John Hennessy: ‘I hope that you leave this campus with a strong reservoir of the Stanford spirit’

Graduates of Stanford University, on behalf of all members of the Stanford family, I congratulate and commend you. You also have my deep thanks for the contributions you have made to our community of scholars during your time at Stanford.

I would like to reflect for a few minutes on a phrase that has been repeated several times since this ceremony began. As each group of graduates was presented to me, I responded by conferring your degrees and admitting you to the “rights, responsibilities and privileges” that are associated with a degree granted by this university.

The language “rights, responsibilities and privileges” reminds me of the words of one of Stanford’s most distinguished alumni, John Gardner. John was a dedicated public servant and one of the nation’s leading advocates for responsible citizenship; his death in February was a tremendous loss to the Stanford community and to the country.

John defined the rights and responsibilities of a citizen in a democracy in nine simple words:

“Freedom and responsibility, liberty and duty. That’s the deal.”

John Gardner was a long-term member of the Stanford family who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology from Stanford in 1935 and 1936.

After earning his Ph.D., John began his career teaching psychology. During World War II, he realized that he also had skills for management — skills for translating ideas into action. As he noted, “It was a fruitful conflict: Action and reflection fed one another.” The desire to turn reflection into action — to make a difference in the world — would be carried out in his work for the next 60 years.

After the war, John headed up the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. John was a believer that “If you want to train leaders, you have to start early,” and he put this belief into action, playing a key role in the establishment of the White House Fellows program. In 1964, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, this country’s highest civil honor.

Defying conventional thinking, John Gardner, a lifelong Republican, joined President Lyndon Johnson’s Cabinet as secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. During his tour of duty at HEW, he helped launch Medicare and enforce the Civil Rights Act, and worked to create the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In 1968, amid the increasing national divisiveness over the Vietnam War, Gardner resigned from the Johnson administration to become chairman of the Urban Coalition. In that position, he worked with people in business, industry and government trying to address the problems that were plaguing our cities in the late 1960s.

In 1970, John founded Common Cause, a group that advocated for openness and accountability in politics. When the group sued President Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President in 1972, Gardner was placed on Nixon’s infamous “enemies list.” In 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Common Cause led the way in urging adoption of landmark legislation that placed limits on political contributions and instituted disclosure requirements for campaigns.

Throughout many challenges, John Gardner remained an optimist. In fact, after the terrorist attacks of last September, he told his daughter Francesca: “There is hope. We’ll manage — the spirit of America will survive.”

John Gardner firmly believed in the importance of our youth, in the transforming power of education and in nourishing the institutions that educate and develop the next generation. Over a period of more than three decades, he made many contributions to Stanford University.

He served on the Board of Trustees from 1968 to 1982 during a critical and challenging period for universities. He played a key role in changing the structure of the board by helping to introduce alumni-elected trustees.

He was a founding member of the national advisory board of the Haas Center and was named the first Miriam and Peter Haas Centennial Professor in Public Service. In 1984, he was awarded Stanford’s highest alumni honor — the Degree of Uncommon Man.

The John Gardner Public Service Fellowship Program was established at our Haas Center and at Berkeley in 1985. The program encourages our best and brightest students to pursue public service, and to date, more than 100 Gardner Fellows — three of whom are in this year’s graduating class — have heeded the call.

At the time of his death, John was a consulting professor in the School of Education, where he was active in the creation of a new Stanford research center focused on youth and their communities.

In his 1991 speech to Stanford’s graduating class, John Gardner reflected on the bonds that tie together members of the Stanford family, long after they have graduated.

“The physical beauty of the campus creates a sense of place that never leaves one,” John observed. “Deeper is the intellectual experience, intangible but powerful. And deeper still the personal bonds. Fifty years from now you will rediscover, away back in the cluttered attic of your memory, acts of friendship exchanged long ago, remembered with tears.”
John’s words — and his life — shine with what I think of as the Stanford spirit.

What is that spirit? In the early days of the university, when the faculty, staff and students were not worrying about the university’s survival, they began to think about developing a spirit that would define Stanford in a unique way.

In 1915, at his 20th reunion, Charles K. Field, a graduate of the Pioneer Class, gave his description of the Stanford spirit, based on a version from the university’s earliest years. I have based my description on Mr. Field’s version.

“The Stanford Spirit is not limited to one’s life on the campus. If it were it would not be worthy of its traditions. It begins ‘where the red roofs rim the blue,’ but it spreads far beyond them. It is born of Stanford associations, but it outlives them. It springs from youthful enthusiasm and rises to world ideals. It grows out of a special loyalty to Stanford and broadens into service to humankind. The Stanford Spirit buds and ripens through student years, but its harvest is forever.”

I hope that you leave this campus with a strong reservoir of the Stanford spirit, a reservoir that will grow over the years. I hope this spirit inspires you as you make your contributions to the world, and I hope it brings you back often to this special place where the Stanford spirit was born in you.

Thank you and congratulations!