Barnard Graduates Reminded to Turn Talents & Energies Outward

Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, activist, educator and managing director of the World Bank, spoke to a graduating class of 550 women on their responsibilities and opportunities as Barnard graduates and as women. "There is a pressing need,” she said, "for you to turn your exceptional talents, sensitivities and energies outward: to the community, the society, and the world at large, and the many problems that deprive billions of your fellow citizens of a secure, dignified and meaningful existence.”

Ramphele received the Barnard Medal of Distinction, one of the College's highest honors, in 1991. She spoke before a crowd packed into all corners of Lehman Lawn and Altschul Plaza for Barnard's 110th commencement.

She began by remembering the challenges she faced when she graduated 30 years ago from the University of Natal. Pursuing her M.D. as a black woman in apartheid South Africa was practically unheard of at the time. "Yes, that was eons ago, a continent away,” she said, "and the challenges I faced in a politically and socially complex South Africa were very different from the challenges you face as you enter the world today. The challenges you are facing are no less real and difficult, however.”

Reminding the graduates of the changes that have occurred, not only since they graduated from high school, but of the last few months, Ramphele said, "In today's world, it is no longer possible to live a life in isolation, detached from the rest of the world.” Solving the growing AIDS crisis, world poverty, lack of education, and lack of clean water were issues she cited as ones for which the graduates "have an important role to play.”

She also called on the graduates to fight against gender discrimination worldwide: "In no part of the developing world are women equal to men in legal, social, and economic rights. Gender gaps are widespread in access to and control of resources, in economic opportunities, in power, and political voice. Women and girls bear the largest and most direct costs of these inequalities “ but the costs cut broadly across society, ultimately harming everyone.”

Ramphele closed with a quote from William James: "The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”

Also receiving the Barnard Medal of Distinction were: Barbara Novak "50, Barnard Professor Emerita of Art History and one of the most influential theorists of American art; Alice M. Rivlin, Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institute and Henry Cohen Professor of Urban Management and Policy at the Milano Graduate School, New School University, a highly regarded policy maker in Washington; and, Harold Varmus, cancer researcher, Nobel Laureate and head of the National Institutes of Health, whose research has led to great strides in the understandings, diagnosis and treatment of a variety of cancers.

In a Barnard Commencement tradition, the Frank Gilbert Bryson Prize was given to the graduate whose classmates voted to have contributed the most to Barnard in her time as a student. This year the prize went to Kathryn Curran. Keeping with tradition, no student knew who would receive the award until the moment President Judith Shapiro announced the name.

President Shapiro praised the graduating class for their learning of the past year, citing the interfaith dinner organized during Ramadan by Columbia/Barnard Hillel and the Muslim Student Organization: "I would like to believe that the students who attended that dinner are viewing the current hostilities from a broader, more critical and informed perspective.”#

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