Commencement Speakers

I don't remember much about the commencement exercises I attended as a student and later as a faculty member or about the commencement addresses by locally or nationally well-known speakers. Or rather, I don't remember the successful commencement speeches; I do remember a cringe-making commencement address in 2002 by Jeane Kirkpatrick, former United Nations Ambassador; the speech was so rambling that I thought perhaps Ms. Kirkpatrick was ill. Over at Slate, Timothy Noah has some useful advice on choosing commencement speakers: instead of choosing people who have succeeded, choose people who have failed and learned from their failures. As he says, "people typically have a much easier time recounting, in often vivid detail, where they screwed up in life than they do explaining what they did right." His suggestions are here: "Wrong Commencement Speakers!," Timothy Noah, at Slate, posted Monday, May 18, 2009.