College commencement speeches are not usually remembered for their brevity or wit. In fact, they’re often not remembered, period.
Sandra Tsing Loh, for example, couldn’t recall who the speaker was at her own 1983 Caltech commencement when she was asked about it shortly after being named this year’s speaker at her alma mater.
This is wild-card casting, of a sort, because Loh is not exactly scientifically inclined and has often publicly admitted that she never really enjoyed doing science, wasn’t very good at it and leaped into the literary and artistic life almost as soon as she stepped off Caltech’s campus, physics degree in hand.
Because of her success as a performance artist, author, composer and radio raconteur, whose works bubble with acid-tinged humor (she once hired a 35-piece symphony orchestra to serenade the grunion at midnight on Malibu beach), Loh stacks up as one of the potentially more entertaining speakers this graduation season, as students around the country, yearning to be free, must sit through that one last “lecture” before receiving their diplomas.
Universities place great importance on this final exhortation. They struggle valiantly each year to find individuals of great accomplishment who can inspire and uplift the young, while impressing their wealthier elders. In many academic circles, the greater the prestige of the commencement speaker, the greater the chance donations will follow.
Talk not always cheap
But prestige can come at a high price. Schools that can’t lure a prominent individual willing to donate time and energy to the speech sometimes book famous people through speakers bureaus, where fees can range up to six figures. Oprah Winfrey is always the most requested graduation speaker, says Theo Moll of Keppler Associates in Arlington, Va. “But I’ve never booked her for a graduation. Her fee would be astronomical,” Moll says.
In fact, commencement speeches are not big business for the agency, because school administrators “tend to reach for distinguished alumni who will waive their honorariums,” Moll says. Or they opt for in-office political figures, who cannot accept fees. “If you are in New York state, and you request Hillary Rodham Clinton, she cannot accept an honorarium. Your congressman or senator cannot accept money from a state university. So the school saves money and gets a distinguished speaker.” (This year, Sen. Clinton will give the commencement address at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga.)
Keppler client Nancy Grace, the former Atlanta prosecutor who is now a CNN commentator, will appear at Utica College in N.Y.; Ben Stein, the economist, TV celebrity and former Nixon speechwriter, has been booked for Ithaca College. Moll will not discuss their fees, but says that “frequently, the fee is reduced” if the speaker wants to do a good deed for higher education.
Some high-profile individuals don’t opt for money, but instead make “deals” to speak in exchange for an honorary degree, or perhaps for the promise of a scholarship fund set up to assist a particular category of students.
Last year, a relatively obscure college scored perhaps one of the greatest commencement coups: a sitting Supreme Court justice. Sandra Day O’Connor spoke at Centre College in Danville, Ky., after being persuaded by friends who were alumni, one of whom provided a private jet to transport her. These days, even well-endowed private institutions don’t want to shell out big bucks when so many campus needs are going unmet. And a place such as Caltech, which is non-profit, won’t pay a cent to its commencement speakers, says Bob O’Rourke, chairman of the school’s commencement speaker committee. Each year, he heads a small group composed of undergraduates, graduate students, faculty members and a representative from the school president’s office. This committee selects a slate of candidates from nominees suggested by the student body via a campus Web site.
But there’s a catch. “Let’s say you’re a student who wants to nominate Walter Cronkite. You can’t just propose his name. You have to know how to get hold of him, have some sort of relationship or know someone who has a relationship with him. Don’t just give us a name. We need some reasonable expectation that we can easily reach that person, and that he or she might agree to do it,” O’Rourke says.
Loh wasn’t the students’ first choice. O’Rourke says Jimmy Carter topped the list: “He is a perfect fit, since he’s a nuclear engineer as well as past president.” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was second choice. Both were invited but neither could accept, he says. Loh, whose father and brother also graduated from Caltech and who has been active in the alumni association, “will undoubtedly have a wonderful message for us,” O’Rourke says.
Bad words
Loh, who will be the first female Caltech graduate ever to deliver the commencement speech, was fired last March from public radio station KCRW-FM after she uttered an obscenity in a prerecorded monologue. She had planned to delete the word from the recording, she has said, but the station engineer offered to do it and then didn’t. She believes the firing was unfair because it was truly an accident, she says. And when the station agreed, and invited her to come back, she declined.
It’s something of a coincidence, she says, in view of that incident and her upcoming speech, that famed Caltech scientist Richard Feynman used that same obscenity “in my very first week at school when he spoke to the freshmen. He was explaining electromagnetism — a needle going into a coil — and he described the motion by using the word I got fired for.”
Harvard’s 354th commencement will feature actor John Lithgow (Class of ’67), now starring on Broadway in “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” but perhaps best known as the high commander of a squad of aliens in TV’s “3rd Rock From the Sun.” Most Harvard speakers have been world leaders, including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who gave last year’s address. In fact, Lithgow is the first professional artist to be Harvard’s main commencement speaker since novelist Carlos Fuentes in 1984.
Reached by phone, the actor says he’s “in the process of writing the speech,” and a theme is “evolving.” But he’ll keep it under wraps until the day before commencement, when he must submit it to school authorities for their perusal.
Neil Armstrong on podium
Neil Armstrong, first to walk on the moon, will deliver the University of Southern California’s 122nd commencement speech; Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios, will address Stanford graduates; Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will speak at Northwestern University’s 147th commencement on June 17; author and columnist Bill Geist will speak at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
At Bossier Parish Community College, in Shreveport, La., students will hear Bob Dole. The former senator and presidential candidate agreed to speak there, he says, because the ceremony will honor Craig Nelson, a local National Guardsman who was fatally injured in Iraq.
Dole met the wounded man shortly before his death at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and has since donated money to a scholarship fund in his name. He also dedicated his memoir, “One Soldier’s Story,” to Nelson. “Any profit I receive from the book will go to that scholarship fund,” Dole says by phone. “I haven’t started writing the speech yet, but I am pretty sure it will be about honor, duty, country and sacrifice.”
And then there’s Yale, one of the few universities that, by long tradition, does not have a commencement speaker. An exception is made only when a sitting president is awarded an honorary degree. Such was the case in 2001, at Yale’s 300th annual commencement, when graduating students got lucky and heard something short and sweet. President George W. Bush (Class of ’68) told graduates: “C students, you, too, can be president” and evoked cheers and laughs as he talked about his snoozes in the school library and his forays into courses such as Japanese haiku. The speech lasted only 12 minutes and won a standing ovation.
Even the protesters seemed charmed.
– – –
A sampling of this year’s commencement speakers
– Northwestern University: Sen. John McCain
– University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Bill Geist, author, columnist (and U. of I. alumnus)
– Utica College (N.Y.): Nancy Grace, CNN commentator
– Ithaca College (N.Y.): Ben Stein, TV celebrity and former Nixon speechwriter
– Harvard University: John Lithgow, actor
– Stanford University: Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios
– Southern Connecticut State University: Henry Winkler, actor
– Agnes Scott College (Georgia): Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
– Wilamette University: Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner
– Columbia College (South Carolina): Barbara Bush, former first lady
