A weighty commencement address is a rarity these days, mostly because the people who graduate and those who come to witness the event mainly are in a mood to celebrate, not to cogitate. Yet the grand tradition of commencement speeches is that they compel people to stand back and see where the civilization is heading. There was, for example, Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri in 1946 and Alexander Solzhenitzen's unexpected assault at Harvard in 1978 on America's callow, materialist culture ("A World Split Apart").
The widely admired career diplomat and recent Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, has called Whitman College graduates to confront the world as it is, not as they'd like it to be. Here is a good review in Crosscut.
Whitman has a public policy asset in alumnus Crocker, who has semi-retired to nearby Spokane, WA. He may challenge their assumptions, which could explain the relatively muted response to his address. One hopes they appreciate him. Challenging the assumptions of contemporary academia is the duty of all responsible citizens these days.
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