President Daniels to grads: ‘I’m talking to you’
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- Опубліковано 20 вер 2024
- #PurdueUniversity President Mitch Daniels made these remarks during commencement ceremonies May 13-15, 2022, at the West Lafayette campus.
#PurdueUniversity #PurdueWeDidIt #Boilermakers #BoilerUp
Thank you President Daniels and Boiler Up!!! 🚂🆙
Nah! The racist might as well say good-bye and go back to Lebanon where his people came from.
Tremendous message by the best president Purdue has ever had! I hope all these graduates took it to heart and listen to it daily until it becomes part of their life.
-Ben Smith, BS Civil Engineering ‘12 MSCE ‘14
#BoilerUp
Thank you President Daniels for inspiring the class of '22 and all of us Boiler alums! Lucy Young BS '76
@Lucy Young Boiler Up! 🚂🆙
A great man.
The importance of this address cannot be understated . Everyone needs to listen to this message.
Bob Shriner BPE'68, MS'74
Thanks for the comment! #BoilerUp
Proud to be a Boilermaker! Thank you for your leadership Mitch.
Glad to have you as part of the #Boilermaker family!
As an alum, really enjoyed hearing this. Extremely insightful. #boilerup
@Larry Schmitt Thank you for the kind words! Boiler up, Hammer down!
This is the best commencement address ever!! Thank you. Richard Higgins BSHTM '61
Love to hear it!
Some people make a really good speech. Many make a less-than-really-good speech. Mitch Daniels shines in the first category.
Thank you @Paul Damerell!
I wish Mitch would return to politics and run for President (of the United States).
Thought provoking and motivationally charged. "Hail Purdue and all of You"! Keevan Grimmett - Public Relations Class of 80'.
#BoilerUp
It was a wonderful excellent speech
Thank you @Marie Schroeder!
One of the themes is that others will try to categorize you and to not let that happen. Good message. And another theme derives from that one; no machine can replace human decision making and that machines can help decision making, not make decisions.
Thank YOU for that inspiring commencement speech. Bob Ade BSME "56
Boiler up, Hammer down! 🚂🆙
Boiler Up!
Love to hear it @laurie Bay!
It's a great speech as corporatist propaganda. But the reality is that most of these graduates will be hired by faceless bureaucratic corporations. Their individuality won't matter, won't be respected, and is not desired. Most corporations want a cog in the machine, someone who will do what they are told, conform to expectations, and maintain norms. They want submissive and compliant employees, not individuals with autonomous power, control, and self-determination.
If these graduates take seriously this rhetoric, they are going to be depressingly disappointed when they hit the job market. Wall Street Journal just put out an article about how most big businesses are now using artificial intelligence to sift through resumes (Heidi Mitchell, "How to Make Sure Your Résumé Passes Muster With an AI Reader"). The only people who make it through that process are those willing and able to suppress their individuality in order to play the game well.
Be careful about this reactionary rhetoric of hyper-individualist fetishization, particularly coming out of a modern college that is mostly funded by corporations, foundations, and defense interests (Jim Bush, Purdue generates more than a half billion dollars in research funding this year). There is a rarely acknowledged link between individualism and authoritarianism, the two being facets of the same diamond (to use one of Daniel's metaphors). This secret dynamic is obvious in the neo-fascism of capitalist realism such as seen with a banana republic like the United States. But the same thing is found in any modern authoritarian system.
Consider the authoritarian Nazis and the authoritarian Stalinists. Both of them idealized and idolized the individual (worker, soldier, etc), even as they were superficially opposed in ideological rhetoric (one right-wing, the other left-wing). This is similar to how so many Americans, specifically on the political right, can advocate positions and policies that are simultaneously individualistic and authoritarian (e.g., paternalistic, technocratic, and oligarchic right-libertarianism that is some combination of corporatism and inverted totalitarianism). The poison goes down smoother with a spoonful of sugar.
That is the world these Purdue graduates will be entering as they look for employment, but no one in higher education is likely to tell them the truth. That is unless they happen to have one of the rare strongly critical, knowledgeable, and morally courageous leftist professors; the kind of scholar who is rarely hired and, if hired, rarely gets tenure because speaking truth to power doesn't tend to advance one's career. Certainly, college presidents with corporate backgrounds like Daniels won't let anyone in on this dark truth and demoralizing reality. These plutocrats understand that most of these young people will have their optimism beat out of them, until they finally submit to the system. But Daniel's rhetoric is like the rails that keep the cows calm as they are guided into the slaughterhouse.
Yup, paying one's dues in pursuit of more autonomy remains the framework of American culture. The individual's personal responsibility to make enlightened choices along the way was, in my view, the "you" President Daniels' was so eloquently addressing.