Lead singer of U2 Bono delivers The University of Pennsylvania 248th Commencement Address to the Class of 2004 at historic Franklin Field, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Monday May 17, 2004.
In case you don’t know him, Bono is the lead singer of the famous band U2.
Of course, being the rock star that he is, he leads his speech by saying, “My name is Bono, and I am a rock star”
Being a rock star, I thought Bono would talk about the perils of fame, the road to stardom or something to that effect. But instead, he talked about big ideas and changing the world.
In his speech, he urges graduates to carefully consider their big idea. “What are you willing to spend your moral capital, your intellectual capital, your cash, (and) your sweat equity in pursuing outside of the walls of the University of Pennsylvania? The world is more malleable than you think and it’s waiting for you to hammer it into shape,” he said.
Bono Delivers Penn’s Commencement Address
Transcript of the Video:
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ladies and gentlemen it is my great pleasure
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to introduce to you a man whose unique voice contains
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strange rock singer poetic songwriter
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social activist and committed citizen
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I get you this year our commencement speaker
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bono the
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thank you
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my name is bono and I am a rockstar
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the
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the don’t get me to excited as I use
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he’s four-letter words when I get excited and
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I’m that guy and but I just like to say the parents
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your children are safe your country is safe
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the SEC is called me a lesson and the only
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there the only four letter word I’m gonna use
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today is p the and
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an 3 she come to think Obama is a four letter word
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I’m the whole business of obscenity
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a I don’t have anything certainly more unseemly
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then the site of a rockstar in that
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in academic robes it’s a bit like trying people get there
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but there’s King Charles Spaniels in little tartan sweats and hats
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it started it’s not natural and it doesn’t make the dog any smarter
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spec no
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as true
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and we were here before with you too and I would like to thank them
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for given me a great life as well as you
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a.m. I got a great rock n roll band that normally stand at the back
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when I’m talking to as as people on a football stadium
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and their they were here with me
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think it’s seven years ago actually then I was
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some other sartorial problems II
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I was wearing and durable suit at the time
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and I emerge from a 40-foot hi revolving
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lemon I’m was sorta cross-breeding spaceship
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a disco and actually at just
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the plastic fruit I’m am
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I think I guess was at that point when your trustees decided to give me their
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highest honor
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and doctor applause Wow
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a.m. I know it’s an honor at a really is an honor
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but are you sure structure in law I mean all I can think I was the laws are
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broken
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yes the
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laws of nature laws of physics
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laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and on a memorable night
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in this late seventies I think it was Newton’s law
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motion sickness specific but they’re
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no and through my resume reads like a rap sheet have to come clean I broken a
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lot of flaws in the ones I have and I certainly thought about
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I have sinned import word and indeed
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am God forgive me actually got for gave me but why would you
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I’m here getting a doctorate
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getting respectable getting in the good graces of the powers that be
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I hope it sends you students a powerful message
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crime does pay the
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so I homely accept the honour keeping in mind the words of a British
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playwright John more smart was no brilliance is needed in the law
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nothing but common sense and relatively clean fingernails
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my best I i’ve got one of the two
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those but no I never went to college
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and I slept in some strange places
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but the library wasn’t one of them am
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I study its rock-n_-roll and their
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group in trouble in the seventies music was an alarm bell for me
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woke me up to the world I was 17 when I first saw the clash
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and it just sounded like revolution weird
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the clash were like this is a public service announcement
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with guitars I was the kid
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in the crowds who took it at face value later I learned
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that a lot of the rebels are in for the t-shirt they’d wear the boots
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but they would march they’d smashed bottles on their heads
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but they wouldn’t go to something more painful like a town hall meeting
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and by the way I felt like that myself until recently
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I didn’t expect change to come so slow so
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agonizingly slow I didn’t realize that the biggest
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obstacle to political and social progress was
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was in the Free Masons are the establishment or the booty love
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whatever you consider the man to be it was something
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much more subtle as the province just referred to
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a combination of our own indifference
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and the calf to ask labyrinth of nose you encounter
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as people vanished and the car doors a bureaucracy
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so that for better or worse that was my education
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I came away with a clear sense of the difference music and making my own life
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in other people’s lives I did my job right which
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if you’re singer in a rock band means avoiding the obvious pitfalls like say
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a mullet hairdo I’m
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I’m if anyone here doesn’t know anna malle it is
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by the way your education is certainly not complete and ask for your money back
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I’m for a lead singer like me
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amal it is I would suggest arguably more dangerous the drug problem
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yes I had demolished in the eighties
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now this is the point where the and
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the members in the pack start smiling and comfortably in thinking
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maybe they should have offered me the owners the honoree bachelor’s degree
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said a full-blown given he should be the Bachelor’s
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next talking about moments and stuff and
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ship if they’re asking what on earth I’m doing here
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I think it’s a fair question what am I doing here and more to the point where
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you doing here
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and because if you don’t mind me saying so this is a strange ending to an Ivy
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League education
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four years in these historic old thinking great thoughts
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and now you’re sitting in a stadium better suited for football
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listening to an Irish rock star give a speech that is so far mostly about
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himself
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what are you doing here
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actually I saw something in
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paper last week about Kermit the Frog
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giving a commencement address somewhere one of the students is complaining I
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work my ass off for four years to be addressed by a sock
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okay
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you have works you’re a
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that’s all for this for four years you been buying trading and selling
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everything you’ve got
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in this marketplace of ideas the intellectual hustle
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your pockets are full even your your parents are empty
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am and now you got to figure out what to spend it on
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well the going rate for change is not cheap big ideas are expensive university
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has had its share big ideas
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benjamin franklin had a few soda justice brennan
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in my opinion so does do this road arm
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on a gorgeous girl they all know
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me on you that if you’re going to be good at your word if you gonna live up
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to her ideals and your education
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it’s gonna cost you so my question is: poses
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what’s the big idea what’s your big idea
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what are you willing to spend your moral capital your intellectual capital your
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cash you sweat
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equity in pursuing outside the walls
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up the University of Pennsylvania there’s a really great
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truly great Irish poet his name is Brendan Kelly
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and he has this epic poems called the book judas
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was a line in that tone that never leaves my mind
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it says if you want to serve the age
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betray it what does that mean to be tray
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BH well to me betraying the age means exposing its concedes it’s for labels
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it’s phony moral certitude it means telling secrets at the age
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and facing harsher truths every age
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has its massive morrow blind spots
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we might not see them but our children well
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slavery was one of them and the people who best served at age were the ones who
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called it as it wants which was
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ungodly and inhuman Ben Franklin called it
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when he became president of the Pennsylvania abolition society
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segregation there was another one America sees this now but it took a
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civil rights movement
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to betray their age and fifty years ago the US Supreme Court betrayed the age
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May 17 1954 it says here
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brown versus board of education came down and put the lie
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to the idea that separate can ever really
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equal amen to that
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fast forwards fifty years may 17
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2004 what are the ideas right now
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worth betraying what are the lies we tell ourselves now
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what are the blind spots our age what’s worth spending your post Penn lives
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trying to do our
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undue it might be something simple and might be something as simple
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as art deep down refusal to believe
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that every human life has equal worth
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could that be it for that beer
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each if you will probably have your own answer but for me that is it
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and from me proving ground has been Africa
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Africa makes a mockery of what we say
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is what I say about equality questions are play it easy on our commitments
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because there’s no way to look at what’s happening over there and its effect on
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all of us
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and conclude the week actually consider
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africans as our equal before God there is no chance
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an amazing event happens
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here in Philadelphia in
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1985 Live Aid at Whole we are the world phenomenon the concept that happened
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here
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well after that concert I went to ethiopia
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with my wife allie we were there for a month and
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an extraordinary thing happened to me a
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these to wake up in the morning and the
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lifting the missed would be lifting weights see thousands and thousands of
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people have been walking
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all night and to our food station when we were working
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and one-man I was
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standing outside talking to it the translator is beautiful boy
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and he was saying to me and America guess it was
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a as saying I I can understand what he’s saying and this nurse who spoke English
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and America said to me he saying will he take his son
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he saying please take his son he he he would be a great son for you
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and I i was looking puzzled and he said
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you must take my son because if you don’t take my son
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my son will surely die if you take an
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he will go go back to where he is and get an education
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probably like the ones we’re talking about today
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and and I course I said
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I had to say no that was the rules there and i’d
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I walked away from that man and I have never really walked away from it
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and I think about that that boy
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and that man and
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that’s when I started this journey that’s brought me here
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into the stadium because at that moment
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I became the worst scourge on God’s green earth
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a rockstar with the Colts sure
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except it isn’t the cause 7,000 africans dying every day
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preventable treatable disease like aids that’s not a cause
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as an emergency and when the disease gets outta control because most of the
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population live on less than a dollar a day
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that’s not a cause that’s an emergency and when resentment bills because I on
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fair trade rules and the burden of unfair debts
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at our debts by the way to keep africans poor
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that’s not a cause
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that’s an emergency so we are the world live 8 start me off
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you know it was an extraordinary thing really that event was about charity
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by twenty years on I’m not that interested in charity
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I’m interested injustice there’s a difference
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Africa means justice
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as much as it needs charity equality for africa is a big idea except
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big expensive idea see that the wharton graduates now getting at the map from
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the back at the program’s
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numbers are intimidating I day but not to you
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but the scale
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the scale of the suffering and the scope
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up a commitment they often no miss into
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a kind of indifference wishing for the end
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aids in extreme poverty in Africa is like wishing that gravity didn’t make
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things so that heavy
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we can we should but what the hell can we do about it
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well more than we think we can’t fix every problem
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corruption natural calamities are part of the picture here
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but the ones we can we must the debt burden as I say
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unfair trade as I say sharing our knowledge the intellectual copyright for
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life-saving drugs in a crisis
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we can do that and because we can we must
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because we can we must a man
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card
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this is the straight truth the righteous truth it’s not a theory
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it’s a fact the fact is at this generation
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yours mine generation that can look at the poverty
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with the first generation that could look at poverty and disease
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look across the ocean to Africa and say with a straight face
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we can be the first to and the sort is stupid extreme poverty
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where in the world have plenty a child can die for lack of food and it’s barely
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we can be the first generation might take a while
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but we can be that generation that says no too stupid
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poverty
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it’s a fact it’s a fact economists confirm it
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it’s an expensive fact but cheaper than say
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the Marshall Plan that save Europe from communism and fascism
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and cheaper I would argue than fighting wave after wave of terrorism some new
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recruits
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it as the Economics Department over there
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good it’s a fact so why aren’t we
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pumping their fists in the air and cheering about us
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well probably because when we add miss
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we can do something about it we’ve got to do something about it
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for the first time in history we have the know-how
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we have the cash we have the life-saving drugs
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but dewey have will yesterday
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here in Philadelphia at the Liberty Bell I met a lot of Americans who do have the
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will
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from arch are you here there’s the three million of them over there
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I’m from arch religious conservatives to young secular radicals
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I just got an incredible overpowering sense that this was possible
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yesterday week recalling at the one campaign to put an end to aids in
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extreme poverty in Africa
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they believe we can do it so do I a really
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really do believe it and I just want you to know I think it’s this is obvious but
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I’m not really going in for the warm fuzzy feeling paying
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I’m not a hippie I do not have flowers in my hair icon from
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aunque rock alright the clash war army boots not Birkenstocks
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alright I believe America can do this
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I believe that this generation can do this
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in fact I wanna eat here in argument about
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why we shouldn’t I know idealism
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is not playing on the radio right now you don’t see it on TV
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irony is on heavy rotation the knowing this
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the smirk the tired joke I’ve tried them all at
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but I tell you this outside
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this campus and even inside it idealism
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is under siege be set by materialism narcissism and all the other isms
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of indifference baggage and shag is in drag is an
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uw-madison graduate is them Jazmin monarch
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where’s John Lennon when you need him but I don’t wanna make you cop
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to idealism man in front of your parents
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or younger siblings what about americanism
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will you pick up to that at least it’s not everywhere in fashion these days
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americanism not very big in Europe truth be told
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no less an Ivy League college campuses but it all depends
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on your definition americanism me
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I’m in love but this country called america the
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I’m a huge fan and I got I’m a huge fan of America I’m like one of those
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annoying fans
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you know the ones that read the CD notes and
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follow you into bathrooms and ask you all kinds annoying questions
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about why you didn’t live up to that exit you know
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and that kinda fan and a
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I read the declaration I’m independence
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my read the Constitution of the United States
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and they are some liner notes did
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and as I said yesterday I’m
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I’m I made my pilgrimage Independence Hall and I love
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America because America is not just a country it’s an idea
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you see my country Island is a great country
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but it’s not an idea America
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is an idea but it’s an idea that brings with it
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some baggage like
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power brings prime responsibility it’s an idea
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brings with it equality but the quality even though it’s the highest calling
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is the hardest to reach the idea that anything is possible
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that’s one of the reasons I’m fine america psych hey look there’s the moon
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up there let’s let’s you know let’s take a walk on it
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and I bring back a piece a bit that’s the kinder
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America and I’m a fan of and
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1970 one actually no
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in 1771 and
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not great for clam rock at that year
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am but your founder mister franklin spent three months
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in Ireland and Scotland to look at the relationship
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they had with England and see whether they this could be a model for america
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other America should follow their example
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and remain apart up to British Empire Franklin was deeply deeply distressed by
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what he saw
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in Ireland he saw how England had put a stranglehold on Irish trade
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how absentee English landlords exploited Irish tenant farmers
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and how those farmers in Franklin’s words lived in wretched hovels
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of mud and straw were closed in rags
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and subsisted chiefly on potatoes not exactly
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the American dream so instead of Ireland becoming a model for america
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America became a model for Ireland
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in our own struggle for independence and when the potatoes ran out
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millions of Irish men women and children packed their bags got on a boat
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and showed up right here and we’re still doing it
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we’re not even starving anymore load the potatoes
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in fact if there’s any Irish at their
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I II break I breaking news from Dublin
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the potato famine is over you can come home now
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sorry
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butare
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why we still showing up because we love the idea of America
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we love the crackle in the hustle we love the spirit that gives a finger to
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fate
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the spirit that says there’s no hurdle week and clear
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and no problem we can fix overhears
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here comes the Brits only joking
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yet
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no problem we can’t fix so what’s the problem
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we want to apply all this energy and intellect to
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every era has its defining struggle
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and the fate of Africa is one of ours
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it’s not the only one but in the history books
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its easily gonna make the top five what we did
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what we did not do it’s a proving ground
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as I said earlier for the idea of equality the weather it’s this or
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something else
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I hope you pick a fight and getting it get your boots 30
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get rough steal your courage with day final drink there at Smokey Joe’s
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one last primal scream
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and go sing the melody line here in your own head
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remember you don’t bow anybody any explanations
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you don’t know your parents any explanations you don’t know your
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professors
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any explanations you know I used to think that the future was solid
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are fixed are something like you inherited like an old building
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that you move into in the previous generation moves at
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gets chased but it’s not
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the future is not fixed it’s fluid
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you can build your own building orkut or condo
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whatever this is the metaphor parted speech
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okay but my point is that the world is more manageable than you think
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and it’s waiting for you hemorrhage into shape
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now if I were a folk singer I would immediately launch into if I had a
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hammer
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right now get you all singing and swaying
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but as I say I come from punk rock so I’d rather have the bloody hammer
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right here in my fist that’s what this degree if yours is
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a blunt instrument so go for
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and build something with it and remember what John adam said about Ben Franklin
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he does not hesitate at our boldest measures
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but rather seems to think us to irresolute
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well this is the time for bold measures
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and this is the country and you are the generation
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thank you
