Samantha Power
U.S. representative to the United Nations
Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the UN and Yale '92 alumna, opens with self-deprecating humor before reflecting on her own mediocre early years at Yale and the moments—a professor's harsh critique and watching the Tiananmen Square crackdown—that reset her direction. Her central message is that to make meaningful change, graduates must 'get close': engage individuals directly, break out of informational echo chambers, bring others along, and persist with both patience and impatience. She closes by addressing enduring inequalities in race and gender, citing examples from Yale and the UN, and urging graduates to reject claims that the great rights struggles are finished.
“We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
Key moments
- 01 Recounting a professor's eviscerating note and watching the Tiananmen Square crackdown as turning points
- 02 Urging graduates to 'get close' to issues and the people affected by them
- 03 Warning against echo chambers and the comfort of unchallenged opinions
- 04 Citing persistent racial and gender inequality at Yale, the UN, and in society
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Samantha Power at Yale, 2016
A Class Day address about going all in, getting close, crossing perspectives, human rights, setbacks, and lost causes found.
Speech arc
- 01Old Campus
Opening move
- 02Yale alumna
Speech beat
- 03Go all in
Speech beat
- 04Get close
Speech beat
- 05Human rights
Speech beat
- 06Perspective
Speech beat
- 07Pauli Murray
Speech beat
- 08Long struggle
Final charge
Formation: The outsider learns to stop holding back
Power turns self-mockery, Yale memories, immigrant biography, and early underperformance into a story about risk, humility, and commitment.
Return
A Yale graduate and U.N. ambassador speaks as someone once unsure she belonged at the university.
Alibis
Early mediocre writing and last-minute work become examples of staying distant to avoid real disappointment.
Reset
A hard faculty note and Tiananmen coverage reset her compass toward dignity and freedom.
Power turns self-mockery, Yale memories, immigrant biography, and early underperformance into a story about risk, humility, and commitment.
Closeness: Impact requires proximity to real lives
The speeches central command is to get close: leave the screen, meet affected people directly, and let first-hand experience change the work.
People
Teachers, architects, employers, and advocates are urged to know the people shaped by their decisions.
Field
Bosnia reporting, genocide research, Ebola clinics, and diplomacy show closeness across roles.
Care
Proximity makes the work harder to ignore and more useful to the people it claims to serve.
The speeches central command is to get close: leave the screen, meet affected people directly, and let first-hand experience change the work.
Perspective: Break the comfort of your own interpretation
Power warns that feeds and filters can return only familiar opinions, so graduates must seek people and evidence that unsettle them.
Echoes
Information systems can make the world feel confirmed before it has been understood.
Ambassadors
Visiting U.N. missions becomes a discipline of listening before making requests.
Witness
Climate, illness, conflict, and displacement become harder to reduce to abstractions after direct encounter.
Power warns that feeds and filters can return only familiar opinions, so graduates must seek people and evidence that unsettle them.
• Key takeaways •
Go all in
Connects to proximity.
Get close to people
Connects to human rights.
Leave the echo chamber
Connects to perspective.
Bring others close too
Connects to service.
Lost causes can be found
Connects to persistence.
Closing charge
The close asks graduates to pair impatience with endurance, using Pauli Murrays lost causes as proof that repeated defeats can still move history.
Stay close when history moves slowly
Equality
Gender, race, religion, and refugee struggles show that unfinished work remains inside and beyond Yale.
Setbacks
Serving others makes failure hurt more because the work matters and involves real vulnerability.
Found
Murrays example turns loss into cumulative pressure that later generations can inherit and advance.
The close asks graduates to pair impatience with endurance, using Pauli Murrays lost causes as proof that repeated defeats can still move history.
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Transcript
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Category: Politics
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