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Women Who Will: A Celebration of Wellesley College Alumnae and Their Life PathsKeynote Address by former Secretary of State Madeleine
Korbel Albright '59 and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
'69
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Faculty, students, staff, alumnae, trustees of Wellesley College, conference panelists and other special guests - - we're so happy to have you here. What a joy it is for me on this evening to welcome you to this historic event. And we are making history tonight. Make no mistake. First and foremost by hosting this rare joint appearance by two extraordinary leaders on the world stage, two incredible daughters of Wellesley - - but we're not proud of them, are we? Two impressive daughters of Wellesley, ten years apart, back together now to give us a privileged glimpse of their shared and separate perspectives on where they've traveled, what they've learned, how they've changed and what they see ahead.
I extend a welcome also to those who are listening online all over the country and around the world. On this historic occasion we are for the first time broadcasting live audio streaming from the campus over the Internet. Two years ago when I first approached our two speakers about this event, they encouraged me to think about new and innovative ways to extend Wellesley's reach even more broadly to women around the world. This then is one small step.
We have so much to celebrate this evening as we have through this anniversary year, so much for which to be so grateful. We honor the many people out of whose courage, intelligence and toil this unlikely college has grown into a mighty institution. We honor our past and our future. We commemorate a proud legacy of excellence, of strength, of resilience.
As we have recalled Wellesley's past this year, celebrated our accomplishments and marked our milestones, we've also been addressing those things we must do to secure our future and to merit this place of power it is our good fortune now to occupy. All of us have a responsibility for charting the course of this institution that we hold in trust for a short time, each one of us in our own way. All of us make a difference for Wellesley College in the way we choose to live our lives. Hence, the inspiration behind this gathering of alumnae voices. Our conference builds on the premise that Wellesley College is positioned now to play a unique role in defining the wellsprings of effective leadership for the 21st century, the essence of a life well lived, how to make a difference in the world, and how to make a different world, a world more faithful to the values and to the aspirations of women.
Henry Durant dedicated his life and his fortune to the founding of this college. He was sure that educated women would make a better world, one built on intellectual rigor combined with forbearance, respect, compassion and trust. He wanted to secure for them the highest quality education fully equal to that available at the best men's institutions at the time. He was scornful of patronizing notions about the limited capacities of women's minds. "Women can do the work," he said, "I will give them the chance." He did and we did the work, and over the years successive generations of Wellesley faculty and staff have dedicated themselves to shaping and reshaping an excellent liberal arts education to meet the demands of changing times.
Even as outside pressures have transformed what we do and who we are, certain fundamental values have remained and endured. A Wellesley education has always focused on qualities that we all recognize as defining a liberally educated person - - flexible intellectual skills, critical habits of mind, respect for history and appreciation of beauty, tolerance, civility and empathy, and a sincere desire to learn from our differences and an abiding spirit of responsible stewardship for generations to come.
At Wellesley, we've always expected that our students, whatever their reasons for choosing this college, would come and be immersed here in a learning community in which they acquired knowledge as part of a deeper process of taking up their responsibilities for themselves and for the common good.
This 125th anniversary conference -- this return to the campus of our luminaries, this gathering of our great ones, the elders and some of them not even so old, and this amazing moment that we've created -- has offered us a chance for all of us to see those qualities of mind and qualities of heart in action in the world, as we've seen already this afternoon in the vivid panel discussions.
At the time of our centennial 25 years ago, few of us could have imagined that we would be as strong as we are today, recognize the world around as a beacon for women's aspirations and for their dreams of a better life. That we are in such a position of remarkable strength, we owe to the many alumnae whose lives have inspired us all and none more dramatically than our two speakers tonight.
To say that our keynote speakers require no introduction would be the understatement of the year, maybe the century. Both were political science majors at Wellesley College. Both were honors students -- hear that everybody? Both were campus leaders while they were here -- Senator Clinton as president of College Government -- Secretary Albright as editor of the Wellesley News. Both have been trustees of the College and both have been back many times to speak on important occasions and to lend their prestige to our cause, and it is a cause and a noble one. And through the powerful connections each of them has made with women around the world, they have underscored on the world stage the reality on which the founding of Wellesley College was based, that the education, empowerment, and self-directed transformation of women's lives, hold the key to the future of the human family.
Hillary Rodham Clinton -- your strength and your courage are breathtaking, legendary -- your unshakeable grace under pressure. We have admired your tenacity and your focus, your capacious mind. You've stood up consistently and resolutely for the needs of women and children first and always. You are a steady champion of the disempowered and the disenfranchised. You have been a tireless voice for human rights and for social justice. We welcome you back to campus now and always to celebrate your stunning successes.
Madeleine Korbel Albright -- you have touched everyone the world around and you have inspired all of us here, as you can hear, with the wisdom and the strength and the endurance that you displayed throughout your tenure as Secretary of State. Your dignity, your clarity and confidence, your human empathy shown through in everything you did and do. Even those people who might have disagreed at times with your policies - - were there any of those people? A few -- always admired your clear commitment to doing what you believed was right no matter what and the selfless integrity that you brought to your demanding work every hour of every day. You are the living embodiment of the Wellesley motto "non ministrari sed ministrare." We welcome you back to campus with our heartfelt affection, admiration and love.
We sure are lucky to have these two women, aren't we?
Now, here's the plan. Let me tell you the plan. You've heard more than enough from me. Each of our two guests will speak for ten or fifteen minutes about her extraordinary life and experience as a leader. Then, we'll sit down here in these three chairs, and I will start a little dialogue between them. We'll do that for about ten minutes or so, see how the time is going. Then, we'll open up the floor for your questions so be thinking about the questions that you might want to ask. There are microphones in the two aisles so you'll have to line up, and I'll take you in order. That's the plan for the evening, and it should be very exciting.
We'll go in reverse order of Wellesley seniority, so we'll begin with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Class of '69, the first First Lady in history to be elected a US senator, and then she'll turn the floor over to Madeleine Korbel Albright, the Class of '59, the first woman in history to serve our country as Secretary of State. Senator Clinton….
SENATOR HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: I am absolutely delighted to be here tonight, and I want to thank Diana not only for that wonderful and thoughtful introduction both about Wellesley and about Madeleine and myself, but for her leadership on behalf of this College that we all love. It is a great pleasure to congratulate her on her tenure and to know that she is at the helm of Wellesley as we move into our 126th year in the future.
I'm delighted, too, to see this extraordinary room filled with students and faculty and the trustees in attendance, and I want to thank all of you for welcoming both of us here this evening. It is always for me a moment of great joy, delight, memory to come back to Wellesley.
When I drove into the Ville which is still "the Ville," I had flashbacks, you know, about everything that I could remember concerning my days here. I've had the opportunity to visit a number of times since I graduated in 1969. Obviously, many things have changed. This extraordinary sports center was not here. I miss, I guess, the place where the posture photos were taken simply because it was really something that should have been left for archaeology. I am pleased that my old dorm, Stone-Davis, recently had a facelift. I know that the Science Center has been remodeled. The computer labs are new.
There is a lot that is different from my time here more than thirty years ago but some things obviously still remain the same. Lake Waban is still a treasure. I suppose swimming is still off-limits. You know, when I was fortunate enough to give the Commencement address back in '92, I spoke about one of my misadventures which was swimming - - and I was then and am still today as blind as a bat but of course now I've got the advantage of contact lenses - - I'm still too chicken to do laser surgery. In those days, I didn't. I wore those very thick glasses that were aviator glasses. If you ever see any pictures of me from those days, you know, don't hold them up next to a picture of Gloria Steinem. It doesn't look the same at all.
So, of course I took them off to go swimming and put them on a stack of my clothes and a very hyper-vigilant campus security man absconded with my clothes, forcing me to wander around blind in a wet bathing suit trying to find my clothes and my glasses. But I still would have gone swimming all the same.
I know that there are many of you who are living in the new dorms, which are still new after all these years. I know that Alan Schechter is still teaching which I'm delighted about. There is much that has changed, much that has remained the same. For me, the memories and the extraordinary experiences that I had here both in the classroom and in the dorm and in every other aspect of my student life have stayed with me as vividly as though it were last year, not thirty more and more years ago.
And no matter where I go, I always am struck by what I was first told by one of Wellesley's legendary figures, Dean Frisch, who none of you may remember, but those of us of a certain age will. I remember one time sitting with her and having a conversation in which she memorably said to me in her inimitable accent, which I will not attempt, that she could always tell a Wellesley woman. And she proceeded to regale me with stories about being in snowstorms in Austria or blizzards in Montana. And one remarkable event that occurred always in her stories was that either she would be taken in or rescued by a Wellesley woman. It did not matter where in the world she was and, you know, when I was like 19 and hearing this story I thought, "Well that's a quaint story. I'm sure that it has been true in her experience, but I don't think it's probably the case anymore."
And I'm here to tell Dean Frisch and everyone else that it certainly is the case that no matter where I have gone in the world, no matter what I am doing, I always encounter women from Wellesley and there is something unique about us. I don't know what it is but it is there. It is present.
One of the great experiences of my recent Senate campaign was being in Rochester, New York, one day and speaking to a large group of women about the campaign and the issues. Sitting in the front row was a 99-year-old woman named Ruth Dyk. Now, Ruth Dyk had marched with her mother in suffragette parades in Boston near the turn of the century as a little girl. She'd gone on to a distinguished career, and she had been a leader in the Rochester community for years, and she was there to speak out about women's issues and in support of my candidacy. And the first words out of her mouth in support of me were, "I'm a Wellesley woman. I was a suffragette. I think we need more women in the Senate and you should too." I was, as always, delighted that the college I loved so much and that gave me so many of the tools that I have used in my life both personally and professionally was once again so well represented.
Now it is clear, I think, on an evening and a weekend like this where you are going to hear from so many alumnae who are accomplished in so many fields, that we owe a debt to all who came before going back to the founding of the College and the extraordinary vision of both Mr. And Mrs. Durant, who often gets left out of the story but who was very involved in the building of the College and in the hiring of the faculty and in the mission that Wellesley represented, that we know that there is much that we can be proud of as we gather here this evening.
Yet, we also are aware that with a privilege such as that bestowed by a Wellesley education do come responsibilities; responsibilities for ourselves and the lives that we construct, responsibilities for our fellow men and women, responsibilities for our community and indeed for our country and our world. Being here at Wellesley this evening reminds me not only of Ruth Dyk or Dean Frisch or the countless other women of Wellesley's past, but of what is expected of those of you who are here in its present and those who will come after you to build the kind of future that Wellesley deserves to have. We are indeed here to honor the past but we are also here to imagine the future for this great institution.
I know that there are big issues that we will confront ,and perhaps Madeleine and I will have a chance to speak about with you and there are issues that are intensely personal.
On my drive here, I did an interview with The Wellesley News and I was asked what advice I would give to those who are about to graduate from Wellesley in the same class as my daughter -- and congratulations -- and I don't think there is any cookie cutter formula for personal or professional or public success. In fact, I would never if I were to cast my mind back and be where you are sitting now have imagined the course of my own life. What I am grateful for is what I learned here at Wellesley, the friendships that I made, both faculty and students, and the opportunities I was given because of that education and those experiences.
As I've traveled the world, especially in the last eight years, I've spent a lot of time focusing on how we can unlock the opportunities that we take for granted, the privileges that an education like Wellesley's bestows upon us, for countless other women and girls around the world. I remember going to the UN Conference on Women. Madeleine was the honorary chair of the delegation, and we went on behalf of the United States and spoke on what we thought should shape the future for our world when it came to women.
I remember saying what I have said before and since -- that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights -- and being met by certainly a great deal of applause but also curiosity. What did I mean by that?
Shortly after, I was on a Voice of America broadcast and we were beamed all over the world and a man called me from a country that has not yet given women full rights. He asked me what on Earth did I mean by saying women's rights were human rights, and I asked him to shut his eyes and imagine all the rights that he, as a man, had to determine the course of his own life, to make decisions great and small about himself and his family, to choose a profession, to enter it, to work as hard as he could, to go as far as his talents and hard work would take him. And I said to him, "That is what I mean. I mean for all women to have the same rights that you as a man have."
There are still too many places in our world where girl children are not respected the same as boy children, where they're fed last and least, where they are denied education and health care that is necessary for the survival or full functioning, where they're even denied the right to vote, to inherit property, to own a business, to chart their own destiny.
I don't think any of us who is part of the Wellesley experience can ever be satisfied until all women have the right that we have to go as far as our talents and hard work will take us. And I would hope that some of you in your vocations and your avocations, in your volunteer work, in your concern, will spend some of the extraordinary energy that we are known for on behalf of those women who you may never meet, on behalf of girls whose futures you may never know to try to help create those conditions for opportunity and personal responsibility that are the hallmark of the Wellesley experience.
And here closer to home, I hope that you will also help create conditions where we respect one another's choices. My choice may not be yours, but if it's a responsible choice as a woman we should be respectful and supportive.
There are some of you in this class that will graduate in June who will decide that you want to be with all your hearts full-time mothers and homemakers, and you should feel free to do that, and we should respect it and you should see that contribution as part of the way that you manifest this experience at Wellesley both in your home and outside.
There may be some of you who will strap on a backpack and be gone for years, and we won't hear from you. And you know what? If that's a responsible decision and you every morning that you wake up feel that you're creating the life that you were meant to lead, then more power to you.
But probably the majority of you will do what Madeleine and I did which is to try to find that balance between work and family that is ever shifting and always difficult, to try to keep your own counsel about how you live and how you chart your future and how you care for those who are close to you or dependent upon you, how you give the best you can at work and have something left over to be the best you can be as a human being. And that will be the challenge you confront.
But what I want to say above all else this evening is that I could never have predicted that I would stand here in the year 2001 having had the experience of a lifetime in the White House, now having such an honor to represent the people of New York in the Senate. I would never ever have predicted it if we had sat down on the shore of Lake Waban and talked about possible futures for myself. It would never have shown up on the list.
One never knows what hand life will deal you. None of us in this room even know if we will survive until tomorrow -- accident, disease, bad fortune -- they're part of the human experience. But that doesn't relieve us of the responsibility and I would argue privilege of trying to do the best we can every minute of every day.
There will be many unintended consequences of the decisions you make. I am a living example of that. And you may decide you charted one course and you want to shift and sail off in another. But using the liberal arts education, using the brain you've been blessed with, using your capacity to reason and think, you can make a responsible life-affirming decision. And part of what I hope you will want to do in the years ahead is to give some of that back to Wellesley.
I went to my library and pulled out the Wellesley College 1875-1975: A Century of Women publication that was published upon the occasion of the centennial. I really commend this to you because I think that looking back at the history of this college is like looking at the history of women in America. Who would have thought that this college would survive as strongly as it is?
I was telling Diana before we came out that I remember sitting in the dorm at Yale Law School in the fall of '69 on a cold night filling out a questionnaire that I'd received from Wellesley -- and I don't know about you but certainly in my last year we spent a lot of time complaining about how difficult it was to date and travel back and forth and all those things. The questionnaire was really designed to find out whether we thought as the latest fad would have had it that Wellesley should go coed or Wellesley should get absorbed and become part of a larger institution. And I found myself as though possessed by some spirit saying, "No. Never. There must always be a Wellesley. Women need Wellesley. You don't give up on Wellesley. Continue Wellesley."
But like any great institution, Wellesley is only as good as its present and its future permit. It cannot rest on its laurels and if you leaf through the pages of this remarkable publication reading about how Longfellow voyaged on Lake Waban and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes visited and the poet Yeats said to Mrs. Durant, "You have chosen a place eternally beautiful." I could go on and on. That's wonderful for us to build on but not rest on. So, my hope this evening is that we have the same sense of vision and mission that Mr. and Mrs. Durant did and for which they gave their fortune, that each of us in our own way not only makes a life for ourselves but continues to build a life of Wellesley.
In my Senate office, I am blessed to have four Wellesley graduates on my staff, all considerably younger than I. Gigi George is the Class of '88 in charge of my New York office. Megan Thompson and Christine Falvo and April Springfield, the Class of '99, are also indispensable to the work that we do. I see in them what I saw in so many of my classmates: a dedication to excellence and hard work, an ability to laugh and enjoy life, but a seriousness of purpose that they want their lives and their work to amount to something, to be meaningful. And since I do consider that to be an essential part of living a life it's wonderful for me to see it's still alive in the graduates of a place that I love so much.
It's wonderful being back and I hope that in ten or twenty or thirty or forty more years, there can be an assembly like this and who knows how it will be cybercast or in what virtual reality it will occur. But I hope it once again reaffirms that Wellesley's mission and vision are alive and well. Thank you very much.
MADELEINE KORBEL ALBRIGHT: Well, thank you. Thank you. I guess it's right to say happy birthday, Wellesley. I think we're here to celebrate this wonderful anniversary and I am truly thrilled to be here.
As Hillary has said, this is a special campus to which to return. I was commenting as we were driving in, kind of thinking about the continuity. The buildings are a little bit more modern but mostly it's the same. I think you have a wonderful feeling of belonging and thinking that many, many of the important things that have happened in our lives started and had a cause coming from here, so I am very pleased to also be here.
It has been quite a lot of years since I had my yellow beanie on and my arm full of books. I'm sure we have a lot of yellow classes here. And Diana, I can only echo what Hillary said. Your leadership at Wellesley has been remarkable and we're all very proud to always know what you are doing and following your amazing energy and footsteps in continuing the leadership here. So, we're very grateful to you.
I have begun writing my book and I have in fact just kind of done the first draft of the Wellesley years. So, I've spent a lot of time kind of thinking about things that are the same or different. I was thinking about the fact that as I go back to teaching that I need to get used to the fact that there will be clicking noise in the classroom from people taking notes on their laptops. Well, when I was here, there were clicking noises in the classroom but they were from knitting needles as we were knitting socks for our boyfriends. I remember being very rudely stopped in the middle of a row when Dante Geromino of the Political Science Department at that time said, "Anybody who is knitting is clearly pregnant," which was not the thing to be.
Now in those days, I think the battle of the sexes was a little bit one-sided because the winner of the hoop rolling contest was promised early marriage -- not necessarily personal fulfillment. It was barely imaginable to conceive of a distinction between the two. It's a very lucky thing that the winner of our hoop rolling contest, Mal Pierce, who is a federal judge, took her hoop rolling winnings in a different way. Our commencement speaker actually told us that our sole and highest duty would be to stay home, become fascinating wives and raise smart sons.
So, I think the very interesting part as I go back and look at what we did was the huge distinction really between Hillary's class and mine. One of our classmates did a study of the 9's and the big breaks that came between the Class of '59 and the Class of '69. I think that it's very important to keep that in mind because our class -- and I see some here, Pam, with us -- was a bit schizophrenic. We were still very much a part of the silent generation content initially I think to take a backseat to our husbands who we very glad to have snared.
We were also very much in the process of transition. More and more, it happened that we would insist on the right to be taken seriously, to participate in the workforce, and to be judged as individuals and not as reflections or appendages of somebody else.
Now, this was certainly true in my case because, as Diana mentioned, I was on The Wellesley News and I wanted to be a journalist and cover world affairs. I was also very much in love and wanted to get married right after graduation, which I did. Unfortunately, my husband wrote for a newspaper in Chicago and I met with his editor and I thought -- there were four newspapers in Chicago at the time -- that I could in fact have one of the other three. And he said, "So, honey, what are you planning to do when you graduate?" I said, "Well, I wanted to be a reporter." He said, "Well, we have a rule on our newspaper that husband and wife can't work on the same paper and it would really not be good for your husband's career if you worked on one of the competing ones so I think you might want to look for another career."
Now for four decades, I have been rehearsing in my mind what I should have said --whatever. What I did say was, "Okay," if you can believe it.
And I little imagined that the time would come that I actually would be returning to Wellesley to share the stage with my very, very good friend and someone who is the awesome junior senator from New York.
And I also never imagined that I would be here as Secretary of State. Now, that's not because I was so humble because, after all, I graduated from Wellesley. It's just that I had never seen a Secretary of State in a skirt. So, when I became Secretary, I really was totally determined that I wouldn't let gender stand in my way of doing what I thought my predecessors should have done.
But, I also felt an obligation to do much more and so I made a pledge that I would bring efforts to lift the lives of women and girls into the mainstream of American foreign policy. It was not going to just be something that people did as a second thought. It is really in partnership with our then First Lady that we had the ability to bring, I think, and to build a very strong platform.
Hillary has spoken about her role at Beijing and because she is humble and modest, she did not in fact describe the earthshaking aspect of what she said. It changed the whole Women's Conference and it has changed the women's movement throughout the world. Because those words, as she explained them, really had a searing effect on a lot of people's minds and I do think that that was the beginning of enabling us to do a lot of work in very important dimensions of women in foreign policy throughout the world.
Now, the reason that it's important beyond each women's rights to have human rights is that it is, I believe, the key to progress for societies generally because in developing societies, where woman in fact are more than half of the population, the ability of women to have economic power and political power will make the difference as to whether those societies succeed.
And so by putting those issues into the center of American foreign policy, I thought and I continue to believe, we really managed to pursue our national interest which is, in fact, to make sure that there are more and more countries where there is less poverty, less disease, less crime and more of the possibility of passing good principles and values down from one generation to another.
That's why I hope very much that the efforts that the Clinton administration began to bring down the barriers to political participation by women as advocates and voters and legislators will continue. I hope that we will continue helping women to succeed economically because that will make all the difference in terms of family planning, in terms of healthy societies, and economic assistance. I think a lot has happened in recent years but there is an awful lot more that needs to be done.
A lot of people ask me what it was like to be the first woman Secretary of State. They actually asked me this question six days after I became secretary of state and I said, "Well, you know I've been a woman 60 years and a Secretary of State for 6 days so let's see how it goes together." And, I think ultimately it worked pretty well.
And people ask me, "You know, would they respect you when you went abroad as a woman Secretary of State? How would you deal with all those men?" And I found that it worked very well because I represented the United States and that made all the difference in the world.
People asked me how I would deal with the Arab leaders particularly. I went to my first meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council and sat with men that wore flowing and fabulous robes and we had a very important meeting. At the end of it, I said, "You may notice that I am not dressed the way my predecessors have been and I just want to thank you for the really remarkable meeting that we've had. And the next time we all meet we'll talk about women's rights." And the interesting part was that one of those Arab ministers said to me, "You should remember that we may have a woman foreign minister in the course of our history 200+ years faster than you had in yours," which may be a point. And the next time that I went to that country, that foreign minister took me to his house and introduced me to his college age daughters and that our talking and speaking out about those issues will ultimately make a difference.
But, in the meantime, in too many countries women continue to be held back and brushed aside and pushed down or beaten up. They're victims of domestic abuse and dowry murders and honor crimes and genital mutilation and even the killing of infants simply because they are born female. Some say that all of this is cultural and there's nothing that we can do about it. I say it's criminal and it's our obligation to stop it.
That's also why a couple of years ago we launched a major diplomatic initiative to combat trafficking in human beings. This is one of the world's fastest growing criminal enterprises and it exploits the desperation of more than a million women every year who think that they're applying for jobs as au pairs or waitresses or sales clerks or ballet dancers. But they end up as virtual slaves of thugs or pimps.
In 1999, I hosted a meeting in New York of the world's female foreign ministers. We were known as the "Fearsome Fourteen" out of about 190 countries of the world. But this was an improvement because when I was an ambassador at the United Nations, there were seven of us. At that stage, we were known as the "G7." We met regularly in order to network about women's issues and we issued a worldwide call for action against trafficking because the women and girls who have been victimized deserved to have their voices heard. Last fall, we met again and we issued a wake up call about HIV/AIDS.
And so, I believe that the networking that women in high level jobs can do is essential and that is exactly the kind of thing that I think Wellesley helps to provide because as I look around and I know from the statistics is that this is a wonderfully mixed student body. The friendships that you will make here will last you forever as both Hillary and I can attest to. Many of you, wherever you are, will in fact become the next leaders. If you have the common purpose that you learned here to do what we have all been taught to do which is to give back, I think that that network above all will make a tremendous difference. By speaking out together, the voice is all that much stronger.
Wellesley was founded in 1875 when America was still exploring its earliest frontiers. I graduated in 1959 when we were about to embark on President Kennedy's New Frontier. You are the students today who will lead our nation to the next frontier -- and because we're not at commencement so I don't have to lay any weight on your shoulders, we won't pursue that -- but I do hope that each of you will use the knowledge that you gained here at Wellesley to be more than a consumer of liberty but also a defender and enricher of it, employing your talents to heal and help and teach.
I hope that you will take an interest in world affairs recognizing that foreign policy today encompasses almost every field of human endeavor from science and sociology to economics and law and recognizing as well that America cannot be secure if others are not. And that part I think is so important as there are those who believe that turning inward makes America secure. I believe that turning outward is the only way that this great country will be secure.
Your choices, the choices that you here will make, will make all the difference not only to you but to all of us because the future depends not on the stars of some mysterious forces of history but rather on the decisions that you and I and everyone must make. As Hillary said, things may not turn out in exactly the way you intended, but the decisions you make are important, and you need to know that as you make each one by not closing doors and options as you make certain choices that are right for you at a particular time.
It is said that all work that is worth doing is done in faith, and tonight as we come together to share our memories of the past and to talk about our aspirations for the future, I hope that we will each of us embrace the faith that every challenge surmounted by our energy, every problem solved by our wisdom, and every soul awakened by our passion and every barrier to justice brought down by the determination will enoble our own lives and inspire others and explode outward the boundaries of what is achievable on this Earth.
This is a remarkable student body and the strength that one feels from being a part of the Wellesley history is something that goes on forever. I can assure you since I've been here awhile.
I just think that I'm very, very pleased to be here this evening and to join with Hillary who fortuitously I think -- we didn't know this when life started that we would have two Wellesley women in the Clinton administration (she knew it, I didn't) -- I can honestly say that were it not for my great Wellesley friend, Hillary Rodham Clinton, I would not be standing in front of you as a former secretary of state. That is Wellesley friendship.
WALSH: We are going to have a conversation. I will start it. There is so much that you gave us to think about and to talk about.
First, I just want to thank you both again for your inspiring words, your wonderful messages. I think you've given so much for Wellesley College to think about as we look to the future, challenges, thoughts and issues about social policy, women's issues as we look to the future and wonderful stories and inspiration from your lives.
You both highlighted the importance of making choices, making responsible choices, careful choices -- the fact that life is long and there are many different forks in the road. I wonder if you could reflect on one or more really important decisions that you faced at some point along the way and really had to deliberate about and how you thought about it, how you struggled with it, the kinds of resources that you tapped into to sort it through, just something more about this thing you both sounded about making good choices.
CLINTON: Well, certainly the most recent choice that I had to make was whether or not to run for the Senate. And it was a very surprising choice that I was even confronted with it. I must say that it's not anything that I thought I would do but when the opportunity arose and people began speaking to me about it, I had to do some very serious thinking because I've always loved public service. I've always admired people who run for office although I hadn't run for anything besides College Government president in the past and so, I really faced for me a huge crossroads because leaving the White House, I knew that I'd write, I would speak, I would travel, I would continue to be an advocate on behalf of the causes that had really consumed me for more than thirty years. Going into a political campaign and doing it under the circumstances that I was going to be attempting it would be very difficult.
As a friend of mine said, a Wellesley friend of mine with whom I discussed this said, "Well, you know there's one really big difference between what you did when you ran for College Government and what you would undertake now." And I said, "Only one?" And she said, "Well, the most important," she said, "Men didn't vote at Wellesley."
You know, I gave that some thought especially when a political science professor from Upstate New York came up to me about a week into my campaign and said, "You know, New York has the second worst record in the country in electing women to statewide office." And I said, "Now you tell me."
So, it was a very difficult choice that I labored over and worried about for a long time and finally decided that I would try. I mean, that's all I could do. There was no guarantee of any outcome. In fact, probably, the odds were not all that much in my favor when I began for many reasons. But once I decided that it would be something that I would want to do were I successful and that I thought I could make a contribution, then I just had to learn how to be a candidate and had to do it in front of the whole world watching and had to make mistakes and keep going and do what one does in any new enterprise -- only on a much more public stage than is the usual case.
But I think that not only were my friends from Wellesley very, very supportive but the idea that I could risk it that I could try it is something that certainly was supported at my time at Wellesley where we were all encouraged to take those kinds of risks. And so for me it was a choice that may have been surprising but turned out to be rooted in much of what I'd done before.
WALSH: Remember you had the wonderful reception at the White House for your classmates just before their reunion? And that you were in the process of making that decision and one of the gifts they gave you was the brand new alumnae directory, the New York sections…
CLINTON: That's right. That's right.
WALSH: Which you were very happy to receive, I remember. And so was the President. A choice or choices?
ALBRIGHT: I think as I think about it, my choices seem to have been made every few years. And it led me to believe and talk about this with my own daughters and students is that women's lives really come in segments -- which at one stage I thought was a disadvantage but the more I think about and thought about it as an advantage -- because there are so many things to be done you don't have to think that you have one career and that you have to follow a straight path. My career certainly was very zigzaggy.
So, what I said in my remarks about when you make a choice not closing a door on something is very important. So, for me, I think there are a series of choices. The choice of going to graduate school was important -- and so impossible to even talk about it so many years later because it's so natural -- but when I went to graduate school just as my twins were born, people thought I was a lunatic and a lot of women thought I was a lunatic. What you said Hillary, about women respecting each other's choices, I think is also something that is key.
And then, I had to make other choices as to whether I would go and have a "full-time job" when my children were still little and then how I would combine my life when I was divorced and a whole series of choices.
And here I am about to be 64 making another choice. I have spent the last thirty years of my life working to either be in the government or overthrow it. There is no job that I can ever have that is greater than being Secretary of State of this amazing country. So, I am thinking about other choices now and thinking about having other challenges and so the choice mechanism is something that has to go on forever.
For me, there hasn't been such a historic one as Hillary took but a series of choices, I think, that then add up.
WALSH: Yes. Your life must be very different now. It must have been somewhat abrupt. You were so busy. It was exhausting even to read the papers and follow your travels. Now, when my office was trying to reach you to formalize the last details for this, I came into my office one day and I said, "This week, we are going to try to get Madeleine Albright on the phone. That's our project for the week." It was Monday and a couple of hours later, someone from my staff came in and they said, "We have Madeleine Albright on the phone." And I said, "You mean, her office?" And they said, "No, we have Madeleine Albright on the phone."
ALBRIGHT: Well, it's a wonderful time. First of all, I hadn't driven for eight years so I was taken out by my security agents to the terrorist driving course so they could teach me to drive.
WALSH: How did you do?
ALBRIGHT: Well, one of the things that I did was exactly like what my life was like. You drive at eighty miles an hour and then they say, "Stop." And then, they have another one where you drive that fast and then they say, "Stop and swerve." Well, that's what happened to me on January 19. I stopped and swerved, and I've learned to drive again.
And I have some wonderful experiences which I'm sure Hillary has had -- well, probably different ones but -- people have looked at me and I was sitting at a table the other day in a restaurant and this woman kept staring at me. She finally -- I got up and she had an English accent and she said, "You know, I'm a very, very careful reader of the Reliable Source which is in Washington and it is such a pleasure to meet you, Kathryn Harris."
WALSH: That's great. That's wonderful. Hillary, when you came here when Chelsea was looking at Wellesley and she made an unfortunate decision, but we'll forgive her for that…
CLINTON: But, you know Diana, I think it's because we had lunch with you and your Stanford daughter.
WALSH: Touché. On that occasion -- see if she can get herself out of this hole! -- Chelsea went over to look at the Science Center and Hillary came downstairs and she had this big, floppy hat on and big sunglasses and there weren't so many Secret Service and she said, "I'm going to go for a walk around the lake. Is that alright?" And I said, "Yeah, I think so. People may bother you." And she said, "Well, if they say, 'Are you Hillary Clinton?' I'll just say, 'Well, people are always asking me that.'" So, your life has changed too.
CLINTON: It has. I was thinking about that the other day. I went out to Fallon, Nevada, to a hearing that two of my colleagues held about a cancer cluster that has occurred in that small town out in the desert. They've had twelve children come down with leukemia in just two years and so we held a hearing to try to understand some of the reasons. You know, nothing is proven obviously. I mean, the fact that they have 100 parts per billion in arsenic in the water might be related but they're not sure yet.
So, then I flew back to Las Vegas to meet my husband and we spent the night with some friends. This friend of mine and I went to the Target store to stock up on some things. Before that, she had taken me -- she goes three times a week to Pilates which, of course, I thought was a brother of a philosopher, I wasn't sure what it was. So, we went to this Pilates class and I got stretched and racked and all of that -- and so then we stopped at Target and we were picking up some things. I'm standing in the checkout counter and this young woman at the next counter starts in as Madeleine was describing saying, "You look just like Hillary Clinton."
I was a little embarrassed, as I looked so bad. It was one of those moments where you think, "Well, ah, what the heck," and she began to motion everybody over and I thought, "You know, gee." I didn't really want to spend a whole lot of time being Hillary Clinton at that moment so I said, "Well, yes, I'm told that all the time."
And then the other checkout woman who was checking me out turns to her compatriot and says, "She's in Reno. She's not in Las Vegas." And I never knew quite what that meant but it enabled me to say -- I think because I was up near Reno at this hearing -- so it enabled me to say, "Yeah, I heard that too." And we began to have this kind of out of body, third person discussion about Hillary Clinton. And since I've gotten very used to reading about this person who I often don't recognize called Hillary Clinton; it was a really interesting experience.
Now, unlike Madeleine, I have not yet begun to drive because former presidents and first ladies are given secret service protection which, given my driving, is probably a good thing for everybody involved, but I have made this transition into the Senate which has been fascinating in every sense. Getting to know people whom I didn't know before on the other side of the aisle, finding common ground with people who I thought were literally from another planet has been a challenge and a gratifying experience in many ways. Finding issues to work on.
I would never regret for a minute the extraordinary experience that I had, the privilege to enjoy in the White House, but it's such a unique and unusual experience that it's hard to relate it to anything else. So, being in the Senate and having a job again and having a role that is not just made up as you go along depending upon what you bring to it but has a certain set of expectations attached to it has been really a very comfortable transition for me. And I'm enjoying it a lot. But it is still difficult and different to try to find my footing in the public me and the real me or what is often the image versus what I think of as the reality.
That happens to anyone like Madeleine or me who get elevated in this time of 24 hour news coverage that is insatiable to the public stage which is now worldwide -- where people project all kinds of meaning onto you whether or not you had any intention of ever doing or saying or being motivated by what others think -- and I think that will stay with us probably for the rest of our lives.
WALSH: That's one of the most striking things I think about leading the public lives that you've lived. How do you keep your balance? When I talked with you on the phone, I was talking to Madeleine Albright and you were the same person that I had met when you were here for the Commencement. It was very powerful. You are who you are. How do you hang onto that?
ALBRIGHT: Well, I think, I'm interested in what Hillary says because there is kind of a little bit -- I always say, "There's Madeleine Albright [pointing away and speaking with great affect]," and then, "There's Madeleine Albright [speaking with ease]." And, SHE does all kinds of things [pointing away] whereas this one [pointing to herself] -- and there's also, since you're surrounded by people who keep telling you how wonderful you are, you need to be with your children to tell you, "Hey Mom."
So, I think it's that kind of a balance. There definitely is the sense, I mean, we all used to talk about her [pointing away] and I would talk about her [pointing away.] You really do become kind of disconnected from this public persona and that's I think how you keep your inner self.
CLINTON: And you can't -- you really have to find a balance in part by not believing either extreme of attitudes toward you -- because there are those who are extraordinarily praiseful about you and what you're doing and then there are those who can't even imagine how you could look in the mirror and not be reviled and disgusted by what you saw. And so you have to kind of push both of those extremes just out of the way and try to find that balance which, on a smaller scale, I would imagine happens to everyone. Every one of us has to try to figure out how to strike the right balance and listen to ourselves, not our greatest proponents and greatest detractors but to try to find the truth somewhere in there and then live it the best way you can.
ALBRIGHT: I think, one thing, it's very hard to be criticized. I will admit that -- and I said -- I have a line which stays with me for awhile which is that the reason I look fatter is that I developed a thicker skin. But I also have to say I think there probably are a lot of people, at least I was asked at dinner, about the relationship that Hillary and I had throughout this period. And I have to say that there could have been no better friend than Hillary who was there at the time that there was criticism for me and would say, "For God's sake, just stop reading that," and had an inner strength that I admired and that was of great help to me.
The friendship that we developed over that period was just immeasurably important. I can't even begin to describe it. We had a lot in common. A lot was Wellesley. I mean, we walked around, Hillary, remember in Prague talking about courses that we'd taken and memories that we had? And even though they're ten years apart were very similar and that linkage is there. We might have been friends anyway, but I think that that made it very special.
CLINTON: Also in Prague, we left a meeting with some Czech officials and had to consult because of some of the things that were raised during the meeting and the only place that available was the women's room, so we go charging into the women's room where we proceeded to have this long conversation about what was going to happen in our next series of meetings. As we were coming out, there was a photographer there who snapped this picture of us emerging from the ladies room. And everybody knew that we were in there talking about the meetings that we were having. And it was just this wonderful moment that Madeleine and I have laughed about since. You know, there weren't many places that we could actually go and have a private conversation and we found one. So we had that potential opportunity as well.
I would say too that Madeleine has an extraordinary spirit, a resilience of spirit as well as a great heart -- and it is difficult when you're in the eye of the storm. And I know that anyone in public life today is subjected to that -- but it is still hard to be a first.
It is still hard to be a woman where you are judged more harshly for trivial matters. And this is not just an American phenomenon. It's a worldwide phenomenon as Madeleine referred to her foreign minister luncheons. I remember being in Finland a couple of years ago, and the entire upper echelon of the government was women. The prime minister, I believe, the head of the federal reserve, the foreign minister, the defense minister, were all women. And we had this fascinating conversation because they were all bemoaning the fact that they would go out and make some important statement or pronouncement about some issue of significance and invariably their clothes and their hairstyles would be commented on in the body of the article.
You just get to the point where you cannot let that bother you. You have to let it go. You cannot fight all of those battles that are really irrelevant, trivial battles. You have to keep focused on what's important. And if you're a person in our positions especially as a woman you know that you're going to be judged more critically. You know that what would be not even noticed for a man will be blown up out of all proportion for you. And you have to be willing to pay that price in a public life either in appointed or elected positions. And you have to always be focused on why you're there.
I don't think Madeleine ever forgot that. It's something that I try to remember because I think that part of the reason that we are where we are is because we want to give voice to the voiceless, that we want to be sure that people are heard, that we want to give everyone a chance to have their opportunity in life. And really, the criticism is minor league. It's really kind of more a reflection on often those who will cast it at you than the object. So, I think that you have to keep that in mind. That doesn't mean it's easy but you have to keep that in mind.
ALBRIGHT: That's what would happen at eleven o'clock at night when Hillary and I would talk on the phone. That is what she'd say.
WALSH: Were there any advantages to being a woman leader?
ALBRIGHT: Well, I actually ultimately think there were advantages. First of all, I was able to mix it up. I was able to say some very tough things that might have not been possible from a man to another country. And then, I do think women care more about personal relationships and I developed very good personal relationships with a lot of my colleagues and so I then was able to say something disarming and that worked very well.
CLINTON: She's also a great dancer.
ALBRIGHT: Yes. But I think in the end there were many advantages. I hope very much that there will be other women secretaries of state. I do think it says something quite fantastic though about the United States that the first female secretary of state was followed by the first African American secretary of state. And I can't wait to see to see what happens at the State Department when they hang my portrait and hang Secretary Powell's because now there are just 63 white men either with beards or mustaches or something so there'll be a lot of stuff that goes on.
WALSH: It'll be fantastic. Now, I promised that we'd invite questions from the audience but we were having so much fun up here that I allowed it to go for longer than I was supposed to. Are there questions? If you have a question, make your way to the microphone and we'll have a little time for that. I knew there would be -- Wellesley women are not shy. I'll start on the right hand side. Could you say your name?
YING YING HOU: My name is Ying Ying Hou of the Class of 2003 and my class color is yellow. I have enjoyed tonight very, very much and all three women are up there are very successful women and I admire your courage, your work and your passion, and I have always been living by my motto of never to be afraid to ask of something that I want or that I have a question for and once that I have a question it is up to the other party to accept it or deny it. So, here is my question: Is it possible for me to take a picture with you?
WALSH: Sure.
HOU: (Proceeds to stage and poses with speakers for photograph) Thank you.
ALBRIGHT: Good luck.
HOU: Thank you.
WALSH: Only one of those questions. Next question on the left.
MARTHINE SATRIS: On a slightly different note, my name is Marthine Satris. Thank you so much for coming. I actually have a question for Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton. In your current and continuing term as Senator, I was wondering what goals you have in terms of defending women's rights especially in the next four years under a potentially hostile administration.
CLINTON: Well, I know that we'll be on the defense. I hope we can also be on the offense. On the defense, we've got to first and foremost reverse the executive order reinstating the global gag rule on family planning. I'm hoping we can be successful on that.
I obviously would like to see us continue the work around the world that Madeleine and I started on behalf of making women's issues and their empowerment a centerpiece of American foreign policy. That means I do not want to see us recognize the Taliban regime in Afghanistan because of their treatment of women, which should be unacceptable in anytime and anyplace.
I'd like to see us continue to implement fully the law that Madeleine and I both worked very hard on to end trafficking around the world of women and put the resources behind it that we promised we would.
I'd like to see us continue the Vital Voices initiative that Madeleine and I started on creating opportunities for women worldwide to have their voices heard. We held conferences all over the world and had some very positive effects.
I'd like to see us continue to have women in high-ranking positions both in domestic and international positions to make sure that our voices are heard.
And on domestic issues, I just want to be sure that we do everything we can to keep our economy going strong so that women will have economic opportunities - - and make the improvements in education and health care that we need, protect our environment, and pursue the other issues that I think are good for women and men. I will try to be a strong advocate of those.
WALSH: Thanks for your question.
ELIZABETH SENECAL: Hello. I have a question for both Senator Hillary Clinton and…
WALSH: Can you say your name?
SENECAL: I am Elizabeth Senecal. I am from Wellesley, Massachusetts. Yeah, Wellesley and the Class of 2004. I have a question for both Senator Hillary Clinton and Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. It's wonderful to have you here. If you were a student at Wellesley College today, March 20, 2001 -- Oh, good call -- April 20 -- Okay, I do go to Wellesley -- April 20, 2001 -- How do you suppose you would have spent this beautiful, warm sunny day given the changes in women's everyday life since the time that you spent at Wellesley College?
CLINTON: You know, we waited for Spring with such anticipation that if it really was a warm, sunny Spring April day, I would have done as little as possible except try to find some corner that I could sit in or walk in. This was before we knew about the dangers of sun tanning and we used to lie out in our courtyard or by the banks of the lake slathered in baby oil and iodine and holding reflectors, and of course, totally damaged our skin. It's a lot worse now with global warming despite those who say it's not. It is. So, I would have carefully put on my you know 105 sunscreen and enjoyed the day I think.
ALBRIGHT: Well, it would depend on the year. If it had been my senior year, I would have been trying to finish something, I'm sure, and try to sit by some window in the "Lib" in order to get some of that spring air. But, I was pretty boring in contrast to Hillary. I was a grind so I would probably have stayed somewhere and pretended I was studying while I imbibed this air.
WALSH: Thank you for your question.
ALLISON CLAYTON: Hi. I'm Allison Clayton, Class of 2001. I was wondering if there was a point in your life that you knew that you had changed and are going to continue to change the world?
WALSH: Great question.
CLINTON: Wow. I don't know that I suppose there are some remarkable people in history who not only feel that and think they know it but actually did it. I don't think that I can say that. I think that from my perspective, it's hard enough just changing myself and doing what I need to do to be the best person I can be. I've loved my life and I've loved what I've been able to do and that's including loving Wellesley but the world is a very big place with a lot of problems and I think you have to find satisfaction day to day.
That may be something that I've learned. I remember one of my friends at Wellesley, she once said, "You know, I think one of the differences between us is that I just want to live a life that I find satisfying and you want to change the world."
And I do think the world needs changing and I'm never going to quit trying to change it, but I also -- as I've gotten older -- realized how important it is just to make the most out of every day. You know, maybe you can't change the world. You can try to influence it. You can try to bring your ideas to the forefront. You can stand in the face of adversity. You can try to do a lot of things but you may not be able to change it in the way that you want to change it.
You know, I made a speech [at the Beijing Women's Conference] in 1995, and you know maybe some things have changed because of the work of many, many people but there's still a lot of work to be done. I don't think anyone can ever be arrogant enough to think that they have. I think that's the root to madness. And so, I think you have to be very modest and humble about what it is you think you can achieve and get joy out of it no matter what it is.
ALBRIGHT: I think there's a different way to ask that question which is, "When do you think you've made a difference?" and I think that's the thing that we've both worked on every day so that everyday is a reason to make a difference and to keep pushing. I've found that there are not enough things in life that are totally black and white where you change the world or do anything or make a difference in any given day but it's the incremental part.
And if you decide, if your goal is to make a difference which is clearly Wellesley's goal and the theme that you've used here, you ultimately move things along and I think that's the part. So, rather than thinking about the day that you might have changed the world, the idea that you can make a difference on any given day is very important.
The other part, and this goes again a little bit to the disembodied aspect, I knew that something had changed in the United States on the day that I led the Cabinet in to the State of the Union message. That was the first time a woman had led the Cabinet in and I sat smack-dab in front of President Clinton. And I knew that that had made a difference, that Madeleine Albright had, not that I had. So, that part I think is important. When you realize that something that you might have done -- I think we all have trouble with the word "role model" -- I know I have had, and yet clearly there are certain events that do make a difference that you are somehow a part of.
CLINTON: I think that this is a really important subject because I bet that in this audience, I bet, among the students, there are many of you who have faced some very difficult issues in your own lives. Dealing with those issues, showing courage in the face of difficulty and adversity, may never make it into a headline but is as important in many respects because all of these individual decisions aggregate as something Madeleine and I might have done on the world stage.
You know, knowing Madeleine as I do, I think the life she lived before she became Secretary of State was filled with a lot of acts of courage and bravery, and forcing herself to go further in dealing with difficulties than maybe she thought she could, and withstanding a lot of change and challenge.
I look at my friends who raise children with severe disabilities, which very much affects how much time they have left to do much else. I consider that changing the world. So for me it's a matter of perspective as I've gotten older perhaps.
That is for some people the greatest fear they could ever face is making a public speech. That's not hard for me. That's not hard for Madeleine. But there are other fears that we have to deal with and conquer that maybe wouldn't be at all difficult for you.
So, you know, at the end of the day you have to really measure your life by the standards you set for yourself and the challenges that you knew you had to overcome whether or not anybody else would ever know about them. Hopefully, enough of those life-affirming decisions get made that combined with political change really do change the world. But it is often not done at the stroke of a pen or on a big public platform. It happens by the countless millions of decisions that people finally make to stand up for themselves, to overturn oppression, to quit putting up with domestic violence, or whatever the issue might be.
WALSH: Thanks for the question. Do we have somebody on this side lined up? Well, over here then. I'm sorry.
QUESTION: My name is [unclear] from the Class of 2003, and my question is for Senator Clinton. Do you have any plans to run for the presidency of the United States?
CLINTON: You know, Madeleine's my candidate, but the Constitution won't let her run, unfortunately, since she was not born in this country. No, I don't have any plans to run but I do hope that we break that barrier in my lifetime just as we broke, you know, the barrier that Madeleine did for us all too.
WALSH: Hopefully, someone will do it. We have time for only one more question, I'm sorry to say.
JENNIFER ALCAREZ: Okay, Jen Alcarez, Class of 2002. My question is, if you could do it all over again, what, if anything, would you change?
ALBRIGHT: My whole life.
WALSH: Your whole life? Her whole life.
CLINTON: Oh, I would have exercised more.
WALSH: It's not too late. You're in the gym.
CLINTON: I know. I've got to start. That is something I do have to do. You know, that's such a hard question to answer because you know you are the sum total of all of your experiences, good, bad and indifferent. It's very tough to go back and say, "Well, I would have undone this," because then you don't know what that would have unraveled.
Obviously, you know, the difficulties or pain in your life is not something that you'd sit down and say, "Gee, I think I'll suffer for awhile because it'll build my character." But oftentimes you look back on situations you would not have wished upon yourself or anyone else. By being forced into them and having to deal with them you learn more about yourself and you adapt better and you acquire maybe new skills, more empathy, whatever you are looking for in your life to keep yourself growing.
So it's very hard to go back on any kind of -- I mean, there's a lot of things, little trivial things hairstyles, exercise, things like that -- but on the big things that really mold you as a person it's sort of hard to say, "Oh well, yeah I'd change that." I don't know.
What do you think, Madeleine?
ALBRIGHT: I agree with what you've said. I think it's the hardest thing to question what series of things actually got you to where you are so you're not sure what you would have changed.
But one thing that I do wish that I had done earlier in my life is -- I say in one word but I'll explain a lit bit more which is -- to interrupt. I do think that I saw this in myself even though I had gone to Wellesley where I felt obviously very comfortable -- that when I went to graduate school at Columbia which was coed and then very much came into a life where women kind of sat back for a long time -- that I got into a bad habit which a lot of women still are in -- which is you are in a meeting and you keep thinking whether you're going to speak at that moment and you let everybody else speak. And you raise your hand and you keep waiting and meanwhile some guy has made your point and everybody thinks it's brilliant. And you didn't say it because you thought it was stupid.
So when I was teaching, my classes were a zoo because I told people not to raise their hands but to interrupt because I think you listen differently when you're going to interrupt. So, I wish that I had learned to interrupt earlier because in any meeting wherever I was, even as Secretary of State, you finally have to interrupt to make your point because the guys will not call on you.
WALSH: So, who knows what chaos we've now released upon the land of Wellesley. The classrooms are going to be filled with interruptions. People are going to be out sunbathing, not doing their homework. And it will all be wonderful. I often say in various speeches that one of the things about Wellesley is you come here as a student and you learn not only what you want to do in the world but who you want to be in the world. I think that we've heard tonight from these two women who have done so very much in this world of which the whole world admires and feel so grateful have also been the most remarkable human beings and we're just so fortunate to have had this time with them. So thank you both very much.
