NYU Commencement 2015

Good morning. I promise that I will not be before you long. Its a beautiful
day and I know you long to share it freely with your family and friends. First and
foremost on behalf of my fellow honorary doctorate recipients I want to express
my heartfelt thanks to the board of trustees of New York University and
President Sexton for conferring this very illustrious recognition. I am truly
humbled to receive this honorary doctorate from one of the greatest institutions
of higher learning in the greatest city in the world. Congratulations Dr. Lang, Dr.
Lax, Dr. Michel and Dr. Vilcek. Second, Id like to thank President Sexton for the
opportunity and honor of addressing you today. When I was on the bus,
someone referred to President Sexton as visionary. And he is. But not every
visionary has the energy, courage and commitment to make his vision become a
reality. I want to congratulate President Sexton for being that kind of visionary.
Graduations are wonderful occasions. For me, the child of a sprawling
immigrant family with nine siblings and nearly 30 nieces and nephews,
graduations are mini family reunions, times to reflect on how far weve come
and how far we still have to go a time to recognize hard work and ambition

and to honor the dreams and aspirations of parents and grandparents. Right
now Im basking in the dreams of my nine siblings, and my parents, but
especially my brother who passed away just last month, and my late father, who
were both huge Yankees fans and who must be joyously celebrating in heaven
seeing me standing here, facing homeplate addressing you all today.
So today is a day of celebration. And yet, because you are graduates of
this great institution, I know that you are aware that out there just outside the
ring of celebration, outside the cushion of todays excitement lies a more
sobering reality. And while I promise not to kill the joy of your day, I want to say
a few words about the challenges out there in the world you will rejoin after
todays celebrations. I feel comfortable doing so, because by virtue of you being
an NYU graduate, I know that you are someone who is concerned with the
world. I know that you are creative, imaginative, bold, a nonconformist, an
intellectual, a doer and natural-born activist. I know that you take your
citizenship
obligations seriously. By citizenship I do not refer to your legal status.
I mean your responsibility to whatever community you belong whether its the
American community or the human community. You take seriously your

responsibility to work for peace and justice, to protect and nurture opportunity
and equality.
Since last August, I have found myself repeating under my breath from
th
time-to-time a line from a document I read in the 10
grade in my American

Literature course at Hillcrest High School in Queens. I havent thought much

th
about this text since that 10
grade class in 1976, but after unrest broke out in

Ferguson, Missouri last summer. After Eric Garner was killed here in New York,
after I saw the execution of Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina,
and yes after I learned early one Saturday night that two police officers were
killed while on duty in Brooklyn, after I watched young people in my adopted
city of Baltimore unleash frustration after years of neglect and dislocation I
found myself whispering the opening lines written by Thomas Paine in his
pamphlet of the American Revolution: these are the times that try mens
souls. Yes, these are the times that try mens and womens souls.
The past nine months have been trying indeed. They have challenged the
very soul of our nation such that we cannot pretend even as are here filled with
the excitement of this day that there are not deep challenges awaiting us. We

cannot pretend that all is right in our land. And we should not. We can suspend
reality for a few hours, maybe a few days, but then we must return to it.
The challenges we face are both personal and national. Some of you are
excited today, but have no idea how you will manage the debt that you have
accumulated to receive this wonderful education. Most of you have enjoyed the
privilege of attending this great university and living in New York City. But for
most of you, if you lived on campus at NYU, this will be the last time that you
will be able to afford to live in Manhattan. Still others of you wonder about
whether you will be able to find a job in your chosen field, one that provides
maternity and paternity leave, and that will not discriminate against you for
being gay or lesbian or transgender. Some of you despite this terrific education
and having found a good job will find the veneer of success stripped away, as
you are stopped on the street or in your car, even though you havent broken
any laws and you are wearing a suit because, you are told, you look like a
suspect in a robbery. Still others of you are struggling even now to take care of
elderly parents who have little or no savings, or you cannot imagine how you
will save enough to send your now infant son or daughter to NYU.

Many of you are doing just fine. But you recognize and accept willingly
your obligation to concern yourself with the state of our democracy. You cannot
ignore that there are an increasing number of states where there are hundreds
of thousands of voters do not have the newly required identification demanded
by ever-increasingly stringent voter id laws. You have never been to prison, nor
has anyone you know. But you know that the prison population of our country
has reached unsustainable and shameful proportions. You know that
incarcerating 2 million people is a sign of American failure, not American
success. You know that violent crimes levels are today as low as they were in the
1960s, and yet our prison population is 8 times the size it was in the 1960s.
You are living in a nation of staggering income inequality and of revived
and entrenched racial segregation.
You saw the video of Eric Garner s death or you saw Walter Scott running
for his life and being shot like prey in North Charleston, South Carolina and you
feel deeply, you know without question that our democracy faces challenges
that demand your engagement, your response.

You have seen all of these things, worried over these things. You have felt
the crisis that is enveloping us, the crisis of confidence in the rule of law, in our
justice system, and you are wondering what your role must be. And you are
right to do so. It is our citizenship obligation to engage the issues of our day. To
work for peace. To demand justice but also to fight for beauty, civility, privacy,
and dignity for everyone.
And so on the beautiful day of celebration, I will not relieve you of the
obligations of citizenship. In fact, to the contrary, I encourage you to nurture
that niggling worry, that sense of dissatisfaction, that inability to settle and to be
content with the deep imperfections of our democracy. I encourage your
discomfort, your sense that you must do something, you must contribute, that
you must make your voice heard. That is the essence of citizenship -- that bone
deep sense of obligation to improve our democracy to improve it especially for
those who are most marginalized and most in need.
And you, my beloved NYU graduates, you
will
find your own way to make
your contribution. You will teach young people. You will participate in
government. You will make meaningful art and help those without access to see

it, hear it, dance it, and sing it. You will fight for the right of children to have a
childhood free from violence. You will commit yourself to finding the cure to a
terrible disease, or to making treatment accessible to those who lack it. You will
create opportunities for good jobs, you will treat your own employees
humanely. You will fight passionately to protect our precious natural
environment. You will stand against religious intolerance. You will do the hard
work of communicating with those who disagree with you of reviving the lost
art of civil discourse in which you respect the humanity of the person with
whom you are in conflict.
I have the advantage of leading an organization in which my predecessors
provide an astonishing example of citizenship. Thurgood Marshall, the first
leader of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund became a brilliant civil rights lawyer
and later Supreme Court justice. His work over the course of a lifetime was
committed to equality and justice. What he and his colleagues accomplished
was nothing short of astonishing. They changed the trajectory of a nation and
they changed your life and my life. No person in this stadium has lived a life

untouched by the work of Thurgood Marshall and the lawyers at the Legal
Defense Fund. So I know that it is possible to make this kind of contribution.
But Ive also come to tell you something that I would not have been able
to tell you two weeks ago. I was a passenger on Amtrak train 188 last Tuesday
night. After the crash I came to, walking on the tracks away from the wreck. And
what happened in the next few moments has helped me think through how to
balance that call to citizenship, to activism, to hard work. I immediately began to
communicate with that tight band of people who really are the center of your
life. In my phone probably in yours too they are your favorites. My sister,
with whom I was talking with the train crashed. My husband. My daughter. My
best friends. And during this time when I was utterly disoriented insisting to
my husband that I was in West Baltimore and saying over and over again that I
had my laptop, my favorites came together. My sister the medical doctor
who helped me understand, despite my protestations to the contrary, that I
needed medical attention. My daughter, who dispatched her best friend who
lives in Philadelphia, to meet me in the emergency room. My best friends, who
loaned their car to my husband so that he could drive from New York to meet

me in the emergency room in Philly in the middle of the night. I was never so
happy to see his wonderful face.
And so I wish to not only call upon you to use this extraordinary education
to exercise the highest form of citizenship. To fight for justice and peace and
equality in our democracy. But I also call upon you to just as passionately
nurture, tend, and cherish your favorites the ones who, when calamity
happens, will find you and surround with their love. You must decide explicitly to
do the work of nurturing those relationships just as carefully and intentionally as
you must decide to do the work of citizenship.
Congratulations graduates. Enjoy this wonderful day and several more and
then..get to work! Who will follow? You will follow! Thank you. And
congratulations class of 2015!