Laurien Alexandre’s GSLC Commencement Address – 2024

Commencement Speech   

July 27, 2024 

Laurien Alexandre 

Today’s commencement talk is about you … and me … and our democracy.   

It’s about our individual and collective responsibility for the future of our country and world.    And, it’s about answering the perennial question Antiochians have been asking for over 17 decades,  “What would Horace say about education’s role in democracy today?” 

But first, let me pause, I recognize that I am one of the privileged in this moment. I am allowed to speak at a commencement ceremony. No one has disinvited me because they don’t like my politics or they are worried about what I will say. No forces behind the scenes have canceled this event. In fact, Antioch has always cultivated rebellious voices  (mine included) and for that, I am deeply appreciative.   

It wasn’t always that way for me. As an impassioned high school student in the late 1960s, I was literally barred from participating in my own graduation for organizing a student walkout in support of the LAUSD teacher’s strike; and in my first year of college, I used words too loosely and wrote something inappropriate on an envelope that I then mailed … to my parents no less …. and two FBI men showed up at my college dorm. Times change, yet in so many ways, they don’t.   The voices of youth – idealistic, passionate, disconcerting, and yes, often unruly— is exactly what this world needs now. I much prefer dealing with unruly hearts than impenetrable hatreds. 

So, I have this platform today. For those of you familiar with my annual Commencement addresses,  you know I meander through months of reading until I find my theme. This time was a bit different. Chancellor Groves called me late last year and said, “Laurien, I want to be sure that when we get to  November 6, I can say, “Antioch did everything it could to ensure our democracy. So, come up with a  plan.”   

That turned into Antioch Works for Democracy, a multipronged University-wide campaign of education and action. I won’t go into all the details here, but organizing it has been a productive way to harness my energy … for my own good and for the common good.  

It also, in some ways, turned into this commencement address. Not to be overly dramatic, but the search for ways to save democracy saved me. It took me out of my profound despair at the state of the country and made me look at who I am – broken heart and all. It helped me reflect more deeply on higher education’s role in strengthening a very fragile democracy and inspired me to reinvigorate my commitment to the fight for a more inclusive country and a more just world. 

Maybe it’s the road you’ve been on too these past months, even years.   Please bear with me as we go on this 20-minute journey together – and hopefully, as Antiochians, it may help us all. So, to start … The litany of what’s wrong seems overwhelming ….  but, this first part is going to be short. After all, we are here to celebrate! Today I’m going to specifically focus on the state of democracy – to do otherwise would seem absolutely tone-deaf to our times.   

The threats are not figments of my darkest imagination. A 2024 Pew global survey shows the depths of the democratic recession: Over 60% percent of those surveyed in 24 countries indicate significant dissatisfaction with democracy; In over half of those countries, close to 30% actually think a strong leader without any parliamentary or legislative interference would be a better form of government; And, in the United States, some 15%, that’s roughly 50 million people,  actually support military rule! (1)   

It gets more terrifying. About 15% percent of the U.S. electorate, again, close to 50 million — believe the country is ruled by satanic worshipers and pedophiles. And 30% of registered Republicans indicate that true patriots may have to resort to violence to save this country. (2) To them, the insurrection on January 6^th was  a “beautiful day.” 

I don’t know what is more frightening – random gun violence that makes mass shootings an almost weekly occurrence or calls for politically inspired bloodbaths that make politicians targets and civil war a terrifying possibility.   It is hard to believe this is the state of our nation. We need to ask, what has happened to an educated and informed populace that makes reasoned and reasonable decisions for the common good, which is the cornerstone of democracy? So given Chancellor Groves’ request and my own distress, I set out to read everything I could about how authoritarianism rises and how democracies die.     

While explanations vary, in general, scholars tell us that authoritarianism appeals to people experiencing tremendous societal change who feel they are losing out and blame some “other” as the reason for their perceived loss. In essence, when people divide, authoritarians can conquer; when people come together, democracy can thrive. Democracy is more than free and fair elections, although even those are in question these days. It is about what we, the people, do together. And THAT depends on “us” being educated in and motivated by democratic values that respect differences and engage in dialogue, debate, deliberate and determine paths forward together. 

Yet, the more diverse we’ve become, the more those in power want to hold on to it, and the more those who feel they have lost their privilege want to blame the other. Basically, the narrative goes something like this. This country is no longer great because someone — angry feminists, invading migrants, woke professors, you name it  – has somehow perverted progress and reduced the nation to a shadow of its former self. Author Anne Applebaum calls this ‘restorative nostalgia’ (3), precisely the sentiment fueling slogans like ‘make America great again,’ and we know what that’s about.   Just to be clear, there is nothing restorative about it. The great post-war political theorist Hannah Arendt tells us that that sense of loss, resentment, and isolation is the experience of ‘furious individuals’ who feel they have nothing in common except their contempt for the other. (4) How ironic, their connection is based on loneliness; their own solidarity is based on hate. Arendt wrote more than 70 years ago, and again, times change and yet they don’t.   This is where we are at today! 

It’s odd to consider loneliness in these terms, isn’t it? But think of it. Loneliness is reaching epic proportions in our country. In the context of today’s speech, that phenomenon isn’t just about the welfare of individual seniors or the well-being of isolated youth, but it is also a reflection of the crisis of our democracy. It is literally making us sick!   An APA 2016 annual survey reported that 63% of all Americans said the elections and the future of the country were significant sources of stress in their lives. By 2018 that number had gone up to  70%. (5) I can’t even only imagine the level of stress right now. I feel it every day. It wakes me up most nights. 

I so want to aspire to, you know, when they go low, we go high.   But my civic tolerance has all but disappeared. The insanity of the arguments, the perversion of facts, and the violence embedded in the words and acts all make me scream at the TV news or just hide inside my Los Angeles bubble. Whether in community centers, college classrooms, or university encampments, we no longer listen to each other. But here’s the thing democracy depends on us being better than that.  

Dictators, or in our case, wanna-be-dictators, love to prey on people’s isolation and fears because that makes us more vulnerable to manipulation and susceptible to scapegoating. Historians tell us that it is precisely dialogue, love, and a sense of shared humanity that authoritarian leaders fear most, and political scientists tell us that coming together is the only way to bring the country back from the brink (6). Bottom line, in order to diminish the threat of black boots marching through our streets, we must find ways to care about each other, to listen and dialogue, and THAT feels so hard.   Let me be clear,  I don’t mean being silent in the face of hate-filled speech or blatant threats to our democracy. We MUST confront them fearlessly. 

But I do mean going beyond dismissive name-calling and simplistic stereotypes. Bridging across divides is the only way we can turn the tide of a world breaking apart (7), and we can’t do that by yelling at or ignoring each other. It’s the only way we’re gonna get to “We the People.” Each of us must do our part to nurture those better angels because it matters for this country’s future. We need to cultivate ourselves as the kinds of people a just and inclusive democracy requires, which means that we need to transform the ways we live and work together (8). Easier said than done, I get that. 

But think about it. We need to become the kinds of people democracy needs. Schools and colleges have a CENTRAL role in that “democratic becoming.”    

And that’s where Horace comes in…. A number of recent articles have identified higher ed’s GREAT misalignment, that being the mismatch between the credentials colleges are offering and the needs of today’s job market (9). Let me be clear, I agree there is a profound misalignment. But for me, that misalignment goes to the very heart of education’s fundamental responsibility to cultivate democratic persons who believe in pluralism, equality, facts, reasoned debate, separation of church and state, the rule of law, and so forth. That’s what Horace believed, and that’s why Antioch was founded.  

My imaginary conversations with Horace these past few months, you know, one Antiochian to another, go something like this: 

The misalignment is that the average undergraduate leaves school with a @$40,000 debt, and 20  years later, they still owe half (10). Master’s graduates owe $80,000 and PhD graduates $135,000. (11) Put starkly, their outstanding lifelong debt is to a bank and not to our democracy. It should be the other way around. 

The misalignment is that 82% percent of universities no longer include a US history or civics course in their general ed requirements. The result is devastating for our democracy. The majority of college students recently surveyed could not even name the three branches of government  (12). Seriously! The misalignment is shuttering arts and humanities departments because they aren’t considered positive contributors to the universities’ bottom line. Of course, the bottom line being referenced is tuition dollars needed to balance budgets. Horace’s bottom line is whole personal learning is needed for an expansive democracy.  

The misalignment is watching higher education be strangled by rabid state legislatures,  congressional witch hunts, and zealous donor demands. Diversity, equity, and belonging aren’t what’s polarizing America; they are precisely the values an inclusive democracy needs.

And yes, the misalignment is sending armed police to break up boisterous and rowdy but largely peaceful protests on college campuses and silencing faculty who speak out in their scholarship and public lives. Antioch was founded on the belief that education is democracy’s best defense. Horace Mann argued that “ignorance breeds monsters” and education is democracy’s safety net, outside of which is darkness. He viewed colleges as sites to nurture pluralism and prepare us as educated persons who would act in mutual cooperation “in ways that lessen friction … introduce deeper sympathy and wider understanding.” (13)  Bottom line, it is where we become the people democracies need. That’s the alignment I’m talking about. 

Somewhere along the way, though – and we don’t have time to go into that history  — the central purpose of colleges shifted from educating people for democratic lives in society to preparing them for economic lives in workplaces. Education has become an instrument of economic growth and not an investment in democracy’s expansion. The fact is we desperately need both. 

If schools are where we are supposed to develop the skills to engage in deliberative dialogue across identities and differences, then the misalignment is staggering.   More than half of Muslim and  Jewish college students, and a fifth of ALL students surveyed in 2024 at 600 colleges and universities, indicate that they feel unsafe on campus and fear ‘personal danger. (14)  We are failing our democracy. If schools are where we are supposed to learn how to discern fact from fiction, truth from lies, the misalignment is frightening. According to a recent study, there has been a significant increase in college students who now believe that COVID was a hoax, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged,  and that the Holocaust never happened (15). As Antiochians, we need to do our part to reverse that trend line, realigning education to revitalize  our democracy and ‘win those victories for humanity.” That’s what Horace would tell us to do. 

So, what does this have to do with the Graduate School of Leadership & Change? It’s an interesting question because civics education tends to focus on undergraduates in community-based service-learning programs. That’s because the most common way to think about civic engagement is through volunteerism. Don’t get me wrong, that’s incredibly important but not really very applicable to a GRADUATE school. OUR responsibility is to educate professionals to be the democratic beings this nation needs. And in that sense, their democratic engagement isn’t something enacted outside the office as volunteers. It IS their work. I’m talking about us in this room. I could use the term “civic-minded professionalism” (16), but I prefer “democratic professionalism.” Because it isn’t just about being civically inclined; it is about rooting our professional actions in the values and methods of democratic engagement – from leadership styles to organizational strategies to efforts to reduce inequities in our professional domains. As so aptly captured by one scholar, “We are democratic professionals not because we do democracy professionally but because we do professionalism democratically” (17). Perfect! 

Don’t get me wrong.   I want professionals – doctors, lawyers, scholars, scientists, architects,  psychologists – to be excellent IN their specializations. But at Antioch, that isn’t enough! At Antioch, we educate for the professions and to challenge those professions. I’m quite taken with that notion of seeing one’s profession as both a fulfilling and fulfilling career and a democratic calling. I think you are too. After all, you have come to Antioch’s Graduate School to study and practice leading change for a most just society. 

Whatever your workplace — classroom, newsroom, boardroom — I KNOW you put your professional capabilities toward the service of democracy. Ahh, you ask, HOW do I know that?  I actually have evidence… you see, I, too, have been trained in data collection and evidence-based analysis! First, think of our program’s pedagogies for democratic practice.   

Start with being in cohorts of diverse learners working through conflicts and finding common ground for the common good. That’s about learning democratically. Think of your 1^st Year Ethical Dilemmas essay as the opportunity to weigh professional conflicts from the lens of what’s right and ethical. That’s about thinking democratically. Think about your 2^nd Year Change Project as creating transformational efforts with engaged stakeholders as opposed to imposing strategic plans on compliant followers.   That’s about acting democratically. Think about your dissertation as the interrogation of inequities in your professional domains. The implications and future research section of Chapter 6 is all about what can be done. That’s about imagining democratic futures. 

But my evidence goes further: In preparation for today’s speech, I reached out to our alumni and asked them how they enact democratic values in their work. I am thrilled to share that I received dozens of replies. As an aside – because I know you’re curious — graduates from 16 different cohorts responded … and if you want to know, the most responses came from Cohort 6… not to be competitive or anything! 

But here are a few brief snapshots of responses:  

Leadership must agree to a listening exercise at all levels in every consulting contract. 

Last week I literally put three empty chairs out so people wouldn’t forget that we were having a meeting without those voices present and to ask why. 

I approach everyone with radical candor and transparent accountabilities.  

I raise up the stories of people from countries left behind.  

I question answers not to cast aspersions but rather to understand and synthesize. I decenter the leader and celebrate differences in the collective.   

I could go on … but you get the drift. When asked, these Antiochian professionals – our graduates – YOU  – focused on listening carefully, engaging in dialogue, ensuring diverse voices are considered, limiting the power of the leader,  acting for the collective good. I think Horace would be pleased. I am. We ARE educating our middle-aged, cross-sector, multiracial multiethnic PhD students to become the professionals this democracy needs. Professionals who use their capabilities to create opportunities for meaningful participation, trust, and belonging across differences of identities, experiences, and interests. Professionals who use their skills to interrogate democratic practices and undemocratic consequences of the domains they enter – be those healthcare, education, businesses,  government, and non-profits.

Bottom line, it’s all about educating FOR the profession and FOR the people. NOT one or the other. We desperately need both. Here’s why. We may educate leaders to run excellent healthcare facilities that have the skill to treat disease, but if the general public doesn’t care enough to protect one another, we will not be prepared for the next pandemic. We may educate leaders to manage community nonprofits, but if the societal conditions of loneliness and isolation do not change, we will continue to see the rise of suicides and addictions no matter how good the clinic. We may educate leaders for meaningful careers as college administrators, but if those we serve are driven by fear and ignorance, unable or unwilling to discern fact from Hiction, then Project 2025 can demonize education and dismantle our democracy. 

That’s why the aspiration of Antioch’s professionalism is not only mastery of specialization but also the ability to empower those we serve to recognize that their flourishing AS individuals takes place IN communities built on care … and not contempt. That’s what WE do at Antioch for democracy! That’s the GREAT realignment I’m talking about. As Antiochians, you’re not off the hook  … sorry to say … just because you’ve finished your doctoral studies.  

Going back to the question that started this commencement address, “What would Horace say about  our role in democracy today?” I think he’d tell us – given the magnitude of the threats, perhaps like no time since his own – that  Antioch has an evermore urgent responsibility to educate democratic professionals who will use their capabilities and privileges to make a more just, more inclusive, and more democratic country and world. For over 170 years, Antioch has been  … and will continue to be … the most UNCOMMON school for the common good, and YOU – our graduates ARE the professionals democracy needs NOW! 

There’s one more thing I want to ask of you as you walk out these doors. As newly minted PhDs.  As engaged scholars.  As reHlective leaders. As democratic professionals.  As parents, grandparents, partners, children, colleagues, friends and family. As citizens.   VOTE. Our democracy depends on it! 

Thank you for walking with me these past 20 minutes. This opportunity to reimagine higher education in a time of profound threats to our democracy comes at a time when I am reinventing myself. It has helped strengthen my will and mend my broken heart. Maybe it has helped heal yours too. I hope so.