Summers Jokes With Graduates

At yesterday’s Baccalaureate Service, University President Lawrence H. Summers imparted good will and advice to the Class of 2004, eliciting raucous laughter from the crowd of future graduates.

The spiritual service, held yesterday at 2 p.m. at Memorial Church, is one of the College’s oldest annual public ceremonies, predated only by Commencement.

Hundreds of members of the senior class, sporting caps and gowns, formed a line at Holworthy Hall, proceeded across the Yard, tipped off their mortarboards to John Harvard, and—led by their class marshals—crammed into Memorial Church for the hour-and-a-half ceremony.

“We welcome you to your last rites,” said Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, after inviting the seniors through the doors of the church’s western porch.

After a speech by Gomes, several prayers—including readings from the Hebrew Bible, Hindu Scripture, the Holy Quran and the New Testament—and two anthems sung by the Commencement Choir, Summers slowly rose to deliver the keynote address.

Summers opened with a story from the annals of Harvard history and in so doing, may have created another College tradition—by repeating his jokes from previous years’ Baccalaureate speeches.

Summers said that the Baccalaureate Service derived from an over 600-year-old custom at Cambridge University, in which graduates were forced to sit through the ceremony with, “bowed head over which...hood was drawn, a picture of abject humility and utter embarrassment.”

“I have observed students in an infinite variety of states, but never in a state of abject humility,” Summers quipped, recycling a punchline from his 2002 Baccalaureate address.

Though Summers used some old jokes, he did offer some new words of wisdom. He told students yesterday to embrace their intellectual talents, strive for multiple perspectives and “think things through.”

Summers also referenced the architects of the future campus at Allston in order to illustrate the importance of tapping other experiences for a full perspective.

“I have come to appreciate how closely they observe [students]...before designing a building to house those activities,” Summers said.

Summers asked students to “develop a lifetime habit of thinking things through,” adding that a liberal education could “hardly teach you everything you need to know.”

“Don’t just rely on traditions, but systematically analyze things,” Summers said.

In another joke that received laughter from the senior class, Summers rhymed, “You’ll leave the Yard, but you’ll never leave Har-Vard.”

“My friends in the humanities feel that this is as close to poetry as I will get,” Summers said.

Kingsley University Professor of English Helen Vendler said after the speech that she was not aware that Summers had made his literary debut.

“It’s not a poem, it’s a joke,” Vendler said, referring to the line from Summers’ speech.

“We all feel somewhat abashed by the knowledge our colleagues have that we don’t have to the same degree,” Vendler added.

Dean for the Humanities Maria Tatar found a literary connection in Summers’ “joke.”

“Our president’s words to the Class of 2004 remind me of what T.S. Eliot [’10] had to say about returning home, especially to our intellectual home,” Tatar wrote in an e-mail, referring to Eliot’s poem, “Little Gidding.”

Anita Raghuwanshi ’04 said she enjoyed Summers’ speech, although she thought that he had looked bored.

“Although his skills in speech-giving have improved over the past years, his sitting posture has not,” Raghuwanshi said, adding that she had observed Summers twiddling his thumbs during the ceremony.

—Staff writer Elena P. Sorokin can be reached at sorokin@fas.harvard.edu.