Wow! What a great speech. A little on the dark side but it ends thrillingly - I had tears in my eyes. I shouldn’t say “the dark side” - it’s the realistic side. So different than my time graduating a decade before you did. In those days we had messages like “wear sunscreen” and DJT was a tabloid fixture for his affairs. If that is what MAGA wanted to go back to, I might be one to agree, but it is not. Keep shouting from whatever dais you get and hopefully many will follow.
Use this spreadsheet as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to your own reps, as well as those in other states on a specific committee important to a topic you’re sharing. Use your voice and make some “good trouble.”
So inspiring and spot on- it makes me proud to be a Wesleyan graduate (‘67) and I’m glad that you gave credit to President Roth for courage in standing up to the bully in the White House pulpit - I strongly agree that “Courage is contagious “ / that’s why I put that quote on the sign I now take to the protest rallies and marches/
The one thing that I would add as advice for young people is to seek out experiences that will broaden your horizons and put you in situations that will challenge and inspire you to use your skills, knowledge- and yes, privilege- to set you on a path for a lifetime of service and advocacy/ just as your reference to your time in the Balkans was a searing experience that has stayed with you for a lifetime , my decision to join VISTA after college was a life changing experience- I witnessed the turmoil of 1968 while living and working in a poor black neighborhood in Washington DC - the MLK and R.F.K. assassinations and the conflagrations in DC and elsewhere - cemented my decision to lead a life of activism devoted to civil rights , human rights and to use my skills and resources to to further the cause of justice-
as I approach my 80th birthday this summer, I am ever more grateful for my time at Wesleyan and in VISTA/ and I will share this speech with my grandchildren who are just now starting college
In his address to the graduating class at Wesleyan University, Ian Bassin said:
*****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.*****
.
This is such an important and new (to me) way of approaching the analogy between our own time and that of the Nazi era. Typically – and appropriately – we meditate on the attitudes of the German people and how different members of that society did or did not act in the face of tyranny's ascent. We look around and see parallels.
As an undergraduate, JFK wondered how it came to pass that England did not take action from abroad to avert the worst that was to come. Reed Galen in an essay that I read today (https://reedgalen.substack.com/p/democrats-to-win-you-have-to-want) similarly hearkened back to those times and quoted a precient warning from Churchill in response to the Munich Pact.
This analogy is interesting. Many Americans today sleep in the sense of not even recognizing the danger that confronts us. Others, perhaps, believe that, bad as the situation surely is, there is little to do but hope it will pass. These two phenomena were true among different segments of German society in the late-Weimar/early-Reich period. It is essential, as Ian Bassin urged, that we give people of the future "reason to write how America was awakened." Or as Reed Galen quoted Churchill, who referred to the Chamberlain government's conduct at Munich:
*****“You were given the choice between dishonour and war. You chose dishonour and now you will have war…And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”*****
We must, all who are cognizent of the danger, awaken others to it and take active steps, perhaps starting with those that Ian Bassin suggested:
*****[S]tep 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.
[...]
[S]tep 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.
[...]
[S]tep 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.*****
I hope Westpoint cadets are reading/hearing some of the fine speeches other 2025 graduates had the opportunity to hear first-hand.
Ken Burns' 2024 address at Brandeis comes to mind: https://www.thejustice.org/article/2024/05/ken-burns-delivers-address-at-undergraduate-commencement-brandeis
Excellent speech!! Inspiring for all who heard it as well as those of us who read it.
Great speech, Ian. Wish it was heard "all over this land."
Keep up the good work at Protect Democracy.
Melvin & Janey
Wow! What a great speech. A little on the dark side but it ends thrillingly - I had tears in my eyes. I shouldn’t say “the dark side” - it’s the realistic side. So different than my time graduating a decade before you did. In those days we had messages like “wear sunscreen” and DJT was a tabloid fixture for his affairs. If that is what MAGA wanted to go back to, I might be one to agree, but it is not. Keep shouting from whatever dais you get and hopefully many will follow.
Phenomenal speech.
Use this spreadsheet as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to your own reps, as well as those in other states on a specific committee important to a topic you’re sharing. Use your voice and make some “good trouble.”
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13lYafj0P-6owAJcH-5_xcpcRvMUZI7rkBPW-Ma9e7hw/edit?usp=drivesdk
I’m f’n standing! Oaths we have taken my military colleagues…time to fulfill them. Democracy now; Blue Revolution now!!
Super address! Very inspiring!
Inspiring! I hope they take your words to heart.
Fantastic speech.
Beautifully said. Every new link in the bond of resistance against authoritarianism counts.
So inspiring and spot on- it makes me proud to be a Wesleyan graduate (‘67) and I’m glad that you gave credit to President Roth for courage in standing up to the bully in the White House pulpit - I strongly agree that “Courage is contagious “ / that’s why I put that quote on the sign I now take to the protest rallies and marches/
The one thing that I would add as advice for young people is to seek out experiences that will broaden your horizons and put you in situations that will challenge and inspire you to use your skills, knowledge- and yes, privilege- to set you on a path for a lifetime of service and advocacy/ just as your reference to your time in the Balkans was a searing experience that has stayed with you for a lifetime , my decision to join VISTA after college was a life changing experience- I witnessed the turmoil of 1968 while living and working in a poor black neighborhood in Washington DC - the MLK and R.F.K. assassinations and the conflagrations in DC and elsewhere - cemented my decision to lead a life of activism devoted to civil rights , human rights and to use my skills and resources to to further the cause of justice-
as I approach my 80th birthday this summer, I am ever more grateful for my time at Wesleyan and in VISTA/ and I will share this speech with my grandchildren who are just now starting college
These are words we all need to hear and remember. Thank you, Ian.
Great speech! Wish the nation would hear and heed it.
In his address to the graduating class at Wesleyan University, Ian Bassin said:
*****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.*****
.
This is such an important and new (to me) way of approaching the analogy between our own time and that of the Nazi era. Typically – and appropriately – we meditate on the attitudes of the German people and how different members of that society did or did not act in the face of tyranny's ascent. We look around and see parallels.
As an undergraduate, JFK wondered how it came to pass that England did not take action from abroad to avert the worst that was to come. Reed Galen in an essay that I read today (https://reedgalen.substack.com/p/democrats-to-win-you-have-to-want) similarly hearkened back to those times and quoted a precient warning from Churchill in response to the Munich Pact.
This analogy is interesting. Many Americans today sleep in the sense of not even recognizing the danger that confronts us. Others, perhaps, believe that, bad as the situation surely is, there is little to do but hope it will pass. These two phenomena were true among different segments of German society in the late-Weimar/early-Reich period. It is essential, as Ian Bassin urged, that we give people of the future "reason to write how America was awakened." Or as Reed Galen quoted Churchill, who referred to the Chamberlain government's conduct at Munich:
*****“You were given the choice between dishonour and war. You chose dishonour and now you will have war…And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”*****
We must, all who are cognizent of the danger, awaken others to it and take active steps, perhaps starting with those that Ian Bassin suggested:
*****[S]tep 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.
[...]
[S]tep 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.
[...]
[S]tep 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.*****