American publisher speaks on diversity at Missouri State Commencement

Your degree is being conferred as an acknowledgment of your struggle, hard work, study, perseverance and financial investment to make you a person who has changed for the better. As a lifelong admirer of language and the arts, and a steadfast believer in the importance of education and farsighted public policy, I can’t tell you how excited and honored I am to be here and to have the opportunity to greet all of you, as many of you will head for jobs, others to graduate school after you collect your degrees – you who will be instrumental in shaping the destiny of our society, and therefore the world, in the coming years.

You’re entering the “real world” at a time when the world is very different than it has ever been before. Changes are so rapid that it’s hard to keep up. There are three times as many people on earth now than when I was born in the 1930s. There is a net gain of 200,000 people in the world every single time we sit down to dinner. The implications in terms of scarce finite resources are profound.

We’re living in a world with exploding medical knowledge that is affording longer, healthier lives for many; where people will soon have a phone in their peripheral vision with the advent of Google Glass, so we can all think even more people are walking around talking to themselves. We’re more connected than ever and yet are more distant than ever – steadily losing the ability to talk to one another face to face, spending entire meals with faces buried in our phones and iPads. 

So what does all of this rapid change mean, in a world bursting with 7 billion people – a billion of whom are malnourished and another billion who live in near starvation, and too many others are threatening and some are actually killing each other? It means we must be willing to change to meet the evolving 21^st century dynamic of global infrastructure, especially the transformational electronic, digital and mobile environments. It means that you have the opportunity to use what you’ve learned over the last four years to help meet these challenges head on, get engaged in what’s going on in the world and jump in — to make your voice heard. 

I’ve became a newsman after being interested in that field for many years – which is why I can’t ignore all of the headlines I see and can’t help but notice how far we still have to go. I haven’t always been involved professionally in media. For most of my early life, I had entirely different careers. When I entered Indiana University years ago, I did think that I might want to be a newspaper man or an architect. 

I eventually pivoted from my professional training as an oral surgeon to follow my other passions. I decided to get into the art business and then eventually the print media, despite being warned that it was a dying industry. In retrospect, I was programmed by my family in my early years to become involved in trying to make a difference in the community – to be conscious of and helpful to others.

I advise you all to go out there and take chances.  Do things that make you feel alive. A vital and rewarding life means always staying alive to your own possibilities.  Accept any failures with the enthusiastic knowledge that they can help you grow, and at the very least, leave you with some great stories to tell. 

Realize that where you are today is a result of fortuitous birthplace and time circumstances, as well as the subsequent intersection of luck, talent, hard work, and the support of others, and you should live with an awareness of just how grim and desperate daily life is in many other places on the globe for so many. Plan to leave this world better than you found it, in your own way, no matter how big or how small. I think we all have that responsibility. 

If you are sitting in a cubicle counting down the hours nearly every day of your life, something is wrong. If that goes on for too long, one day you’ll wake up and be a shell of the person you were meant to become. If some passion or hunger isn’t driving you in some important aspect of your life, you’re not being fair to yourself. I’m not saying you don’t have to pay your dues, or that even your dream job may include some, even many things, you don’t want to do. 

The world is changing fast. That means that not just Missouri and the rest of the United States – but the whole nation is facing huge economic challenges. China, India and other emerging nations are rapidly growing as economic competitors. The words of Thomas Friedman of The New York Times remind us that “it’s a flat world, after all” – the internet and broadband infrastructure have leveled the playing field and made it possible for people over the world to be connected and to rigorously compete. For example, when there are changes in monetary policy in Japan, the impact is felt all around the world. We will need to function at a higher level to claim our share of a global pie that is both expanding but increasingly more complex.

In our nation, the demographic shifts are inexorably fueled by disproportionate birth rates and immigration. The U.S. Census says that non-Hispanic whites will be a numerical minority by 2050. Therefore, we must learn to live together across racial and cultural divides. We can not solve the future challenges by simply looking at the past. The words of Albert Einstein are instructive: “We will not solve the problems of the world from the same level of thinking that created them.”

I want to end with a quote from a native Missourian who was born in 1864, before slavery was abolished, yet George Washington Carver was able to revolutionize agriculture in the southern United States. But in addition to his remarkable scientific accomplishments, he also was concerned about improving race relations, mentoring children, writing, poetry, painting and religion. He became a Christian when he was only 10 years old. He believed in humility, humanitarianism, good nature, frugality and rejection of materialism. His life and wisdom should still resonate with us today when he said: “How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because some day in life you will have been all these.”