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Remarks given Monday, May 19, 2014 by Claire Oakes Finkelstein, Algernon Biddle Professor of Law, Penn Law and professor of philosophy, SAS, director, Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law; and Incoming Chair of the Faculty Senate.
Three Responsibilities: Nourish, Cherish and Cultivate Yourselves
Greetings Class of 2014! I have the honor of addressing you as the in-coming Chair of the Faculty Senate on behalf of the roughly 4,464 faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. This speech is my first official duty. Now in case you think that students are the only ones who receive assignments, I should share with you that my assignment from the Office of the Secretary is first, to offer some sage words of advice to the graduating class, and second, to mention Benjamin Franklin in the process. I have just accomplished the second of my two assignments. On to the first.
I graduated college this month 28 years ago. My youngest child will probably graduate college 13 years from now. And your children will start graduating from college approximately 22 years from now. The last of your children will graduate approximately 45 years from now. Some of you will probably be sitting right here, in 2059, as your children process into their seats, thinking wistfully of today and what changes, and what stays the same.
What changes? Twenty-eight years ago, in 1986, email was barely a twinkle in the eye of the National Science Foundation, but that was the year it began. I went through college thinking I had the latest and greatest of typewriter technologies, because it had the ability to auto-correct up to five letters! It was also the year the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on live TV as well as the disaster at Chernobyl Nuclear power plant. Pre-9/11 generation that we were, we gave little thought to national security challenges, and the suggestion that a government agency might have access to our personal letters and documents would have sounded to us like a Saturday Night Live send-up of a bad science fiction novel. Just as it is difficult for you to imagine the day you will receive your first Mother’s Day flowers by drone delivery.
What stays the same? Most of you have roughly a five-year horizon for thinking about your futures, as I did when I graduated, and your children will at theirs. Human beings are pre-programmed to focus disproportionately on their immediate welfare, as the philosopher Thomas Hobbes so eloquently pointed out over 300 years ago. But what that inveterate bachelor didn’t know is that having your own children usually works a dramatic change in human nature.
Because when you imagine the lives of your children whom you love, and you imagine the child they will have that they will love, and the grandchildren they and their children will love, you can no longer imagine a future world without your children or their children or their children somewhere in it. And when you do, those not-yet-in-existence facts of their world define the conditions under which your children will struggle to realize their ambitions, just as the conditions of your world today define the terms of your struggle and the conditions of my world defined mine.
To the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, you are our intellectual children. Your future paths, as professional leaders, will be the coming to fruition of the education we have sought to extend to you and your own creativity and hard work in receiving and continuing it. On this day, we pass the torch to you. You will help shape the lives not only of your own children, but of those aspiring young people who will look up to you as teachers, mentors, role models and moral leaders.
It is a heavy responsibility you bear. But it is also a great opportunity. An opportunity to make the lives of future generations better, more fulfilling, more inspired and more inspiring for others. As any parent or teacher knows, there is no greater reward than improving opportunities for those who follow in your footsteps. And this is why we, the faculty, share with your parents the pride and satisfaction they feel as they watch you graduate today.
So what about my first assignment—to give you advice? For the sake of brevity, I’ll content myself with this: As we pass the torch to you, take it up and carry it as high as you can. The best way to do that, to live up to the responsibilities you now acquire, is to be the teacher and parent to yourself that others were, or should have been, to you. Nourish and cultivate yourselves and your futures as you would those of your students and children. To love and cherish yourself is a responsibility, but it is also the greatest of opportunities.
On behalf of the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, I wish you my deepest congratulations and my heartfelt wishes for your future!
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