Transcripts For CSPAN College Of William And Mary Commencement Address 20150531

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opposed to the state supporting the municipalities and the counties. there are environmental issues. it is employment, civil rights all those things. it is access to health care, affordability of health care higher education. bill: what surprised you the most this year since your swearing-in in january? rep. coleman: my republican colleagues refusing to let go of issues that have been decided in the courts, such as the woman's right to choose, acting myopically with immigration on the southern border. things of that nature and a refusal to look beyond those issues. bill: before we wrap up, i wanted to ask you, your day-to-day routine on capitol hill, what you like the most and what do you like the least? movement. rep. coleman: i like the movement. i like moving from one thing to the next. i like the excitement. i probably like the least being taken away from a committee meeting or something and then having to come back and get that momentum back. bill: after a vote or something? rep. coleman: after a vote yeah. sometimes i am frustrated, and having to push back on these issues that have already been addressed. every day, looking at a woman's right to choose. every day there is some negative legislation to something it does not belong with, or every other day, we are fighting to make sure that people have greater access to affordable health care. so, probably dealing with those issues over and over and over again is probably that which i like the least. bill: congresswoman bonnie watson coleman of new jersey thank you for being with us. rep. coleman: thank you for having me. >> the new congressional directory if a handy guide to the 114th congress with color photos of every senator and house number plus bio information and twitter handles. and a look at congressional committees, the congressional federal agencies and state governors. order your copy today. this week on cue and day our guest this to time. prizewinner david mccullough. he shared stories about his new book, the right brothers. >> they did not even graduate from high school. their father always encourage them if they had some interesting project they were working on, to stay home and do that. because he knew how bright they were. wilbur will without any question, was a genius. orval was very bright very inventive, very clever mechanically. but he did not have the reach of mind that wilbur had. they loved music. they love books. nathaniel hawthorne was oracle's favor -- formal spirit writer. catherine loved sir walter scott. for one of her birthdays the brothers gave her a bust of their walter scott. here are these people living in this little house no running water, no indoor plumbing, no electricity, and they are giving a bust of a great english literary giant to their sister for a birthday present. there is a lot of hope in that. what i would like to get to know even more about with the sense of purpose that they had. it's all like a bad pun, but high purpose. nothing ordinary big ideas. they were going to achieve a big idea. nothing was going to stop them. >> tonight, on q and a. >> coming up next, our look at 2015 commencement speeches continues with two former secretaries of state. first, condoleezza rice on the at the college of william and mary. the graduates of st. joseph's university here from the philadelphia mayor michael nutter. former secretary of state condoleezza rice delivered this year's commencement address at the college of william and mary in virginia. she was presented with a honorary degree from former secretary of state robert gates. [applause] sectionsecretary gates: condoleezza rice your service has been exemplary. we honor you. by the authority vested in me, i hereby confer upon you the degree of dr. the public service. [applause] congratulations. [applause] secretary gates: asserting the math of authority that accrues to be as chancellor -- [laughter] i am preempting president briefly to introduce our commencement speaker. ladies and gentlemen, my dear friend, and a very great american, condoleezza rice. [applause] secretary albright: thank you very much for that and for the tremendous honor. secretary rice: it is quite something to be named in the same breath as benjamin franklin, and i would\\\as the 66th secretary of state and the first as an alumnus of william and mary. i want to thank you for your life of exemplary service to our country. i want to thank the president of the college. you have done such a marvelous job of leading this fight institution. to the board, thank you for your leadership of william and mary. to the faculty love guided these graduates through their academic paces to academic success, and to the staff who have nurtured them and care for them. to family and friends, thank you for your support and love of the graduates enter the class of 2015 congratulations. [applause] as an economic i'm pleased to be here because this is such a respected place of learning, and has had such an important role in the history of our country. as a southerner it is closer to my roots and as a sports fan i want to know that things your football coach i now have enough t-shirts and hats and golf balls to be a member of the tribe for the rest of my life. [laughter] [applause] it has many years since my own undergraduate commencement i remember almost everything about it but i how proud my parents were, i remember the closeness i felt my classmates and my friends when i remember the thrills but achieving my convict goals. i do not remember a single word that the commencement speaker said that day. and you won't either, and i promise not to take it personally. on this day, you can be forgiven for feeling a little restless and a little proud. you will have lasting members of this place and your professors trying to outdo each other in the debates. and even i will remember the joy in your faces as i joined you last night for the candlelight ceremony. those experiences have been a part of your journey together, a journey that ends today and celebration of your educational achievement at this highly respected institution. education is transformative. it literally changes lives. that is why people over the centuries have worked so hard to become educated. education is more than any other force, can help to erase arbitrary divisions of class and culture, and unlock every persons potential. this belief is very personal to me. it has long been an article of faith in my family. i first learned of this idea through stories about my paternal grandfather, a real family hero. he was a sharecroppers son in alabama. when he was about 19, he wanted to get book learned in a college. for a colored man, that was the parlance of the day, they told him there was this presbyterian school about 30 miles away. he went off to college, and after the first year they said how would be for the second year? he says i'm out of content, and he they said you are out of luck. if you wanted to be a presbyterian minister, you could have a scholarship to. o. o. he said, 'that's just what i had in mind.' my family has been college educated and presbyterian ever since. [applause] john wesley wright senior was onto something. he knew that that education was going to allow him future he might otherwise have never imagined. he knew it would rest that resonate for generations to come. and my father would be an administrator at a college and presbyterian minister. and his sister would go to the university of wisconsin in 1952, she would get a phd in victorian literature and write books on dickens. if you think what i do is wear for a black person, she writes books on dickens. [laughter] because of my ancestors they understood that education was a privilege, not a right. it is therefore that it confers several obligations. i would like to talk to you about the important responsibility of educated people. the first responsibility is one that you have for yourself, the responsibility to find something you are passionate about and follow it. i do not mean anything that interests you, not something you might or might not do, but one unique calling that you cannot do without. as an educated person, you have the opportunity to spend your life doing what you love. you should never forget that many people do not enjoy such a rare privilege. as you work to find your passion, you should know that your passion sometimes finds you. that is what happens to me because you see, my first passion was to be a concert pianist. i could read music before i could read. at the end of my sophomore year i started encountering prodigies, 12-year-old who could play what it took me all year to learn, and i thought oh, i am about to end of playing the piano in a bar or teaching 13-year-olds are one of those people playing the piano while you are shopping in the department sure, but i'm going to play carnegie hall. i would records and had the following conversation. i decided to change my major and i don't know what it is. it may be your life, but it is our money. my first thought was english literature. with all due respect, i hated it. [laughter] i decide on state and local government. that sounded preferable. i thought i would interview the sitter water manager -- city water manager of denver, the single most boring and i have met to this day. i wondered into a course taught by a czech refugee, a man whose daughter was named madeleine albright. with that one class i was look. i discovered that my passion were things that were national things diplomacy. needless to say, this is not exactly what a young black girl from birmingham was exec to do -- expected to do in the early 1970's, but it was right. you know something else, several years later as i was taking off from a helicopter from the south lawn in the white house, shut there with mikael gorbachev, the secret service, and me. i thought i'm really glad i changed my major. keep an open mind, keep searching. when you find your passion, it is yours. not what someone else thinks it should be. don't let anyone define your passion for you. because of your gender, or the color of your skin. [laughter] [applause] the second responsibility of an educated person is present. here at william and mary you have not been taught what to think but how to think. how to ask questions, how to reject assumptions, how to exercise reason. this experience will sustain you for the rest of your life, but no one should think it is easy. it takes a great deal of courage and honesty. the only way he will grow intellectually by examining your opinions, extracting your prejudices constantly, and within your reason. this can be unsettling, and it can be tempting to art for the comfort of a life without questions. it is possible today to live in an echo chamber that serves only to reinforce your own high opinion of yourself and what you think. that is the temptation that educated people must reject. there is nothing wrong with holding an opinion and holy and passionately, but it those times when you have decided you are absolutely right, go and find someone who disagrees with you. don't align yourself the easy course of the cost in -- constant amen to everything you say. a commitment to reason leads to your third responsibility. the rejection of false pride. it is natural, especially among the educated, to want to credit your success to your own intelligence and hard work and judgment. it is true of course, that all of you sitting here today are here because you do in fact possess those qualities. but it is also true that merit alone did not get you to this stage. there are many people this country who were just as intelligent, just as hard-working, just as deserving of success as you are. but for whatever reason, may be a broken home, maybe bad luck they did not enjoy the opportunities that you have had at william and mary. do not ever forget that. from this day on, promise to live your life only. -- humbly. too often, citizens of can be the fellow traveler of learning, and i understand why. history is full of much cruelty and suffering and darkness, and is committed to our desk can be hard to believe that a brighter future is dawning. but for all our past failings, or all of our current problems in the we enjoy hope and opportunity more now than any other time in history. the concerted efforts not of synnex, but of visionaries and optimists and idealists who deal with our world as it should be. here in america, our own ideals of freedom and equality have been born through generations by optimists. there was a day my own lifetime when the hope of liberty and justice for all seemed quite impossible. but because individuals kept faith with the ideals of equality, we see a different america today. you are headed into a world for optimists are too often told to keep their ideals to themselves. do not do it. believe in the possibility of human progress and asked to advance it. what do i mean by human progress? i believe that all human beings share a certain fundamental aspiration they want protection for their lives and their liberty, they want to think freely and to wish her -- worship as they wish. they want to educate their children, and they want to be ruled by the consent of the governed, not by the collusion of state. -- coercion of state. [applause]

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