The trappings of commencement are meant to lift the spirits, but it is now harder to know what to say to a group of mariners setting out on unusually stormy seas.
Universities and their constituents have been wrung through the wringer this year. It seems like everyone from the President to their funding sources have weighed in on their supposed shortcomings: some, such as the tradition of favoring diversity goals, are totally fictitious, others, such as high fees to attend, are true. In this fractious environment what can an invited speaker say to those about to leave the protected shores of academia for the stormy economy that awaits? In better years graduates who gathered in front of Old Main were giddy with high expectations, if not always prepared to hear the solemn words of a somebody at least one generation removed.
Lately, a college degree seems less of an achievement than a document testifying to endurance. And those young grads are obviously none too pleased with their country and the diminished job prospects in many fields that they will be inheriting. Recent reports of vocal “boos” from graduates being addressed by speakers from the tech world are a reminder that what should be a celebration now sometimes resembles a hostile crowd at a political rally. The threat of A.I. performing jobs in many industries is real for these graduates, who might have reasonably expected a degree of protection from the culture.*
Speeches are my business. And while the trappings of commencement and its music are meant to lift the spirits, it is now harder to find the right thoughts to communicate to a group about to step into the unknowns of work and life.
The most durable model for these speeches combined a sense of celebration with old-timey jeremiads about becoming too complacent too soon. The classic commencement speech almost always took the form of a secular sermon, even when the message was simply to hold on to the ideals and enthusiasms that are the birthright of the young. The writer Susan Sontag cautioned students at Wellesley to become students for life. I like here writerly way of putting it: “Don’t move to the mental slums.”
Now, it is less apparent that these new graduates want to hear more from the generation that they believe—with some justification—has put the country in its present disarray.
The best advice to a speaker that I can give is to be brief, and to combine any warnings with a sense of positivity. There goals are not mutually exclusive. Graduates should be urged to joyfully use the intellectual tools that they have acquired. They will need to prove their worth as critical thinkers and communicators. In my own case, stating this was easy. Given the Chairperson’s privilege of speaking to our communication majors in a smaller ceremony, I added a reminder that can apply to many fields.
Communication is not done with any of us. It will have its way with us for the remainder of our days. This isn’t a subject you learn and then move on. There’s rarely such a thing as perfecting a communication skill. . . For the rest of our lives we have no choice but to be students of the arts of working with others, ready for the next opportunity to make friends out of strangers and take the toxicity out of relationships.
In short, make this moment the start of using the intellectual tools and social intelligence you have acquired.
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*A music technologist addressing students at a commencement in Tennessee this spring offered one of the worst comments I have heard from a speaker: “The things you learned in your first year here may already be obsolete.” Everyone at that institution should have been offended, since it suggests the presumption of a trade-school approach to a subject that is thousands of years old. Surely Tennessee’s program did more than explain how to use an outdated edition of some studio software. He was rightly booed.
Personhood is a unique state rooted in carbon-sourced biology, not easily replicated by silicon-based machines. 
