To continue from the previous post on the recent graduation speeches I listened to, here is the second message that stood with me. This message was from the first speech – by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger at the university-wide convocation. It was an interesting speech because a large part of the speech was talking about free speech and other journalistic topics, rather than addressing the diverse crowd with a generic message – free speech is his area of expertise, so I appreciate that he did not talk about ideas that are unfamiliar to him. Bollinger made several pertinent points, but the quote that stuck with me was his mention of "our larger responsibility to answer bad ideas with better ideas, and not to hide or be silent."

Bollinger talked about the expanding world – or rather, how the world is shrinking such that ideas and news cannot be contained within borders. He urged all present to continue fighting for free speech and transparency.

While the speech was long and the sun was hot, the message hit home with me: with the pace of change continuing to grow, we must be transparent with new ideas and never allow ourselves to stay content with the status quo. Now, Bollinger made reference specifically to the struggling journalism industry, but these are imperatives for us all. In businesses, collecting and sharing information is critical to understanding today’s landscape and tomorrow’s new plan of attack. We must first understand the bad ideas so that we can respond with better ones.

As I mentioned, this struck me as a message for us all. As Bob recently pointed out, we all view problems, ideas, information, etc. through the context we bring, so I wanted to leave you with the message itself for a day or two, but I already plan to write a final blog on the various messages I took away from the graduation as a whole and how they spoke to me in the context I bring – specifically, the need for workforce research.