2008 Woodie Awards
Why We Were Right to Invite Tim
Paul Adam
Issue date: 9/4/07 Section: Opinion
- Page 1 of 1
I’ve just finished reading Tim Russert’s thoroughly enjoyable commencement address to last year’s graduating class and whatever you may have heard, it’s quite good. It has humour, insight, and encouragement in the right proportions and in the right places. Listen here: “Remember the message our parents and grandparents and teachers repeated and repeated- and have tried so hard to instil in us- a belief [that] if you worked hard and played fair, things really would turn out all right. And you know, after working for Senators and Governors, meeting Popes and interviewing Presidents, I know they are right.”
There’s a reason Mr. Russert has been asked by so many colleges to delivery keynote and commencement speeches, he’s obviously knows what he’s doing. He should be, anyhow, he gives almost the same speech every time.
It’s true. The bulk Mr. Russert’s speech to us was also heard at Fordham, Washington University, the Catholic University of America and Creighton, to name but a few. That’s obviously a sticking point for some people and I can understand why. Never mind that John McCain explicitly pledged to give the same commencement speech at New School, Columbia and Liberty. Nobody likes getting hand-me-downs. Even if Tim’s themes remain constant, one might expect a little more from a newsman of his integrity and significant intelligence. But really, looking deeper beneath this perhaps unsatisfying address, one finds the very reason we have celebrity speakers in the first place.
I’d say it’s because some students would be content to have the commencement address delivered by Rabbi Lamm that YU was right to get an outsider. We’ve spent the last four years getting words of encouragement from our own Rabbis- the people who think most like us and who would address us for free. A keynote address is not about who can give the most utterly appropriate speech to the students from a deep and intimate understanding of their lives at YU. That’s why Richard Joel has a speech, too. The keynoters aren’t invited to tell Yeshiva students what their lives are like; they come to give universal wisdom from their own life. And Tim Russert did exactly that. He told stories about himself and Tom Brokaw, about his working class father, about his audience with John Paul II. If he used the exact same anecdotes at American and Niagara, it’s just a rightful notion taken to its particular end.
If the goal of every enlightened university is provide a diverse education to their students, it behoves them to offer advice to their graduates from the most enlightening, compelling and refreshingly different source they can find. For YU, in 2007, that source was an Irish-Catholic television journalist, the first in his family to attend a college (and not because his older brother went to Lakewood) who has probably shaken the hand of every American politician of consequence in the last fifteen years. He is someone that every halfway informed student and parent should recognize by name and face before he steps on the podium. And yes, he is someone who sometimes reuses his own material. We could have done much worse.
I hope I’m not creating a straw man in saying this, but I suspect that some dissenters may be harping on this complaint to mask a much poorer objection: why do we need advice from a famous journalist, who never attended or visited YU, who doesn’t live in New York and who isn’t even Jewish?
To the doubters, let me remind you why, quoting again from the much maligned address: “You chose a school that was different and you made the choice deliberately... You've been given an education that says it's not enough to have a skill, not enough to have read all the books or know all the facts. Values really do matter.”
Do you remember the last time someone described the reason you are here so succinctly, without saying “Torah u’Madda”? It doesn’t matter for which college those words were written. Their importance is universal and I’d say they’re a just reminder of why Tim Russert was invited in the first place.
Paul Adam is Associate Editor for The Commentator
There’s a reason Mr. Russert has been asked by so many colleges to delivery keynote and commencement speeches, he’s obviously knows what he’s doing. He should be, anyhow, he gives almost the same speech every time.
It’s true. The bulk Mr. Russert’s speech to us was also heard at Fordham, Washington University, the Catholic University of America and Creighton, to name but a few. That’s obviously a sticking point for some people and I can understand why. Never mind that John McCain explicitly pledged to give the same commencement speech at New School, Columbia and Liberty. Nobody likes getting hand-me-downs. Even if Tim’s themes remain constant, one might expect a little more from a newsman of his integrity and significant intelligence. But really, looking deeper beneath this perhaps unsatisfying address, one finds the very reason we have celebrity speakers in the first place.
I’d say it’s because some students would be content to have the commencement address delivered by Rabbi Lamm that YU was right to get an outsider. We’ve spent the last four years getting words of encouragement from our own Rabbis- the people who think most like us and who would address us for free. A keynote address is not about who can give the most utterly appropriate speech to the students from a deep and intimate understanding of their lives at YU. That’s why Richard Joel has a speech, too. The keynoters aren’t invited to tell Yeshiva students what their lives are like; they come to give universal wisdom from their own life. And Tim Russert did exactly that. He told stories about himself and Tom Brokaw, about his working class father, about his audience with John Paul II. If he used the exact same anecdotes at American and Niagara, it’s just a rightful notion taken to its particular end.
If the goal of every enlightened university is provide a diverse education to their students, it behoves them to offer advice to their graduates from the most enlightening, compelling and refreshingly different source they can find. For YU, in 2007, that source was an Irish-Catholic television journalist, the first in his family to attend a college (and not because his older brother went to Lakewood) who has probably shaken the hand of every American politician of consequence in the last fifteen years. He is someone that every halfway informed student and parent should recognize by name and face before he steps on the podium. And yes, he is someone who sometimes reuses his own material. We could have done much worse.
I hope I’m not creating a straw man in saying this, but I suspect that some dissenters may be harping on this complaint to mask a much poorer objection: why do we need advice from a famous journalist, who never attended or visited YU, who doesn’t live in New York and who isn’t even Jewish?
To the doubters, let me remind you why, quoting again from the much maligned address: “You chose a school that was different and you made the choice deliberately... You've been given an education that says it's not enough to have a skill, not enough to have read all the books or know all the facts. Values really do matter.”
Do you remember the last time someone described the reason you are here so succinctly, without saying “Torah u’Madda”? It doesn’t matter for which college those words were written. Their importance is universal and I’d say they’re a just reminder of why Tim Russert was invited in the first place.
Paul Adam is Associate Editor for The Commentator
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
George Adam
posted 9/05/07 @ 4:37 PM EST
I liked your article. Which is the second article?
Dad
Post a Comment