Give them reason to write how America was awakened

My advice to Wesleyan’s Class of 2025 (and all of us)

This weekend I had the distinct privilege of giving the commencement address to the graduating class — and now my fellow alumni — of Wesleyan University.

I traveled to Middletown not just because it was a remarkable honor to be invited, but also because this is a pivotal moment for our democracy. Universities, all universities, are part of the fulcrum on which our system of self government presently rests.

As Adam Serwer writes eloquently yesterday in The Atlantic (gift link), the Trump administration is engaged in a “sweeping attack on human knowledge and progress … a deliberate destruction of education, science, and history, conducted with a fanaticism that recalls the Dark Ages that followed Rome’s fall.”

What happens now, whether or not our democracy survives this dark period, is up to the graduating seniors of Wesleyan. Just as it is up to all the graduating seniors at all our institutions of education across the country. Just as it is up to all of us.

Here is my advice to the Wesleyan Class of 2025, offered with the humility that it is they who will ultimately lead us. It is the same advice I would give to anyone. In that spirit, I share it with you here. (And I would love to know your reactions or thoughts in the comments.)

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Thank you, Kimberly. To President Roth, all the Wesleyan faculty, staff, and trustees, thank you for your stewardship of this remarkable university. To all the parents, caretakers, and family members here today, thank you for helping to produce such incredible graduates. And most importantly, congratulations again to the Class of 2025!

Now, I have got to start with an apology. When I got my degree up here, the commencement speaker was Oprah. And the last time I was here for commencement, for my reunion, I brought with me a guy I was working for at the time to be the speaker: a little-known fellow by the name of Barack Obama. And you? You got a guy you never heard of. I mean, even the last degree recipient just won the Pulitzer.

But, you get something I didn't have, which is you get to graduate at a moment of historic consequence. That is a burden, but it is also a privilege.

And I didn't have that. When I walked across this stage, the things we were concerned about were what President Clinton meant by the word “is,” whether Ross and Rachel were really on “a break,” and whether a computer glitch called Y2K was going to reset our DVD players. And if you don't know about that one, ask your parents. It was terrifying.

But your moment is different. It has more in common with that of a young graduate in the Spring of 1940, who was sitting at a ceremony much like this one, listening to the usual admonitions about duty and destiny but who was thinking about something else: That at that very moment, the world was on fire.

As John F. Kennedy sat in cap and gown, Nazi Germany was sweeping across Europe. The British had just escaped total annihilation at Dunkirk. France was about to fall. London would soon be bombed. But what troubled Kennedy the most was not the war itself, but the possibility that it could have been prevented.

He had just spent his senior year writing a thesis titled “Why England Slept,” in which he asked a simple but devastating question: How had one of the world’s greatest liberal democracies watched the rise of authoritarianism, only to do nothing until it was too late?

That question — posed about Britain then — is one we must ask ourselves today.

Eighty-five years later, the foundations of our democracy are being tested. We are in a moment of profound risk. A moment of true consequence. And in moments like this, history always offers two paths. One leads to renewal. The other to ruin.

And the burden of choosing the right path, Class of 2025, falls to you.

Fortunately, you graduate today with one of the most powerful tools for making that choice: a degree from this incredible university. I speak from experience.

When I arrived here in the Fall of 1995, Congress was trying to cut federal student aid by the largest amount in history. Outraged at the idea of slamming shut the doors of higher education to millions, a few of us, high on the heady hopefulness of freshman year, posted signs around campus calling for a meeting in the building that used to be standing right over there. We thought a few students would show up. But come on, this is Wesleyan. The whole room was packed beyond the doors.

We organized a national student movement, working with administrators and our legislators in Washington to oppose the cuts. We won. It was my first lived experience of democracy and our power as citizens within one.

After graduation, as a journalist covering the war in Kosovo, I saw the opposite: what happens when governance fails, when the power-hungry turn neighbors against neighbors, and violence becomes the order of the day. I met families in refugee camps tugging at my sleeves, begging for help. I saw whole villages on the side of the highway holding shovels, only to realize they were digging mass graves.

It's an image seared into my mind forever. It has inspired a career trying to strengthen our democracy as our greatest shield against such horrors, and our most powerful sword for freedom.

Recently, I was giving a talk in which I asked an audience to stand up for democracy because, you know, we've got to practice that. And afterwards, a young woman approached me on the side of the stage. “Thank you,” she said. “My parents were from Nicaragua,” she told me. “They believed in a movement that promised utopia, but in the end its leader took away their freedom and forced us into exile.”

She grabbed me by the shoulder and through tears she said: “Keep warning everyone.”

So I’m here to honor her request. Now, some of you may not agree with my perspective. That's your right. But that right to disagree freely is precisely what I speak today to protect.

Because that young woman's family didn't support a tyrant because they were ignorant or evil. They likely did so because in moments of crisis and transition, easy solutions offer the illusion of hope. And graduates, we are in such a moment of crisis and transition.

You inherit a politics that is poisoned. An economy full of uncertainty. A planet in turmoil. New technologies that can either enslave or empower us. For too long, our systems have failed to meet the moment. You have only known dysfunctional governments that have been unable to solve the problems of our time: climate change, migration, inequality, injustice. Institutions that serve the powerful more than the people, and elections that feel like bitter battles for survival.

You have every right to be frustrated. And when someone comes along — a disruptor — who says, I alone can fix it, it is tempting to believe them.

But here's the painful truth that young woman’s family and so many others have learned the hard way: Every single time people have given in to that temptation, they come to regret it.

In recent years, just look to Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela. These were democracies, each of them. Each, facing frustration and stagnation, handed power to flawed leaders overselling promises of prosperity. And each descended into repression, corruption, and, in some cases, outright tyranny.

Now, we may comfort ourselves that America is different. But let us not mistake preeminence for permanence. The truth is, the only way it can happen here, is if we believe that it cannot.

We must remember: It’s not that democracy doesn’t work. It’s that democracy requires work. It survives because people choose to keep it alive.

In 1955, Claudette Colvin, a Black high school student in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus. “History had me glued to the seat,” she later said. Nine months later, Rosa Parks copied Claudette's act. Four days after that, a young local preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. was elected to lead the Montgomery bus boycott. We remember Parks and King, but the 15-year-old Claudette was the spark.

So was Mouawiya Syasneh, a 14-year-old Syrian boy inspired by the Arab Spring. He spray-painted about his own country's despot "Your turn has come” on the walls of his hometown of Daraa — words that ignited a movement that eventually toppled a dictator.

A 14-year-old. A 15-year-old. Young people who rose above grievance and anger, who replaced resentment with responsibility, who turned outrage into imagination — and lit a blaze of freedom armed with little more than the flint and steel of truth and courage.

I just made it sound easy. Like you can just turn on the flint and steel of truth and courage like you're screwing in one of those fasteners on an Ikea desk. The task of securing democracy for future generations may not be quite that simple — though honestly, neither is assembling that Ikea desk. But they're both doable, if you follow a clear set of steps. In this case three, really.

And the first, step one, is to be that spark. Take the first action — even just small symbolic ones, whether it was Claudette sitting down or Mouawiya standing up, these simple acts encourage others by showing them they are not alone. We've seen that here at Wes. When President Roth called out attacks on academia, he helped inspire his peers to do the same. Courage really is contagious.

And it leads to step two: collective action. The bus boycott; the Syrian freedom movement; universities banding together and to say an attack on one is an attack on all. This is what is required. When freedom is threatened, people who normally disagree must band together in its defense. Divide and conquer is tyranny's oldest trick. Pit us against each other — on the basis of race, religion, or national origin — and it's easier to pick our pockets of money and power.

So I ask you to act collectively. When the freedom of any one of us is endangered, act as if the freedom of all of us is. Because it is. And rather than demonize those with whom we disagree or impose purity tests, we must forge common cause with the broadest possible coalition in defense of our Republic.

And if we do that, we create the space for step three: not just to resist, but to rebuild. The 20th-century order is over. A new age is being born. What democracy looks like in that new age — how it works, whom it serves — that is your generation's work.

But I think we all can agree: We can do better than this. So long as we build from our most cherished ideals: Freedom. Justice. Human dignity. Equality under the law.

These are the values that can take us from chaos to competence, from cruelty to kindness, from corruption to common purpose. They are the tools to turn your tattered inheritance into something more just, more inclusive, more beautiful, more lasting.

If you do so, as the leader who led Britain out of the darkness Kennedy observed rightly predicted then: “the new world [you build], with all its power and might, [will step] forth to the rescue and liberation of the Old.”

We've had three national foundings in our history: a Constitution and Union that rose from the Revolution; a Reconstruction that rose from the Civil War; and a New Deal and Civil Rights Movement that rose from the Depression and World War II. It is your generation's opportunity to raise a fourth.

You will decide whether democracy endures. You will decide whether freedom is won or lost. You will decide whether this country writes a dreary final chapter — or its next great one.

The weight of history is a burden, yes. But it is also a profound blessing. And as Wesleyan graduates I know you have it in you to do this. We can witness it right now by making this promise: That whatever your politics, you will always stand up for our democracy, and our right as a free people to set our own destiny.

Can we do that? Can we take the first step of modeling the spark and standing up for democracy? If you're able, stand up for democracy right now. Stand up. Let our rising start your rising, as the generation that renews our democracy. Look around. You have it in you.

Don’t give future graduates cause to write why America slept as the world crumbled. Give them reason to write how America was awakened. We need you, graduates. Let's hear it for the Class of 2025. Congratulations again, and best of luck in this most consequential time.

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I find commencement speeches, for better or worse, to be a helpful barometer of the times we live in. You’ll notice how many this year are touching on similar themes. Just a few examples:

Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel emeritus at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, speaking at the University of Maryland School of Law:

I planned to be a civil rights lawyer. By no means did I believe our system was perfect, but I understood that I had pledged to do the work of making change by working within the context of this infrastructure and doing so honorably. Today that may seem quaint but I assure you it is not. It is the glue that holds together a profession that is essential for ensuring the strength of the rule of law. And as such, it is essential for undergirding democracy. There can be no healthy democracy where the rule of law is threatened.

Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, speaking at Princeton University:

Since the founding of this great democracy 250 years ago, generation upon generation have assumed the burden and the honor of moving us closer to the ideal that all are created equal. Now, it's your turn. I ask you to take a minute and realize how the quest for these values has led us to this point in our history. We lead the world in so many ways, including in scientific innovation and economic dynamism. Our great universities are the envy of the world and a crucial national asset. Look around you. I urge you to take none of this for granted. When you look back in 50 years, you will want to know that you have done whatever it takes to preserve and strengthen our democracy, and bring us ever closer to the Founders' timeless ideals. …

A very last, and critical point. Your life matters — to the people you love and to the broader world. Fifty years from now, you will want to be able to look in the mirror and know that you did what you thought was right, in every part of your life. At the end of the day, your integrity is all you have. Guard it carefully.

Scott Pelley, 60 Minutes correspondent, speaking at Wake Forest University:

[I]n this moment — this moment, this morning — our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack. An insidious fear is reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes and into our private thoughts. The fear to speak. In America? If our government is — in Lincoln’s words — “of the people, by the people and for the people” — then why are we afraid to speak?

Have you seen other commencement speeches that have inspired you and risen to the moment? Let us know in the comments.

Transcript, photo, and video courtesy of Wesleyan University.