To the Class of 2013: Resist Simplicity

Stephen Carter:

Members of the Class of 2013, I salute you.

As everyone keeps telling you, you are graduating at a difficult and even frightening time. I wish it were otherwise -- that my generation was bequeathing you a finer world. We aren't. The world into which you are entering is rich with challenges. Many are scary.

This does not make your generation unique. Through the nation's history, America's colleges and universities have sent forth graduates in times of war, of fear, of economic risk. Eighty years ago, the world was mired in a four-year-old economic depression. Seventy years ago, many schools skipped commencement exercises entirely because their graduates were all heading off to World War II. Fifty years ago, Bull Connor was setting fire hoses and police dogs on civil-rights marchers in Birmingham, Alabama. And 45 years ago, today's exercises would have been sandwiched between the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

In short, there was never a golden age -- a period when new graduates could step into the world and simply start building careers and families without worry.

So what is the great challenge of your generation? Protecting the environment? Increasing equality? Abating poverty? Achieving world peace?

Posted by Jim Zellmer at May 13, 2013 2:35 AM
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