Terrific? Soporific? Whatever your view on commencement speeches, they have gotten shorter over Stanford's 120 years. Among 58 addresses given from 1893 to 2009, those prior to World War I were, on average, more than twice as long as those since 1991. And one, delivered by a professor of classical philology in 1898, was more than four times as long.
As speeches have shortened, their content has become more personal. Early commencement speakers rarely referred to themselves or addressed graduates directly, but since 1900, the use of first- and second-person words (e.g., I, my, you, your) has steadily increased.
WHAT SPEAKERS SAID
Subject matter has changed with the times, often reflecting current events. Some messages, however, have been consistent: Serve others, the world is changing, these times are challenging, you can make a difference.
Summary facts alone cannot convey the poignant anecdotes, humor, insights and wisdom that Stanford's commencement speakers have shared throughout the decades. For example, in 1992, the late Kirk Varnedoe, MA '70, PhD '72, began his speech:
I work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This means that every morning I leave my home and the normal world of daylight and humdrum street life, and enter another kind of world, where traditional ideas of space are radically compressed or eliminated; where wild deformations of imaginative passion transform human faces into unnatural masks of anxiety and alienation; where time itself seems to be warped; where lost dreams of machine technology that date to the Russian revolution collide with assemblages of old cans, spattered paint and the displaced, chaotic detritus of our times . . . and then I get off the subway and go into the museum.
On a serious note, speaking two months after the 1906 earthquake, Benjamin Wheeler, president of UC-Berkeley, told graduates:
The same disorder of Nature which last April made men distrust the solid earth on which they dwelt, revealed to them the sure resource of human helpfulness; and the same distress which showed how small their actual need in things of sense, pointed straight toward the things that are real and the things that abide.
WHAT GRADUATES REMEMBER
In a 2005 commencement speech, former Vice President Al Gore confessed that he could not remember who spoke at his graduation, and that he expected in 30 years no one in the audience would remember anything he said. To test the truth of Gore's claim, a random sample of 232 Stanford alumni from the past 40 years were polled.
Overall, 59.5 percent could recall who spoke at their graduation, 37.9 percent could remember specific content from the speech, and 28.8 percent could remember its theme.
If commencement speakers find these numbers disappointingly low, they should take comfort in at least two things. First, recollection was significantly higher among alumni who graduated in the past 10 years; while speeches may not leave an indelible mark, their impression lasts years. Second, speakers should realize what they are up against. As one alumna explained:
[A]s I was listening to my commencement speech I had just days before finished 16 years of formal schooling. I was 21 years old and for the first time in my memory I had no idea of what I would be doing in September . . . my immediate future was a big tabula rasa.
And I was newly in love with another graduating senior I had met just weeks before in guitar class and the day after graduation we were embarking on a 3-week hike of the John Muir Trail . . . In all honesty, if Sandra Day O'Connor, Mother Theresa, or Bob Dylan had spoken at my commencement, I surely would have remembered WHO my commencement speaker was. But would I have retained any more of the content of their speeches? Probably not. I was simply A) too excited; B) too distracted; and C) too hot. They should make the caps and gowns white.
The reference to the weather should not be dismissed. Nearly 15 percent of alumni mentioned the heat, unprompted. And three alumni blamed their poor memory on too much champagne.
NUMBERS AT A GLANCE
Average speech length prior to World War I: 6,168.3 words.
Average speech length, World War II to 2009: 2,831.65 words.
Average speech length since 1991: 2,900 words.
Longest Speech: 12,671 words (1898)
Highest percentage of first-person words: Steve Jobs (2005), 6.27%
Percentage of alumni since 1970 who recall:
- their graduation speaker: 59.5%
- specific speech content: 37.9%
- their speech's theme: 28.8%
Percentage of alumni since 2000 who recall:
- their graduation speaker: 93.1%
- specific speech content: 70.9%
- their speech's theme: 54.7%
Daniel Newark, '03, MA '11, is a PhD student in organization studies. This survey was part of a research project.
