Vice President Kamala Harris felt the time had come Saturday to share some of her hard-won “personal experience” as she told students “follow your moral compass” during her commencement speech at Tennessee State University, before observing “I have been many firsts in my lifetime” and hoped they would be too.
Harris said the world they were graduating into “is unsettled” and marked both by the bloody conflict in Ukraine and the tail end of the coronavirus epidemic as nearly 600 graduates trod the stage at Hale Stadium.
“It is a world where long-established principles now rest on shaky ground,” Harris said, according to a White House transcript of her speech. “We see this in Ukraine, where Russia’s invasion threatens international rules and norms that have provided unprecedented peace and security in Europe since World War II.”
Harris said Americans had believed that “the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity had, for the most part, prevailed” but that now the fundamental principles of democracy, such as equality and fairness, are being called into question.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris embraces a graduating student at Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 7, 2022. (SETH HERALD/AFP via Getty Images)
“Inequality has always, sadly, existed in our world. The gaps between the rich and the poor, men and women, the global north and global south have existed throughout our history,” Harris continued..
“And through this pandemic, the gaps have become much larger. Globally, extreme poverty is on the rise, as is extreme wealth.”
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Laws during Tennessee State University’s Commencement Ceremony in Nashville, Tennessee. “Each of you has your own story,” Harris told students, “Your own way of looking at the world, shaped by every moment that brought you to this point. (Jason Davis/Getty Images)
Harris finished her address with a self reference as to her own achievements in life. She said:
I started this address talking about how today also belongs to your family, and so I will end by talking about my own mother.
She was the first person to tell me that my thoughts and my experiences mattered. My mother would often say to me, ‘Kamala, you may be the first to do many things. Make sure you are not the last.’
I have been many firsts in my lifetime. And as I look out at all of you today, I know I will not be the last.
She chose not to touch on her own electoral unfavorability or lack of engagement with voters as shown by recent polling which leaves her as one of the most unpopular vice presidents in recent history.
Before her speech, UPI reports graduates told a university publication they were “grateful” to have Harris speak during their commencement ceremony.
Harris is also scheduled to give the commencement speech at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy on May 18.