Student Commencement Speeches 1969

Hillary Rodham and Senator Edwin Brooke, May 31, 1969

Recently, the Daily Kos published an item on Hillary Rodham Clinton's student commencement address at Wellesley College on May 31, 1969, when she challenged the main speaker, Senator Edwin Brooke .  I think that, in many cases, seeing what a person was thinking at the age of 21 may give us a good sense of the person’s best, authentic self.

To test my hypothesis, I dug into an old trunk in my basement to find the text of the student address I gave a few days later at my graduation from The George Washington University.  That evening, the main speaker was Senator Edmund Muskie. (Picture below, with Senator Muskie, June 8, 1969)       

I did not challenge Senator Muskie by name; rather, I sought to challenge my fellow students – along with our entire society.  While I find some of my phrasing a bit hokey, tied to the idioms of the period, and while I would write it a bit differently now (I now think that our Vietnam Era foreign policy problems were more the fault of our civilian leaders and the defense industry than they were the military itself; and I would have been clearer that it was not just seeds of racism that were planted centuries ago, but that much of our country was based on racism – our country’s Original Sin, as I called it in a student newspaper column the previous year),  I would like to believe that it is a 46-year look back to my essential self.   

Anyway, I re-keyboarded it, and copy it here for my own family posterity.  Anyone else interested to reading it, is of course, free to do so.

GWU Student Commencement Speech (David Fishback), June 8, 1969

Today we receive diplomas from a university. The world appears far different from the time, only a few years ago, when we were handed diplomas by our high school principals. 

The world of 1964 and '65 was bright and optimistic. A few cities had erupted, but that was, we were told, a small side product of realistically rising expectations. The Government was sending some men to fight in a war in Southeast Asia, but that was, we were told, a small price to pay for the preservation of "freedom" in Asia. The Nation was making ready to uproot the last vestiges of injustice in what was to become a Great Society. 

Somehow we did not make it. A portion of our population is in incipient rebellion, not because of simple rising expectations, but because of disgust and anger and continued oppression.  The intervention in Asia has devastated a small land whose people, faced with authoritarianism from all sides, must only desire peace; the brutality of this now clearly senseless war has not only crippled the people of Vietnam, but has and continues to tear our own nation apart.  And rather than working to eliminate injustice, the Nation seems paralyzed in any attempts to deal with any problems. 

It would be ludicrous to speak of ourselves as young people now entering the society:  We have been in it for quite awhile. Some of us are extremely sensitive to the crises around us; some of us are relatively unconcerned. But the War and the draft and the domestic upheavals prevent any of us from being completely oblivious to them -- and perhaps that is a silver lining. To the extent we are born into a society, we have no responsibility for its shortcomings; but to the extent we live in it, we have total responsibility. The results of racism, poverty, and militarism threaten to explode or decay our society beyond repair. 

Some say that the problems can be solved simply by stern measures to maintain order:  To keep protesting people in their place, to give them no choice but to play in the game, albeit with a stacked deck. That is no solution:  As John Kennedy so wisely pointed out, "Those who make change impossible make revolution inevitable."

But then others say that revolution is what we need:  By revolution here is meant complete overthrow of the existing order, which, in the context of the conditions in this country, can only be done by violence. In our society this approach is dubious at its best, catastrophic at its worst:  A repressive fascistic counter-revolution would be virtually certain, and even if it were not, the dynamics of violent revolution lead almost inexorably to authoritarian or totalitarian regimes -- and such regimes, by their very nature, are likely to be most oppressive in industrialized and heterogeneous societies like ours.  

Nor will the crises of our time "blow over."  The seeds of racism were planted in this country hundreds of years ago and its trees grew and multiplied:  Today racism's poisonous fruit, which has always sickened our society, threatens to kill it.  Poverty, closely tied to racism, but going beyond it, has become clearer in its inequities:  People are increasingly unlikely to tolerate conditions of poverty imposed by circumstances beyond their control. The increasing influence of the military has led us into a catastrophic wake and could easily, if unchecked, lead us -- by sheer momentum -- to more such wars, harming ourselves and others and taking us down the road to a nuclear holocaust. 

So the alternatives are clear:  We either find humanitarian solutions to these crises or the crises will plunge us downward into an abyss of right or left wing authoritarianism or total annihilation. A social, economic, and political system can survive only if it meets the needs of its people. If our system does not deliver, it will die. 

Our society, for all its grave deficiencies, has much to offer and has great potential:  Prosperity, rich diversity, respect for human rights are possible within its broadest outlines. Shifts – fundamental shifts -- within the system will be required, and we must not shrink from that change. 

A very natural question at this point is, "What power have I to change things?"  The answer I would give is that very few people have power as individuals. But, as we are molded in large numbers by our society, in large numbers we have the capacity to mold the society in turn. People's attitudes create the climate of opinion in which change can take place; and the ballot box is still the ultimate repository of power. But public opinion is only a potent force if it is organized:  To that end we must "get our heads in place," "get ourselves together" to organize for change. 

Youth is always proclaimed to be the wave of the future. Well, we're it. In the final analysis it will be us and people like us who will determine whether this nation descends into more chaos and more repression or whether it develops into a truly just and truly free society. It is our responsibility -- the responsibility of each and every one of us.