Every year, we invite
a distinguished speaker to address the graduating class. Our guest speakers
are accomplished role models who can share
the lessons they've learned and the insights they've gained
preparing our graduates as they venture out to build their
lives and their careers. This year's speaker brings
an extraordinarily broad perspective to the proceedings. He's a person of great
accomplishment, great insight, and great integrity. He served for 37 years in
the United States Navy, including commanding special
operations for the Navy SEALs. A renowned foreign
policy expert, he's advised presidents George
W Bush and Barack Obama. His three books include Make
Your Bed, a number one New York Times bestseller, in which he
shares 10 principles we can all use to change ourselves and
the world for the better. And for four years,
he led the University of Texas, his alma mater, an
enormous academic and health care system comprising
14 different institutions and serving 239,000 students. His ideas are as noteworthy
as his professional accomplishments. He's a strong advocate
for public investment in scholarships and
immigration policies that enable universities to
attract and educate the world's most dynamic talent. And he's a vocal
supporter and practitioner of free speech, who has spoken
out forcefully in defense of America's values. It's a great honor for me to
welcome from Austin, Texas, Admiral William H McRaven. Thank you very much for
that kind introduction. President Reif, distinguished
guests, members of the faculty, and of course, the MIT
graduating class of 2020, it is truly an honor for
me to have the opportunity to address you today. You know, I had an
entirely different speech prepared for this afternoon. It was a nice little speech. It was about how you the
brilliant men and women of MIT are like the Navy
SEALs of academia. I made some good analogies, I
had some cute little anecdotes and some lessons from my career. But somehow, that speech
just didn't seem right in light of all that has
happened in the past five months. The fact that I'm
standing here alone and that you are isolated
somewhere at home is proof enough that
the world has changed. But there is a part of the
speech that I retained. It was the part about heroes
and how after all these years, I came to realize
that the heroes, we need are not the heroes
I've been searching for. When I was a young boy growing
up in the '50 and '60s, I always envisioned
myself as the hero. I always wanted to be
Superman with his powers to fly, his invulnerability,
and his super strength. A hero who saved the world
every day from some catastrophe. Or Batman, Spider-Man,
the Black Panther, the team of the X-Men,
and the Fantastic Four, and my favorite of all, Aquaman. I so wanted to ride on
the back of a sea horse and fight evil underwater. But as I grew up and
traveled the world and as I saw more than my
share of war and destruction, I came to the hard truth
that Captain America isn't coming to the rescue. There is no Superman, no Batman,
no Wonder Woman, no Black Widow, no Avengers, no Justice
League, no Gandalf, no Harry Potter, and no Aquaman. If we are going to save the
world from pandemics, war, climate change, poverty,
racism, extremism, intolerance, then you, the brilliant
minds of MIT-- you are going to have
to save the world. But as remarkable as you are,
your intellect and talent alone will not be sufficient. I've seen my share
of real heroes on the battlefield in
Iraq and Afghanistan, in the hospitals
fighting COVID-19, on the streets keeping
America safe and open. And I know that there
are other qualities necessary to be today's heroes. So if you bear with this old
sailor for a minute or two, I'd like to offer some thoughts
on the other qualities you will need to help save the world. First, you must have courage. Winston Churchill
once said that courage was the most important
quality of all because it guaranteed
all the rest. It was not just talking
about the physical courage to charge the hill, run
into a burning building, or stop a mad man with a gun. He was also talking
about moral courage-- the courage to stand up
for your convictions. Physical courage has
long been the hallmark of a great warrior. But I would offer
that the moral courage to stand up for what's
right has an equal place in the pantheon of heroes. If you hope to
save the world, you will have to stand
by your convictions. You will have to confront
the ignorant with facts. You will have to challenge
the zealots with reason. You will have to defy the
naysayers and the weak kneed who have not the
Constitution to stand tall. You will have to
speak truth to power. But if your cause is good
and decent and worthy and honorable, and has
the possibility of saving even one
of God's creatures, then you must do
what all heroes do. You must summon the courage
to fight and fight hard for your convictions. You must yell them
from the mountaintop. You must shout them
from a lectern. You must write in bold,
cursive, and underlined phrases. You must bring your
convictions out from the darkness and the
subtlety of your heart and into the light of day. They must be made public and
challenged and confronted and argued. There will always
be those who don't want to hear your convictions,
particularly if they are true. Speaking the truth
can be dangerous. But those that came before you-- Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler,
Madam Curie, Grace Hopper, and Katherine Johnson
those brilliant minds. Those tellers of truth who made
the world a more knowledgeable place, a more compassionate
place, a more livable place-- they had courage. If you were going to save the
world, you will need courage. If you're going
to save the world, you will need to be humble. In my career, I've been blessed
to be around some great minds. I've seen how the brilliant
men and women have helped eradicate disease,
reduce poverty, create technological masterpieces. But conversely, I have seen how
the misguided geniuses filled with conceit and convinced
of their own righteousness have tampered with nature,
built apocalyptic machines, dehumanized social interactions,
and tilted towards tyranny. If you do not approach
the world with humility, it will find a
way to humble you. I found in my time
in the military that no experience on earth
was more humbling than combat. The crucible of war
teaches you every day that you are not invincible. That the enemy in bare feet
and carrying only Kalashnikovs can sometimes defeat the
best soldiers and the best technology in the world. And if you believe for a
moment that you are superior, you will be humbled quickly. But if you approach
every mission with a decent respect for
the mountains, the rivers, the oceans, and the enemy, you
are more likely to succeed. In Plato's rendition
of Socrates' Apology, Socrates defends the
charges against him by telling the jury
of Athenian nobles that he is the wisest
man in the world-- far wiser than any of the
robed men sitting in judgment. When questioned
about how he could be so bold as to
make this statement, Socrates says that he is
the wisest because he knows so very little of the world. To solve the world's
problems, you will have to realize
how little you know. You must be able to
look to the stars, peer through a microscope, gaze
at the oceans, and be humbled. To believe for even a moment
that you have all the answers, that you know the
truths of the universe, that you are wiser than
all the men and women who came before you is the tale of
every great man and woman who amounted to nothing. Only when you are
humble, only when you realize the limits of your
understanding, the shortfalls of your knowledge, the
boundaries of your intellect-- only then can you find the
answers you are seeking. If you're going
to save the world, you must persevere
through difficult times. Life as a SEAL is all
about perseverance. Can you make it
through seal training without ringing the bell? Can you make it through the
long family separations, the exhausting
deployments, the loss of a fellow warrior in combat? Sometimes, saving
the world is just about holding on, never
quitting no matter what obstacles face you. A good friend of
mine, who graduated from the University
of Texas in 1969, pursuing a career in medicine. His mother had died of
lymphoma when he was about 11 and he was obsessed
with finding a cure. For decades-- for decades-- he pursued an idea that
most in the Medical field dismissed as fantasy. Could the human body really
use its own immune system to fight cancer? He never ever gave
up on his pursuit. And in 2018, Dr. Jim
Allison was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine. There are the occasional
great men and women of science who changed history
at an early age, but most discoveries, most
achievements, most triumphs are the product of a
long and painful process. And only the most
resolute, the ones that can persevere through
the failure, the rejection, the ridicule, the emotional
and physical strain of time-- those are the ones most
likely to save the world. To help save the world, you
must be prepared to sacrifice. The special
operations forces are filled with memorials of
remarkable men and women who gave their all in the
defense of the nation. Medal of Honor recipients like
Mike Murphy, Mike Mansoor, John Chapman, and Robbie
Miller, remarkable women like Ashley White
and Jennifer Moreno, the heroes of helicopters,
Turbine 33 Extortion 17, SEALs and soldiers who answered
the call and never returned. All great Americans
who sacrificed their lives so that their
teammates might live. But there is a more
mundane you had a central sacrifice
that is required if you want to save the world. As SEALs, we train
hard every day-- long tortuous hours
of physical pain, rucksack marches, open ocean
swim, miles of running, and hours of calisthenics. They're all sacrifices
necessary to be ready when the world needs you. In his time, Thomas Edison
developed 1500 patents from the electric light to the
phonograph to the movie camera to the vacuum diode and
the carbon microphone. He saved the world
from darkness. But in doing so, it required
him to work 20 hours a day. His home front was
often strained. His other business ventures
struggled to survive, and his health always
seemingly in jeopardy. It would be easy to stand
up here and tell you that there is a
wondrous place where you can be great at both
work and life, where your efforts to make a
difference in the world come easy. But I have never
found that place. In the end, if your
goal is a noble one, then your sacrifice
will be worth it, and you will be proud of
what you have accomplished. To save the world, you will have
to be men and women of great integrity-- always-- always-- trying to do what
is moral, legal, and ethical. It will not be easy
and I dare say, you will fail occasionally. You will fail because
you are human. You will fail because
life often forces you into a seemingly
untenable position. You will fail because good and
evil are always in conflict. And when you fail to
uphold your integrity-- when you fail to
uphold your integrity-- it should make you
sick to your stomach. It should give you
sleepless nights. You should be so tortured that
you promise yourself never to do it again. You see, being a hero
will not be easy. It will not be easy because you
are not men and women of steel, you are not cloaked
in a suit of armor, you are not infused
with unearthly powers. You are real heroes. And what makes real
heroes are there struggles and their
ability to overcome them. But no matter how mightily
you might struggle, the world will believe in you. The world will follow you. Allow themselves
to be saved if they know you to be
honest, trustworthy, of good character
and good faith-- men and women of integrity. Finally, to save the world,
you must have compassion. You must ache for the
poor and disenfranchised. You must fear for
the vulnerable. You must weep for
the ill and informed. You must pray for those
who are without hope. And you must be kind
to the less fortunate. For what hero gives
so much of themselves without caring for those
they are trying to save? As we sign off from this
virtual commencement, I want you to
promise me one thing. Promise me that you
will be the last class-- the last class to miss
a commencement because of a pandemic. The last class to miss a
commencement because of war. The last class to
miss a commencement because of climate change,
unrest, tyranny, extremism, active shooters,
intolerance, and apathy. Batman and Superman are not
coming to save the world. It will be up to you. But never-- never
in my life have I been so confident that
the fate of the world is in good hands. Go forth and be the
heroes we need you to be. Thank you, and congratulations.
