‘The art of seeing things anew’: Highlights from David Schaberg’s 2024 commencement keynote

Sean Brenner | July 30, 2024

The Humanities Division celebrated the extraordinary achievements and promising futures of the Class of 2024 on June 15.

In two ceremonies at Royce Hall, with hundreds of family members and friends in the audience, nearly 380 graduates from 11 departments and programs walked across the stage to receive bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Dean Alexandra Minna Stern and Humanities Division faculty.

Another 150 graduating students participated in linguistics department ceremonies (June 13 at Campbell Hall for graduate students, and June 16 at Royce for undergraduates); and more than 250 took part in the English department ceremony at the L.A. Tennis Center on June 16.

At the divisional ceremonies in Royce, David Schaberg, a professor of Asian languages and cultures and former dean of humanities, saluted the graduates, assuring them that the spirit of excellence that had shaped their experience at UCLA “will travel with you wherever you go.”

Following are excerpts from Schaberg’s inspirational address:

“Beyond being a UCLA graduate, and more specifically by completing a degree in the humanities, you can be said to have made yourself into a certified, credentialed, card-carrying humanist. That marks certain habits of mind and brings with it certain intangible powers and privileges, and I’m delighted to point some of these out by way of confirmation and encouragement.

“You’ve been trained intensively in what must surely be the most fundamental technique of the humanities, the art of seeing things anew and seeing for yourself. You know that in our classrooms, whether in philosophy or in art history or in my field, Chinese literature, it always matters that you get your facts right about your subject.

“But what really brings joy and glory is when you see beyond a surface, discern a pattern, draw a consequential conclusion, maybe discover or produce something that no one else could see before — and when you do so in successful communication with others. That’s the baseline creativity of the humanities: finding a new understanding and showing it to other people.

“Humanities is where the truth includes you and the people around you because you are the ones grasping it and living in it and sharing it.

“Your readiness to see things anew and to see for yourselves can protect you against some of the seductions of simplemindedness that beset our age: the lure of entertainment politics and cartoon machismo, and a notoriously dangerous beauty culture; the lure of cheap marketing and the poisonous notion that the only valid measure of value is money.

“As humanities graduates, you are in a position to see such stuff for what it is, to sweep it aside if you want — at least when you can see that it’s doing you harm — and to replace it with something more nourishing. Keep things complicated, keep things nuanced, keep things human.

“You may still be listening to hear that calling clearly; keep your ears open for it. It comes from within you, but it also calls you out into the world and it guides you as you build yourself further. As you hear it more clearly and follow it, keep in mind how you’ve been preparing yourself during your years at UCLA: learning to speak another language or two, learning to understand the world through another person’s experience, learning to connect in human terms and to stay connected.”

– DAVID SCHABERG

“You’ve got huge, complexly formed minds, and part of what you’re going to be doing in the coming years is figuring out how to feed those minds well and keep them healthy.

“You may already have had the good fortune of discovering a calling, whether professional or personal, something that you love to do and do well — maybe better than most — and that you cannot imagine turning your back on.

“You may still be listening to hear that calling clearly; keep your ears open for it. It comes from within you, but it also calls you out into the world and it guides you as you build yourself further. As you hear it more clearly and follow it, keep in mind how you’ve been preparing yourself during your years at UCLA: learning to speak another language or two, learning to understand the world through another person’s experience, learning to connect in human terms and to stay connected.

“As you grow in knowledge and take on more responsibility, whether in a workplace or in a family or in any group, you will face ever more often the hard question of conscience, of practicality and the need to solve problems with and for others. Here, your reflective education will be of use to you: It will have helped shape your conscience deliberately, it will offer some pathways for thinking about a problem, and it will help you remember what you need to shine in the things you do for other people.

“Protect your conscience from the sorrow of having done wrong, use your insightfulness and your eloquence to speak up against wrong, and when you can, use your understanding to help mend the wounds that divide people.

“A healthy conscience can get you into trouble, and I fervently hope that your time at UCLA and in the humanities has prepared you to make the kind of good trouble that makes our world better. In the face of hatred and dehumanization, it can be your special role to reply with love and with a reassertion of the duties we have to each other. The most powerful reassurance you can give to the angry and fearful is by standing conscientiously and unashamedly for your own commitments. Again, I believe that such self-awareness and straightforwardness belong to you by virtue of your humanistic training. …

“I’m willing to predict that you’ll find your greatest and most meaningful satisfactions in the way you care for others: for the people you love in your personal life, for the people you work with in your professional life.

“I’m willing to predict that you will love your work to the extent that it matches your calling and your conscience and puts you in a position to care meaningfully and effectively for others.

“But I’m also saying for certain that in order to do these things, you’ll need to maintain a sturdy regime of self-care: an ability to call a timeout from the immediate striving, to conduct a round of reflection and reevaluation, maybe to rest up for the next move, maybe just to relax and love life. In these times too, the literature and art you love will be your refuge and your source of renewal.

“So, today, as you prepare to walk out through those doors onto Dickson Plaza, as your experience of college becomes your memory of college, let your history as a UCLA humanities student be a constant source of power and provocation for you.

“Listen for your calling. Protect your conscience. Give yourself the care you need to care for others. These are a few of the things you’ll need as you step across this stage and go on your way.

“Congratulations again, Class of 2024, and safe travels to you! May you bring to everything you touch more care, more understanding, more generosity and, above all, more humanity.”