2014 Keynote

Stevenson College Commencement Speech

Dana Frank, Professor of History

University of California, Santa Cruz

June 15, 2014

Thank you so much Alice, for all you've done for Stevenson College. And thank all of you here for listening to me, and for giving me exactly seven to ten minutes of your time (Although I realize you have no choice in the matter, and really just want me to get off the stage so the cool part can begin).

It's a great honor and a great joy to be up here as the Stevenson College commencement speaker, after so many years. I'm looking up at that hill at my old dorm, and thinking about all the things I learned when I was there, starting in 1974. (And the answer to your math question is 58)

I learned all kinds of things.

In my oceanography class I learned why the beaches are steep in the summer and flat in the winter (although maybe it's the other way around).

In the core course I learned about Marx and Freud and Nietsche and Malcolm X and Virginia Woolf, just like you.

In my astronomy class I learned about red giants and blue dwarves and imagined them dancing together across the sky. Next door at Cowell College I myself learned to waltz, to a live orchestra, leaning back into my partner's arm at the waist, in a Laura Ashley dress that dragged to the floor.

And then there all the things I learned NOT to ever do again--which I'll leave up to your imagination.

It was indeed still the glorious Sixties, and in my dorm we had a cooking cooperative in which we ate way too many yams. People were very creative. Our dorm was supposed to be a cleaning coop, but four guys who called themselves the Maids in the Shade offered to clean the bathrooms for the year for all of us, in exchange for our cleaning refunds at the end of the year. (One of those four guys, to remain unnnamed, is now a mathematics professor at Gavilan College and an upstanding Member of the Santa Cruz City School Board).

But let's be clear about any supposed Golden Age at UCSC: in the four years I was here I never once had a course taught by a person of color, and only three of my 24 professors were women. What didn't I learn?

The most important thing I did learn was critical thinking--that vague, hard-to-define concept that is the core of a college education. It means the ability to see the way things are constructed, to see that things that appear to be "the facts" or "the objective truth" are in fact created by other human beings, who may or may or know what they themselves are talking about. I was a meeting recently with two U.S. Congressmembers, and someone asked them about funding for science education (of which they are both big promoters). They said that the most important thing was that young people learn to think critically about evidence. That's critical thinking.

That's the best of UCSC. The best of a UCSC education is also celebrating being creative, and having fun, and making the world a better place, in whatever small or huge way you can.

When I graduated, it was in the lower plaza at Stevenson, between the dorms. We didn't wear caps and gowns for some obscure 60s reason which I cannot now recall. After the ceremony, after all the lists of honors and prizes, my closest friend's father turned to her and asked her why she hadn't gotten any honors. And I learned one last thing: for every prize or honor, there's someone else wonderful and hardworking and smart who didn't get one, and might feel bad about themselves as a result. As a future teacher, I learned to celebrate every single student equally.

I myself wasn't a star student, although I did well. I didn't lead or even join any organizations on campus, that I remember. I didn't reach out to the community, or invent any cures. When I graduated, I had no idea what I was doing. And it took me years to figure out what to do. I'm still trying to figure it out. So here's the first lesson:

It's not like you are going to have it all figured out. Ever.

All my life I've plodded along, trying to make the world a better place in very small ways, never knowing if it made a difference. I taught my history classes, and taught my students to believe in themselves and their own powers, and to believe they could change the world, just like other people had in the past.

And then one of those things happened to me that changes your life. On June 28, 2009--five years ago this month--there was a military coup in Honduras, where I'd been doing research for nine years. My closest friend was grabbed by the military on the fourth day and thrown bodily into the back of a truck on top of fifteen other people. Another friend, who had an opposition radio show, had his daughter killed to try to silence him. It went on for months and months and months--and still hasn't stopped.

I got up every morning at 6:30 and tried to figure out what powers I had to make it stop. I thought I knew all about critical thinking, but reading the newspapers about Honduras every day, and knowing what they said was almost completely wrong, taught me a whole new lesson about how the news is constructed. The reporters didn't know what they were talking about; or, worse yet, repeated deliberate lies and disinformation, and remained almost completely silent about the repression. And so I learned to put on trim little suits and talk to Members of Congress and Senators and write opinion articles in the papers, and talk to wonderful journalists who listened to me. I can tell you in my wildest imagination I would never have thought I'd become an Expert on Honduras, and testify in Congress and the Canadian Parliament. And as a historian, it's been an incredible experience to step into the very history I was writing about.

So, the second lesson is to be open to possibilities. You never know what will happen next, or who you'll become. But at some point in your life--hopefully many--you will have a chance to stand up for something, and make a difference.

Or you hope it will it will make a difference. Because I'll be honest, it's been rough. The post-coup regime is still in power in Honduras and committing vast human rights abuses, and the United States is still sending tens of millions of dollars in police and military aid to support it. It seems impossible to move the Department of State....and it's emotionally brutal to keep banging my head against it, day after day, month after month, year after year.

It seems impossible.

And I'm sure for all you parents, it seemed absolutely impossible to raise that kid you see in front of you, so strong and independent and educated and beautiful. Let's take a moment to celebrate what you did.

And let's also celebrate what you didn't do. You didn't throw them onto the floor at two months when they cried for 76 hours straight. You didn't strangle them when they ran up a giant bill at the mall on your visa card. You didn't greet their dates with a shotgun when they left for the very shifty dance at an undisclosed sketchy location. If nothing else in life, you did one great thing. You raised this wonderful kid. And you paid and paid and paid for it, emotionally and financially. So, let's celebrate what you did!

And now, to those wonderful students themselves, let me say, I'm sure it seemed impossible for you, too--that you would pass all those finals, buy all those books, file all the forms, and even make it here to this ceremony on time. And I know it's scary out there beyond the university. The economy is a disaster, and you're thinking, please, please, just give me that job at Starbucks. And then there's climate change! The landscape is burning, the seas are engulfing the coasts, and the ice is melting out from under the polar bears. Let's not pretend it's not going to be a LITTLE challenging.

But now you have a wonderful UCSC education, and that means you know how to be creative, and have fun, and think critically...and make the world a better place.

And you never know what will happen next. Let me tell you, both as a historian, and someone who's 58, you never know what will happen next.

Last February I had just come out of a horrible meeting in the Senate, during which I realized I had been very deliberately slimed in one of those maneuvers straight out of House of Cards. I was really really depressed about all my policy advocacy on Honduras and how we were seemingly getting nowhere, even slipping backward.

And as I walked out of the Senate offices, past the Methodist Building, right there in between the Veterans of Foreign Wars building and the Quaker building, there on the white plastic sign on the lawn of the Methodist Building sign was a quote from Nelson Mandela:

It always seems impossible, until it's done.

I thought, I can do this. And I kept knocking on doors.

And two weeks ago, to my utter astonishment, at 12:20 in the morning, there was a big fat beautiful article in the New York Times that read:

"Lawmakers ask State Dept. to Review Support for Honduras." 108 members of congress had just signed a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry raising issues about human rights in Honduras and questioning US funding for the Honduran police and military.

The wall I thought was impervious was suddenly, maybe, hopefully, cracking open. And there it was, in the New York Times.

It always seems impossible until it's done.

Look around. It's done. It really is done. And you did it. Ladies, and Gentlemen, and everyone in between, I give you the Stevenson College Class of 2014.