Lech Walesa, Honorary Doctor of Letters

PRESIDENT LECH WALESA
of POLAND

COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE

May 21, 2000

(see a brief video clip of the event)

Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, I have prepared well for the meeting with you, therefore I have about 100 different speeches in my Palm Top, one more in my pocket, and, as it turns out, not one of them is properly appropriate for today's ceremony. Therefore, I have to put all of those speeches aside, and take into account the fact that it might start raining at any moment, and to have a briefer speech. Therefore, let me just say a few words, bearing in mind all the conditionings.

First of all, let me express my gratitude that you permanently included me in the history of your college. I started thinking what we could have in common, me, being a revolutionary, and you young people. However, I was surprised myself, realizing at the last moment that there are many things that we have in common. You are entering your grown up, mature life in the third millennium, whereas I had the honor and privilege of closing up a certain stage of our history. Of course, to you, Lech Walesa and my Solidarity movement may be as distant as George Washington and his struggle for freedom, however, the two names are associated with a great fight for a very important cause.

Let me recall one thing, very briefly. After the second World War, the world divided into two opposing blocks, two zones of influences. One of them was very tightly closed, it wouldn't let people out, it was based on censorship and security police, whereas the other was based on freedom and democracy. It was a very difficult situation, and I think the struggle against that difficult system that was closed was really hard because, for example, you have here a very close neighbor that still has the system, and you still haven't won the battle against that neighbor. Of course, my problem was even harder because the Soviet Union was bigger than that neighbor that I refer to, when, in fact, I have my suspicions that you want to keep that country as a kind of a "Jurassic Park" of Marxism and Leninism. Perhaps that's sensible from one point of view, I don't know. Right now the situation seems as if you were having a mosquito biting the United States on the nose.

But since it has actually started raining, let me add just two more sentences.

In fact, the struggle that I led and that we won opened up tremendous opportunities for you, and in fact the United States has remained the only super power in the world, which is a great responsibility. Today's world differs completely from the one I lived in, in my era. In fact, it's opened up for a new order that needs to be put in it, and it is up to you educated people to put this order in the world.

It is a very pleasant ceremony, but remember that apart, next to the opportunities that you have, you also face great dangers and challenges. I am deeply confident that you-having such high education, having been so well trained-that you will be able to cope with those challenges. And in fact, if it suddenly occurs to you that you are fed up with being the super power of the world, just give the position to Poland and they will know what to do with it.

And to conclude, ladies and gentlemen, I call you the generation of the Internet, the generation of globalization, and the generation of almost limitless opportunities and chances. You only need one thing to be successful: just believe, like I did believe in my life. Because, I was merely an electrician and the only things I had were my belief in God, and my belief in what I was doing, and look, here I am addressing myself to you, to you young people and all the faculty members, and to you highly educated people, now having been awarded with almost 100 honorary doctoral degrees, medals and awards-I don't know whether you remember what Leonid Brezhnev looked like, but I think I have 10 times as many as he had. If I wanted to put them all on, you would need a crane to lift me out from my chair. Just imagine what I could have achieved had I had your education, and your background. Just imagine what things would look like had I lived in the territory of the super power. That's why I am so confident about your future, and I am hopeful that you are going to cope, and face all the challenges. I hope that you are going to be successful for very big, important reasons, and also for very minor and personal ones-because then my old-age pension will be better if you are successful!

Thanks very much again for the honor I have been awarded, and congratulations to you. I hope you are going to have a good and prosperous life, and God bless you.

(see a brief video clip of the event)

-- end --

President Walesa delivered the commencement address in Polish. It was translated into English by Magda Iwinska.

Citation for Honorary Degree

Lech Walesa
Doctor of Letters

Lech Walesa, former President of Poland, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, leader in bringing democracy to Eastern Europe. An electrician at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, you were an antigovernment union activist in the 1970s, and lost your job as a result. In 1980, during protests over high food prices by the workers at the shipyard, you climbed over the fence to join your comrades inside, and were elected head of the strike committee to negotiate with the government. Within weeks, you had signed an agreement allowing workers the right to organize free and independent unions, and for sixteen months you led the federation of unions known as Solidarity, which had grown to ten million members by the end of 1981. In December 1981, Solidarity was outlawed, the government of Poland imposed martial law, and you were detained for nearly a year. Fearing that you would not be allowed to return to your homeland, you remained in Poland while your wife traveled to Oslo in December 1983 to accept the Nobel Prize for Peace on your behalf. In 1988 and 1989, as a new wave of unrest swept across Eastern Europe, the government was forced to negotiate with you once again, and you signed an agreement restoring Solidarity to legal status and permitting free elections for some of the members of the Polish parliament. In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, you won Poland's first free and direct presidential election, and oversaw the transition of the economy from a state-run to a free-market system, as well as the establishment of responsible and accountable parliamentary democracy in Poland. Since the end of your term as president in 1995, you have traveled widely, under the auspices of the Walesa Institute, speaking on the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe. You have truly been one of the significant figures in world history of the past two decades, and we are honored that you have been able to join us at Middlebury College in this, our Bicentennial year.

It is therefore my privilege, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Board of Trustees of Middlebury College, to confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, with all the rights, honors, privileges and responsibilities here and everywhere appertaining to this degree.