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COVER STORY: Moyers tells SMU grads they need to 'fix' U.S. Mary Jacobs, May 25, 2007
UMR PHOTO BY MARY JACOBS
Commencement speaker Bill Moyers told SMU grads that Methodist institutions might produce the kind of leadership to help turn America around.
By Mary Jacobs Associate Editor
DALLAS -- Commencement speaker Bill Moyers told the graduating class of Southern Methodist University that their nation is in need of repair.
"America's a broken promise. America needs fixing," Mr. Moyers said during the university's May 19 commencement ceremony. "Never have we been more in need of transformational leadership."
And a Methodist institution, he added, might be the one to raise the kind of leader who could accomplish that.
During SMU's 92nd annual commencement convocation, the journalist skipped the usual commencement theme of giving personal advice.
Instead, Mr. Moyers spoke from his experience as one of the best-known figures in the nation's exploration of ideas and as an "old man," troubled by looming problems, who yearns for a promised land he probably won't live to see.
"I pray I am looking into the face of someone who will lead us toward it," he said.
More than 3,000 degrees were awarded at the convocation and at separate ceremonies conducted by each school within the university. Mr. Moyers received an honorary degree from the university, as did business executive and civic leader William T. Solomon and SMU professor and author Marshall Terry.
Mr. Moyers told the graduates he had originally written a commencement address urging them to find something they love to do, "and then put everything you have into that work. Apply yourself every day. Follow your bliss when faced with hard decisions-listen to the still small voice that only you can hear."
But he abandoned that text when news broke about the April 16 Virginia Tech shootings.
"I haven't been able to think of your commencement without thinking of the commencement Virginia Tech went ahead and held a few days ago," he said. "I'm not trying to spoil your day. To the contrary, this moment, the only time we'll all be in the same place ever again, is all the more hallowed by the remembrance of how precious life is, and how fragile and fleeting.
"I am an old man now, past his biblical three score and 10, and it is from long experience I tell you: Take hold of this day, pull it close, squeeze from it every drop of joy and camaraderie and fellowship you can."
Though he avoided any mention of the controversy over the proposed George W. Bush Presidential Library at SMU, Mr. Moyers' address took a political turn as he voiced his concern for the current state of the nation, calling America a "broken promise."
"It's not right that we are entering the fifth year of a war started on a suspicion. Whatever your party or politics, my young friends, America can't sustain a war begun under false pretenses, because it is simply immoral to ask people to go on dying for the wrong reasons."
He also voiced criticism of the widening gaps between the wealthy and the poor, telling the relatively affluent SMU students that it's increasingly difficulty for middle-class folks to make ends meet. He admitted it took him awhile to come to that awareness.
Growing up in the small East Texas town of Marshall, Mr. Moyers recalled hearing his father, a Baptist deacon, often praying the Lord's Prayer.
"I realized that it was never in the first person singular," he said. "It was always: 'Give us this day our daily bread.' We're all in this together; one person's hunger is another's duty."
Cooperation, he argued, not the "leave me alone" principle of American individualism, is what made our nation great.
"It's right there in the Constitution -- in the Preamble: 'We, the People' -- that radical, magnificent, democratic, inspired and exhilarating idea that we are in this together, one for all and all for one.
"I believe this to be the heart of democracy," he said. "I know it to be a profoundly religious truth."
Mr. Moyers invoked SMU's "DNA" -- its historic ties to Methodism -- as a source of hope. By the Civil War era, he said, Methodism was the largest denomination in the country, with one in three church members claiming the denomination as their own.
"No institution has done more to shape America's moral imagination," he said. "If America is going to be fixed, I believe someone with this DNA will be needed to do it."
Mr. Moyers says he envisions America as a place where people of all races, creeds and nationalities can live together as a "Beloved Community." "Not as an empire or a superpower. Not a place where the strong take what they can and the weak what they must. But a Beloved Community. It's the core of civilization, the crux of democracy and a profound religious truth."
SMU graduates gave Mr. Moyers a standing ovation.
Robin Lovin, Cary Maguire Professor of Ethics at SMU, found the speech moving, and said it transcended politics.
"I think he was saying our efforts to resolve these problems are broken," Dr. Lovin said. "We've got to find a way to transcend politics to fix them. I think he was saying, we've all got to tear up our commencement speeches and old platitudes and recognize we are at a point of social crisis."
Dr. Lovin was also impressed that Mr. Moyers had "done some homework on Methodism and SMU."
"It was a good reminder from a Baptist of what Methodism has meant in American society," he said.
But Taylor Russ, a 2007 graduate and outgoing student body president, called the speech "a little too negative and depressing."
"I'm a little disappointed," he said. "It was a valid and important message and he made some great points. But it wasn't the right place."
"His message seemed to be, 'Hey, our generation messed things up. Good luck turning this around!' We were looking for something a little more positive to reflect on the last four years and to celebrate our achievements."
UMR PHOTO BY MARY JACOBS
More than 3,000 degrees were awarded at the convocation and at separate ceremonies conducted by each school within the university. Mr. Moyers received an honorary degree from the university, as did business executive and civic leader William T. Solomon and SMU professor and author Marshall Terry. 
