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Actress Jane Alexander at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y.: "We are in a society where there are no leaders of any note because there are no followers. There are no followers because most of us are operating on independent initiative and in small clusters. Privately we do have our heroes and heroines, but we don't talk about them much publicly. How do you share with others that you secretly admire Marge tremendously because not only does she care wonderfully for her family but she has the best vegetable garden in Yonkers, she led the coalition to the town council for a clean-water bill, and last year she managed to climb Kilimanjaro with a group of bird watchers? These are our leaders: local heroes."
Law Professor Geoffrey R. Stone at the University of Chicago: "This spring marks the 30th anniversary of the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Brown vs. Board of Education. It is difficult to conceive that only 30 years ago blatant, open and legally enforced racism, with its degrading humiliations, was a fact of life in more than one-third of our nation. Brown was a triumph for the Justices of the United States Supreme Court, whose vision and understanding enabled them fundamentally to recast our constitutional law. You must remember that you too hold beliefs that your children or your children's children will rightly regard as naive, foolish, or perhaps even obscene. You must be prepared to reform your world, just as the Justices in Brown were willing to reform theirs. You must challenge 'the nature of things.' "
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith at American University in Washington: "The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture. There is the problem of the audience: its members' thoughts, inevitably on this day, are divided between nostalgic reflection on the joyful years just past and a justified sense of trepidation over the tasks, the travail, even the terrors, of the years to come. There are also the stern constraints on commencement oratory. It must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech; speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum."
Peace Corps Director Loret Miller Ruppe at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.: "Be involved in your family, in your community, in your job. Give it your all. Even as the Peace Corps Act mandates sharing America's talents and skills with that big world out there, please share your talents and skills with the world around you. Some of you might take the step of joining our work in helping the developing world, but all of you should help in development work in your own homes, churches and communities."