Listen to Hillary Clinton in 1969, the First Student Speaker at a Wellesley Commencement

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Listen to Hillary Clinton in 1969, the First Student Speaker at a Wellesley Commencement

Hillary Rodham was 21 years old when she was chosen as the first student to ever speak at a Wellesley College Commencement in 1969. She was introduced by President Ruth Adams, who called her “cheerful, good humored, good company, and a good friend to all of us.”

And Wellesley College this week released the speech she gave in which she discusses the political climate of the time and what she felt should change:

“Part of the problem with just empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn’t do us anything. We’ve had lots of empathy; we’ve had lots of sympathy, but we feel that for too long our leaders have viewed politics as the art of the possible. And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible.”

She also spoke of education:

“To be educated, the goal of it must be human liberation. A liberation enabling each of us to fulfill our capacities so as to be free to create within and around ourselves.”

Clinton also spoke of people who feared for the future because of the situations of the present. Clinton advised:

“Fear is always with us but we just don’t have time for it. Not now.”

Watch:

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