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New York Times Publisher
Arthur Sulzberger Jr. delivers a moving and powerful speech at SUNY New Paltz
Graduation calling the war in Iraq a “misbegotten war” and apologizing that we
are living in a world that continues to try and deny basic human rights like the
rights of gays to marry, women to choose and immigrants to start a new life.
New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Receives
Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters at the May 10th SUNY New Paltz
Graduation
Here is his speech:
Good morning and my most heartfelt congratulations.
As the father of two relatively recent college graduates, I know how
important this moment is to all of you. Whether mother or father, you are
now breathing a huge sigh of relief. Your child has the possibility of a
future and, while the bills remain to be paid, at least they’ve stopped
growing.
But as much as I’d like today to be about us parents, I know it’s
not. It’s about the rest of you – our children and our future. So, to all
of you – well done.
This is my first ever commencement speech and, depending on
your reviews,
maybe my last.
Worse, the truth is I even skipped my own graduation. It was a glorious
day. My cousin and fellow graduate and I heard the road calling.
Motorcycles; speeches – no brainer. Thank goodness it’s gray and overcast
today, so most of you are here.
Given my lack of commencement experience I prepared for today the way
good journalists are supposed to – I reported out the story. I read what
generations of other commencement speakers had said and what themes they
hit.
Ninety five percent of them come down to this: “Today you enter the
real world. Follow your heart. Find what you love and do it.”
Who can argue with such wisdom? It’s sort of a motherhood and apple
pie statement. It sounds so easy.
So let’s all tip our hat to the honesty of our favorite non-news
caster, Jon Stewart of the Daily Show. Two years ago he told a graduating
class at William and Mary:
“So how do you know what is the right path to choose to
get the
results you desire? The honest answer is this. You don’t. And accepting
that greatly eases the anxiety of your life experience.”
As a journalist; as a media executive; as a human being -- I come to
you fully aware of the need we all have to heed Mr. Stewart's words and
ease our anxieties. The vagaries of life are enormous, and it is those very
vagaries about which I want to talk with you.
I’ll start with an apology.
When I graduated from college in 1974, my fellow students and I had
just ended the war in Vietnam and ousted President Nixon. Okay, that’s not
quite true. Yes, the war did end and yes, Nixon did resign in disgrace –
but maybe there were larger forces at play.
Either way, we entered the real world committed to making it a
better, safer, cleaner, more equal place. We were determined not to repeat
the mistakes of our predecessors. We had seen the horrors and futility of
war and smelled the stench of corruption in government.
Our children, we vowed, would never know that.
So, well, sorry. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
You weren’t supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a
misbegotten war in a foreign land.
You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still
fighting for fundamental human rights, be it the rights of immigrants to
start a new life; the rights of gays to marry; or the rights of women to
choose.
You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still
drives policy and environmentalists have to relentlessly fight for every
gain.
You weren’t. But you are. And for that I’m sorry.
Starting today, it will be more and more up to you to decide what
world you will bequeath to your children (yes, most of you will be having
children – it just goes with the territory).
As you continue to make the choices that define your
life – and by
the way, attending and graduating from college was a critical one – you
also will be defining the world you live in. Think of it as your personal
version of what in the scientific world (or perhaps the science fiction
world) is known as the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect holds that
the smallest of actions -- say, the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in
the mountains of Bolivia -- can lead over time to enormous consequences --
say, a hurricane in Africa.
Each of you will face many crossroads, some of them
seemingly small
and inconsequential. You will choose at each point whether to be bold or
hesitant; inclusive or elitist; generous or stingy. And each one of your
choices will result not only in how people define you. Each one will help
shape the world you make for the rest of us.
So I have a plea and I have a piece of advice. The advice is to focus
on the small decisions, because they add up very quickly. And I don’t mean
what job you take or what town you live in. Those will change as you
change. I mean decisions like whether to pick up that overturned trash can
or whether to stop for that stranded motorist. Those are the decisions that
can change our world just as surely as a butterfly can create a hurricane.
Yes, it’s important that those of us at The New York Times have
the courage of our own convictions and defend the rights of our journalists
to protect their sources or, after much debate and discussion, publish the
news that our government is bypassing it’s own legal systems to tap into
phone calls made to and from the United States.
But those big decisions rest on a stable foundation which has
been built by thousands of small decisions – from the way we protect our
reporters and photographers in war-torn areas such as Iraq (and even then
lose too many) to how we’ve shattered the glass ceiling that for too long
stopped women from moving into the highest levels of leadership.
And my plea is: engage. Our world needs you. It needs your energy and
your caring; it needs your commitment and your values. If we don’t get them
our society – all of us – will continue to aimlessly drift, failing to make
our country and our world a place that makes us proud.
Engage. Help make decisions. Vote. Read a newspaper (what, you
thought the publisher of The New York Times wouldn’t get there?) Knowing
what’s happening in your world, your country, your neighborhood is the
critical precursor to being a citizen of a democracy. Each one of you who
forsakes your role in keeping our democracy alive by either inaction or,
perhaps worse, by action based on ignorance, threatens all the rest of us.
So, read a newspaper and build a community.
As you already heard, I’m here in large part because I’m a rock
climber. I work in New York City but I come to New Paltz to clear my head
and batter my body against those beautiful cliffs up there. And this ties
in to another bit of reporting I did in preparation for today. I found what
may well be one of the shortest commencement speeches every given.
It was 1941. Following what was no doubt an excessive introduction,
- sort of like mine - our speaker walked to the lectern, glared out at the
assembled multitude and in his trademark bark intoned: “Never give in,
never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small,
large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honor and good
sense.”
And then Winston Churchill sat down.
With a philosophy like that, Sir Winston would have made one hell of
a rock climber. Life is relentless. When you think you’ve made the crucial
move – what in climbing parlance is called The Crux – it always throws you
another one. And another. And another.
These are the vagaries of which I spoke earlier in these remarks. In
my experience, the only way to prepare for them is inside each of you. It
is not about the job you have or the money you make. It is about commitment
and courage; it’s about caring and fortitude. It’s about supporting those
around you and, just as importantly, it's about letting them support you.
In the parlance of the climber, trust that you’re “on belay”.
Engage; get the small decisions right; never give in and please -- please
– build us a world of which we can be proud. Go make a damn difference.
None of you wants to be standing where I am 30 years from now
apologizing to the next generation of bright and shiny college graduates.
Thank you.
Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
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