Undergraduate Commencement Address by Jonathan D. Sarna ’75, GSAS MA’75
Honorary degree recipient Jonathan D. Sarna ’75, GSAS MA’75 delivers the Undergraduate Commencement speech at Brandeis University's 74th Commencement Exercises on May 18, 2025.
Transcript
President Levine, members of the Board of Trustees, fellow honorees, fellow faculty members, fellow members of the great Brandeis Class of 1975, graduates in 2025 and friends.
Fifty years ago, we, the graduates of 1975, assembled outdoors in the Ullman Amphitheater, of blessed memory, and rain poured down over us. America lay mired deep in recession. When we graduated, there was unemployment. It peaked that May at 9.2%, and contrary to what our economics textbook taught, there was simultaneously massive inflation. The Consumer Price Index rose by 10.4% in 1975 and would rise by another 6.5% in 1975.
Economists had to invent a new word to characterize the simultaneous recession and inflation that we experienced. That word was "stagflation." The main Commencement speaker 50 years ago was Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. His lengthy prepared remarks dealt with energy policy and Middle East relations. But he proceeded to teach us a great lesson by discarding most of that speech "to save time and escape rain." He did make news by decrying newly imposed presidential tariffs. President Gerald Ford had recently imposed new tariffs on oil that were expected to cost New England $250 million. Sen. Kennedy characterized that policy as ridiculous.
Our class valedictorian back in 1975 was the university's first-ever Rhodes scholar, Michael Sandel, on his way to a great career. "We grew up in a world of discontinuities where only crisis was constant," he declared, seeking to understand the chasm between the radical activists of the Brandeis '60s and what he called the "passive, self-centered, materialistic, even humorless," albeit "well-behaved" students, like me, who graduated with him.
"If we have learned anything," he explained, "it is that moods change with the times."
Unlike those militant Brandeis students of the '60s, he disclosed that our class worried about university budget cutbacks and what he described as destruction by austerity. "For now," he concluded, "we are the sober generation." The Boston Globe headlined that phrase: "Class of 1975: A Sober Generation."
Well, for the last 50 years, I've been trying to figure out what it means to be part of a sober generation. But now I understand. Our class was actually ahead of its time. Studies show that Gen Z, you graduates, and others in the audience born 1997-2025, you are really the "sober generation."
Scholarship confirms your decreased alcohol consumption, as well as your maturity, defined in one study as being moderate, nuanced, in control. Being sober--for you in 2025, as for us in 1975--means avoiding excess, keeping calm, remaining dignified. Our generation, now known to the Yiddish-speaking cognoscenti by the technical term "Gen AK," had much reason to be sober.
We had lived through an era driven by a president, Richard Nixon, intoxicated with power and fueled by rage. We watched the unfolding Watergate scandal and the resignation of the vice president and then of the president. We experienced October 6, 1973, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, when we awoke to horrifying news of a surprise attack on the state of Israel from neighboring Egypt and Syria. Thousands, including some of our own friends and relatives, lay dead and wounded. Two hundred and ninety-three Israelis were captured. Notwithstanding the great economic hardship, Brandeis University suspended most fundraising during the Yom Kippur War.
Administrators, faculty and students alike understood there was no other choice for a Jewish-sponsored university like ours. It was a sobering time, indeed. Dark, dark days on our campus.
Your generation, Class of 2025, likewise, has much reason to be sober. Yours, too, is an era driven by a president intoxicated with power and fueled by rage. You lived through a global pandemic, filled with lonely quarantine restrictions, Zoom classes, mandatory COVID testing, ubiquitous masks. Later, you watched as Russia invaded Ukraine, killing tens of thousands and displacing over 15 million people. And you experienced October 7, 2023, the holiday of Simchat Torah in Israel, when we awoke to horrifying news of a surprise attack upon the Jewish state's southern border from neighboring Gaza. Thousands, including some of our own friends, relatives, children of colleagues, lay dead and wounded. Some 250 Israelis were kidnapped, taken hostage. Fifty-eight of them, living and dead, are still there. Sobering, indeed. Dark, dark days on our campus. My repetition here is not accidental.
It aims to remind us of the wise and frequently misattributed aphorism of psychoanalyst Theodore Reich: "It has been said that history repeats itself," he wrote. "This is perhaps not correct; it merely rhymes." One rhyme proved imperfect, however. Back in 1973, the Brandeis community, administrators, faculty, students, Jews and non-Jews alike, had an intuitive sense of our collective responsibility toward Israel and the Jewish people.
As world Jewry now consolidates, some 90% living today either in Israel or North America, let us strive to reawaken that collective sense of responsibility. Let's make certain whatever our faith or politics, that Brandeis' role as the great academic center and the foremost training ground for 21st-century American Jewish leaders is reaffirmed and bolstered.
Let us resolve, too, to promote moderation and sobriety amid the extremism of our time. Back in 1975, that was the message my class of graduates heard, and that, members of the Class of 2025, is my message to you as well.
Heed the great Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides, who, under the influence of Greek and Arabic teachings, instructed us to seek balance and moderation in our actions and character. "Aim at the happy medium," Maimonides wrote. Strive for the "golden mean." Precisely what is glaringly absent from so much of political, public and academic life today.
Our namesake, Justice Louis Brandeis, Louisa's great-grandfather, modeled sober living. He scorned excess, conducted himself modestly, cherished the rule of law, prized good character, felt a deep sense of responsibility for the Jewish people, steered clear of slogans and name-calling and certainly did not believe in moving fast and breaking things.
Listen to this little-known birthday letter that he sent to his daughter, Susan, in 1919, when she turned 26. His words still resonate, I hope, for you, 106 years later: "You have been happily born into an age ripe for change; and your own horror of injustice properly beckons you to take an active part in effecting it. In laying your plans, bear in mind that time, the indispensable, is a potent factor, and that your own effectiveness is to be measured in terms of a lifetime. Be not impatient of time spent in educating yourself for the task, nor at the slowness of that education of others, which must precede real progress. Patience is as necessary as persistence and the undeviating aim."
Members of the Brandeis graduating Class of 2025, as you now set forth amid the turbulence and the traumas of our time, eager to promote change and impatient to start, I hope that you will keep Louis Brandeis' admonition in mind.
Be patient as well as persistent. Aim at the happy medium. Learn from history. Support Brandeis University and its role in Jewish life. And above all, keep calm and stay sober.
Congratulations. Mazal tov. Thank you very much.