Since the President’s Spring Town Meeting, students have been eagerly awaiting news about the speaker for this year’s Commencement. Typically, that guest and other honorands are announced then, but this year that announcement didn’t come for more than a month afterwards.
In fact, some might say it still has not been announced, as communication has been nil from President Shirley Ann Jackson’s office, shy of a brief reference in the university’s newsletter, Inside Rensselaer, late last week.
The speaker this year will be Peter Schwartz ’68. If you don’t have to reply “Who?” to that last sentence, you’re better off than most of this year’s class.
Schwartz, as it turns out, is “an internationally renowned futurist,” whatever that is; an author; and the cofounder of the Global Business Network—apparently all of the qualifications needed to be a Commencement speaker. He actually attended Rensselaer and graduated with a degree in aeronautical engineering. If you attended the colloquy that preceded the opening of the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in October, you may remember him from the discussion. Otherwise, this man is truly nobody of great importance or interest to our class.
An e-mail that was sent to the class in mid-November listed possible candidates that the Institute was pursuing, including Kofi Annan, Steve Jobs, Henry Kissinger, Condoleeza Rice, and Alan Greenspan, among many other prominent individuals. I won’t waste space listing their titles, as their names are as familiar as a favorite pair of shoes. The e-mail included a note referencing the obvious caliber of speaker we could expect—I think we fell short on that expectation.
It is safe to say that none of the suggestions from the class were taken into consideration and that we truly failed at finding a speaker who can address the class as it begins its future in the real world.
In addition to giving the Commencement speech, Schwartz will also receive an honorary degree, as recognition for his distinct achievements. I am still researching to find a worthy list of accomplishments.
Someone asked me who the recent Commencement speakers have been. I rattled off names including Hillary Clinton, Bill Cosby, Wesley Clark, Bill Nye, Thomas Friedman, and last year’s David Gergen. Perhaps you don’t know all of these people but you’d know the organizations they’re affiliated with—The New York Times, CNN, NATO, and others.
For Schwartz, I had to Google the Global Business Network to find out it’s a strategy firm, though I assumed as much from his background. Perhaps we should keep them on retainer, since we could certainly use the advice “in the midst of extraordinary global economic uncertainty” that Jackson has written about.
My hopes for a Commencement speaker were varied, but mostly I wanted two things. For one, when I told my family who he was, I wanted them to be impressed. And, second, and most importantly, I believe that the Commencement speaker should be someone who epitomizes everything Rensselaer students are. Though he is an alumnus, he is relatively unknown to students, and I do not believe that Schwartz will be able to achieve either of those things for me. While he may be very bright and accomplished in his own right, I believe anything he says will be diluted by the fact that he is not an influential player and lacks the prestige most people would expect and want. I am interested in what he will say. However, for a once-in-a-lifetime experience, this is not quite how I imagined it would pan out. We failed in finding a speaker who is comparable to the reputation and esteem we as a university claim to have.
