On May 19, CBS correspondent Scott Pelley delivered a commencement address to graduating students at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Much of it noted ominous moves toward dictatorship by President Donald J. Trump—whose name went unmentioned.  

And his counsel: “The country needs you, and it needs you today.”        

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The Wake Forest Class of 1861 did not choose their time of calling. The Class of 1941 did not choose. The Class of 1968 did not choose. History chose them. And now history is calling you, the Class of 2025.

You may not feel prepared, but you are. You are not descended of fearful people. You brought your values to school with you and now Wake Forest has trained you to seek the truth, to find the meaning of life.

Let me tell you briefly about three people I have recently met who discovered the meaning of their lives in moments of crisis not unlike what we have today.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, spent his entire career as an entertainer on television. His first elected office was president of Ukraine. And three years ago, the Russian army came at him from three directions. He had a decision to make. And so he reached for the most lethal weapon in the Ukrainian arsenal: his cell phone.

He walked out of front of the presidential offices in Kyiv and made a video selfie. He told his people, “I’m still here and your army is still here, and we are going to fight.” He galvanized 44 million people instantly. Today, three years later, he is all that stands between a murderous dictator in Russia and the rest of free Europe.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

I asked him, “Where did that come from?” And he said, “Well, you look in the mirror and you ask, ‘Who are you’”?

Nadia Murad, a woman whom we at 60 Minutes found in a refugee camp in Iraq. Her family was murdered by ISIS and she had been sold for money into slavery. We convinced her to tell her story on 60 Minutes, which she did and she found her voice.

Then she began to write, and then she began to speak about the crimes that women suffer in war. And a few years later, this young woman who we had found in a refugee camp won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Who are you?

Finally, Dr. Samer Attar, an orthopedic surgeon in Chicago and a professor of surgery at Northwestern who volunteers to do surgery in war zones. In Gaza. In Ukraine. To save lives of innocent people by using whatever meager supplies he has at hand.

I asked him, “Where does this come from?” He told me, “It’s not much, but it beats burying your head in fear and ignorance.”

Who are you?

What is the meaning of life? 

Today, great universities are threatened with ruin. So what did President Wente and Provost Gillespie do? They spoke out. They joined other institutions signing the call for constructive engagement, a declaration of the relationship between government and higher education.

It reads in part, “Institutions of higher education share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.”

Who are you? What does this make Wake Forest in this moment? Well, I think we know.

Did you hear that phrase in the Declaration? “Pursuit of truth?” Why attack universities? Why attack journalism? Because ignorance works for power.

First, make the truth seekers live in fear.

Sue the journalists. For nothing.

Then send masked agents to abduct a college student, a writer of her college paper who wrote an editorial supporting Palestinian rights, and send her to a prison in Louisiana and charge her with nothing.

Then, move to destroy law firms that stand up for the rights of others.

With that done, power can rewrite history. With grotesque, false narratives, they can make heroes criminals and criminals heroes.

And they can change the definition of the words we use to describe reality. “Diversity” is now described as “illegal.” “Equity” is to be shunned. “Inclusion” is a dirty word.

This is an old playbook, my friends. There is nothing new in this. George Orwell – who we met on the street in London – in 1949, he warned of what he called “new speak.” He understood that ignorance works for power.

But it is ignorance that you have repudiated every single day here at Wake Forest University.

Who are you? I think we know. 

Can just speaking the truth actually work? Well, consider this day. This day. May 19. May 19, 1963. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was published for the first time.

In that letter, Dr. King says, “The first thing that has to be done in the pursuit of justice is collecting the facts.” Power was telling him in a jail cell, “Do not speak the truth because power will crush you.”

But consider that just months before that letter was published, Wake Forest University became the first major private institution of higher education in the South to integrate.