Ally or adversary. Just a moment's recognition of that phenomenon and Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo Bay would be merely names on a map and not markers of the eternal shame of all Americans.
And then there is a final article of faith that this College – that all the institutions of a liberal education – have always sought to propagate and that is the conviction that history is not finished; that the future is not fated; and that with our privilege, with our degrees, comes our responsibility to build a more benevolent nation, a more hospitable people, a more welcoming world.
Somewhere in one of the great art museums in Europe hangs a large painting of Faust and the Devil sitting at a chess table. Faust has made his pact with the Devil and now his face is contorted in anguish because he retains on the chessboard but a knight and a King and his King is in check.
One day a great chess master happened into the museum and naturally this painting caught his eye, and he sat down in front of it, and stared at the painting for ten minutes, then fifteen. Then twenty. And still he stared. And then suddenly, leaping to his feet: "It's a lie!" he shouted at the top of his lungs for all to hear. "It's a lie, I tell you. The King and the knight – they have another move. They have another move."
And that, my friends, is the final message that this school would have these graduates deliver to a bruised and battered world that, no matter what orthodoxy may claim, no matter what ideology may bluster, history is not finished, the future is not fated, what comes next is in our hands, so that in the face of hardship and injustice, in the face of suffering and of death, we say, "The story is not over. The end is not here yet. For it is not just the King but the knight, not just the Queen but the rook, not just the Bishop but the pawn, not just the wealthy but the pauper, not just the powerful but every starving, lonely, frightened person in the world, every single person, every single one of us, who has another move. We all have another move.
Pat Buchanan once famously said that America was engaged in a "culture war." For once, he was right. We are engaged today in an enormous struggle for the soul of this country. It is a struggle between those who would close down culture and those who would keep it open. Between those who welcome the preeminence of one nation and those who give their fealty to the common interests of the globe. It is, in short, a struggle between those with a parched vision and those with a generous heart. I suggest that this institution and every institution like it has pledged itself to one side of that equation and, to you who graduate today I have a very simple message: "Wear the mantle of these values proudly; give no quarter; yield to no adversary; fear no shadows; let your voices roar and make the mountains tremble."