But in 1968, with the Soviet invasion and crackdown, Klima’s ideas became dangerous. He could have fled, but he chose to return home and continue his work in defiance of the Communist regime. He organized an underground meeting of writers who circulated manuscripts in secret. Over the course of 18 years, those writers produced three hundred different works of art. They were critics, of course: critics of tyranny, critics of violence. But they were creators, too, creators of plays, novels, and poetry. They imagined, and helped create, a new and better world.
What will you imagine? A better business, a smarter school, a stronger community? Whatever you are against, it is time to create something you are for.
At Yale, you have learned to do both: to imagine and create. You have studied and explored new ideas; made art and music; excelled in athletics; launched companies; and served your neighbors and the world. You have created a vibrant, diverse, and exciting community.
Take these experiences with you and draw on them when you need encouragement. Remember a class that surprised you; a conversation that inspired you; a professor who believed in you. And take care to avoid what Toni Morrison calls “second-rate goals and secondhand ideas.”
“Our past is bleak. Our future dim,” Morrison writes. “But if we see the world as one long brutal game, then we bump into another mystery, the mystery of beauty, of light, of the canary that sings on our skulls.”
Being for something is a search for those mysteries, for that light: it is an act of radical optimism, a belief that a more perfect world is within reach and that we can help build it.
What are you for?
You may well turn that question back to me. What are you for, Peter Salovey?
I am for the transformative power of a liberal education – one that asks you to think broadly, question everything, and embrace the joy of learning.
I am for the American Dream in all its rich promise – the idea that opportunities are shared widely and that access to education is within reach for the many, not the few.