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2007 Honorary Degree recipient: Mary Patterson
McPherson
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It is an honor and a great pleasure to be with you on this
special day, celebrating the Class of 2007, their families
and friends, some of whom might even have entertained an
occasional doubt that this glorious day would ever come.
Cheers too for the faculty of Pomona who are in good part
responsible for getting us all to this moment ripe for new
beginnings.
Now commencements, like weddings—another new beginning—are
occasions in which vast amounts of good advice should
probably go unheeded. Two wise philosophers of commencements
believed deeply in the value of the short speech, and had a
minimalist’s approach to advice.
Art Buchwald, speaking at a commencement at Holy Cross, said
simply—“we have given you a perfect world, now don’t go out
there and louse it up”, And Yogi Berra opined at a similar
occasion-“when in life you come to a fork in the road—take
it.”
But as I have been asked to sing a bit for my lunch—let me
say simply to the class of ‘07 that you are needed in the
wider world you are about to enter. The last 6 years have
been especially painful periods of self reflection for many
Americans as we have had to come to terms with, or at least
acknowledge that, we are seen by a number of the world’s
citizens –not as the somewhat innocent, generous-spirited
people we like to think we are, but rather as being
generous-yes-but too often on our terms -- arrogant, and
bullying in our stance to the world, and self centered
consumers of far more than our share of the world’s
resources.
That woefully dated innocence—the marker for earlier
generations of less affluent, less well-educated, less well
traveled Americans—that we still imagined in ourselves has
turned out to be now a dangerous kind of ignorance about how
much we are both envied and hated by those less fortunate
than ourselves and an ignorance about whole parts of the
world we have not found it important enough to try to
understand.
So, our country needs you—a generation better prepared for
the task of thoughtful citizenship in a post-cold war world.
You have been taught here about respecting and learning to
understand people different from yourselves. Learning to
appreciate other religions, languages, traditions and values
has been a central part of your education here. Many of you
have participated in programs that have had you living and
working in other countries, and you have been taught that
with the privileges of education come certain obligations to
and responsibilities for the world beyond yourselves. After
today life gets real for you—but you have been readied here
for Prime Time.
As you start your own journey from this good place, remember
the sage advice given by the modern Greek poet—Constantine
Cavafy:
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Hope the road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
What pleasure, what joy,
You enter harbors you’re seeing for the first
time;
May you stop at Phoenecian trading stations
To buy fine things,
Mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
Sensual perfume of every kind-
As many sensual perfumes as you can;
And may you visit many Egyptian cities
To learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
So you’re old by the time you reach the island,
Wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
Not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have
fooled you,
Wise as you will have become, so full of
experience,
You’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas
mean.
About Mary Patterson McPherson:
McPherson is president emeritus of Bryn Mawr College – she
was made acting president of Bryn Mawr College in 1976 and
president from 1978-97. Effective July 1, 2007, she will be
executive officer of the American Philosophical Society. She
currently serves on the board of directors of Josiah Macy
Jr. Foundation, JSTOR, The Philadelphia Contributionship and
Goldman Sachs Asset Management. She is on the board of
trustees of Smith College, The American School of Classical
Studies at Athens, Emeriti Retirement Health Solutions, and
The Teagle Foundation. She is also a member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was vice president of The
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation from 1997 until April 2007.
Prior to joining Bryn Mawr College as an assistant and
fellow in the department of philosophy in 1961, McPherson
was an instructor in philosophy at the University of
Delaware (1959-61). |
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