Do you remember the speech made by Stanford’s president at your commencement? Let’s be honest: most of us don’t. Caught up in the giddiness of the ceremony and the final fling with old friends, students sometimes find it hard to concentrate on the substance.
It’s only years later that some alums start wondering what they missed. For those who graduated from Stanford during Donald Kennedy’s tenure as president, a new book may fill in the gaps. Published by the Stanford Historical Society (and available through Amazon.com), The Last of Your Springs is a compilation of Kennedy’s 12 farewell addresses (1981 to 1992), each preceded by a brief history of events that year. To produce those accounts, Kennedy pored over bound copies of Campus Report and the Stanford Daily. The result is a chronicle of the Kennedy era, from the “great books” debate to campus racial unrest to the Loma Prieta earthquake to the indirect costs dispute.
Kennedy’s speeches were made in a conversational tone, and he was unafraid to be avuncular. “The delivery of honest adult advice, as long as it springs from authentic caring and has some relevant experience behind it, is a function no teacher should shun,” he writes in the book’s introduction. In fact, he ended each commencement speech with the same piece of advice, a quote from Adlai Stevenson: “Your days are short here; this is the last of your springs…. You will go away with old, good friends. And don’t forget when you leave why you came.”
