The Return of Content

HARVARD'S Commencement speech--one of the most prestigious annual lecture series in the world--had apparently lost its luster in recent years. The address has been considered an "event" unto itself--separate from the magnificent pomp that marks each Harvard graduation--at least since 1947, when the circumstance was used for the unveiling of the Marshall Plan. A recent string of prominent speakers--exiled Russian writer Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn in 1978, then-West German Chancellor Helmudt Schmidt in 1979, and former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance in 1980--bolstered the reputation. But extending similar invitations the following two years, alumni officials were not quite so successful. They tried for then-recently-inaugurated President Ronald Reagan in 1981, and settled for Thomas Watson, former ambassador to Moscow and head of IBM. In 1982, they tried for recently widowed Jihan Sadat and ended up with John H Finley '25. Fliot Professor of Greek Emeritus.

And it seemed that this year would fail into the same initial rejection pattern. Polish labor leader Lech Walesa received an internationally publicized invitation but was unable to accept. Instead, he offered a text, selections of which President Bok read at the June 9 ceremonies And as a result, the official address was delivered by Mexican writer ambassador Carlos Fuentes.

But this year's forum was a success--not merely because officials managed to salvage a link to Walesa, not even because of the historical firsts--having two speeches, and having a speech read in absentia. Rather these two addresses embodied what a Harvard Commencement speech should be--a fresh, well-crafted intellectual argument. Walesa's absence muffled the celebrity parade mentality that has surrounded the event in recent years, while Fuentes' eloquence helped play up the importance of the ideas themselves.

The rare juxtaposition of the Eastern European and Latin American leaders presented a prevailing theme. Both men are actively involved in popular freedom struggles, and although the nature and status of their causes are significantly different--as are the cultures that produced them--they do concur on some basic universal points.

According to the two speeches, the major difference between the two movements is their relative familiarity with freedom. Fuentes' tone was one of a people bitterly resentful of rights consistently denied them and ready to battle for them. Walesa wrote of a country just beginning to shake off its feeling of resignation, and just starting to realize the importance of fighting for freedom. He conceded that "the introduction of martial law brutally demonstrated the limits of progress attainable in Poland today."

Solidarity's true progress so far has changed the perception that "nothing was worth attempting because nothing could be changed anyway," to "a new consciousness" of freedom.

But despite the staggered stages of political development, the two regions have expressed similar ideas about such development. Both Walesa and Fuentes implied that such progress is not ideological and thus unattainable, but inherent in human nature. Walesa pointed his argument towards the hard line bi-polar view of the Soviet Union, arguing that "the workers starting the strike and the process of transformation did not refer to the classics of Marxism-Leninism. They referred to the simplest natural rights due man upon his very birth in accordance with common sense." In turn, Fuentes aimed the same observations at the equally simplistic Reagan Administration, saying that attributing unrest in El Salvador to Communist infiltration "is akin to crediting the Soviet accusations that the Solidarity movement in Poland is somehow the creature of the United States." He added that the conflict in El Salvador, as throughout the region, springs from years of being fed up with "political corruption and democratic impossibility."

AND BOTH FUENTES AND WALESA stressed how nationalistic passion led to the inevitable development of self-determination. "We do not have to overthrow the system," the Solidarity leader argued, because "it is weaker than the national self-awareness, it either shrinks before it or absorbs it." Fuentes observed that "today, we are on the verge of transcending this [ideological] dilemma by recasting it as an opportunity, at last, to be ourselves--societies neither new nor old, but, simply, authentically, Latin American as...the benefits and the disadvantages of a tradition that now seems richer and more acceptable than it did 100 years of solitude ago... The real struggle for Latin America is then, as always, a struggle with ourselves, within ourselves."

The only major point the two differed on was the role this country plays. After outlining his strong optimism for the prevalence of freedom, Walesa concluded that "it is precisely such ideals that unite us, the people of America and Poland." But, unfortunately, the last word went to Fuentes, who asked why, paradoxically, the United States did not feel the same towards its southern neighbors as it does towards Poland: "Are we to be considered your true friends, only if we are ruled by right-wing, anti-Communist despotism's?... How can we live and grow together on the basis of such hypocrisy?" By placing two self-determination crusades under the same spotlight--one against the Soviet Union, the other against the United States--Harvard helped to demonstrate that the different causes are essentially the same.