It’s that time of year again, when our nation’s luminaries hit the graduation podiums to bestow parting wisdom on newly-minted college grads. Many walk away with an honorary degree in exchange for their services—like Henry Winkler (“The Fonz”), who spoke today at the New England Institute of Technology. Because nothing says cutting-edge tech quite like the leather-jacketed king of jukebox cool.
Some heavy hitters hit the commencement trail hard. Hilary Clinton gave five speeches in 2005 alone, nearly exhausting the pool of colleges willing to listen to her tell the same story about Yale Law in slightly different regional dialects. Not to say she’s scraping the bottom of the barrel, but this year, Hillary won’t be doing a simple “find and replace” on her 1998 Harvard Medical School speech to deliver it at Buffalo State or Long Island University.
Meanwhile, our noted rhetorician George W. Bush gave four commencement speeches that year, starting at Oklahoma State. He told graduates to “harness the promise of technology without becoming slaves to technology… science serves the cause of humanity and not the other way around.” What does that mean, exactly? Is that a veiled scolding about stem cell research? An anti-abortion parable? A vague warning about the uprising of intelligent machines? Also: killer robots are already a thing. Ask Boston Dynamics.
Bush did get a laugh out of OSU’s mascot:
“If you read the papers, you know that when some want to criticize me, they call me a cowboy. … This cowboy is proud to be standing amidst a lot of other cowboys.”
Way to pump them up for their futures in either ranching or student loan repayment.
To his credit, even Bush seemed aware of the irony of addressing a room full of academics. At Calvin College, he quipped:
“I was just telling Laura the other night what fun it would be to come to Calvin College. I said, you know, Laura, I love being around so many young folks. It gives me a chance to relive my glory days in academia. (Laughter.) She said, George, that’s not exactly how I’d describe your college experience. (Laughter.)”
Isn’t it refreshing to have a down-to-earth president who can joke about his own mediocrity?
Boston colleges scored some speaker coups that year—Condoleezza Rice at Boston College, Les Moonves at BU, Lance Armstrong at Tufts. Harvard went for a safe choice in Jim Lehrer, after bringing out John Lithgow in 2005 and Will Ferrell in 2003, who told graduates:
“You’re young men and women whose exuberance exudes a confident confidence of a bygone era. I believe it was Shakespeare who said it best when he said, ‘Look yonder into the darkness for knowledge onto which I say go onto that which thou possess into thy night for thee have come with only a single sword and vanquished thee into darkness.’”
A+, no notes.
Once the domain of politicians and CEOs, the commencement circuit has become a hotbed of fame-chasing. Colleges want speakers who will entertain the crowd and impress potential donors. Bono opened his 2004 speech at UPenn with: “My name is Bono and I am a rock star.”
Richie Sambora, at Kean University the same year, told grads:
“I’d appreciate it if you all referred to me as Doctor Sambora from now on (and I’ll be asking my wife to do the same, since I already bought her the nurse’s uniform).”
We’ve all been through things.
Jon Stewart crushed his 2004 address at the College of William and Mary:
“What piece of wisdom can I impart to you about my journey that will somehow ease your transition from college back to your parents’ basement?”
Timeless.
For years I’ve told people that Wynton Marsalis was my commencement speaker, though I’m now pretty sure it was his brother Branford. All I really remember is him scolding the graduates for acting like children in front of our families. Which, to be fair, we were.
The whole day’s a little hazy. I stayed up until 4 a.m. arguing with a guy I’d just met about whether the actor who played Cliff Clavin on Cheers was one of the rebel pilots in Star Wars. I was wrong. Cliff Clavin was in Star Wars.
And that—ladies and gentlemen—was the cherry of knowledge atop my college education.
