Two weeks ago, prominent journalist Fareed Zakaria told Harvard University’s graduating class, “You don’t need an ethics course to know what you shouldn’t do.’’
It was good advice, as members of Duke University’s class of 2012 could attest. At Duke’s commencement 11 days before, Zakaria had uttered precisely the same words.
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So is commencement speaking an honor or a job? Surely there is enough rhetorical talent in this country that the same orator does not need to be chosen many times. And by the way ethics does need instruction since people's beliefs and cultures often clash and figuring out how harm can be avoided and survival promoted is not often obvious. It also becomes nuanced as we gain more knowledge about our world. Old principles may no longer be valid and a modern world makes segregated enclaves of ethical purity rarer. To be truly wise takes broad scholarship and experience. It is also curious that a political pundit seeks homogeneity in his message to an audience. In effect, Mr. Zakaria, doing nothing wrong, expresses the defects in our political discourse. Don't go off message, whether it holds water or not.
Seriously, this is news? I think it's asking a bit much to ask a busy, successful and in demand professional to write 2 wholly separate speeches on the same topic. I've heard my professional peers recycle the same speech for years. : )
One more time: "Seriously, this is news?"
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WOW- THIS IS BIG-It is soooooo big my mind can not wrap itself around it. You did a good job Mary, filling the empty space.
Wow, searching for the news here - is the implication that the guy somehow plagarized himself? Perhaps he could have personalized the speeches a bit more to the individual institutions but he has a valid point that to write two different speeches for two different (and VERY similar) institutions within two weeks of each other would have meant one of them got the inferior speech. That is assuming he actually wrote it and it wasn't ghost-written, as the vast majority of commencement speeches are.
Who cares ?
I admit that I don't know this journalist too well, but I did hear him talk at length one time and was turned off by his politically conservative viewpoints. No way is this man progressive. It says something not good that not only Harvard, but Yale, as well, chose him to give the address at Commencement.
Correction: Harvard and Duke, not Harvard and Yale.
When politicians deliver the same general remarks in both Ashtabula and Cincinatti, the media mavens say it was dull and just the same old 'stump speech'. What is wrong with overexposed journalists like Zakaria and movie directors doing the same thing? Is Harvard somehow entitled to a specially written speech script that must differ from a place like (horrors!!!) Duke? The Hahvuds all demand that their speakers at least be equal to, if not outdoing, George Marshal and Andrei Solzhenitsyn. In fact, the Hahvuds are no better than this year's grads at Cape Cod Junior College. Congrats to Zakaria for being his own man.
Oh woe... How could Yale and Harvard choose anyone but Al Sharpton or Ed Schultz, or -- heaven help us -- Rachel Maddow?? All true left listers... as backwards leaning as can be...
This is news why, exactly? And leading the section? Pahleeze!
There's no news here. I'm sure anyone who regularly delivers speeches, has little new to say from one venue to another, and that goes for the Globe's speakers bureau, if it still exists. Entirely too much space was used to expose this "scandal." Is Mary Carmichael trying to imply that Zakaria is guilty of plagiarism -- plagiarizing his own work? If so, she's not qualified to report for a major daily newspaper.