In recent years, I have made it a Commencement tradition to talk about alumni who demonstrated great personal vision and a commitment to making a contribution to the public good. As the thousands of graduates are about to embark on a new chapter of their lives, I believe it is important to remind them of other alumni whose contributions have made a true difference in the world.
This June I talked about Daniel Pearl. A member of the Class of 1985, he studied communications while at Stanford and graduated with honors. By all accounts, he was an enormously charming, brilliant, funny and compassionate man with an interest in global justice. He also was passionate about music and its ability to transcend differences. As a late-night deejay on KZSU, he served up a mix of music as wide-ranging as his own eclectic interests. His friends said he was an excellent musician—equally comfortable on classical violin and bluegrass fiddle—and he made a point of joining musical groups every place he called home.
Like many graduating students, he was not quite sure what he wanted to do with his life. He spent some time on the ski slopes of Sun Valley, patching together a living by working at a convenience store. As classmate Karen Edwards told Stanford Report years later, the resulting boredom was a great help in clarifying his thinking.
He began his career as a journalist at three Massachusetts newspapers, first at the North Adams Transcript, then the Springfield Union News and the Berkshire Eagle. His talent was recognized early; while he was at the Eagle, a five-part series on land use garnered him the American Planning Association Award.
In 1990 he joined the Wall Street Journal. He worked for the Journal for a dozen years on stories that were as diverse and idiosyncratic as their author. Danny’s stories evoked a sense of humanity. He found his stories in every corner of the globe—from posts in Atlanta, Washington, London and Paris, where he met Mariane Van Neyenhoff, the French journalist who became his wife. In 2000, they moved to India, where Danny served as the Journal’s South Asia bureau chief. Wherever he went, he was interested in promoting understanding and tolerance, in connecting people through their stories.
On January 23, 2002, Daniel Pearl was abducted in Pakistan while covering a story for the Journal; a month later, he was murdered. His death played out on the international stage in videotape released by his captors. It was horrific—a tragic loss for his family and friends, for the Stanford community, and for the world at large. Mariane was pregnant with their first child; Adam was born in May 2002.
Daniel Pearl’s death brought about an outpouring of grief and indignation from people across the world. But as tragic as his death was, it is his life—and his deep commitment to promoting understanding among all people—that we remember and honor today. Five years have passed, but the story of his courage and passion for life lives on.
In 2002, the Daniel Pearl Foundation was established. Through the foundation, Danny’s parents, Judea and Ruth Pearl, continue to spread the message of his goodwill and good works: through the Daniel Pearl World Music Days held annually in October around the anniversary of Danny’s birthday, through a variety of fellowships and internships for journalists, and through annual lecture series at Stanford and UCLA that focus on improving the understanding of people around the world.
Fifty of Danny’s best pieces live on in the collection At Home in the World: Collected Writings from The Wall Street Journal. In the foreword, Mariane Pearl wrote:
“Our commitment to journalism as our means of changing the world deepened every day. . . . For us—for Danny—journalism epitomized the path for charting a better world future. . . . It is our task to educate, inform and provide keys to people so that they will not be held hostage to the ignorance bred in every corner of the world. It takes courage.”
In his work and his life experiences, Daniel Pearl demonstrated remarkable bravery and endeavored to make a real difference in the world. His personal story is one of deep commitment, dedication and service to the highest purposes—everything we know today to be the Stanford spirit. It is not necessarily the length of one’s life that matters most but rather the quality and intensity with which one lives that life. In that way, Daniel Pearl’s story will continue to inspire people and his legacy will live on at Stanford as an example of how one person—acting with integrity, commitment and compassion—can influence the world in which we live.
