Summers Says He’s an ’06 Grad Too

University President Lawrence H. Summers told members of the Class of 2006 at yesterday’s Baccalaureate Service that he, too, will be graduating tomorrow.

“I count myself as one of you,” he began, prompting loud laughter and applause from the seniors, who were crammed into Memorial Church in caps and gowns.

In his speech, Summers joked that he and his “classmates” will no longer eat Harvard food or live in Harvard housing. And he noted with pride that Harvard’s football team has never lost to Yale while the Class of ’06 was here—or while he was president.

Continuing to describe the parallels between himself and the graduates, Summers said, “We think some professors did well by us. Others were, well, less well-disposed.”

He also described the qualities he does not share with the Class of ’06. He will not keep in touch with his peers over facebook.com, and he will not be mailed hundreds of solicitations for donations from Harvard.

“Me, I’ve paid my dues,” Summers said.

After recounting some of his favorite moments at Harvard—including dancing with students at his study breaks and marrying Professor of English Elisa New—Summers left jokes aside and discussed the role of education.

“I hope that more than anything else, you leave here with a reverence for, and personal commitment to, the power of human thought and the positive contribution reason can make,” he said.

As a caveat, he said that human thought has also resulted in much of the world’s misery, and that we should not be uncritical of ideas.

Summers warned that the concept of reason is threatened today by “faith-based terror.” As an example of reason in danger, Summers said that the theory of evolution is being challenged in U.S. public schools more today than ever in the last 100 years.

He said that “consensus and comfort” should never be held above “the value of truth.”

“When the airing and incorporation of diverse views becomes the end rather than the means, then we set the bar too low,” Summers said.

When his speech concluded, the audience gave him a standing ovation.

“It was humorous but very instructive,” Navin L. Kumar ’06 said after the service.

Aaron K. Harris ’06 said that the speech was “hilarious” and that it “hit the right notes.”

The service began with the traditional procession of seniors into Memorial Church from the Yard. Readings from Hebrew and Hindu scriptures as well as the Qur’an and the New Testament were read in both their original languages and in English.

The origins of the Baccalaureate service are unclear. Columbia and Dartmouth both say on their websites that the ceremony began at Oxford University in 1432, when each graduate had to deliver a Latin oration.

But Gomes traces the ceremony to 13th-century Cambridge University, where graduates sat shrouded in hoods—“a picture of abject humility and utter embarrassment.”

The service has been part of Harvard’s exercises since the University’s first Commencement in 1642, six years after the school’s founding.

—Staff writer Katherine M. Gray can be reached at kmgray@fas.harvard.edu.