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№ 2004.010 — Stanford University — Commencement address
Paul Glaser
Field: arts
Paul Michael Glaser, honorary chair of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, addresses Stanford medical graduates by reflecting on his own lack of medical training, his career in acting and directing, and his experience losing his wife and daughter to AIDS. He argues that acknowledging fear and vulnerability is the path to compassion, creativity, and connection, urging the graduates to surrender the illusion of control. He frames good medicine and research as acts of listening, collaboration, and recognizing common humanity, while critiquing global inequality and what he sees as fear-driven control in society and politics.
Key moments
- 01 Recalls his own academic struggles and playing a doctor on a soap opera
- 02 Describes creativity as requiring a loss of control and faith
- 03 Reflects on losing his wife and daughter to AIDS and the choice between victimhood and growth
- 04 Argues that experiencing fear is necessary to find love and compassion
- 05 Calls on doctors and researchers to listen, collaborate, and recognize shared humanity
Visual speech map
Paul Michael Glaser at Stanford, 2004
A medical commencement address about fear, vulnerability, compassion, creativity, listening, and shared humanity.
- 01 Medical graduates
- 02 Actor as outsider
- 03 Soap-opera doctor
- 04 Creativity
- 05 Loss to AIDS
- 06 Fear and love
- 07 Listening
- 08 Shared humanity
Outsider
A non-doctor addresses doctors
Glaser uses his outsider status, acting life, and academic struggles to speak honestly about medicine and humanity.
Not being a doctor becomes an opening.
Playing a doctor becomes a lens on real care.
Authority begins by admitting limits.
Creativity
Surrender control
Creativity is described as requiring faith, loss of control, and willingness to enter the unknown.
The illusion of mastery blocks connection.
Creative work requires surrender.
Research and healing also need openness.
Loss
Fear can become compassion
The deaths of his wife and daughter from AIDS frame the choice between victimhood and growth.
Loss becomes a severe teacher.
Acknowledging fear opens the path to love.
Pain can widen connection rather than close it.
Charge
Listen and collaborate
Good medicine and research are framed as listening, collaboration, and recognition of common humanity amid global inequality.
Patients and colleagues must be truly heard.
Healing is shared work.
The doctor's task includes seeing the whole person.
Transcript
The full transcript is hosted by the original publisher. Commencement Archive links to the source rather than republishing copyrighted text.
Read the full transcript at source →Provenance
Imported from NPR commencement archive; cross-referenced with Open Commencement DB
NPR archive last updated in 2015; destination availability has not been exhaustively rechecked | Open Commencement DB transcript; not independently verified against the original recording