Commencement at Bard

I have to confess that my visit to Shropshire was a bit curtailed by going to Commencement at Bard College, where I was getting an honorary degree. I had never been to a US Commencement before, and I suspect Bard is not typical (it��s what we call in the UK ��Graduation��).

It was a wonderfully sylvan occasion. Just look at the lunch plus Greek temple in the background. To die for, eh? How lucky am I?

But what was really memorable about it was the radical, liberal tradition of US culture and politics being celebrated.

The main speaker on the occasion was John Lewis, the Democrat congressman and ally of Martin Luther King, and rightly an American hero (I walked in the procession behind him, and very rightly BEHIND him, as you can see in the pic at the top of the post). He gave a wonderful address urging the graduating students to be troublemakers, ��necessary troublemakers��. And we all cheered and cheered.

But the whole occasion was affirming �� for example when we literally cheered again the people who had started their Bard degrees in ��correctional facilities��. And the President, the conductor Leon Botstein, emphasised the radical roots of Bard, in talking about the dark days of modern America, and offering a wonderful, appropriately radical, new version of the Sermon on the Mount (all the better, and the more moving, coming from a secular Jew).

So I was hugely honoured to be there, and to reconnect with my friends in the Classics department. I am not sure how great I look in the academic robes, though.