| Bernadine Joselyn, president of the Humphrey School's alumni board, welcome graduates at the commencement ceremony
I have been invited to speak to you today in my capacity as President of the Humphrey School’s Alumni Board, a position in which it has been my privilege to serve this past academic year.
Let me begin by first congratulating you on your graduation today.
Well done graduates! Just five years ago I was sitting where you are, and I well remember how good it felt to have made it into those seats.
And how satisfying that this celebration should fall this year on Mothers’ Day.
Like many of you graduates, I am privileged to have my own mother, Yleen Joselyn, here today… Happy Mothers Day, Mom, and Happy Mothers Day to all the other mothers out there. Seeing your daughters and sons in their caps and gowns is testimony to your achievement, as well.
By long tradition, it is the Alumni Board President’s second task, after saluting the graduates (and in today’s case, their mothers), to recruit you as future members of the University’s Alumni Association.
I submit to you that supporting the University through its alumni association is one of the obligations you should carry with you into the future, in return for the many benefits you will reap ever after from your education here.
Like the University itself, the University of Minnesota’s Alumni Association is in the midst of exciting renewal and focus; in this time of shrinking commitment to public support for public education, your voice, participation, and support are needed more than ever.
But I want to take advantage of this podium and this threshold moment in your professional lives to say just a few words, from my vantage point as an earnest practitioner in the public sector, about a broader set of obligations and benefits you will carry with you as you leave the auditorium today.
First a word about the benefits.
Frankly, I think you are, as a group, the luckiest graduates on campus. The key to happiness, so the wise ones say, is to live a life of meaning.
We are best to ourselves when we are good to others.
As public servants, whether in government, public charities, or philanthropy, we are freed from what some have called the “tyranny of the bottom line.” Even in our “ownership society,” where the dollar is king, we have the privilege of waking up every morning and thinking about how to make the world a better place.
To my mind, that’s a pretty major benefit!
And now to the obligations part.
Freed from the need to focus on what sells, it is our obligation to think about what works. It is our special responsibility to promulgate the promise of the public sphere, best expressed, I think, by Paul Wellstone, when he said: “We all do better when we all do better.”
Paul delivered the Commencement Address to our graduating class of 2001. I had met him for the first time some months earlier, when he agreed to have coffee with me and a classmate to discuss his views on what to do with the state’s budget surplus – return it to the taxpayers in $300 rebate check allotments, as then-Governor Jesse Ventura was arguing, or invest those dollars in education and public infrastructure. While Jesse’s plan about what to do with the surplus prevailed, Paul’s passion for doing the people’s business well was palpable, and inspiring, and endures in my imagination.
Today, our communities, our state, our nation, our world, need that inspiration more than ever.
I was just in Pittsburgh to attend the annual conference of the Council on Foundations. I sat in on a session called “Moving Values through Culture” in which Ted Nordhaus from the Environics Group shared the results of values survey research they have done to map Americans, segmented by values profile and social, economic, and demographic variables, and compared the results with similar research on Canadians and Western Europeans.
The matrix they built from the data had four poles – Security counter posed with Fulfillment (as in self actualization) and Authority over Individuality. The results caused everyone in the room to take in sharp breathes.
Session participants, all philanthropods, had taken the survey in advance, and the guy from Environics reported back to us that, almost to a person, we were in the lower right quadrant ruled by Fulfillment and Individuality.
Americans, including our youth, were at the opposite end of the matrix, in the quadrant ruled by Security and Individuality, whose values are informed by cynicism, nihilism, me-first-ism. Sub-groups w/in this quadrant include folks Nordhaus and his colleagues had classified the “Just Dessert-ers” – who believe that poor sick people deserve to be so; and the “Tough is Good” group who believe that some violence in society is inevitable, and even can be justifiable, if it helps you get what you want.
Their values map displays a predominant set of American responses to a complex post-modern society in which people, hungry for meaning and purpose, are increasingly turning to consumerism and, in some cases, fundamentalisms of different kinds, to find it.
So there is clearly lots of work to do to reclaim the possibility and promise of the public commons that inspired Paul.
He was inspired by a deep appreciation of the significance of individual action and of the importance of honoring the responsibility we all carry for one another.
Empowering and motivating people to act on the responsibility we carry for ourselves and for one another is at the heart of public policy work. Informed engagement is the bread and butter of democratic societies.
Practice suggests that the best solutions to tough social problems are those that take into account the perspectives, experiences and aspirations of the greatest and the smallest, the weakest and most powerful, alike.
I was introduced to much of the theory and many of the practical skills necessary to do this work here at the Institute.
Melissa Stone taught that in a messy “no-one-in-charge world” change making requires patience and partners.
Harry Boyte, who gave me new eyes to see the world and a new language to describe it, also introduced me to Saul Alinsky. Alinsky’s wisdom is about the need to connect with people where they are at, to see folks’ self interest, and to help them connect that self interest to the common good. It is about living in the tension between what is, and what should be, between outrage and hope.
And John Bryson helped me understand that, ultimately, social entrepreneurship, public policy leadership, is about organizing hope.
I believe that’s what Paul meant when he said “the future will not belong to those who sit on the sidelines. The future will not belong to the cynics. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
So, on your feet everybody! Welcome to the fray! Speaking for myself, I can say that my experience here at the Institute prepared me well to do my part; as you venture forth, I’m sure you’ll find the same.
Enjoy the benefits of your chosen path, honor your obligations (including to the University’s Alumni Association), and good luck in making a positive difference in the world. It is a challenge worthy of all of your aspirations and talents.
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