05 June 2008

A Liberating Discovery from J. K. Rowling

Showing a fine sense of priorities, this year's Harvard class got to hear from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke at Class Day exercises and author J. K. Rowling during their more formal commencement. From her remarks:

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
She went on to speak about poverty versus failure, her work at Amnesty International, and lifelong friendships. I suspect her speech will in fact be memorable.

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