The sun(graduation planners' favorite celestial object) began burning through themorning http://priv...

1. Harvard Commencement 2015 Morning Exercises
The sun
(graduation planners' favorite celestial object) began burning through the
morning http://privatetutoring.us/ murk at 5:50 a.m. By 6:10, a doctoral
candidate, already in cap and gown, leaned over a stroller to kiss her husband
as she and he and their befuddled toddler waited (naturally) for an inbound
MBTA subway train from Alewife Station to Harvard Square. A summery morning
stirred to life for the University's 364th Commencement, and with it
thousands of students stunned to find themselves awake and ambulatory at an unaccustomed hour-
-on their best behavior for adoring parents, loved ones, and
the gathering throng. Soon they and 10 honorary-degree recipients (see below) would
be in proud possession of their Harvard diplomas, somewhat damp with humidity
but unmolested by so much as a drop of rain during the morning festivities.
The Setting
An Arctic winter
battered Massachusetts. Harvard was shuttered for three days in three weeks--tying the number of
snow days for the entire
twentieth century, President
Drew Faust told the College seniors in her Baccalaureate address on
Tuesday, May 26. By then, an up-and-down spring (frost had threatened
western Massachusetts the prior weekend, and the Commonwealth slid into a
deepening drought) had given way to early stickiness. In time for the
University's graduation marathon, what passes for heat in New England put in its
first sustained appearance. Weather-savvy proud parents posed their
graduates-to-be for photos in front of Widener Library at 7:45 a.m. The morning

2. breeze may have tousled a lock or two, but better than having an A.B.-to-be
melted by the end of the Baccalaureate that afternoon, when the temperature
peaked at 86 degrees and the humidity oozed up, too: perfect Cape Cod weather. The
warmth brought hints of thunder and rain for fretful Commencement planners to
fret about. Media credentials for the Big Day on Thursday featured a photograph
of Deval L. Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts and featured speaker,
in a tweedy jacket; one hoped he had donned something much lighter underneath
his doctoral gown.
At 5:30 p.m. on
Tuesday, still in the 80s, buses disgorged College class of 1950 and 1955
reunioners outside the Faculty Club. Some walked slowly, and a few used canes.
But their spirit was Harvard strong, their summer sport coats and blazers were
natty and well pressed, and they seemed resilient: less affected than their flip-flop-wearing
successors of Century 21 by a bit of heat.
Wednesday
morning early, the grounds crew was tidying up Massachusetts Avenue outside
Harvard Yard, sweeping away the seasonal snowfall of elm seeds, geranium
petals, and locust blossoms brought down by brisk, damp breezes. Tuesday's sun
had proved enough to wilt the campus azaleas, but not to obliterate the
rhododendrons. In preparation for myriad class days, Harvardians were about to
find out what it is like to hold Commencement week, in academic garb, during
summery weather--86 muggy degrees by mid afternoon. Gusty
winds made it seem cooler, barely, briefly, but guests reported that it was hot. The breezes ruffled
the feathers of
at least one of Harvard Square's resident wild turkeys, seen crossing Prescott
Street shortly before 5 p.m. Was it scoping out a way to crash the gates at
the honorands' dinner in Memorial Hall at 6:30--or, perhaps, an unticketed

3. flight path into Tercentenary Theatre Thursday morning? Only the turkey knew, of
course--and it kept its counsel. No matter, the stage was set for the graduates'
Main Event.
The Players
During the
Morning Exercises (read the program here), the University conferred honorary degrees
on six men and four women (background on each is available here)--among them:
a
Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine, and a preeminent art historian, the
daughter of another Nobel laureate (in
economics);an
African-American public-interest lawyer who leads efforts for reform of the
criminal justice system and against the death penalty, and an African physician
who has cared for women and campaigned against rape and sexual violence as an
instrument of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo;the
geoscientist and oceanographer who is popularly associated with coining, in 1975, the
term "global warming" (in this year of campus protests advocating divestment
from fossil-fuel producers); anda
pioneering political scientist, and the former governor of Massachusetts.
Students
received 7,736 degrees and 32 certificates; undergraduates
in Harvard College earned 1,612 of those degrees.
The Exercises Begin
After the
exercises were called to order at 9:48 a.m.(under partly cloudy skies, with breezes keeping
temperatures to the mid 70s, and humidity to match), in keeping with a trademark of President

4. Drew Faust's Commencement rites (the honorand-as-entertainer, who livens up
sleepy graduates-to-be during the Tercentenary Theatre proceedings), opera (and
increasingly, pop) star Renée Fleming--coyly identified in the program only as "Soloist"--sang
"America the Beautiful." She was accompanied by student musicians who played a cello, a violin, and
an acoustic guitar. The imminent doctor of music would soon join the recent
line of distinguished honorand/alumni performing artists: trumpeter Wynton Marsalis (2009); tenor
Plácido Domingo (who serenaded
fellow honorand Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2011); poet Seamus Heaney reading his famous
Harvard villanelle (2012);
hugger extraordinaire Oprah (2013); and soul singer Aretha Franklin (2014).
The chaplain of the day, Tammy McLeod, who represents Cru (the
former Campus Crusade for Christ, the evangelical organization, among the Harvard Chaplains),
then offered the opening prayer.
Following
the Commencement Choir's rendition of Domine salvum fac, by Charles
Gounod, it was time for talk. The traditional student orations (now called
"addresses," perhaps to make them seem less forbidding and to encourage more
applicants to compete for a part) were delivered by James Paul McGlone '15 (the
Latin salutatory and its English translation; Jacob Silberg '15 (the Senior
English Address); and Anna F. Wang Erickson, Ph.D. '15 (the Graduate English
Address).
"Quid Durat?" ("What Lasts?"):
Latin Salutatory

5. McGlone,
a history concentrator who pursued a secondary field of study in the classics,
is from Boonton, New Jersey. The former Kirkland House resident studied the
premodern intellectual history of Western civilization (his thesis concerned
some of the political writings of Saint Augustine), and, when not steeped in
those texts, was heavily involved, he reports, in the Harvard Catholic Center,
and was a member of the John Adams Society ("a conservative debating club") and
president of Harvard Right to Life. To relax after undergraduate rigors, he
will spend much of the next year in Rome at the Paideia Institute, a nonprofit
foundation that promotes study in the classics and humanities, including
immersion in Latin and ancient Greek as "living" languages. (Read the Gazette biographies of
McGlone and his
fellow student speakers here.)
He
instructed his listeners (read
his text here) on both the priority of Harvard and the pleasant obligations
of soon-to-be alumni:
Ac velut
illi canes Yalenses arenam vel suam vel nostram quotannis intrant et quotannis discedunt gementes
et flentes, illos dies memoria tenentes cum interdum vincerent; haud secus nos redibirnus et
iuventutem laetam
meminisse dolebimus.
(And just as those
dogs of Yale each year enter either our stadium or their own, and each year depart mourning and
weeping, remembering those days when they used to win once in a while: in the same way we will
return to recall our happy youth.)
Then,
mixing historical and classical perspectives, McGlone recalled

6. the University's (muddy!) anniversary bash during his class's freshman year
and the cold winter just past, and projected a future when the campus would
resemble a mash-up of the Roman Forum and the fallen colossus of Ramses II
(featuring guess who--and with McGlone acting out the appropriately prone posture):
...as we celebrated
our alma mater's
three hundred seventy-fifth anniversary: a lifespan unparalleled across the whole country!
But without a doubt,
even the proudest strongholds
fall to the
twists of
fate. Imagine
in some future century, which reverently calls our own time "antiquity," a passing traveler looking
out over the ruins of Harvard. He marvels at the
fall of so
great a city, filled with so many distinguished men. He
is utterly stunned
by the columns lying broken here and there, the statue of John Harvard lying on its back, the empty
marble and brick temples, not of the gods and goddesses but of the arts and sciences. As he beholds
the Houses covered in dust--much like New Haven today!--he sighs from the depths of his heart for
lost greatness. What is
there that lasts?
Never fear, though, my friends, for our University, though she does not herself last forever, has a
monument more lasting and more beautiful than bronze or marble or brick: namely, the unbroken
bond which, in the words of the poet Horace inscribed by our forebears over a gate to this Yard,
unites the souls formed by our alma mater's teaching
until the last
day. Never
abandon this

7. bond, my classmates,
but hold onto it and cherish it! May no storms scatter us, nor any winter chill the warmth of our
brotherhood. Farewell!
"The Red Phone": Senior
English Address
Silberg,
a social-studies concentrator from Maplewood, New Jersey, who lived in Adams
House, has a special interest in American education policy. In his senior
thesis, he used attendance data to prove
what a lot of parents of American teenagers know only instinctively: that students are less likely to
attend
school as days get shorter, possibly because it is more difficult for students
to wake up when there is less sunlight in the morning. His principal
extracurricular role was as "Czar" (president) of The
Immediate Gratification Players,
an improv comedy troupe with which he performed throughout his College career;
it took a one-word prompt from the audience each night and proceeded to do an
hour of scenes based on that suggestion. Silberg also taught Boston and
Cambridge fifth-graders about civic matters, such as the U.S. Constitution and
the American political process. Next year, he will take his show on the road,
using a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship to observe Spanish democracy and the parliamentary
elections there.
Silberg spoke
about the red landline telephones in dorm rooms (read
his text here), and the kinds of connections made through such antiquated
equipment, or cellular successors:
About

8. a year ago, I received a call from a 16-year-old friend of mine named Avery.
Avery had leukemia and I had had lymphoma several years earlier, so naturally
he and I talked about...sports. On this particular call, he told me about his
Make-a-Wish trip to the Super Bowl with Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio. "Leo
was the man," he told me. "He was rocking a giant beard. And I met Kate
Upton...and I was making her laugh...and she even gave me a kiss." I teased that maybe there was a
chance he would still get Kate's phone number, but I was so glad to hear he was doing well.
Tragically, about a week later, Avery passed away. It wasn't fair, what
happened to Avery. But I am always so grateful that he and I shared that phone
call. The warmth and the joy in his voice always give me strength.
That led him to
larger points about connection and engagement with fellow human beings:
But,
it is also easy to disengage in smaller moments. It is easy to answer, "How are
you?" with "Busy," to end a conversation rather than feel vulnerable by opening
up. It is easy to sweetly lie to those people in Harvard Square holding
clipboards, "I'll be back soon," and then avoid them for the rest of the day. It's
easy to be unavailable because each of us is working on something important.
Engaging requires us to choose empathy, to set aside time for what is important
to others.
But
at Harvard, in ways big and small, we engaged. Here, we chose optimism over
cynicism when we planned an educational trip to Israel and Palestine, or gave a
voice to refugees the world had left in the dust of Western Tanzania. We
watched fifth-graders beam on a field trip as their state senator told them
that they were all actually her boss. It reminded us that our democratic political system,

9. so often a punchline, can still inspire. We chose to appreciate each others'
gifts rather than view them as threats to our own. We brought a latte to a
friend up all night in a lab across campus. We cheered together all over the
world when Steve [Moundou-Missi] sank the shot to beat Yale as time expired. We chose empathy
when
we respectfully disagreed in class and said, "I'd just like to push back on
that." In these moments, we glimpsed a world as we want it to be.
Rather than
worrying about changing the world as they scatter from the shared experience of
Harvard, Silberg urged his fellow students to
...choose
not to let the world change us. Let's invite someone who looks lost to sit with
us at lunch, like we might have in Annenberg. Let's give our neighbors directions,
like we would to tourists looking for the John Harvard statue. Let's keep making time for our friends
even when we have a million things we should be
busy doing instead, like we did when we went out for drinks after our roommates
turned in their theses, and like we did a second time, for more
drinks, when our roommates got their theses back.
He
concluded by summoning the image of President John F. Kennedy '40, LL.D. '56,
installing a red phone to connect the Oval Office to the Kremlin, at a moment
of particular peril and promise. In that spirit, he told his audience, "Today, it would be easy to
pretend there
is nothing we can do, to disconnect, to stash other peoples' problems in the
back of a closet or under a futon. But instead let's connect our Red Phones,
and be available for those small serendipitous moments when someone needs our
time. Let's engage...."

10. "A Disruptive Innovative
Scalable Valuation": Graduate English Address
Wang
Erickson, from Prairie Village, Kansas, by way of Princeton, has studied in
Harvard Medical School's biological and biomedical sciences program and is
earning her doctoral degree today in molecular and cellular biology, with a
certificate in human biology and translational medicine. Her boundary-crossing
work has been advised by Cabot professor of biology http://math.about.com/od/tutors/ Richard
Losick--a celebrated leader in sciences pedagogy
at Harvard and nationwide. Undergraduates have
been in her orbit, too--since 2010, she has been a resident tutor in Mather
House--and her talk nicely combined experiences from the graduate and
undergraduate perspectives. Wang Erickson also began with a warm bit of humor (read
her text here) that might appeal to achievement-oriented Harvard students:
"Shoot for the moon and if you fall short, at least you'll be
amongst the stars." It's a nice sentiment. If only it were true. It's more like
"Shoot for the moon and if you fall short, you'll be amongst the enormous
amount of trash orbiting the Earth." Now, that's true! So don't fall short.
Maybe best not to shoot for the moon.
Why,
she asked, ought one to "be bold, take risks, change the world"? The answer
began to take shape for her from a conversation with an undergraduate:
One day over lunch, a student told me she was nervous about
talking with a professor about a low exam score. Before she left, I said, "Just
remember that you have intrinsic worth apart from your accomplishments." She
was stunned and said, "Is that really true? I mean, doesn't everyone judge

11. you based on your accomplishments?" Oh. Right. But the thing about intrinsic
worth is that you have it inherently, it's part of your personhood. You
can't earn it with accomplishments and therefore you can't lose it with
failures. Nothing can take it away. But it's easy to forget since the world
often reduces us to the sum of our achievements and has a long memory of our
failures. It's tough to believe something if no one else affirms it, even if it
is true.
With a wry nod
to the unromantic realities of living and studying in Boston and Cambridge ("Two weeks later, I saw
the same student on the M2 shuttle
heading back to Cambridge from the medical school. It's two miles away. So
during the next 45 minutes on the bus...."), Wang Erickson recounted being on the
receiving end of the same conversation:
[S]he asked me how my research was going. Poorly, as usual, I replied.
And immediately, she said, "Well, remember that you have intrinsic worth apart
from your accomplishments!" I had to smile. A student actually remembered
something I said!
Applying
her own advice, she has come to see that
...recognizing intrinsic worth in other people broadens our
perspective. My student later told me that knowing her own worth changed her
life. How much more life-changing--disruptive even--would it be if we
affirmed worth not only in ourselves but also in other people? What if we acted
like it? Wouldn't we be a bit more compassionate? A bit more considerate in
criticism? A bit more courageous to fight injustice? How different our news
headlines would be! A person has inherent value; it's part of our shared

12. humanity, and that should compel us to act boldly for the sake of others, even
when it's costly. Recognizing intrinsic worth simultaneously motivates and
sustains us to take those risks to change the world.
And we mustn't think that changing the world only applies to
special people with special circumstances to help the poor or the sick or a
developing country far away. Every person fundamentally desires to be fully
known and fully loved despite their flaws--in essence, to have their
intrinsic worth affirmed. So as my student did for me, remind each other in the
midst of life's trivialities and great opportunities: you have extraordinary
worth apart from your accomplishments. Nothing can remove it, not even
yourself. And if you live confident that your worth is already secure, then you might
actually begin to change the world.
To the Degrees
The Commencement
Choir sang the spiritual, "This Little Light of Mine," arranged by Moses Hogan.
Then, amid cooling breezes and clearing skies, Provost Alan Garber began the ritual of engaging the
deans of the
professional and graduate schools, who presented their candidates for the conferral
of degrees, an act undertaken by President Drew Faust.
One player in
these parts did so, unusually, in a second incarnation: computer scientist Harry R. Lewis appeared
as interim dean
of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He had previously presented
undergraduates for their "first degree in Arts or in Science," when he was dean
of Harvard College.
Deans performing
their duties for the last time included Julio Frenk, who will depart the Harvard

13. T.H. Chan School of Public Health in August to assume the presidency of the University of Miami,
and David T. Ellwood, the longest-serving
dean, who steps down from the Harvard Kennedy School's helm on June 30.
Lewis, Frenk,
and Ellwood were all recognized and commended for their service in Garber's
remarks. (President Faust
recognized each during the honorands' dinner Wednesday night, in Memorial Hall.
She also thanked Cherry Murray, who stepped down as
engineering and applied sciences dean last fall, and Thomas W. Lentz, departing director of
the Harvard Art Museums,
who led their renovation and reopening as of last November.)
The proceedings proceeded very much by the script. Among the departures, Dean Ellwood was
greeted with chants of "Ellwood! Ellwood!" when he rose to speak his part. The go-getting M.B.A.
candidates from Harvard Business School, directed by the provost to rise, had already done so, as he
observed.
Rakesh Khurana, the College's dean since
last July
(and,
since the deanship was endowed this week as a result of The Harvard Campaign,
the first Danoff dean of Harvard College), then received the customary rousing reception
(augmented with chants of "Dean Rakesh! Dean Rakesh!") when he performed
his undergraduate graduation duties for the first time.
Musical
interludes included the Anthem, Psalm 78 (St. Martin's), and the Ralph Vaughn Williams Anthem,
"O, clap your hands."
The honorary
degrees (see
in-depth biographies here) were then conferred in the following order on:

14. Wallace
S. Broecker, Doctor of ScienceRobert
M. Axelrod, Doctor of LawsLinda
B. Buck, Doctor of ScienceSvetlana
Leontief Alpers, Doctor of ArtsPeter
Salovey, Doctor of Laws (with a joke from Garber about the Yale president's prior
service in the exalted role of university provost; Salovey was greeted by the
Harvard University Band with a few
bars of "Boola Boola," the Yale fight song--but did not have the opportunity, as
a founding member of The Professors of Bluegrass, to return the favor)Bryan
Stevenson, Doctor of LawsPatricia
Albjerg Graham, Doctor of LawsDenis
Mukwege, Doctor of ScienceRenée
Fleming, Doctor of Music (also saluted, with Dvo?ák, by the Commencement Choir)Deval
L. Patrick, Doctor of Laws
During his toast
to the University on behalf of the honorands Wednesday night, Patrick had noted
that "honorand" is a term in use uniquely at Harvard--and in fact, he will be an
honoree at University of
Massachusetts Boston, tomorrow. Touching on multiple emotional chords, he recalled
"42 years ago, sitting in a hard chair opposite Jack Reardon ['60, the
longtime, and much-admired, former director of admissions, athletics, and the
Harvard Alumni Association], being interviewed as a candidate for admission."
Upon being admitted, the first in his family to head for college, Patrick said,
he called his grandmother, who yelled and screamed in excitement--before asking,
about Harvard, "Where is that, anyway?" Aghast, he said, it took him some time

15. to realize that she had gotten the point more quickly than he had: that what
mattered was the opportunity to pursue
a higher education, and not the
prestige surrounding the institution where he would pursue it. He and his
fellow honorands, and members of the dinner audience, he said, had fortunately
been able to make the most of that opportunity.
And so, now, had
thousands of other newly minted graduates.
Whereupon
it was time for the Harvard Hymn; the benediction by the Pusey minister in
Memorial Church (who urged all to "Go in peace. Speak the truth....Be slow to criticize," and quoted
Stevenson); the sheriff of Middlesex County's customary loud adjournment, the clanging of
bells; and, at 11:37 a.m., the march out to lunch and a cold beverage--with delight in the morning
that had been, and a wary weather eye on the sky, lest thunderstorms compete with the amplified
rhetoric scheduled for the Afternoon Exercises.