Vol. 24, No. 24	June 4, 1999

9,600 Are Graduated at Close of Columbia's 245th Academic Year

BY A. DUNLAP-SMITH

In cap-and-gown ceremonies across campus, Columbia's 15 schools and two affiliates bade farewell to their graduates with advice to keep an open mind, resist cynicism, seek the fresh angle and use sunscreen.

Although the main University Commencement on May 19 was the wettest in more than 10 years, the presence of the honorary degree recipients, including Muhammad Ali, Noam Chomsky, Tito Puente and Julie Taymor, lifted the spirits of the more than 30,000 guests and more than 9,000 graduates. When the boxing and human rights legend rose to accept his honorary degree, many students stood on their rain-spattered chairs and chanted "Ali, Ali!"

On the day before Commencement, however, the weather looked promising as students participated in individual school graduation ceremonies. To the approximately 950 Columbia College seniors seated on the South Field Lawn, television journalist Claire Shipman warned that "your future will not -- almost certainly -- unfold as expected."

Shipman, CC'86, SIPA'94 and the 1999 winner of the College's prestigious John Jay Award for Distinguished Professional Achievement, said she based the statement on the unexpected way that her own life has unfolded: from avid undergraduate sunbather to premed casualty of organic chemistry to TV news producer turned on-air reporter (in a pinch in front of a Moscow McDonald's) to NBC's current White House correspondent.

Her experience of life so far has taught her, she told the graduates, "to keep an open mind," which is a mind accepting of uncertainty, for "uncertainty can make the most of opportunity." She also told them to "try to grab moments and make them your own through examination" -- a lesson she learned, regretfully, from not keeping a journal while in Moscow during the tumultuous years of communism's collapse.

Shipman ended by sending the College Class of '99 on its way with "good luck and don't forget the sunscreen."

The afternoon rain on May 18 did not dampen the joy of some 500 graduates of the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) gathered on Ancell Plaza. The guest speakers were in fact a couple well acquainted with each other's work: James P. Rubin, CC'82 and SIPA'84, assistant secretary of state for public affairs and husband of the second speaker, Christiane Amanpour, chief international correspondent for CNN.

Rubin talked to the graduates about the relationship between the government and the press in the post-cold war world of the 24-hour news cycle. "The government is mostly in a defensive crouch against the media's onslaught," he said.

Rubin, however, was not defensive. He generously praised the media, saying, "Today's press is often the voice of reason in an unreasonable world." He cited the work correspondents such as his wife have done in bringing ethnic cleansing, particularly in Kosovo, to the attention of the world.

Before turning the podium over to Amanpour, Rubin urged the graduates, as they pursue careers in public service, not to fall prey to cynicism. "Cynicism," he said, "is simply not an option."

Amanpour took up the theme on which her husband finished his speech. She called on the nascent public servants "to be passionate" about their work and "to display the courage of [their] convictions."

Challenging what she characterized as the "cynical" and "patronizing attitude" of today's media leaders, who believe the "American people are not sophisticated or mature enough" for serious news, Amanpour warned her audience against such an attitude in their professional lives.

In the evening, Joan Didion told the 266 graduates of the School of Journalism assembled in Levien Gym that the best part of being a journalist was finding an unfamiliar situation and making sense of it.

Didion, whose reputation as a master of the literary journalism genre is founded on such books as The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem, told the fledgling journalists to avoid the big breaking stories. She said to "follow the edges" by looking instead at smaller stories from fresh angles. And she advised that they always ask themselves: "Am I writing down what I saw? Am I telling all I know? Am I giving everything its proper context?" Didion quoted the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss as she summed up the challenge and triumph of journalism for the graduates: "Fieldwork is taxing. You must pass unnoticed but always be at hand. You must see and know everything."

In his Miller Theatre address to the 191 graduating students of the School of General Studies (GS), Dean Peter J. Awn said that "to be a paradox, a mix of opposites . . . is exactly what we are all about at GS.

"How can you be a policeman or a diplomat or a working mother and graduate from an Ivy League university at the same time?" he said. "In celebrating these opposites we break the cliche stereotypes of what an Ivy League graduate ought to look like, think like and act like." Also in Miller Theatre but on Commencement Day, director Julie Taymor addressed a throng of aspiring artists at the School of the Arts ceremony. Taymor, whose Broadway production of Disney's The Lion King is a huge favorite with both the critics and the public, told the graduates that the "act and process of making art are as important as the product."

She explained that a work of art is only authentic if the artist is engaged completely throughout the creative process, because "authenticity is about putting yourself fully into every detail."

"I encourage you," Taymor said in conclusion, "to be as risky as you can be and only do that which you are fully committed to."

Following the Commencement ceremony, the Alumni Federation of Columbia sponsored a lunch to award their annual alumni/ae medals. Paul C. Sereno, '81 MA, '82 PhM, '87 PhD, a renowned paleontologist, won the 1999 Medal for Excellence.

Sereno presented a visual lecture of his work tracing dinosaur migration in history with slides to illustrate his research in Africa. Before Columbia he studied studio art in Chicago, but eventually was drawn to paleontology because of the visual aspect of hunting for dinosaur bones.

"In studying dinosaurs, I know what it is like to be a part of history," he said. "It's about understanding deep time -- time that we will never be able to experience."

The Alumni Federation also awarded 10 Alumni Medals for dedication to the University. The recipients were: Carl T. Burton Jr, Maureen A. Cogan, Stanley Edelman, Philip W. Ehrlich, Stephen D. Hoffman, Brian C. Krisberg, Donald E. Ross, Jack S. Roth, Thomas Scheuer and Cecile Singer.