Gutmann a fine academic, but not the best possible speaker

Here’s what we like about this year’s graduation speaker, Dr. Amy Gutmann, President of University of Pennsylvania. Her research has covered issues of religious freedom, equal opportunity, affirmative action, and politics—all issues important to the Wesleyan community. She has devoted nearly thirty years to higher education at Princeton and now UPenn. According to the school’s website, her latest book, Identity in Democracy, “analyzes the relationship between our constitutional democracy and those parts of our individual identities that are based on characteristics such as gender, race, religion, sexuality, and social ideology.” That too sounds like the kinds of topics Wesleyan students debate daily. She could be a very interesting speaker.

That said, we are disappointed that Wesleyan didn’t think beyond academia when choosing this year’s commencement speaker. Graduation marks the end of four years of academic study, and for many students, the beginning of the real world. We want a speaker who will inspire us as we start our next life adventures, not look back on the last four years. In Gutmann’s convocation speech, however, her advice to incoming UPenn students included such generic axioms as, “Force yourselves out of your normal comfort zones,” and “Debate your classmates vigorously and respectfully on issues for which you hold strong opinions.” Good advice, of course, but hardly original. We hope her speech here is more unusual.

We do not necessarily think we would be better served with a famous speaker. A well-known and well respected non-academic would have been perfect. We’ve had plenty of speakers during the school year who would have made great graduation speakers: from Anthony Romero of the ACLU, to Seymour Hersh or Paul Farmer. Or, they could have surprised with someone like William Safire whose selection would have demonstrated Wesleyan’s commitment to hearing all views. Wesleyan also has many parents of current students who would make great speakers.

As accomplished as Gutmann is, we think it’s strange that the school chose another university president to deliver our address. This is supposed to be the day seniors put a cap (so to speak) on their years of learning. We wish we had someone really prepared to send us into the real world and usher us out of our academic past.