Just because graduates have received their degrees does not mean that the learning process has stopped, John Major told the Class of 2006 during the University’s 145th Commencement.
The former prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland spoke to an audience of more than 13,000, including some 2,500 graduates, during the May 19 ceremony in Brookings Quadrangle.
“Learning continues well beyond academia. In the university of life, it never stops,” said Major, who had to leave formal schooling at 16 to help support his family. “My own experience has taught me that a good education benefits not only the recipient, but also everyone influenced by them throughout their lifetime.
“It is a priceless and continuing asset. Socrates taught Plato. Plato taught Aristotle. Aristotle taught Alexander the Great. Three of the great minds of the ancient world shaped one of the great commanders of history. In just such a fashion, knowledge accumulates and is passed on through the generations.”
And because of that accumulation and passing along of knowledge, Major feels the future is in good hands despite all of the problems worldwide.
“Despite all of the difficulties that confront our world at the moment — and they are many and varied — despite all those difficulties, I am confident about the future,” he said. “It is likely that a large number of today’s graduates will be tomorrow’s leaders. And by leaders, I don’t just mean statesmen or women, or captains of industry or military heroes.
“I mean leaders in our professions, in our communities, in all aspects of our life; Men and women who will look to the resolution of the long-term dilemmas that the previous generations have failed to solve.”
However, Major cautioned that it will take a special kind of leader and that some things need to change in order for the leadership to be effective.
“Sound-byte leadership will not do,” he said. “Those glib phrases that are supposed to cure a serious problem are a fraud.
“If it’s a serious problem, it can’t be solved by a sound byte. And if it can be solved by a sound byte, then it’s not a serious problem.
“In 40 years of public life, I only ever heard one worthwhile sound byte, and that was Boris Yeltsin before lunch at the Kremlin. I said to him, ‘Boris, tell me in one word, what is the state of Russia?’ He said, ‘Good.’ I was surprised — it was falling to pieces at the time. I said, ‘Tell me in two words.’ He said, ‘Not good.’
“Never accept sound-byte government,” Major added, to loud applause.
He said leadership has many facets, referring to the various leadership styles of Abraham Lincoln, Josef Stalin, Genghis Khan and Mother Teresa as examples in history.
Major, who while prime minister initiated an unprecedented effort to secure lasting peace in Northern Ireland, went on to address terrorism.
“In our world, much has changed. The fear of global war that the Class of ’56 would have remembered only too well is gone. Today the fear is more of global terror. Terrorism has been with us since ancient times and now it is globalizing. …
“Terror has developed a particular flavor,” Major continued. “It has become a tool of extreme religion and a vehicle to oppose the free-market system. We should be concerned about it, but we should put terror in a proper context — so far it has failed utterly to gain any of its political objectives.
“The threat before us is the attempt to radicalize all of Islam — to set Muslim against non-Muslim by playing upon prejudice and by posturing hatred. This campaign can and does cause mayhem, but often it merely entrenches more securely that which it most seems to destroy.”
Terrorism, he continued, is “ultimately ineffective.”
“Mahatma Gandhi had far more success changing minds than Osama bin Laden will ever have,” he said. “Terrorism and democracy are polar opposites. They cannot coexist; one must defeat the other. … More important than any policing matters, democracy must deny terrorism its causes.”
He then turned his attention back to the graduating class and recounted a visit several years ago to a shantytown just outside of Lima, Peru — a place he said, that “was a dismal place, a place that seemed to me almost entirely without hope.”
After having breakfast with a local priest, the two of them saw schoolchildren on the way to class. The priest stopped a girl and asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.
“She looked up at him with a look of puzzlement because I think she knew that he already knew the answer,” Major said. “But nonetheless, eyes shining with optimism, she replied, ‘I want to be a brain surgeon, I want to be a brain surgeon.’ A soaring ambition for a child with nothing in a family that had nothing from the worst slums in Peru, a nation that has very little.
“I have no idea if she will ever realize her dream, but the message from that little girl is unmistakable to the educated graduates of a great university like Washington. It’s a message everyone should listen to: Be ambitious. Aim high. Do today what your instincts tell you could wait until tomorrow. Never underestimate what you might be able to achieve.
“With luck, skill and effort, there is no ambition that need be denied you.”