For Wellesley Graduates, Clinton’s Return Highlights the Challenges Ahead

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Hillary Clinton returned to her alma mater on Friday to deliver encouragement and a call to action to 570 young women about to enter an America that for many of them feels very different than it did just six months ago.

In her first major speech since she lost the presidential election, in November, Mrs. Clinton told Wellesley College’s graduates to insist on truth and integrity from their political leaders, to fight for the academic ideals of free speech and open debate, and to never let anyone tell them to “sit down and shut up.”

“If you feel powerless, don’t,” she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you your voice doesn’t matter.”

Still, she didn’t play down the challenges that the students will confront as they enter a world where it’s “easier than ever to splinter ourselves into echo chambers” and where “extreme views are given powerful microphones.”

“You are graduating at a time when there is a full-fledged assault on truth and reason,” she said.

Zainab Younus, 21, said she appreciated how honest Mrs. Clinton had been about what she and her classmates will face “once we leave this bubble.”

“The speech was uplifting but realistic,” said Ms. Younus, the college’s student-government president. “It was meant to open our eyes to the real world.”

Friday’s address was a bittersweet homecoming for Mrs. Clinton, who delivered the first speech by a student at Wellesley’s commencement nearly 50 years ago. And it was bittersweet for many of the students, who had expected to graduate with the first female president in the White House.

In interviews before the speech, graduating seniors said Mrs. Clinton’s loss had caused them to rethink their future. Some, like Ananya Ghemawat, said they had been considering jobs in Washington, but had decided they no longer wanted to be anywhere near the nation’s capital.

Ms. Ghemawat said that while it “might seem like running away,” she’s decided to “work outside the system to effect change,” accepting a job as a paralegal at a civil-rights group in New York City.

She said the election had made her wonder “whether we’re as far along as we thought we were” when it comes to women’s rights.

“We elected someone with no political experience over the secretary of state,” she said. “You can’t tell me none of that has to do with latent sexism.”

Others seniors, like Amina Ziad, said they felt a new call to public service. She’d been planning on medical school, but now hopes to earn a Ph.D. in public health, too.

“The election made clear,” she said, “how important it was for me to act as a bridge between policy and practice.”

Both students spoke about using their prestigious degrees and formidable Wellesley network to bring about social change; they said they wanted to serve as counterweights to what they see as President Trump’s harmful policies toward immigrants and Muslims.

‘New Sense of Urgency’

Christine Cruzvergara, associate provost and executive director of career education at Wellesley, said the election had been “very personal for our students,” who feel a sense of sisterhood with Mrs. Clinton. After she lost, many seniors were asking “what now?” and “how do I want to respond” through my career? said Ms. Cruzvergara.

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Irene Mata, a professor of women’s studies, said Mr. Trump’s victory had been a wake-up call for many Wellesley students, who were “raised to be strong, opinionated women, and hadn’t considered how much misogyny continues to permeate their lives.” She said the president’s promises to build a wall along the Mexican border and ban immigrants from Muslim-majority countries had given her students a “new sense of urgency” about advocating for immigrant rights.

“The election,” she said, “made everyone aware that there’s no such thing as a postracial America.”

Mrs. Clinton’s speech, delivered under a tent on a rainy day, capped an unusually charged commencement season that saw students turn their backs on the secretary of education and walk out of a speech by the vice president. And Mrs. Clinton didn’t shy away from politics in her speech, offering digs at Mr. Trump and forceful criticism of his policies. She called the president’s recently proposed budget “an attack of unimaginable cruelty on the most vulnerable among us,” and said Mr. Trump’s lies had undermined public confidence in government and threatened core democratic and academic principles.

“Our country, like this college, was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment — in particular, the belief that people, you and I, possess the capacity for reason and thinking, and that free and open debate is the lifeblood of a democracy,” she said. “Not only Wellesley but the entire American university system — the envy of the world — was founded on those fundamental ideals.”

She also referred to how Republicans had portrayed her in the election, as a “nasty woman” whose elite education meant she was “out of touch” with mainstream America.

The ‘Hardest Glass Ceiling’

But Mrs. Clinton’s speech was also very personal and, at times, funny. She talked about feeling as if she didn’t belong at Wellesley — that she wasn’t smart enough — and joked about how she had overcome her disappointment over the election’s outcome with the help of Chardonnay. She drew parallels between her generation and the current one, and she talked about the societal divisions that existed in the 1960s and have re-emerged today.

“We didn’t trust government, authority figures, or really anyone over 30,” she recalled. “We were asking urgent questions about whether women, people of color, religious minorities, and immigrants would ever be treated with dignity and respect.”

“And by the way, we were furious about the past presidential election of a man whose presidency would eventually end in disgrace with his impeachment for obstruction of justice after firing the person running the investigation into him at the Department of Justice,” she said, to loud clapping and cheers.

She reassured the graduates that the country had gotten through “that tumultuous time,” and that it would again, and she reminded them that women had made progress since she was an undergraduate, even if they had not yet broken “that highest and hardest glass ceiling.”

“Just in those years, doors that once seemed sealed to women are open,” she said. “They’re ready for you to walk through, or charge through, to advance the struggle for equality, justice, and freedom.”

“Keep going,” she said. “Don’t do it because I asked you so. Do it for yourself. Do it for truth and reason.”

Afterward, Tala Nashawati, the student speaker at commencement, said Mrs. Clinton’s speech had helped “piece us back together” as a campus community.

“Election night was heartbreaking. Everyone was feeling hopeless,” she said. “Having Hillary standing up there, chin up, confident, showed us it’s going to be OK, and we should keep going.”

Kelly Field is a senior reporter covering student success, equity, and federal higher-education policy. Contact her at kelly.field@chronicle.com. Or follow her on Twitter @kfieldCHE.