Oh, Grads, the Places You’ll Go!

I attended the Duke graduation in 2008 and remember the harsh criticism that students and audience members gave of Kingsalver's speech at the time. I believed then and especially now that Kingsalver's speech is exactly what a commencement speech should be and believe in the timeliness of her comments. Yes, Kingsalver said harsh things about the society that Duke graduates would inherit, including a floundering economy and an energy crisis. However, in making these comments, Kingsalver charged the class with fixing the impending crisis, which has now fully matured, by adopting the basic life skill of communal sharing they learned while being a part of the Duke Community.

I think it is incredibly naïve and sad for Duke graduates to think that their commencement speech should only address their personal achievements as students. In fact, I thought it was very clear that Kingsalver was telling the graduates that the way they had been living at Duke was a sustainable choice and had the potential to solve economic and energy problems at a global scale. She was explicitly telling the Duke graduates that the way they were living as students was right. Rather then being angry by the blunt and largely accurate portrait of society Kingsalver painted, I wish the Duke class of 2008 would appreciate Kingsalver???s intelligent analysis of the current status of America and her trust in you to nurture ???the new green things that sprout up through the wreck.???

In researching the text of all the speeches, it took only a minute to find out that the Kurt Vonnegut speech at MIT in 1997 never happened. The commencement speech at MIT that year was given by Kofi Annan, and the speech attributed to Mr. Vonnegut was from a Chicago Tribune article written by Mary Schmich. I am disappointed that Newsweek did not research this fully.

I am a graduate of Duke Class of 2008, and I completely disagree with the "prescience" of Mrs. Kingsolver's speech. I thought it was ill advised to discuss energy renewable sources at a commencement when there was no attempt made to congratulate or give advice. I feel like your praise to her speech, was actually its biggest detriment. I was uninspired and it did not seem poetic at all to sit in the pouring rain and listen to her prattle on about not obsessing over your bathrooms.

As an attending student (not a graduate) of the Duke University speech by Barbara Kingsolver, I am disgusted by her inclusion in this list. It was not the rain, nor the length, nor other pressing events that had 3/4 of the audience leaving the ceremony before her speech had finished (though the rain certainly didn't help), no, it was the droning preaching and pontificating about corn and fossil fuels and YOUR SUVs that drove thousands out of the ceremony. It was as if someone had stood up and pointed to a random passage of James Joyce and read it in filibuster to a Senate already irritated by the thunderstorm going on around them. It was not poetic, it was infuriating and served only to insult the thousands of graduates and families present ??? who comes to graduate or see their son/daughter/grandchild graduate just to be told how they are ruining the world? Hers was not a commencement speech. It was not encouraging, uplifting, driving, or anything new, it was just a depressing, demoralizing, accusatory, finger-wagging hope to write Something That Would Be Included In A List Of Superlatives, Possibly As Most Poetic, to adopt her style.

The student speakers were a thousand times better, and I wish the ceremony had ended with them. Duke probably would have gotten a significantly larger number of donations had it done so. After discussing this with many graduates and families, I have not, nor have my friends who graduated in that class, met a single person who thought that her speech was appropriate or in any way ???good???. But no, she was lauded by the student publication and Everything Official, because who wants to piss off a famous student parent?

At least one good thing came of this ??? no one will plagiarize THIS speech, that???s for sure.

Link to the transcript, for anyone interested: http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2008/05/kingsolver.html

So where are the links to the speeches?