Trevor Noah speaks at Princeton University's 2021 Class Day

it is my honor to introduce our class day speaker mr trevor noah originally from south africa and a current resident of new york city trevor noah is one of the most successful comedians in the world in just the past year his emmy award-winning tv show the daily show with trevor noah received six emmy nominations mr noah has also written produced and starred in 11 comedy specials many in our class consider him to be one the most astute cultural critics of our time and they have found his comedy as an entryway into deeper conversation in april of 2018 mr noah launched the trevor noah foundation a development initiative that empowers youth with access to high quality education through a partnership with microsoft the foundation is able to provide under-resourced schools with technology as a tool to enhance the learning experience and increase digital literacy beyond the classroom we are thrilled to have mr noah as our class day speaker because of his talent for bringing joy during this year's unprecedented times and to talk about challenging subjects with humor he has inspired us with his ability to transcend boundaries and navigate the world with grace kindness and a commitment to finding common ground now i would like to present mr trevor noah in conversation with our class day chairs kamia michael and morgan [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome in mr noah it's so good to see you my name is morgan what's going on morgan how you doing doing well hi mr noah i'm kamia it's so nice to meet you hi kamia how you doing pleasure to meet you hi mr noah i'm michael good to meet you michael you've got a really cool uh picture in like the in the in the um what is it the class day thing you guys have like a little like a little superhero combination going on there i like it i appreciate it it is such a pleasure to welcome you in uh so we have a couple of questions on behalf of our peers that we know that just they're so eager to hear from you and so the first question is you know when did it hit that you know comedy like this is this is my calling this is what i'm good at but when did that moment hit for you and how might we seek that moment out for ourselves it was the first time somebody paid me morgan that's that's when the moment was um no i'm joking the the first moment when i knew it was a calling was instinctively when i made people laugh for the first time so you know in school i'd always been like the class clown i was never the most popular kid but i made everybody laugh i mean whether it was the bullies whether it was the jocks whether it was the nerds whether it was i just knew how to make people laugh i knew how to get into their worlds i would make teachers laugh as well it's not like i was i was an to to my my teachers you know they'd never be like trevor misbehaves they would always just say like he just you know he likes making people laugh too much sometimes he needs to calm down and um and this would follow me everywhere in life you know i would i would i would tell jokes at parties i would you know whenever there was a group of people gathered around i would i would try and tell funny stories and and over time i came to realize that this was something i wish i could do but you must remember in south africa we didn't have a comedy scene at that time you know because of apartheid free speech was inhibited and so it's not like we ever had a comedy thing so i never dreamed of being a comedian but i think that's when the calling hit me and um and so yeah for the first few months of my comedy career i did it for free i loved it um and it only became a career when somebody paid me for the first time then i was like oh wow i can actually try and do what i love for for a living and and that um as they say the rest is history um mr noah how do you navigate belongingness as an international student i'm constantly thinking about what home means you grew up in south africa and then moved to the us to pursue comedy so do you ever find yourself feeling like home is in multiple places and nowhere at the same time or is it something completely different for you you know what i've come to realize uh kamiya is i've come to realize that home for me could be different for everyone but home for me is where my people are and what i've come to learn is my people can be anywhere you know so i i have a close-knit group of friends who i've grown up with who i've met over the years in my life whether it's in comedy or in in just general life and and those people have become like the core of who i am as a person they remind me of who i am um they make me enjoy life with them we we share stories and we build together and so for me those people have become home and so when i think of south africa i think of that as my home but then when i think of new york i think of new york as my home you know i think of of of the joy that i have when i'm out here i think of um you know california at some point pasadena was my home so so for myself i i yeah i've come to realize that as long as i have the people any place feels like home and in terms of belonging it is the people who make you feel like you belong or you don't it's not the place and so if you can find a group of people who who you relate to who who make you aspire to be more who challenge you who help you enjoy life and you know help you through the tough times as well then i think you'll find a sense of belonging no matter where you are mr noah i want to get a little bit more into your work in your mind what role does comedy play in popular culture right now so what are you thinking about when you create content for your specials or for the daily show well michael the one thing about comedy now is that it's so mainstream and it's so big that i don't think it has a role i think it can play multiple roles you know so asking what role does comedy play is like saying what role does tech play or what role does music play or what role you know i think there was a time when comedy was so niche that maybe it played a role but i think i think now it plays many roles the most important one for me i define my rules for comedy and i go number one the first rule for me is to make people feel better that's what i'm trying to do you know i want you to laugh when you come to my show when you watch my tv show whatever you do i want you to leave feeling a little bit better than when you came in and that's what i because i love that i love going to comedy shows where i laugh and i enjoy myself and i go like man that was fun and then i'm laughing on the way home and i'm trying to tell the jokes to my friends the next day that's that for me is what i'm looking for and that's what i try and give to an audience i think comedy on on on on a larger scale for me is is also about speaking truth you know um comedy for me has always been that place where it's like we can talk about the uncomfortable truths you know we can talk about racism while laughing with people we we can talk about misogyny while laughing with people we can talk about some of the more uncomfortable things in society and hopefully poke holes and reveal some of the light that comes through those holes while using comedy to to to i guess lessen the burden that the audience is feeling so instead of it just being a lecture about like oh this is why racism is bad it's using comedy in such a way where somebody's sitting in the audience and they're like man i never thought of it like that yeah actually racism is pretty stupid i got to think about these things i got to figure that out oh yeah actually why do we have toxic masculinity as men this is holding us back maybe we should try and figure but it's like how do you figure out how to play with that and tell the truth and so for me comedy is oftentimes uh a tool that i will use to subvert what society has accepted as normal or the standard or you know or the status quo because that's oftentimes what happens in society is we just accept something as being normal and then at some point you know as a comedian you go like guys this is this is not normal you realize that right this is not actually normal we've just done it for so long and so i i enjoy those aspects of comedy and i think that's that's the role that comedy fills in my life and what i try to do with it in the world so thinking of that subversion and that discomfort what has been your greatest lesson around taking risks what has been my greatest lesson in taking risk that's interesting i think i would split that lesson into two number one not all risks are worth taking and what i mean by that is sometimes i understand that the risk may not even be to myself but it may be to the subject of the comedy or the unintended consequences of the comedy that i'm saying and so what i realize is i go ah if i'm trying to tell this joke and it may come off the wrong way let me try and spend more time not telling it and figuring out how to clean up the the you know what i like to call the targets of the joke and and then minimize the risk if i can call it that because you know i can't control how people feel about jokes everyone can be offended about anything i i don't i don't believe in like going oh if you're offended i'm sorry no you can be offended by anything i say and if you are offended i didn't intend to offend you and because offense has taken i have no control over your offense uh what i do know is is is comedy not just professional comedy but even between human beings interpersonal comedy is all contextual you know you can say something morgan to your friends that a stranger could never say to you because you have the context of your friendship you know michael you can say the same thing to your friends that nobody can say and the same thing with you come here you can say things these are things that you have because you have context and so when i look at the risk i first look at the context and then i think about mitigating that risk and so i go who are we and what are we talking about unfortunately these days especially with comedy and and and i think with social media as well a lot of the time context gets thrown into the wind because you can be having a conversation with one person and social media is weird because back in the day i would be talking to kamiyah just me and you come here and i'll be talking to you and let's say we've been best friends for 10 years and i'll tell you a joke about india and then you'll tell me a joke about south africa and we laugh now we do that on social media and then somebody who doesn't know us goes how dare you say that about india how dare you say that about south africa and all of a sudden the context of our conversation has been lost and so when i look at the risk i try and mitigate as much as i can that happening because my intention is not to i don't have time to offend people i'm not even trying to i don't i don't benefit anything from that so i try and mitigate that risk but at the same time not at the expense of speaking my truth thank you so much um something that you know we've been thinking about is traveling during the pandemic and in afraid of the dark you said that traveling is the antidote to ignorance for those of us who missed the typical college experience because of the pandemic could you talk more about how travel has influenced your own perspectives wow travel has not just influenced it shaped my perspective you know travel for me is is is a humbling experience if you do it because it will show you that the world is bigger than your world it'll also show you that every idea you have that you accept as dogma is in fact just an idea and so when you travel you start to realize that most of the rules we learn as human beings are just societal structural ideas that have been imparted on us by our parents or our forefathers but when you go somewhere else they're like no we we just don't do that you know and and i think that that's humbling and i think it's also informative because it tells you and it teaches you that the way you think the world is isn't it's just the way your world is and and so whether it's learning that somewhere out there people are just like man english who gives a damn about english you're like oh but english and they're like no we don't care you're like but how do you do things and they're like yeah we don't care we speak other languages that's humbling you know you go to another place where they they go like oh this is this is what we do this is how we eat we eat with our hands or or this is how we speak or this is how we laugh or this is how we dance so this is how we communicate with everything and i think that that's a humbling experience that's why that's why i truly enjoy it because i think it gives you a sense of of understanding that everybody is generally coming from a perspective in the world that they think is correct because they've learned it but in fact there is no one correct way to do anything you know unless it's science everything else we've just applied with a veneer of the way it's supposed to be so we're coming a little bit close to the end here i think we have time for one more question and then the 2021 class officers want to induct you as a honorary member of our class so this past year has been you know it's been incredibly stressful and also transformative in both good and bad ways for everybody so i want to ask you looking forward what is your greatest hope and your biggest fear for the year that follows my greatest hope is that we will use this time which is arguably one of the worst periods the world has been in in recent history to to try and transform how we do things you know let's relook everything the way we've been forced to relook everything let's relook work do people need to be in the office five days a week i think we've realized that they don't need to be if possible people can work from home when they need to can be better for your mental health it can be better for traffic on the roads it can be better for parents who need to stay home and look after their kids when they're sick it could be better for everybody in society we realize now that it's possible i hope that in the future we apply these lessons i hope that in the future we come to realize that just like everybody who was forced to stay home or forced to to to leave work or forced to to not participate in society that once coronavirus is gone there is still a subset of society that has permanent coronavirus people don't just not have jobs because they don't want to have jobs you know most people are out of work most people cannot be integrated into the workforce most people are struggling most people are starving this is happening despite coronavirus coronavirus just made it i guess a more mainstream thing and i hope that after this we have a little more compassion and going like oh wow you're unemployed i know what it's like to be unemployed because coronavirus made me unemployed oh wow you you haven't been this or you're sick or you're disabled do you i understand these things a little bit more because temporarily i experience these same statuses i hope that we move forward with a certain sense of compassion one of my fears going forward my fears especially for america is that coronavirus will merely become a blip on the radar where people learn nothing from it my fear is that it'll become a politicized idea in people's minds where somehow the way so many things have in america because of social media and just the way information gets warped it'll become another conspiracy theory it'll become another you know like oh who did coronavirus who did 9 11 it just becomes a game and my fear is that instead of looking at this as a moment in time when humanity itself was tested and people were forced to think together and move together and be together it will actually be seen as just another point of fragmentation where people can go off in their different directions and believe whatever they want to believe and i fear that many people will learn nothing from this experience that's my fear thank you so much yes thank you mr noah no thank you thank you thank you pleasure thank you so much mr noah for taking the time to join our graduating class on this special day before we officially induct you into our class i would like to start introductions from our class officers my name is emma and i'm the senior class president i'm studying in the school of public and international affairs and i'm from tennefly new jersey hi i'm sanjana i'm the senior class vice president i'm a sociology major and also from new jersey hi i'm kavya i am the senior class treasurer i'm from miami florida and i'm studying the school of public and international affairs hi my name is arielle i'm the 2021 class secretary i'm a psychology major with a certificate in gender and sexuality studies and i'm from cherry hill new jersey hello i'm phoebe i'm the 2021 class social chair i study civil environmental engineering and i'm from philadelphia and so every year we select honorary class members to join in our graduation celebrations mr noah we're absolutely thrilled to welcome you to the great class of 2021 and i'd like to take a moment to read what is written on the certificate that we're presenting to you as part of your official induction into our class so the princeton university class of 2021 welcomes trevor noah into its ranks for his singular talent of bringing joy during the unprecedented times of this past year mr noah captivates and inspires our generation through wit and incisive analysis of the salient socioeconomic and cultural issues of our world today he is guided by a moral compass that seeks equity and justice for all people and in doing so demonstrates us the power of giving voices to one's own values mr noah has inspired us us with his ability to transcend boundaries and navigate the world with grace kindness and a commitment to finding common ground we are honored and grateful to invite him into our cohort and so as a member of the great class of 2021 you will receive the alumni magazine and we're honored to invite you to all of our class reunions in the future um professor eddie glaude who has been a guest on your show is kind enough to send along some signed books for you to add to your collection and finally we'd like to present you with some princeton clothing clothing i see that you're already wearing your princeton hoodie and we're hoping that you'll add some more orange into your wardrobe thank you again for your remarks and welcome to the princeton class of 2021 thank you so much everybody thank you thank you so much thank you very much i will now introduce myself hi i'm i'm trevor noah i am the part of the honorary class of 2021 and um i've been studying uh hoodie management um i have i have a degree in hoodie management my major has been sweatpants and general hoodie zoom couture and so that is what i've been studying this year and i just want to say thank you to everybody i appreciate you so much and we did it guys we did it we graduated we did it thanks everybody i really appreciate you guys man this has been so much fun and i really hope you guys go out and change the world don't don't let it be the same way it was before you came into it thank you everybody

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Id: xwI3IW9wES0

Length: 19min 18sec (1158 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021