[Introduction: And so it came to pass that my daughter received her college diploma Monday afternoon. She yawned the entire time while waiting in line for her diploma. Too many parties and events and outings, I suppose. My wife and I both felt a sense of completion, that we had run our race and done our part as parents. Grandma was there for her second commencement in New Haven, Class of 1988 and now the Class of 2024. My adult sons were joyful and full of fun and pranks as adult big brothers should be. I felt a tinge of sadness that my Mom wasn’t there. My Mom-in-Law lamented the absence of her parents who missed the passing of the baton to a new generation. Her parents would have been around 105 years old this week.
I ignored the kente cloth stole, the nose piercing, the Palestinian flag and anything else of no meaning. My daughter’s moment was all that mattered. My little girl commenced her adult life among the fellowship of educated men and women. It was a good day.
Free Palestine — those were the words that echoed for a good minute as a black female student speaker wearing the obligatory kente cloth stole shouted from the podium on Class Day Sunday. Free Gaza. During the general Commencement ceremony on Monday, the President’s award of baccalaureate degrees was punctured by protesters screaming Free Palestine. To his credit, the President continued with his duty steeped in tradition since the 1700s in Old Campus. The 50 or so protesters shouted their chants and slogans. And I was ok with it all.
There was no Commencement speaker per se. One was scheduled but one did not speak. The following is my hypothetical commencement address were I invited to address the Class of 2024.]
Commencement Address of 2024.
I will not speak long this afternoon. For 332 years on these hallowed grounds, the leaders of our nation have addressed the future. College presidents and scholars and writers and activists have offered gems of wisdom for the leaders of tomorrow. I am not vain enough to believe I have anything new or novel or original to offer you, save for my desire to see the world as you see the world.
The chants of Free Palestine still echo in this courtyard. It is good that these passions about right and morality enter our soul. It is equally true that we live in a world where the state of Israel remains a valued part of our world community. Let us always remain steadfast in the knowledge that truth is a blend of competing visions, values and attitudes. We are always at our best when we temper our traditions of the greater good with respect for the good faith views and opinions of our fellow man. As you become the leaders of tomorrow — the Governors, the Senators, the College Presidents, the Best Selling Authors, the Masters of Artificial Intelligence — lead with profound vision and wisdom.
That combination will hold you in good stead wherever life takes you.
I look out into the vast audience and I see the human condition. I see the world beyond the year 2050. I see the nascent power of conscience among the vocal and the contemplative. And I quote from the famed novel Life and Fate by a Russian novelist Vasily Grossman: “…and the greatest tragedy of our age is that we don’t listen to our consciences. We don’t say what we think. We feel one thing and do another.”
I see future leaders who are mixed in every way imaginable and I think “What constitutes the freedom, the soul of an individual life, is its uniqueness.” Another insight from the novel Life and Fate.
I see a young black American woman from San Diego who proudly wears the kente cloth stole and works at the Afro-Am House, the legacy daughter of the Yale Class of 1988 and I think to myself of this woman of promise from San Diego “You carry away this sense of your life without having ever shared it with anyone: the miracle of a particular individual whose conscious and unconscious contains everything good and bad, everything funny, sweet, shameful, pitiful, timid, tender, uncertain, that has happened from childhood to old age — fused into the mysterious sense of an individual life” and I understand Blackness is more than Oppression today at Yale.
Blackness has become home.
[Applause]
I see so many proud Moms and Grandmothers out there before me. Let it be said the future destiny of the child is always the work of the mother.
[chuckles] And fathers here today are to be commended as well for their support and guidance through the years.
I have no more to say. All that I could say has been said 331 times before me.
Graduates, your task is to know who you really are. What are the things that attract you? What excites you? What are you drawn to? Now is the time to discover your super power and energy. What to ignore. What to leave in. What to leave out. Against the Wind
Do these things, and usher in a Golden Age for our World beyond the year 2050.
Go forth and discover who you are. And the world will be a better place!
Commence now into your future! This is your life! This is your fate!
Congratulations, Wink, to you and your family for raising such a wonderful daughter participating in a graduation not possible back in my year of 1960 . My newly discovered ancestor Lemuel Haynes, who gave one of his sermons at Yale with Timothy Dwight in the audience, would be proud too!