Central Michigan University is to be commended for practicing and steadfastly defending this essential pillar of academia. An institution of higher learning is a marketplace of ideas, where ideas are shared, discussed, debated, sometimes debunked, but always treated with the respect they are due, never dismissed without thought or reason, and never feared. In the spirit of the true academician, truth is not advanced by stereotyping, by shallow epithets, by innuendo or insinuation, by blind obedience to an ideology at the expense of evidence and reality, or by suggestion that those with different views should not be heard. That’s the stuff of small or idle minds. Those who labor and study in our centers of learning must be made of stronger stuff than that, for if they are not, the prospects for a free, virtuous, and compassionate larger society are slim. These are modern times, not the dark ages. We should judge ideas as we should judge the people who bring them to the marketplace—on their merits. The thing I have always found refreshing about the traditional academic environment is that we place a premium on thinking. We can disagree without being disagreeable. We reject the thought police.

Graduates, you are about to step from this institution into a world you will shape for years to come. I know it’s customary for Commencement speakers to say at least a dozen times in their addresses, "You are the future." We all know that. What I would like to prompt you to think about is HOW you want to shape that future. HOW do you want your influence to be expressed? I have chosen as my title this afternoon, "The Power of Positive Example."

Will you please, each one of you, for just a few seconds, close your eyes and try to think of one or two people in your life who have, in some fashion, motivated you, encouraged you, spurred you on … Ask yourself, was it because of what they said, or what they did? How they talked, or how they behaved?