Speakers Chosen To Address Graduates

Eric B. Hart ’03 will urge graduating seniors to be civil in public debate in a speech chosen Friday to be delivered on Commencement Day.

Hart is one of three students selected to speak at Commencement exercises on June 5.

Hart will deliver the English oration, Charles B. Watson Jr. ’03 will give the Latin oration and Harvard Business School (HBS) student Elizabeth Carpenter will present the graduate student oration.

Hart said his speech, entitled “Respecting the Future,” was motivated by the bitter debates that have occurred on campus in recent memory.

“My speech talks about maintaining civility irrespective of what our differences are,” he said.

Hart, an Eliot House resident and former House Committee co-chair, cited the controversy over the use of the word “slut” on the Eliot House open e-mail list and conversations about the war in Iraq as examples of uncivil debates.

“It’s sort of a conglomeration of seeing talented Harvard kids reduce themselves to dialogue like ‘Bush is a cold-blooded murderer’ and [the controversy over] last year’s graduation speech,” he said. “I’m challenging the senior class to think about how we conduct our public discourse.”

Hart said the public debate sparked by the original title of last year’s English oration, “American Jihad,” is another example of the disrespectfulness he hopes to target in his address.

Last year, Zayed M. Yasin ’02 was selected as the undergraduate English orator. Some students and national media decried the use of the word “jihad” in the title of his speech.

In a compromise Yasin renamed his speech “Of Faith and Citizenship: My American Jihad,” moving the disputed word to the subtitle of his address.

Watson, who is in his ninth year of studying Latin, said he has wanted to give this oration since he first heard it existed.

“Since I was in high school, I thought if I go to Harvard I wanted to do that,” Watson said. “I’ve always wanted to do it if I had a chance.”

The Latin oration is one of Harvard’s oldest traditions and was delivered during the first commencement exercises in 1642.

Graduating seniors receive an English translation to the speech so they can understand the address.

Watson said that his speech, “De Ignotis,” which translates as “On the Forgotten,” is about how history often forgets the people who were vital for the successes of today.

“The people who are here today, the graduates are, in themselves, physical monuments of what other people have done,” he said.

Carpenter, who will deliver the graduate oration, said that her speech attempts to “marry” her background as a book editor with her years at the HBS.

She said the speech is about “poetry and finance.”

“I had thought about words a long time and then I came here and I thought about numbers,” Carpenter said.

She said the working title of her speech is “Auden and the Little Things,” referring to the famous 20th century poet.

The committee that selected the addresses included Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, Professor of Greek and Latin Richard F. Thomas and Gurney Professor of English Literature James Engell.

Both Hart and Watson said that they are excited and nervous about delivering their respective orations.

“It’s a little daunting, I’ll tell you that,” said Hart. “I’m not too worried about screwing up.”

—Staff writer Nalina Sombuntham can be reached at sombunth@fas.harvard.edu.