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On behalf of the faculty of Kalamazoo College, and by virtue of the authority vested in me
by the board of trustees, I now confer upon you, Carl M. Levin, the degree Doctor of Laws
honoris causa with all the rights, responsibilities and privileges thereto pertaining. Congratulations.
We are very privileged that Dr. Levin will be our commencement speaker.
Judge Lipsey, thank for that extraordinary introduction. I love since I'm only five foot
nine being called a giant; it's something I've always aspired to. Ben that was some
extraordinary remarks you gave and when you talked about what you think you'll feel like
at the age of seventy five, since am seventy five, you got my attention. And I am sure
that you also got the faculty's attention when you said that you didn't learn very much
in classroom. But they got your point and I'm sure they applauded as much as your parents
and your classmates cause you are exactly right.
To the leadership of Kalamazoo College, thank you. Thank you for the honor of this degree,
thank you for all that you've done for our state, and our nation, and for the students
that are gathered here today. It's great to be here today and to be here with my wife,
Barbara.
To the K College Class of 2010, my heartiest congratulations. You did it. Take a moment,
consider what you've done, and consider all the people who have helped to get you here.
You've worked hard, it's true, but keep in mind also your incredible good fortune. The
opportunity to study here is an exceptional gift. This college was here before Michigan
was admitted to the union. You are the beneficiaries of a long, proud history.
K College has embedded in you the value of good books, and the power of good ideas. It
has taught you to think critically, and to examine your own opinions with the same rigor
that you apply to the opinions of others. Your remarkable study-abroad program has shown
you a world beyond this campus and beyond our shores - a world worth exploring and understanding.
The comprehensive strategy of the K Plan has combined the practical and the high-minded,
the value of preparing for your own future and the need to improve the lives of those
around you. You've learned other lessons that seem less
weighty, perhaps, but will also come in handy. The lessons that Ben talked about but you
also now know that sometimes the only solution to a tough problem is a doughnut from Sweetwater's.
And you have also learned the value of an unplanned day at a Lake Michigan beach.
The commencement address tradition calls for the speaker to share one or two life experiences.
And I'm going to cheat a little. I'm going to enlist the help of another politician,
one who also delivered a speech here in Kalamazoo. This speaker out-ranked me - he was, in fact,
president of the United States. No. Not President Obama. I'm talking about another president
from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's only speech in Michigan of which
we have a record was delivered about a mile from here, in Bronson Park, in 1856, four
years before Michigan helped elect him president. He was campaigning for John Fremont, the Republican
presidential candidate that year. Lincoln is a remarkable teacher. A new college graduate
could do far worse than model a life and career after that of the 16th president, although
he didn't graduate from college, he had hardly any formal education at all. Here was a man
who was raised on the frontier, given only the barest of schooling, who had to walk for
miles just to grab hold of a new book. Yet his thirst for learning was unquenchable.
Imagine what Lincoln would think of our world, in which nearly all human kind's store of
knowledge is just a few keyboard clicks away. Lincoln's Kalamazoo address is a fascinating
speech, and not just because it was delivered nearby. When we think of Lincoln, we think
of the soaring rhetoric of the Gettysburg Address or his Second Inaugural Address -
"Four score and seven years ago" and "with malice toward none, with charity for all."
That wasn't the Lincoln who spoke here in Kalamazoo on that hot August day 154 years
ago when he talked to a fired-up group of supporters.
The central question of the day was whether slavery should be extended into new territories.
Supporters of slavery wanted to extend it into Kansas and Nebraska as they became new
states. The candidate of Lincoln's party sought to keep the stain of slavery from spreading.
In Kalamazoo, Lincoln made the moral case against slavery, though speaking to a staunchly
anti-slavery crowd, he knew his audience needed little convincing that slavery was evil. But
Lincoln focused at length on how the moral imperative to oppose slavery was aligned not
just with his audience's conscience, but with their own self interest - how the extension
of slavery would be an injustice not only to African-American slaves, but also to the
white voters of Michigan. How so? Because of the Constitution's treatment
of slavery. Slave states not only benefitted unjustly from the labor of their slaves, they
gained political power from owning them as well. Slaves were, of course, treated as property,
deprived of all rights, including the right to vote. But in the census every 10 years
that determined how many seats each state had in the House of Representatives in Washington,
the Constitution provided that each slave counted as three-fifths of a person.
That formula put the voters of non-slave states at a real political disadvantage. Maine and
South Carolina, Lincoln pointed out to his listeners, had nearly equal voting populations,
yet South Carolina had twice as many seats in the House of Representatives in Washington.
Lincoln told the Kalamazoo crowd that day: "It is a fact that any man in South Carolina
has more influence and power in Congress today than any two [men here in Washington." So
he made a direct appeal to the self-interest of Michigan's white population. Extending
slavery into new states would have added to that political injustice, Lincoln argued.
So, he attacked slavery not only because it enslaved blacks in the south, but because
it discriminated against whites in Michigan! Lincoln's speech didn't ignore the moral case
against slavery - he called it a demon" over which the nation must triumph. But it was
the pragmatic, practical arguments that took up most of his remarks. Lincoln didn't just
preach to the people of Kalamazoo - he appealed to their interests as well as to their values.
And I think there's a lesson for that for all of us.
We want others to see the world as we see it, to see it as right and true and moral
what we see as right and true and moral. Lincoln knew that people are motivated by conscience,
but also by interests -self-interests - and that if we can show them that their conscience
and their self-interests are in sync, we can more easily persuade them. Some might see
that as cynical, but I think that gives humanity too little credit. People, in 1856 and today,
want to do the right thing, and they also want to stick up for their family, or their
business, or their state. Trying to make those goals consistent is a very human, and a very
humane, endeavor. The most powerful lesson Lincoln taught us
is that the most valuable tool that we possess is our own moral compass.
Lincoln's compass remained fixed - to the obvious discomfort of his strongly anti-slavery
audience in Kalamazoo - Lincoln's compass was fixed on preserving the union at all costs.
As he wrote early in his presidency: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave,
I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could
do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." Lincoln believed that
America's gift to the world was its ongoing experiment in democracy, and that to allow
the union to crumble was to squander that precious gift, something he was unwilling
to do, even if others in his own party would have sacrificed the union rather than remain
in a union stained by slavery. It is also true that as his presidency progressed,
the question of slavery itself more and more came to dominate Lincoln's thinking. The moral
evil of slavery became almost inseparable in his writings from the danger of destroying
the union. Preserving the union and abolishing slavery together became one and the same cause.
Lincoln lost his life to a fanatic who hated him because of his dedication to that cause.
Yet dedication to a great cause is an example we all should strive to follow.
I got a reminder of that in the mail not long ago. It was a letter from the mother of a
Marine who was killed in Afghanistan. This young man from Michigan was serving his second
combat tour, leaving a young wife at home while he served his nation. His mother wrote
to me: "We, as parents, are not supposed to bury our sons and our daughters." Yet she
was so proud that her son had died in the service of something bigger than himself,
something he believed in strongly -his country, and the freedom of a nation not his own. She
sent me a few photographs - a haunting photo of her Marine son in desert fatigues, along
with photos of scores of people who lined the route as his body was returned home to
Michigan, people standing in the falling snow to wave an American flag, a message of support.
You graduate today and enter a world in which many young men and women willingly make such
sacrifices. You will be called upon to make sacrifices of your own - not so dear, I hope,
but sacrifices nonetheless. For all the progress that we've made since Lincoln's time, the
need for service, for sacrifice, is still with us - and it will likely always be with
us. I hope that when your cap and gown have been laid aside and you have embarked upon
your new lives that you will look for ways to serve your communities, your nation, and
your planet. The teachers, parents and mentors gathered here today, and the college that
now proudly calls you alumni, have given much to bring you to this point. Repay those gifts
with a lifetime of doing the extraordinary. Give back to the community that has given
you so much. You can never go too far wrong by supporting
the people who have sacrificed on your behalf, or when you defend and advance the principles
of the nation that has been and remains mankind's best hope. But I also hope that you'll keep
in mind, in the face of all those great responsibilities, that there's a time to head for the beach.
Thank you again for inviting me to share this day with you, I will treasure the degree which
you presented to me, and the best of luck to the Class of 2010.