2009 Commencement Address

Good afternoon. Sister Mary Denise, Sisters of the Visitation, to whom I owe so much, Dr. Nichols, Faculty, Members of the Class of 2009, and parents, families and friends, it is a great pleasure to be here. I’d like to thank Sister Marie Therese and Dawn Nichols, Head of School, for inviting me to address the graduates of the Class of 2009 today. What a wonderful honor to address these amazing young women.

Today is a very joyful day for the Members of the Class of 2009, their families, most especially their parents, and their friends, but it takes place at a time of great economic and financial turmoil.    Your graduation day, in many ways the start of your adult lives, is a wonderful reminder of the continuous renewal in life. Your new beginning is a reason for optimism for all of us.

The events we have seen over the last 22 months are indeed seismic. Just this past week, General Motors—the most iconic company in the most iconic industry of America’s 20th century—filed for bankruptcy. All over America, millions of Americans have been losing their homes to foreclosure, and with their homes, a key piece of the American dream. The free market system that has been the source of such vitality and resilience in the American economy seems to have run off the rails, at least in the financial sector. Because the marketplace today is global, the financial crisis that started here in the U.S. has contributed to a severe recession touching every major country in the world.

In my training as an economist, I never imagined that the Great Depression of the 1930s would be a reference point for decision-making in my lifetime, but it has become one. Historians now generally agree that economic policy mistakes here and abroad contributed substantially to the “greatness” of the Great Depression. Much of the economic policy we’ve seen in the last eight months—massive fiscal stimulus and monetary expansion, the infusions of government capital into firms and the bank “stress tests”—reflect lessons learned from the Great Depression.

Right now, on this quite cool June day, the darkest clouds of the crisis seem to be lifting, a very welcome development. Now begins the hard work of clean up—the restructuring we see at auto companies and banks, and in the housing and financial markets. Now also begins the challenging work of drawing lessons learned from this crisis and making changes that will protect us from similar problems in the future.

So my message to the Class of 2009—and at this point you may be worried about what I might say!—is that you will have the good fortune and opportunity to enter college or university at a time of great excitement. Americans will be questioning assumptions about how we live our lives. Issues of finance and the economy and the proper role of government in the economy may interest and engage some of you, but probably not all of you.

But the deeper issues will touch all of us. In our personal and family lives, how much should we borrow to enjoy life today versus how much should we save to enjoy life tomorrow? After so much wealth in endowments has evaporated, how should we fund nonprofit organizations, scientific research, universities and schools like Visitation, so that they are resilient in the difficult times when they are often most needed? And with so much government and private household debt, how we will tackle the challenges of financing health care and our retirements?

As we look abroad, rapidly growing countries, such as India and most especially China, already the number three economy in the world, are rewriting the global leadership playbook. They aspire to provide their people the American way of life, with widespread ownership of homes and cars and the related energy demands. How do we create a sustainable relationship to our environment and make available the American living standard to all with the resources on earth? And how do we maintain America’s historical competitive edge in innovation, rooted as it is in education and research?

It all sounds daunting as you head off to college. I recall that the situation was not so different in my own year of graduation—1969, 40 years ago almost to the day, hard as that is to admit! The issues in the late 1960s were less about the economy and more about political authority and social structure in America. The issues included very emotionally charged topics such as the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement.

Like today, they were times in which fundamental assumptions were challenged—about the role of race and gender in our society, about the role of the people in government decision-making. Assumptions were revised, barriers fell. I benefited directly from the elimination of many professional barriers to women. We saw the “smoke-filled rooms” of the political process give way to today’s primary process. The college and scholarship application process you’ve just experienced stems from reforms made in that period to open up opportunity much more broadly.

So it is my great hope that you will participate in the intense discussion and debate that will we are certain to have in the next few years. I also hope that you will find it exciting, if sometimes frustrating. Important changes will occur. Your choices, much more than mine and those of my contemporaries, will shape our future.

In building your lives in the years ahead, you will find that your Visitation education will be invaluable to you. In a time of great change, the excellent grounding you’ve received in fundamentals—communication, critical thinking, argumentation and quantitative analysis—as well as the teamwork reflected in the banners on this gymnasium wall will be essential building blocks in tackling challenges and solving problems, many of which we don’t even recognize today.

You will also find that the other values that we associate with Visitation, the Sisters, the faculty and the school, will be invaluable to you. I have found that the respect I learned for others and their opinions and beliefs while at Visitation has been so useful in these last 40 years, as I’ve work with people from many cultures and countries. I learned that that respect is an active state, embodying listening, patience and humility. I’m mindful of the tremendous debt I owe to Visitation for its values, a debt that cannot really be repaid. The financial crisis has amply demonstrated how destructive the absence of such values can become. Let it help us treasure even more what Visitation has given us.

I now turn to that traditional part of the commencement speech when I speak of what I wish I had understood better 40 years ago. The advice is all familiar, but durable!

First, do what you love. Whether your passion lies in a career, your family life, your community, or an avocation, find something you truly love to do. The satisfaction that comes from doing the work is its own rich reward, one that exceeds money, position or other earthly emolument. Whatever you pursue in life, you will meet bumps and dry spells. The love of what you do will help you through them.

Second, be optimistic and courageous in pursuing your goals. Almost nothing really substantial comes easily—it takes great belief and fortitude. In Taylor Branch’s wonderful book, Parting the Waters, a history of the Civil Rights movement between 1953 and 1963, his most striking observation is that the civil rights leaders in the field saw so little progress and suffered tremendous setbacks over the entire decade covered in the book. What moments of doubt they must have experienced, even as they were slowing changing the minds of the American people about segregation. St. Jane de Chantal, founder of the Visitation order, faced tremendous sorrow and loss in her life, as well as much initial opposition to the work of her order, and yet persisted in its development to cover much of France with monasteries in her lifetime and in the years after reach the New World and all of us here in St. Paul.

Most of us will not be involved in such great causes, but we will face obstacles, and disagreements. But the same optimism and fortitude will serve us well in our lives.

Third, be true to your values. In a tough, secular world like ours, with its emphasis on prestige and wealth, maintaining your values is hard. When I was 30, about three years into my career at the Fed, I read George Eliot’s novel, Middlemarch. What resonated in that novel was one of its themes—how adults begin with great idealism and how they often stray far from those ideals. I remember in particular a young doctor, trained in the newly scientific discipline of medicine, with great hopes to improve medical care for the villagers of Middlemarch. He didn’t end up doing that.

His path away from his ideals did not lie at some clear fork in the road, but in a series of small choices over many years. Life is indeed mostly about such small choices. Do I tell the unpleasant truth or go with the popular view? Do I contradict an unkind or inappropriate remark? Do I take credit for something I did not do? We are all familiar with these situations. But as you progress in your adult lives, the stakes go up, and the choices get harder.

Finally, cherish your family and friends. They are your most important investments. Help them achieve their goals, let them help you achieve yours; share their joys and sorrows and let them share yours. Ask anyone about their fondest memories, and they will talk about occasions they shared with other people, not personal triumphs or stock market rallies or citations in professional journals. Your family and friends will sustain you through your good times and bad.

Let me end with a quote that reflects my last important message: that these 40 years have gone by very quickly. The quote is from St. Jane de Chantal (although my source is the internet!).

Our days, months and years flow on, ultimately coming to an end. How should we respond to this reality? Do what is good and hope in the Lord! Let us embrace our state and stage of life in the best way we can. Let us employ the time that God gives us with great care. While we ultimately must depend and rely upon God's mercy, let us at the same time remember to do as much good as we can in the time that God gives us now.

On this joyful day, let me congratulate you on your graduation and wish you great happiness and success in the years to come.