When this year’s commencement speaker, Tim Wise, was in college at Tulane University, he worked extensively on the anti-apartheid movement, eventually earning the thanks of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.
Years later, he still works to address social injustice through public speaking, publishing and serving as Senior Advisor to the Fisk University Race Relations Institute in Nashville. When he speaks at this year’s commencement, he expects to focus on “the importance of critical thinking as a lifelong process, and taking action against the injustices that one confronts in this world,” Wise wrote via email.
Wise first spoke at Grinnell in the fall of 1999, giving a speech entitled “Breaking Ranks: Why Whites Must Join the Fight for Racial Equality” as part of a mini-symposium on whiteness sponsored by Diversity Coalition. Other students have heard Wise speak at a white privilege conference at Central College in Pella, Iowa.
“Danny [Cochrane] and I had heard him speak at the white privilege conference, and we were really impressed by him,” said Katie Pieper ’03, a member of the Commencement Committee. “He seems like a good person to represent Grinnell to our parents. He’s controversial and inspirational.”
The search for a commencement speaker begins during a class’s junior year, after the SGA president approves Commencement Committee applicants. Committee members brainstorm potential speakers, solicit ideas from classmates and compile a list of potential speakers.
The Commencement Committee must balance finding a memorable speaker with his or her fees. The idea is generally to focus funds on the entire weekend’s events, instead of a spending “the bulk of the money on a 10 minute speech,” Pieper said.
The top candidate is contacted informally, then invited formally by the President of the college, said Jon Petitt, director of conference operations, who sits on the Committee as a non-voting member.
The choice of Wise as a commencement speaker came relatively late in the game in comparison to many years’ choices. Negotiations for the committee’s top choice fell through in February, leaving the committee to look back over their possibilities again.
Unlike most commencement speakers, Wise will not receive an honorary degree. “This is not meant to reflect negatively on the speaker, but under the circumstances, we decided not to offer the speaker an honorary degree,” said Faculty Chair Mark Montgomery, Economics, who sits on the Honorary Degree Recipient Committee. “We were in a difficult position, because the person we thought was going to come didn’t.”
Unlike many commencement speakers, who tend to have reached the pinnacles of their careers, Wise is still rising in his field, said Pieper. “He’s young, so I think he’ll relate to students. We were interested in getting someone who’d make us think, not someone who’d make us count the minutes of the speech,” she said.
Wise also reflects a commitment to and comment on social justice common at Grinnell commencement speeches. Via email Wise advised graduates “to remember that injustice never is defeated by wishful thinking, and that unless one is speaking out for peace, equity and justice for all peoples, one is implicitly collaborating with the forces of war, inequality and injustice. In other words, the world is up to them.” —Sara Millhouse