Journalist cites ‘power of the W&J education’
A bagpiper leads the procession at Washington & Jefferson College’s 216th commencement Saturday.
Washington & Jefferson College president Tori Haring-Smith and other administrators process during the college’s 216th commencement Saturday.
Graduates process during Washington & Jefferson College’s 216th commencement Saturday.
Graduates process during Washington & Jefferson College’s 216th commencement Saturday.
Graduates process during Washington & Jefferson College’s 216th commencement Saturday.
Graduates process during Washington & Jefferson College’s 216th commencement Saturday.
Graduates process during Washington & Jefferson College’s 216th commencement Saturday.
Washington & Jefferson College president Tori Haring-Smith addresses the audience during the college’s 216th commencement Saturday.
Keynote speaker Howard Fineman, global editorial director of Huffington Post Media Group, addresses graduates during Washington & Jefferson College’s commencement Saturday
Keynote speaker Howard Fineman, global editorial director of Huffington Post Media Group, was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters at Washington & Jefferson College’s commencement Saturday.
More than 300 Washington & Jefferson College students turned their tassels from right to left Saturday at the college’s 216th commencement ceremony.
Saturday’s ceremony started with students proceeding onto the lawn of Olin Fine Arts Center to the traditional graduation song, “Pomp and Circumstance.”
W&J President Tori Haring-Smith welcomed the students and guests and congratulated the graduates before introducing Pittsburgh native Howard Fineman, an award-winning political journalist and global editorial director of the Huffington Post who delivered the keynote address.
Fineman joked that, until today, the greatest number of presidents he ever saw at one time was at the White House in 1991, when President George H.W. Bush invited the four other living presidents to a reunion.
“Now, here I am and there are hundreds of Presidents around,” he quipped. “There’s only one other President I need to meet. He’s the most powerful person on the planet. I speak of Commissioner Roger Goodell, W&J Class of 1981. Barack Obama can blow up the world. Roger Goodell can blow up the New England Patriots. That is the power of the W&J education.”
Fineman, who has interviewed every major presidential candidate since 1984, encouraged the students, telling them their W&J liberal arts education has prepared them for “a future in which things are going to change and change and change again. The only constant in life is change, and you are prepared for that in every possible way.”
His speech was filled with hope, humor and optimism, and Fineman asked the graduates to sort through the “overwhelmingly, suffocatingly available” information found on social media and the Internet, and to be “citizen editors,” using their knowledge to find “meaning and moral essence in the noise, and find a way to contribute to the ongoing conversation that is our country.”
Fineman told the class he considers millennials ground zero for the 2016 presidential campaign because they played an important role in deciding the 2008 and 2012 campaigns and are the “undecided of the undecided” in the upcoming election. He predicted the 2016 election is going to be the nastiest and most brutal in modern times because “there will be too much money chasing too few votes, and hope may matter less than fear, I fear.”
He concluded with words of advice, rules which he dubbed the “Seven C’s:
1. Curiosity. “Always ask why, always seek more knowledge. Educate yourself. Put down the phone, go there,” said Fineman. “I had a journalism professor whose simple advice was ‘Go there.'”
2. Critical thinking. “Never assume anything.”
3. Context. “Try to put everything you consume in the media into context.”
4. Calmness. “Be calm. The world of media and society around you is operating at an ever faster and faster pace to the point of making everyone crazy. Stand back, be calm.”
5. Compassion. “Nothing is worth communicating or knowing that doesn’t relate somehow to the idea of love and justice in the world. You don’t know things just for the sake of knowing them. You know them to make things better for your family, for yourself, to realize your potential for the country, for the world.”
6. Connect. “Once you’ve figured something out to your satisfaction, say it out loud. Get in the conversation. That’s what I think American democracy is about.”
7. Conscience. “You need an internal moral compass to discern what’s important,” said Fineman, who then quoted George Washington.
“Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience,” said Fineman. “It was George Washington who said that. When he did so, he was a young man about your age. He was a student heading out into life. W&J has lit that celestial fire within you. Now go and light the way for us all.”
Valerie Dunlap, the first women’s basketball Academic All-American at W&J, was valedictorian.
Fineman and the Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, 26th presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, received honorary degrees from W&J, along with Tony and Grammy award-winner and Pittsburgh native Billy Porter, and distinguished civil rights activist and educator Dr. Thomas Gaither.
Jefferts Schori, a trained oceanographer, was ordained into the priesthood in 1994. She is the first woman elected as a primate in the Anglican Communion.
Porter, a singer, composer, actor, playwright and director, made his name on Broadway in the ’90s before pursuing a solo career as a singer and making his directorial and writing debuts. He won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Actor, a 2013 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theatre Album, and the 2013 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a musical for his performance in Kinky Boots.
Gaither, a retired biology and botany professor at Slippery Rock University, was an important figure in the non-violent civil rights movement as a young man. In 1961, while serving as the field secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality, he and eight students of Rock Hill’s Junior College commemorated the one-year anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins by ordering hamburgers and sitting down at the whites-only lunch counter of McCrory’s variety store in Rock Hill, S.C. The group, known as the “Friendship Nine” was immediately arrested and chose to serve a month of hard labor at a prison camp instead of paying a $100 fine that they believed would support the faulty system that punished them.