Today, Barack Obama gave the keynote address at my little alma mater’s commencement ceremony. I, of course, on my peculiar piece of English earth, could not attend. So my Victorianist and I wired ourselves into the webcast and prepared ourselves for a healthy dose of Hope, Audacity, and other such forms of inspiration.

He was, of course, inspiring. Aside from a bit of vaguely offensive stumping, his speech on the value of investing in small changes in the interest of creating bigger ones, was, yes, inspiring, luminous, et caetera.

But you know what? Michael S. Roth, my little alma mater’s new president, was more inspiring, more luminous. Michael Roth was the one who made me cry. Michael Roth was the one who made me proud to be an alumna of this institution, who reminded me why I value as deeply as I do the lessons that I learned there, who reminded me of the urgent need for me to take those lessons with me into the world. 

His words, in part:

Being in the company of students as gifted and energetic as Wesleyan’s class of 2008, gives me faith that we may well be able to reject the status quo, to build a politics and a culture of hope and community rather than of fear and divisiveness. Your thoughtfulness and courage, your questioning and your exuberance keeps me from becoming cynical and pessimistic. If you engage in the serious politics of change, if you participate in the struggle for social justice and sustainable economic growth, I believe we can change course. Now, it would be easier for you to use your smarts, your sophisticated learning, to be funny and hip, to be smart and ironic. But you don’t have to take this path of least resistance. You have the moral and intellectual capacity to take the path of actually making real progressive change, of becoming productive idealists. 

For many generations of students, Wesleyan University has stood for the opportunity to connect serious intellectual and aesthetic work with making a difference in the world. Wesleyan students have the talent, the capacity and the drive to create something new. This year’s graduates, like Wesleyan alumni before you, will contribute to shaping our culture in the future, because otherwise it will be shaped by people for whom creativity and change, freedom and equality, diversity and tolerance, are much too threatening. We are counting on you to help shape our culture, so that it will not be shaped by forces of oppression and violence.

Violence remains one of the sad, disturbing parts of our lives. It is the loud noise that keeps us from hearing the music of the world. Violence not only destroys meaning, but it has the potential to disrupt our very capacity to make future meaning. Wesleyan University resists that violence [...] As scholars and artists, as scientists and as writers, you also set an example against the de-meaning that is violence.

You will hear people tell you that the greatest protection against violence is surveillance, that greater security is developed with higher fences to keep out the foreigners, or that we must project violence on distant shores to keep our homes safe. DO NOT BELIEVE THESE MESSAGES. Please remember that your education stands in opposition to non-sense and cruelty; please recall your capacity to create when others around you call for destruction.

This “education” is an investment in the fate of the universe. I wonder, sometimes, what my choice to pursue a career in what we quaintly call “higher education” actually means. Today, Michael Roth reminded me that to be an educator, and to do it well, is to insert one’s entire being into the fabric of the universe and shake it as hard as one can. 

That is what the best among faculty of my alma mater do every time they step into a classroom. That is what makes them shapers of the minds of a body of students known for their commitment to meaningful change. My fellow graduates are all, in one way or another, teachers. They teach every day of their lives. They are invested in transmitting their commitments and their passions. My alma mater is a community of committed teachers, and I am feeling very powerfully at this moment my connection to that community.

We don’t have to be rabble-rousers (though some of us are, and brilliantly). The material we teach doesn’t have to be “topical,” or whatever, for it to be useful. The men and women whose student I have been blessed to be have taught me many things in many ways, but all of them have taught me mindfulness. They have taught me to respect the complexity of the universe, and to engage it with all my intellectual might. They have taught me that this is what resistance means — that to engage, to refuse stasis, to create, is to shake the fabric of the universe.

That work will be mine to carry forward, one day — rather soon, really. I look forward to it more than I can possibly say. Today, a quirky young intellectual who by some miracle has got his hands on the presidency of my little alma mater reminded me that I owe it to myself to rise to the challenge of that work, and that I will be damned lucky if I can live up to the example my teachers have set me.