In a wired world, don’t short-circuit souls, Brokaw says

With approximately 16,000 family members and friends in attendance, the university’s 115th Commencement culminated Sunday with the ceremony to award undergraduate degrees to more than 1,700 students.

The keynote speaker was broadcast-news icon and author Tom Brokaw, whose message to the graduates was to be mindful of their duty to contribute to society and to avoid turning exclusively to the Internet and their handheld gadgets to engage with the world.

“You live in a world of personal computers and search engines, e-mail and network, capacity and storage, research and retrieval, entertainment and commerce,” Brokaw said in his familiar baritone voice. “But it’s also important to remember that it will do us little good to wire the world if we short-circuit our souls.”

This cautionary tone dominated Brokaw’s speech, and perhaps not surprisingly. For more than four decades, Brokaw has presented the American public with news of the gravest importance—from Watergate to the war on Iraq. He first came to NBC in 1966 and anchored the NBC Nightly News from 1982 until he retired in late 2004. Since then, he has remained a presence in the business by occasionally producing longer, in-depth news reports.

A fitting speaker on Father’s Day, Brokaw also is the dad of a Stanford alumna, and he began his speech by describing how the unfolding of events on Sunday reminded him of his daughter’s graduation in 1988—from the sense of community engendered by the ceremony to the caps and gowns that he saw, as well as the bikinis and flip-flops.

Yes, despite the relocation of Commencement to Elliott Field during the renovation of Stanford Stadium, the ceremony still started with students storming the field for the pre-processional “Wacky Walk.” Some ran in, some bounced in on exercise balls, others strutted in intricate costumes and a few wore considerably less. Then the procession of Stanford faculty members and administrators, trustees and public officials walked onto the stage. Sitting beside President John Hennessy were Brokaw and Vartan Gregorian, who delivered the Commencement address Saturday to students graduating with advanced degrees. (Two ceremonies, one for graduate students and one for undergraduates, were held this year.)

Numbers provided by the Office of the University Registrar on Tuesday showed that Stanford awarded 1,755 bachelor’s degrees, 2,121 master’s degrees and 953 doctoral degrees. The senior class included 1,706 undergraduates: 841 women and 865 men. Sixty-five seniors were awarded dual bachelor’s degrees, 155 graduated with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, and 452 students completed minors.

Also, 385 seniors graduated with departmental honors, and 280 graduated with university distinction (top 15 percent of the class). The senior class also included 97 international students from 37 countries. At the graduate-student level, there were 925 international students from 77 countries.

On both days, seating was made available inside Maples Pavilion, next to Elliott Field, to accommodate overflow and those with disabilities or other issues. Approximately 300 people watched Sunday’s ceremony on large video screens inside the air-conditioned venue. “I think we got the better end of the deal,” said Tracey Hixson, of Oklahoma City, Okla. She was one of more than a dozen relatives attending the graduation of her niece, Shoney Hixson.

Outside, Joseph Chidi and several members of his family had front row seats on the field. They arrived at 7 a.m., and even though the sun continued to bear down on the early birds, it did not stop Chidi from beaming like the proud father he was. His son, Ike, graduated Sunday with a bachelor’s degree in political science.

“When I talk with him now, he’s different—more mature, more sedate, more erudite,” said Chidi, of Visalia, Calif. “I can actually argue with him, and sometimes he seems to make more sense than me.”

Indeed, Brokaw acknowledged that Sunday was a day to celebrate and enjoy. But he quickly reminded the graduates and their loved ones that other young people were not wearing caps and gowns at that moment, but military uniforms. They did not, as Brokaw described it, come from the place of privilege that allowed many of the students to get to this point. Where these other people stood was in harm’s way.

“However you may feel about the decision that placed them in peril,” Brokaw said, “you must not forget them or their families—for they have volunteered to risk their lives, if necessary, to ensure your security and to defend this country.”

Brokaw’s books include The Greatest Generation and The Greatest Generation Speaks, both of which pay tribute to those citizens who came of age between the Great Depression and World War II and then went on to build modern America. Despite the promise at the start of the 20th century—with electricity, telephones and international travel poised to take civilization to new heights—what also came about during that time were two world wars, the Holocaust and the dawn of nuclear capabilities.

“At one end of the scale, great powers developed weapons capable of ending life on earth as we know it,” Brokaw said. “At the other end of that scale, religious fanatics turned their bodies into weapons and their zealotry into suicide assaults.”

Transitioning from patriotism to optimism, Brokaw talked about the cracking of the DNA code, the spreading of political freedom abroad and the emergence of gender and race on the global agenda. He went on to tell the graduates that they have inherited what seems like a smaller planet with many more people. He called it a world of perpetual contradictions, unintended consequences and unexpected realities.

Brokaw said too many young Muslims live under politically and economically oppressive regimes, where they are easy prey for religious teachers who preach jihad against the West as a matter of faith. He said that what Americans hold dear—pluralism, the rule of law, modernity—they are taught to hate and attack.

If those issues are not addressed, people on both sides will live in a perpetual state of terror and rage, Brokaw said. “So a primary challenge of your time is to bank the fires of hostilities that are now burning out of control,” he said. “To do that requires more than a fresh political strategy or imagination. It requires the personal commitment of the best among us, the Stanford class of 2006.”

Brokaw then returned to his reminder that graduates live up to the legacy of the generation that came before them—the generation that suffered through the country’s most severe economic crash and a war that cost the lives of 50 million people in the fight against imperialism and fascism. That generation also built this country and then turned around to help rebuild those of its enemies, Brokaw added.

“You cannot take your place in the long line of those who came before you simply by sitting in front of a screen or at a keyboard,” Brokaw said. “Life away from the keyboard, the PDA and the cell phone is a life in which you connect to the websites of your personal convictions, and that is an obligation you must carry with you the rest of your days.”