Ms Magazine: Making the Impossible Possible - HRC's speech at Wellesley
"Clinton spoke of her own days as a student at Wellesley College, and described a kind of commitment to bettering the world that I saw in each of my peers while at Wellesley myself. The first Wellesley student to give a commencement address, Clinton reminisced about the night she spent awake with her friends planning the speech. She reflected on the academic lessons she had learned as a student—particularly rigorous and critical analysis—and the issues that her generation had faced at that time—memories of the Vietnam war and the approaching Nixon impeachment. Ultimately, in that 1969 speech, Clinton remarked on the work of politics as the art of making the impossible possible.
In her 2017 speech last week, Clinton gave a fierce critique of the Trump administration, but, perhaps even more importantly, she also reminded the graduates of the good work that they can and must do in these times.
Acknowledging that students may be called “nasty women” along the way, Clinton urged the Wellesley community—students, graduates, and alumnae alike—to fight on. She spoke about the work that her generation did to “[turn] back a tide of intolerance and [embrace] inclusion” in the 1960s and the fear and uncertainty that they felt before the impeachment of a president charged with obstruction of justice a decade later (a reference to current and past events). But above all, Clinton emphasized that “our country, like this college, was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment.”
Encouraging the graduating seniors to protect reason and free debate, Clinton’s advice was that they go into the world prepared to fight voter suppression, alternative facts, and sexism. Though she had not been able to shatter it, Clinton pressed graduates to make “millions of more cracks in that highest and hardest glass ceiling.” And, though we wish it were not so, she reminded listeners that “it is often during the darkest times that you can do the most good.”
Clinton’s address, as others have remarked, clearly admonished the current administration. But, hers was also a speech for the generation that will shatter the glass ceiling. Though challenges abound and the fight will be hard, Clinton reminded students of the ever important work of making the impossible possible."
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2017/05/31/making-the-impossible-possible-hillary-clinton-wellesley-commencement/
