Veneman urges graduates to reject despair and
tackle world's pressing problems with determination
MIDDLEBURY, Vt.—On Sunday, May 28, about 600 graduating seniors at Middlebury College heard a message from Ann M. Veneman, executive director of UNICEF, about the need to engage the wider world and its problems.
Under warm sunny skies, Veneman, who had previously served as Secretary of Agriculture under President George W. Bush, told the seniors—and thousands of parents, family members, friends, and faculty members—that "a commencement ceremony may be the only place in the world where someone would speak to hundreds of people in identical caps and gowns about the power of the individual."
Telling the class of 2006 that their "ability to adapt to and capitalize on [technological] changes will help determine your ultimate success," Veneman stressed the magnitude of the problems that face her United Nations children's relief agency, and the world in general. "Every minute that you have been listening to me, 20 children under the age of 5 have died around the world. Every minute, nine more people have contracted HIV … and at least one of those people is a child under 15."
| Also during commencement weekend: President Liebowitz's baccalaureate address on "living the liberal arts." |
Speaking to a crowd that covered the main quad between Mead Chapel and Old Chapel in the center of the Middlebury campus, Veneman said that given the depth and breadth of the world's ills, we are all presented with two choices: despair or determination. She strongly suggested the latter, and encouraged the graduates to devote at least part of their lives to public service. "We can choose to make ourselves and others more aware of what is happening in the world around us," she said. "We can choose to help worthy organizations that are doing good work around the globe. Or we can choose to volunteer, or devote a portion of our lives to public service. ... One person who works to make a difference is worth 1,000 of those who are on the sidelines, complaining about the state of the world."
Commencement 2006 took place on a near-perfect late spring day in Vermont.
She urged the graduates to visualize life not as a straight line with a beginning and an end, but as a circle. "You might not have very much control over the size of your circle," she said, "but this is certain: It is you who determines how full your circle will be.
"You can try to fill it with money, expensive cars, electronic gadgets and self-indulgence and find that when the ends of the circle meet, it is still quite empty. Or you can fill it with close friends, a loving family, and a commitment to fair play and honor, and find that when the circle closes, it is full of wonderful memories, meaningful contributions to others and people who really matter.
"And if you give something of yourself or help your fellow human beings … you will fill your circle with love and respect. Class of 2006, fill your circle with all that is good for you and humankind."
Student speaker Lauren Allison Curatolo also urged her classmates to give back to the world, reminding them of the obligations that fall to those
privileged enough to have received a Middlebury education. "We have a responsibility to think both locally and globally consciously," she said. "We are a privileged few, and we have an obligation to share our knowledge and our spirit with our global community. Our education has been empowering, to say the very least, and I stand here, confident with the words I believe, that you will each let the world change you. And you, in turn, will change the world."
Curatolo, a Women's and Gender Studies major from Bayside, N.Y., told the students to "have patience with everything unresolved in your hearts. ... Live the questions now and perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
Among the students who earned awards at commencement were valedictorian Martin Rajcan, an economics major from Slovakia, and salutatorian Jonathan Fink Mosser, a biochemistry major from York, Pa. Both graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and earned honors from their departments.
Commencement speaker Veneman received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Also receiving honorary degrees at this year's ceremony were U.S. Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont, Robin E. Bell, Dr. Richard M. Hodes, Alec S. Webb and Lihua Yu. All were introduced by President Ronald D. Liebowitz.
Robin E. Bell, who received an honorary Doctor of Science degree, is a member of the class of 1980 at Middlebury College, where she graduated magna cum laude with a degree in geology. Bell is the director of the Center for Rivers and Estuaries, an affiliate of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, where she is also director of the ADVANCE program, designed to increase the recruitment, retention and advancement of women scientists and engineers at Columbia. She is a Doherty senior research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is also affiliated with the Earth Institute. Bell's areas of research include the Hudson River and Antarctica, to which she has led seven major expeditions. She is the chair of the National Academy of the Sciences Polar Research Board and the former co-chair of the International Council for Science International Polar Year Planning Committee. Bell earned her doctorate in marine geophysics from Columbia in 1989.
Since 1990, Dr. Richard M. Hodes, who also received an honorary Doctor of Science degree, has served as medical director in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for the New York-based American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a relief and rescue operation. A 1975 graduate of Middlebury College, he has helped oversee the health of all Ethiopian immigrants to Israel and also worked with refugees and displaced people in Sudan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Albania, Turkey, Somalia and elsewhere. Hodes supervises two clinics and treats patients, most of whom are severely or terminally ill, at Mother Teresa's Mission for Sick and Dying Destitutes in Addis Ababa, and is the organizer of a project to send Ethiopian children abroad for specialized surgery. In 1994-1995, he was in charge of the health of 50,000 Rwandan refugees in Kibumba Refugee Camp outside Goma, Zaire. At any given time, Hodes has a varying number ― sometimes a dozen or more ― of Ethiopian children and young adults of all ages living with him, several of whom he has formally adopted. He has an academic appointment at the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
U.S. Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Jeffords, who was born in Rutland, has been a member of the Senate since 1989, after having served in the House of Representatives from 1975 through 1988. Throughout his tenure in Congress, he has championed legislation to strengthen the nation's education system and increase opportunities for people with disabilities. Jeffords has also been a leading advocate for environmental protection, including the 1990 Clean Air Act. During his career, he has consistently fought for financial support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Jeffords has received many prestigious awards, including Legislator of the Year by Parenting magazine in 1999, and the John Muir Award, the Sierra Club's top honor, in 2002. In 2001, Jeffords left the Republican Party and became an independent. He is the author of "My Declaration of Independence" (Simon and Schuster, 2001) and "An Independent Man: Adventures of a Public Servant" (Simon and Schuster, 2003).
Lihua Yu received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree. Yu has been characterized as being among the most influential Chinese-born women writers since the Second World War, and she is a leading spokesperson for Chinese intellectuals in the U.S. Born in China, she was educated in Taiwan and the U.S., where she has lived since 1956. Yu is the author of 25 volumes that include novels, which have been translated into many languages; collections of short stories; and prose. She has also written several volumes of critical works and translation. From 1968 to 1993, Yu was a faculty member in the East Asian studies department at the State University of New York at Albany. Her life in America is the subject of her monthly column in the People's Daily, the national newspaper in China, and was the topic of her former commentaries aired on the Voice of America. Yu is the mother of Anna Sun, coordinator of the Middlebury College Chinese and Japanese Schools, and the grandmother of Tara Sun Vanacore, a member of the Middlebury class of 2006, who will graduate in May.
Alec Webb received an honorary Doctor of Science degree. In 1970, Webb began the work necessary to convert Shelburne Farms from his family's private estate to what is now a 1,400-acre working farm and forest, a nonprofit environmental education center, and a National Historic Landmark on the shores of Lake Champlain in Shelburne, Vt. As president of Shelburne Farms since 1988, he has guided the organization in its mission to cultivate a conservation ethic by teaching students, educators and the general public about the stewardship of natural and agricultural resources, and sustainable land use. Webb has also served as a member of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission and on the boards of several Vermont organizations. He is currently a trustee of the Preservation Trust of Vermont and of ECHO at the Leahy Center for Lake Champlain. Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin honored Webb in 1990 for his extraordinary contributions to Vermont, and he received the Vermont Land Trust's Richard W. Carbin Community Conservation Award in 1998.
- Photos by Michael Sipe