Print
Columbia Law School Graduation 2005
News Release
STEPHEN FRIEDMAN TO DELIVER COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL'S 2005 GRADUATION ADDRESS
NEW YORK - Stephen Friedman, the retired chairman of Goldman Sachs & Company and currently assistant to President George W. Bush for economic policy, will deliver the keynote address at the graduation ceremonies for Columbia Law School, on May 19 at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall in New York.
Mr. Friedman, a 1962 graduate of the Law School, spent 28 years with Goldman Sachs & Company where he served as co-chairman (1990-1992) and chairman and senior partner (1992-1994.) More recently, Mr. Friedman has been serving on the boards of directors of Goldman Sachs, Fannie Mae and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Mr. Friedman has also established a strong record of public service and he has served as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and on the Presidential/Congressional Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community. He was also chosen to lead a task force on modernizing financial management at the Pentagon.
Mr. Friedman has maintaned a strong committment to his alma mater and is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Columbia University. He is also involved with several charitable and academic organizations and is Chairman of the Financial Committee of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; Chairman Emeritus of the Executive Committee of the Brookings Institution; and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has also been a board member of the National Bureau of Economic Research
Highlights of the ceremony also include the receipt of the Willis L.M. Reese Prize for excellence in teaching by Ariela Dubler, Associate Professor of Law. Since her arrival at Columbia Law School in 2001, Prof. Dubler has has taught family law, perspectives on legal thought, and a seminar on the family and the state.
Seating is reserved for graduating Law School students and their guests. For more information, please contact Student Services at (212) 854-2395. Columbia University will hold separate commencement ceremonies on the Morningside Heights campus on May 18. Please see www.columbia.edu for more information on the University's ceremony.
Back to top
Address by Columbia Law Dean David Schizer
Welcome everyone. On behalf of Columbia Law School, I want to congratulate the Class of 2005. I will always feel a special bond with this class. I had the pleasure of teaching many of you, and you are the first class to graduate since I've become Dean.
You are an amazing group of people. Your families and friends have every right to be very proud of you, and to be proud of their indispensable role in what you have achieved.
In expressing pride in you, I know I speak not just for those who are here, but also for loved ones who cannot be here. Our law school community has suffered losses this year. We all miss Alan Farnsworth, Jim Milligan, and Richard Uviller. They helped to shape this wonderful institution, and the objectives we all share.
At Columbia Law School, we have an ambitious goal: we train our students to become leaders of a new and better world, a world of prosperity and freedom based on the rule of law. One of my personal heroes is a Columbia-trained lawyer -- Alexander Hamilton. As I see it, we are living Hamilton's dream. A poor immigrant from the West Indies, he hated slavery and valued religious freedom and social mobility. He was a talented lawyer who believed in meritocracy and personal initiative. And as a soldier and statesman, he understood that the fate of the United States would rise, or fall, with the rest of the world. His vision has been realized to a remarkable degree.
The result is amazing opportunity for all of you. You are graduates of the greatest Law School in the world. There really is no limit to what you can do. This is not an exaggeration; it's a fact. You can run an investment bank or a public interest organization; you can be a scholar or a Senator; you can be a corporate counselor or a cutting edge litigator. Our graduates have done all these things, and much more.
At one level, this range of choice is an incredible privilege. The vast, vast majority of people do not have any choice in the way they live their lives. They do what they have to do to survive. This has been true throughout history, and it remains true for most people today. You obviously are very fortunate.
But this degree of choice brings its own burdens. After all, you have important choices to make. What should you do? For many of us, law school represents the end of a well-defined path. Do well in high school, and get into a good college. Do well in college, and get into a good law school. What comes next? Now, there are many forks in the road.
The law is a vast universe, and different talents and interests correspond with different jobs. Do you like winning a tough fight? Or sealing a deal? Do you like to write? Or to talk? Do you care about the environment? Or human rights? Do you like to read prospectuses, or academic articles - or, maybe, neither? Do you find travel in a job appealing? Or burdensome? We all have to find our own answers. Over the next few years, you need to get to know yourselves a little better, so that you figure out what gives you the most satisfaction.
One way to do this is to look at the responsibilities of people a few years ahead of you in a job. Would you enjoy doing what they are doing? If the answer is, "yes," then keep going. If the answer is "no," then keep looking around. As you consider your options, have the courage to make your own choices. Don't waste your life living other people's dreams.
And while I am giving you advice, I want to emphasize one other thing. Do not keep score with money or fame. I just finished a biography of Lord Horatio Nelson, the British naval hero who repeatedly defeated Napoleon's Navy. But the more he achieved, and the more the crowds loved him, the more it fed his ambition, leaving him unsatisfied - and, indeed, miserable - much of the time. "I have had a good race of glory," Lord Nelson wrote, "but we are never satisfied. One cannot help longing for a little more." The irony is that, as he lay dying on his ship during the battle of Trafalgar - his greatest victory of all - he spoke mostly of the woman he loved, and of the young daughter he was leaving behind. If you must keep score, keep score with the happiness you find, and with the lives you touch along the way.
This brings me to my final point. Life is fragile. You know this - everyone does, in a world of terrorism and war. Most of the time, I have great confidence in the future. But I have to admit that, in darker moments, I feel doubts and, sometimes, fear. Freedom and prosperity are available to us, now. But they are not available to everyone, and, even for us, who knows what the future will bring? Hamilton's dream is fragile.
So what do we do? My own answer is to devote myself to training people like you. The future we all want - freedom and prosperity for everyone, all over the world - that future depends on a corps of energetic and talented people, across the world, who are deeply committed to progress and the rule of law. The world can become so much better than it is now - but, I'm sorry to say, it can also become so much worse. To keep things moving in the right direction, we are relying on all of you. I, for one, am very comfortable with this. You are an amazing group, and I know you will do great things.
Congratulations and enjoy the day. Thank you all and please stay in touch.
Back to top
Speech by Prof. Areila Dubler, recipient of teaching award
Thank you for this incredible honor. First and foremost, thank you to the class of 2005. I have had the privilege of teaching many of you and it is your collective engagement and enthusiasm that have made me love teaching as much as I do. I am truly thrilled to receive this award from you. Thank you also to all the friends and family of the class of 2005 for sharing these wonderful graduates with us; you are their primary educators, and all of us on the stage are grateful that you have let us play a part in their legal education. And, finally, thank you to all the people on the stage—my many colleagues who have made Columbia Law School a place where teaching is so valued.
Now, although I hope we've taught you many things during your years as law students, most of your learning about the law is only about to begin. And, to be clear, I'm referring to your lives, not your bar review courses. As Benjamin Silliman, a then-prominent New York lawyer, told your predecessors at the graduation of the Columbia Law School class of 1867, "Learning is but ammunition without artillery for its use." It's a more militaristic metaphor than I might have chosen, but Mr. Silliman was speaking to a class that had just lived through the Civil War. Silliman offered the class of 1867 quite a few thoughts—actually, thoughts that filled forty-three single-spaced pages—on what to do with the ammunition that they had acquired at Columbia Law School as they turned to the massive educational project of their lives as lawyers. Now don't worry, I'll spare you the forty-three pages and just give you Silliman's core insight: Use the knowledge that you amassed in law school and that you will continue to amass daily from here on in; whatever you choose to do with your law degree—whether you're drafting documents, or litigating cases, or teaching students, or painting paintings— use your legal knowledge to critically evaluate both the legal status quo and the myriad possibilities for legal change. This is the privilege and responsibility that comes with your new status as a lawyer.
Now, you're all going to be different kinds of lawyers and you won't all agree on which elements of the law should be preserved and which elements should be changed. Consider, for what it's worth, Benjamin Silliman's evaluations in 1867: Although Silliman encouraged the graduates to embrace wise legal reforms, he devoted a fair amount of time in his remarks to denouncing new laws that allowed married women to hold property, and he likewise denounced what he considered ill-advised proposals to grant women the right to vote.
No doubt, some of Mr. Silliman's audience agreed with him and others did not. Today, women vote and, Silliman's views notwithstanding, I think we can probably all agree that that legal reform was not such a bad idea. But, like the class of 1867, you are becoming lawyers at a time when other fundamental questions of law and legal reform are deeply controversial. While we might agree on woman suffrage, we might disagree in profound ways about the contested legal questions of our own time—whether it's national security in a post-9/11 world or the meaning of marriage in our federal system. And it's good that we would not all agree on these issues—it's what has made teaching you all such a pleasure and an education. Both inside and outside of the classroom, we have challenged each other on the merits of the legal status quo and its possible alternatives. So whatever you do next, whether it's in a law office, a university, a bank, or an art studio, don't stop asking those fundamental questions. That is how you will continue to educate yourselves and others.
Again, many thanks for this extraordinary honor and many congratulations on your many extraordinary accomplishments.
Back to top
Schedule of Events
###
Back to top
Stephen Friedman Biography
Cornell University, B.A., 1959; Columbia University Law School, LL.B., 1962 (Law Review); Law Clerk to Federal District Judge, S.D.N.Y.
Attorney: New York City (1963-1966); joined Goldman, Sachs & Co. in 1966; Partner 1973; Vice Chairman and Co-Chief Operating Officer, 1987 - Nov. 1990; Co-Chairman and Senior Partner, Dec. 1990 - Dec. 1992; Chairman and Senior Partner, Dec. 1992 - retirement in Dec. 1994. Nominated for re-election to Board of Goldman, Sachs Group, March 2005.
Certain prior affiliations: Chairman, Columbia University; Board Member Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center 1994-2002; Director, Wal-Mart; Fannie Mae; Goldman, Sachs Group; Senior Principal, MMC Capital, Inc. April 1998 - Dec. 2002; Member, President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, under Presidents Clinton and Bush.
Assistant to President George W. Bush for economic policy, Chairman of the National Economic Council, 2003-2004.
Back to top
Ariela Dubler Biography
Professor Ariela Dubler has a JD and a PhD in history from Yale University. She joined the faculty of Columbia Law School in 2001 after clerking for Judge José A. Cabranes on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Since her arrival at Columbia Law School she has taught family law, perspectives on legal thought, and a seminar on the family and the state. Professor Dubler's research and writing focuses on the legal history of marriage and the legal regulation of intimate life outside of marriage.
Back to top
Photos from Graduation 2005
Click here to see a selection of photos from the 2005 commencement ceremony in Avery Fisher Hall.
(High speed Internet connection recommended)
Back to top
|
|