In case some of you had not heard, former President Bill Clinton will be giving the commencement speech at UCLA in June.
But why?
Don’t get me wrong. I have plenty of respect for the triangulations of the Clinton power couple. If nothing else, it has been amusing to watch Sen. Hillary Clinton try to give the appearance of a fully functioning human being out on the campaign trail for the past year, while Bill has been tarnishing his own legacy with one moronic comment after another.
Whatever one’s personal feelings for the gruesome twosome might be ““ and, after nearly 20 years in the national consciousness, they are bound to stir up some strong emotions one way or the other ““ nobody will dispute the historical relevance of the Clintons. He is one of only three living former presidents, and she is attempting to become the first female commander in chief in this country’s history (a dream that is all but dead). So, I can understand the allure for the UCLA administration to bring the name recognition of Bill Clinton to its 2008 undergraduate commencement.
But it is a horrible mistake to have Bill Clinton, a man with no ties to the UCLA community, show up in Westwood on June 13 and give a garden-variety speech to about 3,000 graduating students who are about to embark on a wild adventure into the unknown terrain of grad schools, penniless existences or their first full-time jobs. Clinton is going to come, treat the speech like any other stop as a surrogate for his wife’s presidential campaign, throw out a few trite lines filled with superficial emotion and wisdom that is manufactured for the most common denominator.
The chances of Clinton saying anything truly heartfelt and worthwhile are slim to none.
Don’t get me wrong. This is not a personal attack on Bill Clinton. His wife is running for president, and one of the most prominent universities in the country has asked him to give the locals a thrill by gracing them with his presence.
Of course he agreed. He probably turned down a couple of offers from other schools to be here.
I am disappointed in the UCLA administrators who are behaving like politicians, which is to say they are under the impression that the graduating students and their families are fools, and easily fooled fools at that. Do the people organizing the commencement ceremony honestly think we are dumb enough to be moved by whatever generic, campaign-tested speech Bill Clinton is going to throw out there simply because it is coming out of the mouth of Bill Clinton?
It may sound hokey or idealistic, but I always believed that ceremonies as long and tedious as college graduations are moments for serious reflection. Those of us receiving our diplomas from UCLA that Friday deserve a speaker who will challenge our most widely held conventions about life yet leave us feeling hopeful about the future. While it is sexy to find someone powerful or famous to give such a speech, it is more relevant to find someone who understands and sympathizes with the UCLA community because he or she shares many of the same memories as a UCLA graduate.
However, finding someone who merely brings cachet is perpetuating a superficial notion of success, one that is predicated on the falsehood that the only true measurements of success in life are power, fortune and fame. One might expect such an ideal expressed in the mainstream media, but not at an institute of higher learning.
Bill Clinton’s commencement speech is the not the end of the world. It will not spoil a weekend filled with awkward family brunches and hundreds of photo ops.
But it does make the commencement ceremony itself less intimate and unique and much more commercialized and vapid. On second thought, maybe we should just skip the commencement ceremony and spend the afternoon thanking the people to whom UCLA feels like a home, as opposed to, say, a political campaign.
E-mail De Jong at adejong@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.