A Graduation Speech in Dark Times by Henry Giroux

 

In a time when universities face racist, anti-intellectual assaults from demagogues like Trump, Stephen Miller, and Kristi Noem, epitomized by the recent attack on Harvard, I offer this speech given a few years ago as a call to youth—an invitation to rise against the authoritarian forces threatening the U.S. and emerging democracies alike.

It is a call to stand against genocidal war mongers, ethnic cleansing, and state-sanctioned violence, at home and abroad. It is a call to fight for civic courage, social responsibility, and dignity—values that sustain a thriving democracy. It is a call to learn from history, to prevent Trump and his merry crew of authoritarians from turning higher education into laboratories of dehumanization and indoctrination.

To the students delivering graduation speeches in the name of justice and freedom, such as Logan Rozos-and being punished for speaking out--your courage stands a model of hope. Your recognition that education is a crucial bulwark against what Foro de Sevilla the "dark paths of neo-Nazism," which are with us once again, has to be repeated over and over again.

What must be fought in the realm of culture and on the streets at all costs is the silence surrounding the thousands of children killed in Gaza and the war on youth in our own land, exemplified by a GOP budget soaked in blood.

Fascism is more than a distant moment in history; it is a breathing threat and wound that has emerged in different forms once again. And the endpoint of such savagery is always the same--racial and ethnic hatred that ends with broken and bloodied bodies in the camps, detention centers, and mass graves.

This brief speech stands in stark contrast to the hollow platitudes of right-wing figures, compromised politicians, and celebrities who serve the status quo. Their speeches echo a complicit silence in the face of government corruption, student abductions, and tax cuts for the wealthy funded by the poor. This is gangster capitalism at its worst.

Hopefully, in such dark times this speech points to the need for a language of critique and hope, the power of collective struggle, and an education rooted in justice and empowerment. It calls for action, courage, and the relentless pursuit of democracy through unity and defiance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eFTbsbYlEA