Today we have two items we would like to share: First, a column by Donald M. Murray from the Boston Globe, "Friends' caring and sharing shows the way" Second, check out the website Humanity.org for all your commencement speech needs.
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Commencement Speeches
"The commencement ceremony affirms each student's search for knowledge. It often includes a graduation speech which seeks to put their recent hard (or not so hard) work into the context of their future. Many of us hear one or two commencement addresses as graduates or listen to a handful as spectators. Yet -- as we graduate from one year to another, one relationship to another, one experience to another -- we always are learning.
Though these myriad departures and arrivals of everyday existence are seldom met with ceremony, words traditionally reserved for momentous occasions may ring true and inspirational at any hour. That's why we created this unique archive of commencement addresses, selecting an eclectic menu of twenty nine extraordinary speeches from the thousands that we have reviewed since beginning work on this initiative in 1989.
Though some of these wonderful remarks were given decades ago, we believe they are as relevant and important, perhaps increasingly so, as the more current speeches. Thus we encourage you to read them all, recognizing and celebrating your own constant commencement into tomorrow, finding ways to place it firmly within the context of progress for all humankind."
| | - Tony Balis |
| INDEX OF OUTSTANDING SPEECHES FROM 1936 TO 2007 | |
| Bill Gates | "Great Expectations" Harvard University, 2007 |
| Alice Greenwald | "Why Does Memory Matter?" Sarah Lawrence College, 2007 |
| Ken Burns | "A Vanguard Against this New Separatism" Georgetown University, 2006 |
| Steve Jobs | "Find What You Love " Stanford University, 2005 |
| Thomas L. Friedman | "Listen to Your Heart " Williams College, 2005 |
| Toni Morrison | "Be Your Own Story " Wellesley College, 2004 |
| Bono | "That's not a cause. That's an emergency." University of Pennsylvania, 2004 |
| Lewis Lapham | "Merlin's Owl" St. John's College - Annapolis, 2003 |
| Wally Lamb | "What do Novelists Know?" Connecticut College, 2003 |
| Martha C. Nussbaum | "Compassion and Global Responsibility" Georgetown University, 2003 |
| Daniel S. Goldin | "Gallileo and the Search for Truth" Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001 |
| Madelaine K. Albright | University of California, Berkeley, 2000 with response from Fadia Rafeedie, a Palestinian student |
| Desmond Tutu | "Fly, Eagle, Fly!" Brandeis University, 2000 |
| Aung San Suu Kyi | Bucknell University, 1999 |
| Richard N. Kaplan | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1999 |
| The Dalai Lama | "Education and the warm heart" Emory University, 1998 |
| Roger Rosenblatt | "Get A Job" Brigham Young University, 1998 |
| Elie Wiesel | "Learning and Respect" DePaul University, 1997 |
| Russell Baker | "10 Ways to Avoid Mucking Up the World Any Worse Than It Already Is." Connecticut College, 1995 |
| Vaclav Havel | "Civilization's Thin Veneer" Harvard University, 1995 |
| Gordon Matthew Sumner | Berklee College of Music, 1994 |
| Romulus Linney | Oberlin Collge, 1994 |
| Cornel West | Wesleyan University, 1993 |
| Robert E. Leestamper | Richmond College, London, 1989 |
| Meg Greenfield | "A Better Truth" Williams College, 1987 |
| Gloria Steinem | Tufts University, 1987 |
| Margaret Atwood | University Of Toronto, 1983 |
| Ursula Le Guin | "A Left-Handed Commencement Address" Mills College, 1983 |
| Alan Alda | "The Wilderness of Your Intuition " Connecticut College, 1980 |
| William Gass | "Learning to Talk" Washington University, 1979 |
| Theodor Seuss Geisel | "My Uncle Terwilliger on the Art of Eating Popovers" Commencement poem at Lake Forest College, 1977 |
| John F. Kennedy | American University, 1963 |
| George C. Marshall | "The Marshall Plan" Harvard University, 1947 |
