University of Washington Commencement Address

June 12, 2010

Prepared remarks by William H. Gates Sr, Co-chair

When they asked me to speak at commencement, I leaped at this opportunity to suit up and take the field in front of 50,000 cheering Husky fans.

I’ve been a Huskies fan since football players wore leather helmets. I’ve seen dozens of games at this stadium.

In fact, who’s in Row K, Seat 32, up there on the north side?

You’re in my seat. I tell you this because for more than six decades, this university has been an indispensable part of my life. I care deeply about the University of Washington.

I went to college here. I went to law school here. I met my wife and the mother of my children here.

We both met some of our closest friends here, and they have been friends for a lifetime.

I learned a lot about citizenship here. The first real community service I ever did was serving on the board of the university YMCA.

As the years went on, my wife and I remained in the fold. She served on the board of regents for 18 years. Now I serve on the board, along with our daughter.

I care about the UW because it has been the stuff of my life—it’s the place where I was educated, the way I built my family, and the medium through which I tried to serve my community.

I hope you have the same feelings of affection for the university, and I hope you will express them by serving the university in the years and decades ahead. If you’re anything like me, your loyalty to your alma mater will make your life much richer.

Today, I am going to talk about some things that have made my life so rich. My premise is that there may be value to you in hearing what an 84 year old man has to say about the ingredients that cause him to look back with satisfaction.

A lot has changed in the 60 years since I sat where you sit now, so I am going to talk about some very basic ideas—ideas that don’t change much.

Let me open by suggesting that one worthy goal is what some might call personal indulgence. There is nothing wrong with learning how to do the Cha Cha Cha--nothing wrong with planting a garden or playing in that fantasy sports league.

But by far the most rewarding part of my life is—and always has been—raising a family. And if there’s one thing about your future I feel comfortable in predicting, it is that you either do, or will, feel the same way. I want you to know, by the way, that I mean family in the broadest sense—whether by blood, adoption, or bonds of affection.

Let me suggest that you be as deliberate as you can be about the job of raising your family. Being deliberate helps translate your fundamental human decency into your behavior as a parent.

It is intriguing to me that, as a culture, we so seldom look for or accept any guidance in how to be a parent. You need a Ph.D. to teach 20-year-olds for a few hours a week. Based on current priorities in our society, you don’t need anything at all to teach an infant for 168 hours a week. But which does more good if you’re skilled? And which does more harm if you’re not? I’m not saying you should be required to get a certificate in parenting, but it’s worth thinking very carefully about what kind of parent you want to be and how to get there.

I had the good fortune to marry a woman who grew up in a family that enjoyed a number of annual traditions. One was an assumption that everyone would be together for Sunday dinner. Another was new pajamas for all hanging on the tree on Christmas morning.

We adopted many of these regimens and added a couple of our own.

I mention this as an example of being deliberate in organizing a family life, and because I am certain that those traditions had a central role in creating a sense of continuity and permanence for our kids growing up in a world full of change and uncertainty.

The next of my paramount pleasures is having a long list of very good friends. This list includes people I met in grade school.

I belong to a bridge club that was started in 1952. I look forward with pleasure to our meetings. It is in part the pleasure of a half-century of shared memories. But it is also the comfort of sharing of experiences and views with people whose ideas you have come to know and appreciate.

If you come to cherish friends as I do you will discover that, as with family, there is a requirement of a measure of deliberateness to make it work.  You need to work at it.  You do need to email that note or make the phone call to keep friendship alive.

Now I venture out onto softer ground.

I am very comfortable extolling the rewards that flow from conscientious, well informed parenting and urging you to make that part of your life. I am very comfortable underscoring the pleasures derived from making the effort to have and to maintain close friendships.

The obvious next question is, what about a public life. I haven’t always been comfortable urging young people to embrace public life. I figured it was none of my business. Lately, though, I have grown more accustomed to the idea that every life should have its public aspects.

And for all the rewards of private life, my life would have been much the poorer if I had not experienced those moments when I felt like I belonged to something larger.

My favorite axiom is this: “We are all in this together.”

You know it’s a good axiom because there are so many ways to express it. “We’re all in the same boat” is one. Benjamin Franklin said, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.”

The fundamental idea here is interdependence. We simply cannot succeed without the contribution of others.

What are the implications of that idea? The biggest one is basic citizenship. Citizenship means that we behave according to the belief that every person matters just as much as every other person.

Citizens must not prosper at the expense of another person. Citizens should aspire to do what they can to counteract the disadvantages that random chance imposes on others.

I suggest that this principle for society at large is alive and working in our world. Let me cite the most prominent example I know of the role of good citizenship in changing society for the better.

When I graduated from college, our society condoned the killing of African Americans. My senior year, a man was beaten to death in Mississippi because, his murderers explained, he was “hogging the road” with his horse-and-buggy, and they couldn’t pass in their car. They were never punished.

But now, we have elected an African American president of the United States. I never imagined I’d see that.

One of the great historical themes of my lifetime—America’s march toward racial justice—has demonstrated the vast potential of citizenship.

You can’t explain the civil rights movement in terms of heroic public service alone. You can give credit, but not sole credit, to the handful of public figures whose names we all know. Martin Luther King is a hero of mine, but for every Martin Luther King there were thousands of courageous southerners, citizens whose names we don’t know, who sat in at lunch counters. Thousands who registered to vote, boycotted buses, and enrolled in schools where they weren’t wanted. Thousands who marched into mobs of men armed with billy clubs.

And there were millions of white citizens who said they would no longer sanction racism. Most of them didn’t storm any barricades, but they did the small, necessary things. They told their politicians that the issue mattered. They donated money to the cause. They made sure their children learned about civil rights in school.

What I am getting at is what I believe to be the real substance of democracy: something called public will. It’s an abstract concept, public will. You can’t touch it, or take a photograph of it, or buy it at the store.

But when important things happen, it’s because the public had the will to make them happen. And when nothing happens, it’s because the public isn’t willing. Public will is the reason why the civil rights movement happened in the 1960s, but not in the 1940s.

That’s what public will does, but what is public will?

Public will is when the right thing to do becomes consensus and people generally start expressing the convictions they share in everything they do.

So I don’t care if you carry a banner or if you stand near the back. You can yell into a megaphone if you like, or you can listen carefully if that’s more your style. You don’t need a soap box to be a good citizen. You just need to be part of the public will to make life on this planet a little bit better.

And if I know you at all, I expect that you want to be part of it. I also know that you’re ready to be, because I know what you’ve learned here at the University of Washington.

But let me carry this sense I have about the wisdom that “we are all in this together” a bit further.

I suggest that we are extending the consensus flowing from the success of the civil rights movement.

We are seeing a growing acceptance of the idea that we have an obligation to counteract the fundamental disadvantages that so burden a large part of mankind.

How can a world of plenty have a billion hungry people? How can a million infants die of a disease, diarrhea, for which the treatment is essentially Gatorade?

Here at the university and elsewhere, I have begun to perceive that this movement for global equality might just be your civil rights movement. That could be the world-historical problem that you solve through billions of ordinary acts of citizenship.

Dr. King spent his life preaching about this world you are on the verge of creating.  He was a preacher because he knew that people needed to keep striving to bring that world into being.  He knew that the future he imagined was not ineluctable.  It would have to be the product of human effort, your human effort.

“Through our scientific and technological genius,” King said, “we have made of this world a neighborhood.  And yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood.  But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this.  We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.”

There is that axiom again.

Let me note here that many people make the case that global poverty is an economic issue or a national security issue. If we have to make that argument to generate the public will required to overcome this problem, we should do it. But to me this is not primarily an economic issue or a national security issue; this is a humanitarian issue. People are dying and we can save them—that ought to be enough.

People suffering in poverty are human beings. They are not national security assets. They are not markets for our exports. They are not allies in the war against terrorism.

They are human beings who have infinite worth in their own right without any reference to us. They have mothers who love them, children who need them, and friends who cherish them, and we simply ought to help them.

When I was young there was no Internet. No cable news. I turned my attention to the things I knew, and so did all the people around me. There was but little public interest in thinking of equality on a worldwide scale.

You are different. You will have to work hard not to learn about the wide world. And since you are aware of people suffering, you will act on their behalf.

Privileged people aren’t selfish with their privilege. You will display the ethical commitment to make of this world a brotherhood.

So, on your graduation day, let me exhort you to join me and your fellow graduates on this special day to become Huskies for life.  Let me exhort you to go fishing. Let me exhort you to read a novel. I exhort you to find love. I exhort you to be a learned parent and to wring all the joy you can out of the friends with whom you surround yourself.

In closing, let’s go back to the subject of public life.

In respect to that, I have a confident prediction.  It is a prediction based on knowing how prepared you are, from what you have learned here at this fine school to live and to contribute as a constructive citizen.

My prediction is that 60 years from now, when you sit down to write your Commencement speech, you will look around and you will observe that your world, while still beset with serious problems, has indeed become a better place than it was in 2010.  And you will make that observation with a sense of pride in having contributed to that change.  This will occur not because I say so, but because you are who you are now – graduates of the University of Washington possessed of all the qualities this fine institution has taught you.

Good luck and thank you.