A Few Words Before Going Forth

Asked last week on television whether he thought graduating collegians paid attention to a commencement address, William F. Buckley, a perennial favorite to speak at these rites, replied no. Rather he saw it as "a kind of a final obstacle to their emancipation." The sentiment was shared by New York Governor Mario Cuomo, surely one of the most popular graduation speakers (over 100 invitations), who told the class of '86 at the State University of New York at Albany, where one of his daughters was graduating, "Today's challenge is mostly to avoid embarrassing Madeline."

Elsewhere the mood of the special day varied from good cheer to quiet pride to plain antagonism. At the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 300 students demonstrated against the regents' refusal to grant an honorary degree to jailed South African Black Leader Nelson Mandela; later, new graduates listened politely to U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar's persuasions for peace on earth. At Haverford College near Philadelphia, former Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis doffed his academic hood and rejected an honorary degree after 28 faculty members protested his handling of the air controllers' strike five years ago. At the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, by contrast, Julius ("Dr. J") Erving, 36, pro basketball star and onetime college dropout, proudly accepted both an honorary degree and a hard- earned baccalaureate. Said Dr. J of the latter: "I needed that to fulfill a promise I made to my mother." And at Georgetown University in Washington, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor reminded law school graduates that there are other promises--like public service--to keep, despite the temptations of paychecks for "more than you are worth." A commencement sampler:

California Chief Justice ROSE ELIZABETH BIRD at the University of California, Davis: "You should concentrate on what you are doing now, and if you do it well, things that you want will happen in the future. I think that no matter how much material success you may achieve, you pave the way to disappointment if you set up your five- and ten-year goals and say to yourself, 'By then I want to be there.' We are here, I believe, to achieve wisdom and live ethically. And if we can look upon the journey of life as a learning process, we will begin to perceive a lot of the difficult and disappointing things that happen along the way in a very different light--and perhaps grow from the experience, rather than turn bitter. You really can't control very much of what happens to you. But what you can control is how you react to the things that do happen. And there, I believe, is the key to finding out about life."

Television Star BILL COSBY at the University of South Carolina, Columbia: "As a parent, I know that four years of college bring nothing more than a learned person in terms of books, tests, notes. But that maturity, that ability to read other human beings, that maturity to make a decision based on what is needed as opposed to what you want--there's no degree for that. It's a happy time for you. It's a time to get it together, collect your family, collect the love and then collect yourselves, because now comes the maturity of self, the decisions to be made. Young ladies and gentlemen, this is not your world yet. You have to make it."

Secretary of Education WILLIAM BENNETT at the Citadel, Charleston, S.C.: "Isaiah says, 'All our works are nothing--our molten images are empty wind.' There is support for theoretical pessimism. But practically, operationally, you should not bring such an attitude to your tasks. You should go about your business with some measure of enterprise, of seriousness, of good humor and of interest. I do not mean to recommend, as the Schlitz Brewing Co. did some years back, that 'You only go around once, so grab all the gusto you can.' I'm not talking about grabbing gusto or swilling beer. I'm talking about living well, living a life worth living. I offer the wise words of the Maharani of Jaipur. She said once, 'Keep an open mind; an open mind is a very good thing, but don't keep your mind so open that your brains fall out.' "

Chrysler Chairman LEE IACOCCA at Duke University, Durham, N.C.: "My class, the class of '46, wasn't too worried about competing in the world. There was hardly anybody to compete with. But the class of '86 had better learn how to compete, because you're living in a very different world. Something else you'd better do better than we have: learn how to balance the books. We're leaving you with a $2 trillion national debt. Along with your own problems and your own bills, you're going to get the privilege of handling some of mine. I'll tell you one thing: don't try to pay it off in cash. It would take the U.S. Mint 57 years, two months and two weeks just to print it. We've been using your credit card, and you didn't even know it."

Retiring President A. BARTLETT GIAMATTI at Yale University, New Haven, Conn.: "As I think back and look forward, I see how nothing is unambiguous; nothing is without risk. Salvation does not come through simplicities. The health of educational institutions rests on the need to be mindful of the crucial distinction between education and indoctrination. There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the Left and Right. They are not confined to a single part of society. They are the terrorists of the mind. (But) if freedom does not first reside in the mind, it cannot finally reside anywhere."

LAWRENCE WILDER, Virginia's first black Lieutenant Governor, at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville: "Much has been written about my not being able to attend this university during my time. The fact that my son finished his undergraduate studies here and that my daughter is in this year's graduating class warms me with a poetic and an ironic justice. We have come to see that this country's insistence on right can make a change. It did so in the archipelagoes of the Philippines. It did so with the ravaged despotism in Haiti, and it will and must do so in the blood-drenched townships of South Africa. We've seen blacks rise to compete at every level, if given the opportunity to do so. But this did not just come about. Some people had to believe it so and fought for it to be--and it did."

Historian DAVID MCCULLOUGH at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vt.: "Imagine a man who professes over and over his unending love for a woman but who knows nothing of where she was born or who her parents were or where she went to school or what her life had been until he came along, and, furthermore, he doesn't care to learn. What would you think of such a person? Yet we appear to have a never-ending supply of patriots who know nothing of the history of the country, nor are they interested. We have not had a President with a sense of history since John Kennedy--not since most of you were born. It ought to be mandatory for the office. As we have a language requirement for the foreign service, so we should have a history requirement for the White House."

TV Newscaster BARBARA WALTERS at Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y.: "This is not only the day when you are most confident, it is also the day when you are most vulnerable. Look at me. I sound like someone who really knew what she wanted and got it. Baloney. When I was graduating from college, I hadn't a clue. You don't have to know now, and you probably shouldn't know exactly now. The next time somebody says, 'And what are you going to do?' try saying, 'I don't know yet.' What a relief. You may not even want a career. You may want a job and something else: more time for yourself, more time to write, paint, explore, create, have babies, stay home . . . The hardest thing you will ever have to do is to trust your own gut and find what seems to work for you."

Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico JOHN GAVIN at Pepperdine University, Malibu, Calif.: "I do encourage you to maintain an active and healthy skepticism. That, after all, is what a university preparation is about, learning to judge, learning to think. I am constantly amazed by the distortions and untruths I find in reports and comments about subjects on which I am informed. I therefore cannot help but have a healthy skepticism. I encourage you to adopt the same attitude. It is wise to remember, as my father says, that some people so treasure the truth that they use it with great economy."

Supreme Court Justice WILLIAM BRENNAN at Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass.: "Rulers always have and always will find it dangerous to their security to permit people to think, believe, talk, write, assemble and particularly to criticize the government as they please. But the language of the First Amendment indicates that the founders weighed the risks involved in such freedoms and deliberately chose to stake this Government's security and life upon preserving the liberty to discuss public affairs intact and untouchable by Government."

Planned Parenthood President FAYE WATTLETON at Spelman College, Atlanta: "Today we see efforts to tear down the progress of affirmative action and the protections of the Civil Rights Commission, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. These are all manifestations of a 'blame the victim' philosophy--'We must force people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, even if they have no boots.' This is a crisis of no small measure for black families. And compounding it is the myth that poverty is a symptom of a so-called pathology in the black community. This myth ignores the social and economic climate in which the black family struggles for survival. It ignores the double standards used in family analysis. Single-parent black households are called 'matriarchal,' while single-parent white households are described as 'alternate life-styles' headed by 'supermoms.' "

Former U.N. Ambassador JEANE KIRKPATRICK at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va.: "I have spoken at few commencement occasions for just the reason that I do not feel that I am really sure what a commencement speech should be, what to talk about to people who are filled with pride and thoughts of parting and packing, and who are tired and tense. So I asked my son, who is a student, what I should speak about. 'I don't know,' he answered, 'but keep it short, and don't talk about foreign policy.' "

Author TRACY KIDDER (House; The Soul of a New Machine) at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, N.Y.: "If you do feel a little worried, don't worry about being worried. You're heading out on an adventure, and you can always change your mind along the way and try something else. I know lots of people who have done that, and none I can think of who regret it. What some people I know do regret is the severing of connections between what they imagined themselves doing and what they've ended up with. You want work that is rewarding and altruistic, that is worth doing for its own sake, not just for the price it commands."

Kansas Senator NANCY KASSEBAUM at Northern Michigan University, Marquette: "When thinking of commencement exercises, I am always reminded of Bob Hope's legendary commencement speech. Warning of the dangers and disappointments of the 'cold, hard world outside,' Mr. Hope gave his audience two words of advice: 'Don't go.' "