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Judy Woodruff, CNN anchor and
senior correspondent, was the speaker and an honorary degree
recipient at Smith College's 126th commencement ceremony
on Sunday, May 16.
President Christ, Provost Bourque,
distinguished faculty, trustees, family and friends, and
especially members of the Smith College Class of 2004:
What a great honor to be here on this special occasion at
this special institution.
It is remarkable to be in this
collection of honorees today: Rita Colwell, Thelma Golden
and Patricia Williams. My inclusion is testimony that affirmative
action is alive and well in Northampton.
I am aware of the
history of today, your earlier commencement speakers: John
F. Kennedy, Alistair Cooke, Walter Lippman and Edward R. Murrow. It took Smith
40 years to have a woman commencement speaker, but you have more than made
up for lost time with, among others, Maya Angelou, Marian Wright Edelman and
last year, Madeleine Albright. What an honor to be on such a list.
And what an
honor to speak at commencement as Smith graduates the United
States’ first
all-female class of engineers. Let’s give the 20 graduates of the Picker
Engineering Program a special round of applause.
I will make one commitment:
this will not be the longest commencement speech ever given.
Research shows that that was a six-hour address given in
the 19th century at Harvard -- the first half
was in Latin, the final three hours in Greek. Then the graduates were given
a test.
I do feel an affinity for Smith.
I have known so many of your distinguished alumnae over the
years who have made such enormous contributions in politics
and journalism.
I also have a very personal
connection: Zhengli Zhu, a Smith graduate of the class of
1998. She came with me today, along with her mother, who
is visiting from Shanghai.
At the risk of embarrassing
her, I’m going to tell you a bit about Li-Li,
whom we consider our Chinese daughter. She was an exchange student at the Sidwell
Friends School in Washington more than ten years ago when she stayed with us
for a semester. We had no idea she would become family: years later when she
was married in the States my husband gave her away. But one of the enabling
bonds on that journey was going through the college admissions
process with this exceptionally bright young Chinese woman.
That was when we first knew Smith was special.
She had a distinguished
four years here. An economics major, she landed a great job
with one of the prestigious Wall Street investment banking
houses; she spent the next two years working 110 to 115 hours
a week. A life of abundant riches was to follow after this
two-year apprenticeship; pretty heady stuff for the middle-class
daughter of a Shanghai accountant and schoolteacher.
I happened
to know the CEO of that firm, and he reported that Li-Li
was a treasure with an unlimited future. Then, at the end
of those two years she did the unexpected: she tossed aside
a lucrative job offer to follow in her mother’s footsteps
and teach school.
So every school day for the
past three years she has commuted from Jersey City to the
Bronx -- three hours daily. Like
her peers, she is evaluated every year; she receives the
highest grades for every category of teaching.
Why did she
do this? Some of her former colleagues on Wall Street still
ask her why. When I asked, she spoke of the nobility of teaching.
But she also cited her Smith experience; the "intellectual
inspiration and influence" of
her professors: "I kept thinking of them as my role models."
Smith,
this young Chinese woman explained, gave her confidence: confidence that
she could adapt and compete in a new land; certainly confidence
that she could do a job every bit as well, indeed better,
than most men; and confidence to go against the grain.
This
is not a recruiting speech for the National Education Association,
although I hope some of you answer that noble calling. I
also hope some of you go into investment banking; for those
of you who do, on behalf of President Christ and the Smith
trustees, always remember your alma mater!
But what Li-Li’s
story suggests, I believe, is that your intellectual/moral
compass has been finely honed during your four years here.
Follow it.
In talking with several of
you these past few weeks, this is strikingly evident: Meghan
Taugher told me that Smith "has developed us as leaders.…We
will do a lot of things." Nicole Berkes appreciates that she has "learned
to think out of the box." Sienna Hunter-Cuyjet recalls the "homophobia
and racial and anti-Arab sentiments after 9/11" that your class came
together to deal with. In that vein, your sophomore year, as Liz Liedel says,
was a time "bracketed
by tragedy." She and others spoke of the leadership example set that
difficult year by acting President John Connolly.
Because of all this, and
more, you are young women ready to encounter choices and make decisions.
That
does remind me of the sage counsel of another commencement
speaker, Woody Allen. "More than any time in history
mankind faces a crossroads," he
told those graduates. "One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness,
the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose
correctly."
The choices actually are much
better, but let’s
talk for a moment about some of the conundrums you will encounter.
The world you are about to traverse is much smaller than the one your
parents entered. You are as likely to spend time in Frankfurt, Germany,
as in Kentucky, or in Athens, Greece, rather than Georgia.
We are a far
more globally interdependent economy and -- with a few exceptions -- this
has been good. Smith has prepared you; more than half of you studied
abroad and some 7 percent of you are from other countries.
Moreover,
economically, politically, militarily and socially, America is the
world’s leader, the trendsetter. American products and American
culture are omnipresent.
Yet, at the same time, American
policy, and even Americans, are increasingly reviled around
the globe. America, not terrorism, too often is seen as the
greatest threat to world peace.
In moderate Arab countries,
supposedly our allies, Osama Bin Laden, a demonstrable murderer,
is more popular than George W. Bush; a recent Pew study found
the percentage of people in Muslim countries who feel that
suicide bombings are justified, has soared.
American cannot
lead -- and you will have more difficulty in playing a
prominent role in any international field you pursue -- if
this persists. A Field-of-Dreams international policy -- do
it and they will follow, irrespective of what the people
believe -- is a fantasy.
Allow me two asides. One, do
not let my profession elude its responsibilities: the number
of foreign correspondents on the three commercial networks
has been cut in half over the past couple of decades and
on September 11, 2001, there was not a single CBS, ABC or
NBC correspondent in a predominately Muslim country; and
then we wonder why we don’t understand one another.
Also,
whatever your views on the Iraqi war, don’t make the
mistakes that were made in Vietnam, where we condemned the
warriors as well as the war. This way may prove to be a tragic
mistake, as Vietnam did. But we should honor those brave
young men and women -- most from working-class families -- who
are serving their country in uniform.
Another crossroads of
sorts revolves around the notion that you will have much
to celebrate and worlds to conquer. Both true. There are
more opportunities today than ever. Seize them. Have fun
too.
When I was sitting in your shoes
more than three decades ago about to leave Duke University,
I never dreamed that I would interview presidents and prime
ministers, travel the world covering major stories, report
on every major presidential election for more than a generation,
participate in national debates, and, in a tragic vein, be
standing 15 feet away when the president of the United
States was shot.
It has been heady stuff. I have
been very fortunate.
But also know your heart will
be broken. Mine has been in ways large and small. I have
lost assignments, I have been beaten on stories, I have made
mistakes -- and
that hurts, because in my business they are usually public. More
important, I also have a severely disabled child.
What Smith
has prepared you for -- and what I believe Duke helped
do for me -- was
to instill or sharpen the fiber, the resiliency, the courage to
bounce back from those setbacks. But setbacks there will
be.
For those of you so inclined,
there’s the issue
of combining career and family. Can you do it? Of course.
Women have been doing it for centuries and, thanks to the
feminist movement, there are more possibilities for you today.
Over the past 40 years, women have gone from making 59 percent
of what men make to 77 percent; although that’s welcome,
it is also unacceptable.
Yet in the past few years, corporations
and other institutions are making it more difficult, cutting
back on flex-time and job-sharing and other arrangements
that disproportionately help working mothers. The first child
today lowers earnings for a mother by 7.5 percent; the second
child by another 8 percent. That is unacceptable.
It also
is unacceptable that our family and medical leave policies
are so limited; this imposes a special burden on lower- and
middle-income working-class families; over three-quarters
of low-wage workers have no paid sick leave. These burdens
fall heaviest on women.
Don’t accept these trends.
Use your voice and the skills you acquired here to change
them.
One other note to those who
wish to combine career and family: I highly recommend it.
I have been married to the man I love for almost a quarter
century, and we are blessed with three marvelous children -- well,
a small caveat, two are teenagers. My family is the best
thing that ever happened to me. But there is one constant:
I am tired every day of my life. You will be too.
Finally,
there is the matter of service to others; that has been a
way of life at Smith. I am sure that each of you envisions
continuing involvement with people and communities.
For most
of you it will be tougher than you think today. There will
be distractions, competing claims, job demands, family pursuits,
the need to find some free personal time.
But find time. You
know -- much better than do the troglodytes of my generation -- the
value of technology to enrich our lives. But the information highway
has never tutored an underprivileged young child, taken meals-on-wheels
to an infirm senior citizen, transported people with disabilities,
or played ball or watched a movie with an at-risk teenager.
Those experiences enrich your lives too; they fashion your
character, which forms your destiny.
You have enjoyed special
privileges and opportunities. It was at another commencement
almost 40 years ago when Robert F. Kennedy told Berkeley
graduates: "You
can use your privileges and opportunity to seek purely personal
pleasure and gain. But history will judge you, and as the
years pass you will judge yourself, by the extent to which
you have used your gifts to lighten and to enrich the lives
of your fellow beings."
You, more than most college
graduates, should appreciate that. It was the dream of Sophia
Smith that with this college and its alumnae "[women’s]
wrongs will be redressed, their wages adjusted, their weight of
influence in reforming the evils of society will be greatly
increased…their power for
good…incalculably enlarged."
I celebrate with you on
this great achievement culminating in today. And I am a little
envious of the grand challenges and choices ahead of you. Before
you start, one final request: remember the words of Mark Twain,
who said when he was 14, "my father was so ignorant that
I could hardly stand to have [him] around. But when I got to
be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned...."
When
this ceremony is over, go to your parents, who are so proud
of you, even tell them how much they have learned as you
thank them for their support and sacrifice. Then give them
a big hug.
Congratulations. Thank you. |
