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Dean McCartney's Diploma Ceremony Remarks

Graduates, today is your day! All of us here applaud you, the class of 2011.

Graduates, many people have helped you to arrive at this special moment in your lives. Your parents, grandparents, partners, friends and others are cheering you on today, as they have throughout your time here. Graduates, I invite you to thank the many people who have supported your studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

And I notice that many of the graduates have brought their children with them. I invite all the children here to comment on today’s ceremony in whatever way they see fit! This is an Ed School after all!

There are 345 staff members who have supported you, and many of them are volunteer commencement staff today – they are the folks wearing white polo shirts. Graduates, I invite you to thank the assistant deans, program coordinators, librarians, the teams in Enrollment and Student Services, Operations, and more.

And let’s give a special thanks to the Office of Student Affairs, who have planned and hosted Commencement Week for all of us.

There are 80 faculty members who have taught and mentored you. Graduates, I invite you to thank the faculty.

You are now alumni of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. You are now a member of a community like no other I know. You will take sustenance from this place, for it will serve as your intellectual home now and always. All of us here on Appian Way will take pride as we learn about the impact of your work.

You will contribute in so many ways – as researchers, teachers, principals, superintendents, literacy specialists, community organizers, higher education administrators, art specialists, policy analysts, leaders of education organizations, and leaders in government.

Today is a day of celebration – of your passion for learning and your commitment to serve others as educators. Commencement is a ritual that honors all that you have accomplished. And what a ritual it is! The regalia, the flags and banners, the music, and the speeches. So many people have told me that they can’t remember much about their Commencement. I want to make sure you remember all this. Cognitive psychologists tell us that it takes only a few seconds to form a long-term memory. About 7 seconds to be precise. Let’s make one together right now. A collective memory that we will share. Look around you and take in this moment.

I hope you will rely on this memory when the work gets hard. And it will. One day you may fail to reach a student. One day you may fail to persuade others to take a step you believe is crucial to your work. One day you may fail to raise the funds you need to greenlight a project. This moment can serve as a reminder of the optimism you feel right now. You get to construct your reality after all. No one else. When people tell you education is an intractable problem, you have the option of choosing faith in your work; you have the option of choosing to move forward.

Many things inspire me during dark days. As you may remember from orientation, I often rely on poetry. So do many people, like the late Elizabeth Edwards. She faced many challenges in her life – the loss of a child, a public betrayal by her husband, a US Senator, and a cancer that took her life far too early. Shortly after her death, I learned that Edwards kept a verse from a Leonard Cohen song taped on the wall by her desk:

Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets through.

Emily Dickinson says that a good metaphor takes the top of your head off. I love that Dickinson uses a metaphor to describe the power of it.

I heard about Cohen’s lyrics and their meaning to Elizabeth Edwards from my close friend, Betty Sprague. I was so moved by Cohen’s words that I showed them to my colleagues in the Dean’s office. Since then, I have thought a great deal about the meaning of these four layered lines.

Ring the bells that still can ring. Bells announce, proclaim, and signal, as they did this morning in Harvard Yard for you. “Ring the bell” is an idiom, of course, which means to accomplish or achieve. The first line in Cohen’s verse reminds us to do what we can. We cannot ring all the bells, but there will always be bells we can ring.

I like the second line best. Forget your perfect offering. It is such good advice. I suspect many of us in this community strive for perfection in ourselves and in our work. We want to be as good as possible.

With his third line, Cohen tells us that there is no perfection, because there is a crack in everything. Now, a crack is a fissure, but it’s also an opening. For Cohen, it’s the latter – the crack lets in the light. That’s how the light gets through.

Light is perhaps the most powerful metaphor in all of literature. Writers of all genres use light to represent goodness, wisdom, love, and even God. There is always light—if we look for it.

Beth Berg, my beloved colleague in the Dean’s office, framed Cohen’s four lines for me as a Christmas present. She chose a verdant green paper, the color of spring, embossed with leaves, on which to print the verse. She chose a lacy, antique frame and threaded a green bow at the top. Even unwrapped, it looks like the special gift that it is. A gift of optimism, of faith in this work we do, and of the choice to move forward in the dark days. Beth’s gift was a perfect offering, so maybe they do exist from time to time.

I am so grateful for friends like Betty, colleagues like Beth, poetry in my life, and days like this one. We are going to ring the bells for you now.

Wherever your work takes you, listen for your bell. And use this collective memory when you need it.

Thank you.

For full coverage of Commencement 2011, visit http://wpdev.gse.harvard.edu/news-impact/tag/commencement/.

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