2008 Doctoral Convocation Speech

I am delighted to greet you all on behalf of the faculty and staff of the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

Graduates of 2008, we hood you tonight as a sign of welcome into the community of scholars.

I know you want to acknowledge the faculty members who have accompanied you on your journey. I ask the faculty stand and be recognized for their contributions as mentors and advisors, coaches and colleagues.

All the successes we honor today are possible because of the gifts you have been given, because of your own hard work, and late night and early morning hours, but you also have accomplished much because of those who have supported you financially, emotionally, spiritually and intellectually. I ask you to acknowledge the families and friends gathered here today.

Graduates, you enter your professions and the academy with a commitment to life-long learning and professional practice – habits of mind, skills, knowledge and virtues instilled within you during your years at Washington Square.

The words, ‘Pestare et Praestare,’ are emblazoned on your diploma. ‘Pestare et Praestare’ is Latin for persist and excel, the words on the University’s official seal.

In the time you have spent with us, you have certainly persisted. Perhaps you feel you know that aspect of our University’s seal more than the excelling. Perhaps it feels as if your doctoral program would never end. It did for me. One day, while I was writing my dissertation -- 100 years ago -- I was sitting on the steps of Burton Hall at the University of Minnesota when a street worker came to fill a major pothole. He mixed the tar and filled the hole and rolled a huge roller back and forth to flatten it, and then he stepped back, folded his arms and beheld his work. He was done. And I remember being filled with envy, wondering when I could say, “I am done.”

Your barista at Starbucks knows she is done: when she puts the lid on your coffee cup and hands it to you and you pay. Even a political pundit knows he is done when the last vote is counted and the candidate elected – and aren’t we looking forward to that moment!

Would I ever be able to have that feeling – of being done – in my chosen career of academic psychology – I wondered, sitting on steps of Burton Hall that day?

The poet Ranier Maria Rilke gave this advice to a young writer in his famous ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ Rilke wrote:

…try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

All of us, who are doctorally educated, have signed up for a career of ‘living the question.”

Last week in the Science Times there was a story of a Siberian family who for 60 years kept track of what was happening under the surface of Lake Baikal, the deepest and largest body of fresh water on earth once a week. They went by boat in summer and over the ice in winter to record water temperature and clarity, and track the plant and animal species.

The researcher who began this ‘habit’ of measuring the lake was Dr. Kozhov – Dr. Kozhov trained his daughter to collect these data, and she trained her daughter. Through three generations of researchers the data were collected-- despite the death of the original researcher and then his daughter -- through years of political, economic and social turmoil -- and even after funds for the program had dried up. The researchers persisted and the data this family collected for 60 years is now informing what we know about global warming.

And so, 60 years into the study does the surviving researcher have a sense that the pothole is filled? That she is done?

The Times reports that the data collection continues.

Through your doctoral scholarly work, you have added to our knowledge, but can you say you are done questioning? Done searching for answers? Done seeking information to better treat your physical therapy patients? Are you done generating the best data about the effects of poverty on children? Are you finished living the questions that you asked in your doctoral dissertation?

I hope not.

During your time of persistence at NYU, you have acquired a great deal of knowledge, enough to dazzle and mystify your families and friends.
To judge from the titles of the dissertations you have excelled in some erudite areas.

And now, you are receiving the final degree in your field, the final sign that not only have you persisted, but you have also excelled. And with that excellence, I remind you, as your dean, come responsibilities.

Most excellent doctoral graduates of 2008, I send you out from NYU with TWO responsibilities:

Courage and Virtuous Action.

First, you have a responsibility to be fearless in the expression of your own excellence.

Nelson Mandela, the great spiritual and political leader of post Apartheid South Africa writes:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? …. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. … And as we let our own light shine, we give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence liberates others.

Your first responsibility, because of the excellence of your accomplishments -- that we celebrate today is to use your talent and training courageously.

The second responsibility you carry with you as you leave this great university, is to use your knowledge, your creativity and your skills in virtuous ways.

Pestare et Praestare : Persist and excel.

Realize that virtue and excellences have the same root in Greek. In the Aristotelian sense, virtue, that is, “excellences,” are acquired not from books and classroom teaching alone , but also from doing -- from engagement in the world,
from praxis.

Knowledge informs practice and practice informs knowledge in an iterative way. Yhis is the theory-practice link you have worked to understand .
And now, I ask you, as you leave the Square, “How will you practice your excellences?”

This fragile world needs both your courageous and your virtuous action.

Will you take your knowledge of depression and bring hope to the marginalized?
Will you strive to make health services you provide available for all who need them?
Will you use your research on the achievement gap to help all children learn and excel?
Will you illuminate how media are changing the way we live in our world, and how technology is changing who we are?

Thank you, graduates of 2008 for all your virtuous work and your courageous contributions to making our society better.

Please return to Washington Square and let us know about your work – your scholarship and practice so that we can celebrate your successes with you.

Dean Mary Brabeck