宾大校长在宾夕法尼亚大学2019年毕业典礼上的演讲

宾大校长在宾夕法尼亚大学2019年毕业典礼上的演讲

Weave a Tapestry of Communities

– Address by Penn President Amy Gutmann at the University of Pennsylvania Commencement 2019

May 20, 2019

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Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning! Good morning, Class of 2019! You look fabulous! 

Though many of you may…maybe you feel a little bit tired?

Last night, some of you were out to dinner with family. Some of you were up late packing. And some of you went out with classmates and friends.

And this is Penn, I have to ask: How many of you managed to do all three?

Okay, I thought so! But did anyone here last night find time to turn on the TV…maybe turn it on…to HBO?

Are you ready? Are you ready? It’s time for a special edition of Game of Thrones!

Graduates: All of you today sit on either side of a great divide. 

To my right: Southern Alliance! Among you are several Great Houses. 

Arrayed on the field are members of House Engineering! House Nursing! House Wharton! Houses…Houses Medicine to Dental; Law to…Law to Design; SP2 to Education; and Annenberg to Vet! All…all of you to my right form the Southern Alliance!

Now, to my left: The Northern Alliance! Your Great…your Great Houses may be fewer…your Great Houses may be fewer, but man, are they big? 

Arrayed on the field, as you can see, are the members…many members of House College! And House Arts and Sciences! All of you…all of you to my left form the Northern Alliance.

We have two sides, and spoiler alert: we’re going to do battle. But instead of a battle with spears, this will be a Battle of Cheers. 

Whoops! Who left a Starbucks cup here? Not supposed to be here! Oh well, oh well…. We’ll figure that out later.

I’m…I’m going to call on each of your Alliances in turn. When I do, you need to make…I hate to ask, I know how hard it is, but you need to make the most noise you can. The side that cheers the loudest wins! Okay? Ready?

Okay, let’s hear it from the Southern Alliance!

Impressive! Impressive! Okay, now let’s hear it from the Northern Alliance! Alright! Also …also impressive!

Both sides gave it your very best shot. Now it falls to me…. 

But I will not call a winner. Instead, instead, I ask you to consider this a window into the human heart. 

Listen up. Here we are, proud members of the Penn community – this beloved community. Yet, when called upon, how readily we divide to do battle for our side.

Game of Thrones became a global phenomenon for many reasons. We obsess over the characters. We love the dragons and the drama. But its deepest attraction is allegorical. 

In the walls of ice, in the thrones of iron, we see a mirror for our times.

We recognize our own world, where too many live for their tribe alone. Where too often, we listen only to those who think, look, and believe as we do. 

Where the game seems rigged against open and free exploration. We hear too few dissenting voices, and we consider too few conflicting views. But remember: None of this is inevitable. 

We can glorify our own tribe to the exclusion of others. We can build up our walls, and we can cast down those who are different. 

Or we can better use the strength in our hearts and the power in our hands. 

Our many identities and beliefs: We make these our threads. Our diverse backgrounds and goals: They become our loom. 

From this world of differences, we can weave a tapestry of communities.

Weaving…yeah…weaving is hard work, especially when we interlace many into one. Our identities may clash. Our beliefs diverge. We disagree over where we want to go. We argue about the best way to get there. 

But when – together – we embrace the challenge, the cloth of human understanding grows more resilient. We craft something stronger by far…by far than iron thrones and walls of ice. 

As many of you may know, I am a first-generation college graduate – I’m proud of it. My family had very little money. We lived in a small town. 

And try as I might to fit in, I always felt like an outsider and often was treated as one. My father was an immigrant, and the only person around who spoke with a strong foreign accent. In elementary school, I was the only Jewish girl. 

And…and one day – I remember this vividly – in fifth grade, I learned just how easily false stereotypes about minorities can arise. 

That’s when another blond-haired, blue-eyed girl moved into my class. My best friend Diane took one look, turned to me, and said, “Oh! She must be Jewish, too!” 

My hometown may not have understood or celebrated diversity, but it treated me and my family respectfully.

I never took that for granted given my father’s escape from Nazi Germany. My parents even joined with others in neighboring towns to create the first synagogue. 

Wonderfully…wonderfully…wonderfully dedicated and caring teachers helped prepare me for college. And I couldn’t wait to go.

But when I finally arrived on campus, I was in for a surprise. In fact, I was stunned. I had never before in my life felt poor. As a scholarship student, suddenly, I was surrounded by people who were so astoundingly rich! I was also fascinated by this and other differences – different faiths, politics, ethnicities, and culture. 

And sure, at times it was uncomfortable. There were many moments I just wanted to turn around and go back home to my mother’s warm embrace – and also her great home cooking! 

And like every one of you…every one of you, I made the best, most important choice of my life: I would pick up the threads of differences to weave myself a new community. 

This would become my cause, my mission, my identity. I had found my purpose, rooted in beloved community.

I was inspired by the work of Dr. Martin Luther King. He called upon us all to embrace inclusion, love, and justice. He preached the soul force of nonviolent protest. 

He warned against the perils of tribalism, of clinging to the familiar and holding sacred the status quo.

King famously addressed his…go ahead…he famously addressed his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” not to his jailers, but to his “fellow clergymen.” 

He challenged them to reject the status quo. In King’s words, we find the essence of beloved community, recognizing that: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” 

“We are tied,” yes, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. “We are tied,” he wrote, “in a single garment of destiny.”

Now, one of our seniors graduating today grew up just a few miles from here. Close at hand, but a world away, Penn was an unfamiliar place. 

Just weeks after she accepted an offer, her father suddenly passed away. And then, only months into her freshman year, she lost her mother. Family is our very first community, the rock on which we build our lives. Hers shattered in the passing of a season. 

But she persevered, honoring her parents’ memory by embracing a new community, a University where we pride ourselves on the tapestries we weave. 

She championed educational access, leading Penn’s first-generation, low-income student community. Any FGLI students here today?

Last fall, we learned that this senior had been named a 2019 Rhodes Scholar. We…we could not be more proud. Her name of course is Anea Moore. Anea, would you please stand up? 

Each and every one of you today left behind comforting familiarity to come here to Penn. 

You embraced a more intellectually challenging, inclusive, and demanding world. You have woven a rich tapestry of friends and memories.

Now, the task before you: Stay at the loom. Speak out and stand up. Weave together a world better, freer, and more inclusive. 

Just as there are no dragons, there is no Northern Alliance, or Southern Alliance – there are many overlapping and intersecting threads woven into a beloved community of humankind. 

Together, you weave that beautiful, beautiful multi-faceted garment of human destiny, empowered by your Penn education.

So now, as befits this joyful occasion, I ask everybody to stand together as one beloved community. Families and friends, faculty, University leaders, stand with me and show our profound pride in the Class of 2019.