Stanford Today Edition: July/August, 1997 Section: Features: Commencement WWW: Commencement
"YOU STILL CAN CHOOSE TO BE A PIONEER"
Central casting could not have chosen a more appropriately serious speaker than a member of the Supreme Court. So when Justice Stephen Breyer launched into a choppy but spirited rendition of the Macarena, more than a few of the thousands in Stanford Stadium were surprised but wildly enthusiastic. The dance routine had been jokingly suggested by his host, President Gerhard Casper.
Justice Breyer's hoofing was the gesture of a happy, proud father. His son, Michael, sat among the graduates. "I think I can speak for all the fathers and mothers here in telling you that however nostalgic we are about the children that you once were, we love and admire the adults you have become," he began and then wryly noted his son's comments to the Stanford Daily at the prospect of the speech: "He's been giving me advice for more than twenty years; I suppose another fifteen minutes won't matter," Michael had said to the paper.
The following is excerpted from Justice Breyer's speech. The complete text can be found at http://www.stanford.edu/ news/report/news/june18/commence618.html.
"Yesterday I walked through the Inner Quad and saw the three paving stones that mark my family's three graduations: my father's graduation, my own in 1959 and yours, Michael, now. This was an emotional moment.
When my father was at Stanford, he could not join any of the social organizations because he was Jewish, and those organizations, at that time, did not accept Jews. Indeed, I can remember, as a child, my mother thinking of going to lunch at a downtown San Francisco hotel with a friend of hers, who was African American, and their discussing whether they would be served. When my colleagues Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated from law school, they had trouble finding jobs - because they were women. So did Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein. The world has changed. Often for the better. I think it is very important to remember that those changes did not occur magically - that they represented individual, and collective, pioneering efforts. We need to remember those efforts both because so many of us now benefit from them and because there is so much still to be done. You still can choose to be a pioneer.
This brings me to a more difficult matter - a word of advice, as you try to decide "what next?". There is always the risk that advice reflects the tunnel vision of one's own career. Supposedly someone asked Conrad Hilton what he might pass on to others after 50 years in the hotel business and he replied, "Always keep the shower curtain inside the bathtub."
But some advice rings true. Bayless Manning, former dean of Stanford Law School, pointed out to me once that, when we make an important personal decision, we rarely know more than 10 percent of all we would like to know about it, let alone about the other options that the decision precludes. Sometimes agonizing does not help; sometimes we must simply choose. And our lives then shape themselves around the choices that we make. Our stories include our own justifications for our actions and our motives - in light of our own values. I agree with the philosopher who said that money can vanish overnight, power disappear, even that bubble reputation can evaporate; but character - personal integrity - is a rock that is secure and that no one can take from you.
Now, may I make a prediction? Certainly predictions are dangerous, which is why Casey Stengel said, "I never make predictions - at least not about the future." What is it that one can predict with any certainty at all about the world in which your grandchildren will graduate? Daniel Bell has predicted - and he thought it fairly obvious - that 100 years from now we will have recently inaugurated a president of the United States, following a free election the preceding November. I share that prediction and hope. It sounds unremarkable; yet that very fact - that it is unremarkable - suggests something unique about our society. Bell's prediction tells us that democratic institutions, our Constitution, government and laws, are not simply words on paper, but are principles that have claimed the allegiance of generations.
The carrying out of our commitment as a nation to basic principles of democracy, liberty and fairness has depended upon custom, tradition and commitment to the enterprise, not just by politicians and judges, but by millions of ordinary citizens. I experience the working of that tradition every day in my job. My parents' generation passed on that tradition to mine; we must to yours; and you must to your children; otherwise our society and our law - however decent and fair in principle - will not work in practice.
As to the future, Bell's prediction expresses a hope. It is the hope that you will participate in the affairs of your communities and your nation. Some would say that today's challenges are less clear - that, unlike my father's generation, you face no Hitler, no Nazis abroad; that unlike mine, you need not confront the evil of legal segregation by race. But you do face inner cities where the greatest threat to children's lives is homicide; where drugs and crime are prevalent but education, jobs and hope are scarce. You do face the ever-shrinking world, with its growing populations and rapid development, with threats of terrorism and ethnic wars. You do face the cutting down of forests, the heating up of climate, the overfishing of the sea, which threaten our Earth's environment. You do face the challenge of building a multiracial society. The challenges are there. And they are clear. I greatly congratulate the Stanford Class of 1997. And I wish each of you a life of passion, action, integrity, participation - a long and most fulfilling story. ST