Now my job is a is a very difficult one. How do you introduce a person that
everyone already knows but nonetheless, I want to put the president's introduction
into context because I found myself the last few weeks studying his syllabi from
his classes and looking at grading mechanisms that he had in place and
looking at a number of things that he's written and it's a fantastic story. So, it
is my honor and my privilege to introduce to you and I'm going to walk
through this, our president, let me begin with the following.
Let me walk through why the president's visit here is so important
for this institution, for this state and for our country.
Barack Obama is a man of intellect devoted to the common good which is a
rare thing, a rare thing.
Barack Obama is a man who's journey from
boyhood teaches us all about the power of a single life with purpose and each
of our graduates should remember this. Barack Obama is a man who's understanding of
the dream of and for America knows no limit. That dream often about a limitless
America however comes from a different point of view often, it comes from those
that have benefited from economic success of their parents or the social
status of their family and sometimes those that view the limitless dream of
the United States, have a fanciful view of our history. A view that's often
inaccurate. Sometimes, and this is rare, this understanding of America's true
greatness and our potential comes from a deep understanding of the need to drive
change and that fact is in fact America as the statement of change itself. The
fact that America represents what the change has been that we have moved from
around the world, that's the central theme I want to focus on. Martin Luther
King once said that change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability but
comes through continuous struggle. Barack Obama understands from the experiences
of his family both in America and Africa his work in organizing communities in
Chicago, his deep understanding of the U.S.
constitution and his raw and powerful intellect, that continuous struggle is to
move us even closer to the ideal America. In this ideal America the yolks that
hold us back must be taken off to create opportunity for success. One of
those yolks has been the struggle
to educate every child, to allow everyone equal chance. Here, our history as a
country has been long and difficult and while progress has been made since the
1950s we remained far from the ideal. 25% of our children, more than a million
children per year don't graduate from high school and for those that do that
come from the lowest socio-economic grouping only 15 percent of them will
have an opportunity to graduate from a university. Mr. president no national
leader before you has fully understood the role of education, learning and
knowledge in fulfilling the American ideal, in advancing the continuous
struggle for change, in studying your life and your achievements as a
community organizer, constitutional law professor and a statesman, I can see your
fantastic awareness of the enigma of our present America. How is it that we have
changed so much and yet have so much further to go? You realize that our
constitution and thus our civil rights, our voting rights and our right to be
educated is not a static thing but in fact is a constantly evolutionary ideal.
It is this evolutionary process that you see change as essential to our life, to
our future as Americans. You see an America where all children graduate from
high school and most go on to college at some level.
In this change process you see an America where every talent can be tapped
and every dream has real potential. Mr. president you have already taken many
bold steps to improve our nation and to move us forward. You have changed, I
believe already, how we conceive education. Education is now a national
civic duty. It is not a privilege it is a civic duty.
You have given hope to all who dream about what they can be and as I'm
increasingly beginning to see as a common activity you've lit a fire under
all of us to move America forward using our ideas and our creativity. Mr.
president we feel that fire, we share your drive for change, we've heard your
speech before Congress, saw you driving us closer to the ideal, the better
America, your expansion of Pell grants, your goals to educate all of America,
your drive to have a great college education not just a college education
but a great college education to all who work hard we hear you we join you in
fact we join you by today committing to you and to the people of Arizona that we
will continue building ASU as an egalitarian center for advanced teaching
and learning and we commit to you also that no Arizona student will be left out
of this institution and what we have to offer because of his or her family's income.
Mr. president we're pleased to announce the establishment of the Barack Obama
Scholars Program and pledge to you to work and fight to make
accessible education the change that takes America to the next level. It's an
honor to have you here with us this evening, ladies and gentlemen, the
President of the United States.
thank you
Thank You ASU! Thank you very much! Thank you very much! Thank you so much!
Thank you! Please, thank you very much! Well, thank you! Thank you President Crow
for that extremely generous introduction, for your inspired leadership as well
here at ASU. I want to thank the entire ASU community for the honor of attaching
my name to a scholarship program that will help open the doors of higher
education to students from every background. What a wonderful gift,
thank you. That notion of opening doors of opportunity to everybody, that is the
core mission of this school. It's the core mission of my presidency and I hope
this program will serve as a model for universities across this country so
thank you so much.
I want to obviously congratulate the class of 2009 for your unbelievable
achievement. I want to thank the parents, the uncles, the grandpas, the grandmas
cousins, calabash cousins, everybody who was involved in helping these
extraordinary young people arrive at this moment. I also want to apologize to
the entire state of Arizona for stealing away your wonderful former governor
Janet Napolitano.
But you've got a fine governor here and I also know that Janet is now applying
her extraordinary talents to serve our entire country as the secretary of
homeland security keeping America safe and she's doing a great job.
Now before I begin I'd just like to clear the air about that little controversy everybody
was talking about a few weeks back. I have to tell you I really thought this
was much ado about nothing but I do think we all learned an important lesson
I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets.
it won't happen again. President Crow and the Board of Regents will soon learn
about being audited by the IRS.
Now in all seriousness, I come here not to dispute the suggestion that I haven't
yet achieved enough in my life.
First of all Michelle concurs with that assessment. She has a long list of things
that I have not yet done waiting for me when I get home but more than that I
come to embrace the notion that I haven't done enough in my life.
I heartily concur. I come to affirm that one's title, even a title like President
of the United States, says very little about how well one's life has been led.
That no matter how much you've done or how successful you've been there's
always more to do, always more to learn and always more to achieve
and I want to say to you today, graduates class of 2009, that despite having
achieved a remarkable milestone in your life, despite the fact that you and your
families are so rightfully proud, you too cannot rest on your laurels, not even
some of those remarkable young people who were introduced earlier, not even
that young lady whose got 4 degrees she's getting today, you can't rest. Your own
body of work is also yet to come. Now some graduating classes have marched
into this stadium in easy times, times of peace and stability. When we call on our
graduates simply to keep things going and don't screw it up. Other classes have
received their diplomas in times of trial and upheaval, when the very
foundations of our lives, the old order has been shaken, the old
ideas and institutions have crumbled and a new generation is called upon to
remake the world. It should be clear to you by now the category into which all
of you fall. For we gather here tonight in times of extraordinary difficulty for
the nation and for the world. The economy remains in the midst of a historic
recession, the worst we've seen since the Great Depression, the result in part of
greed and irresponsibility that rippled out from Wall Street and Washington,
as we spent beyond our means and failed to make hard choices.
We're engaged in two wars and a struggle against terrorism, the threats of climate
change, nuclear proliferation and pandemic define national boundaries and
easy solutions. For many of you, these challenges are also felt in more
personal terms. Perhaps you're still looking for a job or struggling to
figure out what career path makes sense in this disrupted economy. Maybe you've
got student loans, now you definitely have student loans or credit card debts
and you're wondering how you'll ever pay them off. Maybe you've got a family to
raise and you're wondering how you'll ensure that your children have the same
opportunities you've had to get an education and pursue their dreams. Now in
the face of these challenges it may be tempting to fall back on the formulas
for success that have been peddled so frequently in recent years. It goes
something like this, you're taught to chase after all the usual brass rings,
you try to be on this who's who's list or that top 100 list you chase after
the big money and you figure out how big your corner office is. You worry about
whether you have a fancy enough title or a fancy enough car. That's the message
that's sent each and every day or has been in our culture for far too long.
That through material possessions, through a ruthless competition pursued
only on your own behalf, that's how you will measure success.
Now you can take that road and it may work for some but at this critical
juncture in our nation's history, at this difficult time, let me suggest that such
an approach won't get you where you want to go. It displays a poverty of ambition
that in fact the elevation of appearance over substance of celebrity over
character of short-term gains over lasting achievement is precisely what
your generation needs to help end.
ASU I want to highlight -- I want to highlight two main problems with that
old, tired, me first approach to life. First of all it distracts you from
what's truly important and it may lead you to compromise your values and your
principles and your commitments. Think about it, it's in chasing titles and
status in worrying about the next election rather than the national
interest and the interests of those who you're supposed to represent that
politicians so often lose their ways in Washington. They spend time thinking
about polls but not about principle. It was in pursuit of gaudy
short-term profits and the bonuses that came with them that so many folks lost
their way on Wall Street. Engaging in extraordinary risks with other people's
money. In contrast, the leaders we revere,
the businesses and institutions that last, they are not generally the result of a
narrow pursuit of popularity or personal advancement but of devotion to some
bigger purpose, the preservation of the Union or the determination to lift a
country out of a depression, the creation of a quality product, a commitment to
your customers, your workers, your shareholders and your community.
A commitment to make sure that an institution like ASU is inclusive and
diverse and giving opportunity to all. That's the hallmark of real success.
That other stuff -- that other stuff, the trappings of success, may be a byproduct
of this larger mission but it can't be the central thing. Just ask Bernie Madoff
that's the first problem with the old attitude. The second problem with the old
approach to success is that a relentless focus on the outward markers of success
can lead to complacency. It can make you lazy. We too often let the external, the
material thing serve as indicators that we're doing well even though something
inside us tells us that we're not doing our best, that we're avoiding that which
is hard but also necessary, that we're shrinking from rather than rising
to the challenges of the age and the thing is in this new hyper competitive
age none of us -- none of us can afford to be complacent. That's true. Whatever
profession you choose. Professors might earn the distinction of tenure but that
doesn't guarantee that they'll keep putting in the long hours and late
nights and have the passion and the drive to be great educators. The same
principle is true in your personal life. Being a parent is not just a matter of
paying the bills, doing the bare minimum, it's not just bringing a child into the
world that matters but the acts of love and sacrifice it takes to raise and
educate that child and give them opportunity.
It can happen to presidents as well, if you think about Abraham Lincoln and
Millard Fillmore had the very same title. They're both presidents of the United
States but their tenure in office and their legacy could not be more different
and this is not just true for individuals, it's also true for this
nation. In recent years, in many ways, we've become enamored with our own past
success, lulled into complacency by the glitter of our own achievements. We've
become accustomed to the title of military superpower, forgetting the
qualities that got us there, not just the power of our weapons but the discipline
and valor and the code of conduct of our men and women in uniform.
The Marshall Plan and the Peace Corps and all those initiatives that show our
commitment to working with other nations to pursue the ideals of opportunity and
equality and freedom that have made us who we are. That's what made us a
superpower. We become accustomed to our economic dominance in the world
forgetting that it wasn't reckless deals and get-rich-quick schemes that got us
where we are but hard work and smart ideas, quality products and wise
investments. We started taking shortcuts, we started living on credit instead of
building up savings, we saw businesses focused more on rebranding and
repackaging than innovating and developing new ideas that improve our
lives. All the while the rest of the world has grown hungry, more restless in
constant motion to build and to discover, not content with where they are right
now, determined to strive for more. They're coming so graduates it's now
abundantly clear that we need to start doing things a little bit different.
In your own lives you'll need to continuously adapt to a continuously
changing economy. You'll end up having more than one job and more than one
career over the course of your life. You'll have to keep on gaining new
skills, possibly even new degrees and you'll have to keep on taking risks as
new opportunities arise and as a nation we'll need a fundamental change of
perspective and attitude. It's clear that we need to build a new foundation, a
stronger foundation for our economy and our prosperity. Rethinking how we grow
our economy, how we use energy, how we educate our children, how we care for our
sick, how we treat our environment.
Many of our current challenges are unprecedented. There are no standard
remedies, no go to fixes this time around. And class of 2009, that's why we're going
to need your help. We need young people like you to step up,
we need your daring, we need your enthusiasm, we need your energy, we need
your imagination and let me be clear when I say young I'm not just referring
to the date of your birth certificate. I'm talking about an approach to life, a
quality of mind and a quality of heart, a willingness to follow your passions
regardless of whether they lead to fortune and fame, a willingness to
question conventional wisdom and rethink old dogmas. A lack of regard for all the
traditional markers of status and prestige and in a commitment instead to
doing what's meaningful to you, what helps others, what makes a difference in this world.
That's the spirit that led a band of patriots, not much older than most of you,
to take on an empire, to start this experiment in democracy we call America.
It's what drove young pioneers west to Arizona and beyond, it's what drove young
women to reach for the ballot, what inspired a 30 year old escaped slave to
run an underground railroad to freedom, what inspired a young man named cezzah
to go out and help farmworkers, what inspired a 26 year old preacher to lead
a bus boycott for justice, it's what led firefighters and police officers in the
prime of their lives up the stairs of those burning towers and young people
across this country to drop what they were doing and come to the aid of a
flooded New Orleans to what led two guys in the garage named Hewlett and Packard
to form a company that would change the way we live and work, what led scientists
in laboratories and novelists in coffee shops to labor in obscurity until
they finally succeeded in changing the way we see the world. That's the great
American story. Young people just like you following their passions, determined
to meet the times on their own terms. They weren't doing it for the money,
their titles weren't fancy, ex-slave, minister, student, citizen, a whole bunch
of them didn't get honorary degrees
but they changed the course of history and so can you ASU.
So can you class of 2009!
So can you.
With a degree from this outstanding institution you have
everything you need to get started you've got no excuses, you have no
excuses not to change the world. Did you study business? Go start a
company or why not help a struggling not-for-profit find better more
effective ways to serve folks in need.
You study nursing?
Under staffed clinics and hospitals across this country are desperate for your help.
You study education?
Teach in a high needs school where the kids really need you, give a chance to
kids who can't get everything they need maybe in their neighborhood,
maybe not even their home, but we can't afford to give up on them. Prepare them
to compete for any job anywhere in the world.
You study engineering?
Help us lead a green revolution, developing new sources of clean energy.
It will power our economy and preserve our planet but you can also make your
mark in smaller more individual ways. That's what so many of you have already
done during your time here at ASU tutoring children, registering voters,
doing your own small part to fight hunger and homelessness, AIDS and cancer.
One student said it best when she spoke about her senior engineering project
building medical devices for people with disabilities in a village in Africa. Her
professor showed a video of the folks they'd been helping and she said when we
saw the people on the videos we began to feel a connection to them. It made us
want to be successful for them. Think about that. It made us want to be
successful for them. That's a great model for all of us.
Find somebody to be successful for. Raise their hopes, rise to their needs as you
think about your life after graduation. As you look into the mirror tonight,
after the partying is done,
that shouldn't get such a big cheer. You may look in the mirror tonight, you may
see somebody who's not really sure what to do with their lives. That's what you
may see, but a troubled child might look at you and see a mentor, a homebound
senior citizen might see a lifeline, the folks at your local homeless shelter
might see a friend, none of them care how much money is in your bank account or
whether you're important at work or whether you're famous around town, they
just know that you're somebody who cares, somebody who makes a difference in their lives.
So class of 2009 that's what building a
body of work is all about. It's about the daily labor, the many individual acts, the
choices large and small that add up over time, over a lifetime to a lasting legacy.
That's what you want on your tombstone. It's about not being satisfied with the
latest achievement, the latest gold star, because the one thing I know about a
body of work is that it's never finished. It's cumulative, it deepens and expands
with each day that you give your best, each day that you give back and
contribute to the life of your community and your nation. You may have setbacks
and you may have failures but you're not done. You're not even getting started, not
by a long shot and if you ever forget that just look to history. Thomas Paine
was a failed corset maker, a failed teacher and a failed tax collector
before he made his mark on history with a little book called common sense that
helped ignite a revolution.
Julia Child didn't publish her first cookbook until she was almost 50. Colonel
Sanders didn't open up his first Kentucky Fried Chicken til he was in the
60s. Winston Churchill was dismissed as little more than a has-been who enjoyed
scotch a little bit too much before he took over as prime minister and saw
Great Britain through its finest hour. No one thought a former football player
stocking shelves at the local supermarket would return to the game he
loved, become a Super Bowl MVP, and then come here to Arizona and lead your
Cardinals to their first Super Bowl. Your body of work is never done.
Each of them at one point in their life didn't have any title or much status to
speak of but they had passion, a commitment to following that passion
wherever it would lead and to working hard every step along the way and that's not
just how you'll ensure that your own life is well lived,
it's how you'll make a difference in the life of our nation. I talked earlier
about the selfishness, selfishness and irresponsibility on Wall Street in
Washington that rippled out and led to so many of the problems that we face
today. I talked about the focus on outward markers of success that can help
lead us astray but here's the thing class of 2009, it works the other way too.
Acts of sacrifice and decency without regard to what's in it for you, that also
creates ripple effects. Ones that lift up families and communities, that spread
opportunity and boost our economy, that reach folks in the forgotten corners of
the world, who committed young people like you see the true face of America,
our strength, our goodness, our diversity, our enduring power, our ideals.
I know starting your careers in troubled times is a challenge but it is also a
privilege, because it's moments like these that
force us to try harder and dig deeper and to discover gifts we never knew we had.
To find the greatness that lies within each of us. So don't ever shy away
from that endeavor, don't stop adding to your body of work.
I can promise that you will be the better for that continued effort as will this
nation that we all love.
Congratulations class of 2009 on your graduation!
God bless you and God bless the United States of America.