President Lawrence Bacow told the Daily yesterday that in an ideal world he would eliminate celebrity speakers from Commencement and bestow the honor on a different Tufts faculty member of distinction each year instead.
"If I had my way, we'd dispense with outside Commencement speakers," Bacow said.
The president thinks that a Commencement speech should present hard questions that provoke introspection and self-assessment among outgoing students. "I don't think we're there to be entertained on Commencement day," he said. "You're there to be challenged."
Professors are more likely to give provocative speeches that will make students think about how they should use their Tufts degrees to do good in the world, according to Bacow. "Commencement should be a time for reflection," he said.
"The issue is, 'Who is going to say something important?' [But right now] it's, 'How big a celebrity can you land?'"
The president said that while students get excited for famous speakers, the less sensational personalities can often make the better orators. "One of the best speeches I have heard on this campus [came from] Margaret Marshall," the chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and a former anti-apartheid activist in South Africa, Bacow said.
Students were not generally enthusiastic about this choice, but she proved to be a provocative speaker, according to Bacow. "Students were all over me, and she gave an unbelievable Commencement speech," he said.
Bacow added that having faculty members deliver Commencement addresses could serve as a tribute to Tufts' best teachers. "I can see how something like that could be a tremendous honor for a faculty member," he said.
