365 Students Receive Degrees at JSC's 142nd Commencement Exercises on May 16, 2009

On Saturday, May 16, 2009, at 2 p.m., 365 undergraduate and graduate students received degrees from Johnson State College at the college's 142nd Commencement ceremony. In addition to student speakers Jahida Jorganes, Cathleen Voyer and Donna Works, Ambassador Peter W. Galbraith served as this year's Commencement speaker.

 

A life-long resident of Townshend, Vermont, Galbraith is an author and diplomat. From 1993-1998, he served as the first U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, where he mediated the 1995 Erdut Agreement that ended the Croatian War. In addition to his ambassadorship, he has held positions in East Timor and Iraq. As a staff member for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he uncovered Saddam Hussein's "al-anfal" campaign against the Iraqi Kurds, documenting chemical weapons attacks on Kurdish villagers.

 

During his address, Ambassador Galbraith described the bleak global economy and unstable political situations in the middle east and central Asia and critiqued the ideology of the previous federal administration which Galbraith portrayed as key in exacerbating these problems. In addressing these problems, the ambassador claimed, the U.S. should be, above all, pragmatic. This requires the U.S. to abandon unilateralism, embrace negotiation — which, Galbraith stressed, is not a synonym for conciliation or compromise — and find common ground with other nations on the issue of international law. He ended his talk with the following advice:

 

"Most of you will marry and a fair number of you will divorce. Those of you in business, will be in disputes with your vendors, customers, employees, bosses, and partners. You may feel you are and you may be right. But, be pragmatic and strategic. Do the costs of a court case — money, emotional harm, severed relations — exceed the cost of a compromise solution. And how do you find compromises? Norms — child support guidelines, business codes, provide guidelines but, so should your own sense of fairness. And, if you want to know what is fair, do what any skilled diplomat does before a negotiation. Imagine you are on the other side. What would you want, how would you see the world, what would you think was fair and what compromises might you accept.

 

"In life as diplomacy, it is best to focus on the results. And the best results are those achieved with the least cost. And that usually means respecting the rules and the views of others."

 

An archived video of the event can be seen here: www.jsc.edu/streaming

 

You can view a slideshow of the event below: