Remarks to the Class of 2025
by Keynote Speaker Maxim Langstaff ’81
Connecticut College’s 107th Commencement
May 18, 2025
When I am introduced, people often say “Oh, I have a dog named Max!”. They’ll tell me they’ve named their rabbit, pet turtle, or pot-bellied pig after me. How I achieved such transcendent multi-species fame remains a mystery, but that’s my story and I’ve decided to go with it. If you’re as lucky as I am, someone, somewhere, will name their schnauzer after you.
Standing here now, I think thank-you and congratulations are in order. The cost, the struggle and hardship, tears and joy, it has been a long, hard road. Congratulations parents. You did it.
Now this is the part where I am supposed to tell you, the graduating class, to follow your dreams. But honestly, you’ve heard that speech before. The truth is you are graduating into an angry, unstable world. It’s a mess out here. The climate is on fire and AI is coming for you. My generation has spent an awful lot of time and energy screwing things up. I’d like to tell you the story has not yet been written. I hope not, but then, that’s now up to you.
When I stood where you are standing now, I could not have imagined I would one day return in this moment. This is my school. I am, no more and no less, a graduate of Connecticut College. What I have, what you’ve given me cannot be taken away. What I’ve learned is that I can be a part of the difference I want to see in the world, not because of what I’ve accomplished, but because of my willingness to connect, imbuing me with a respect for the gifts and contribution of others different from me.
Graduating from college does not mark an end so much as a beginning. You are not standing here because you ‘ve accomplished any great feat. The truth is you have spent the first 21 years of your life a consumer, supported and curated by others. Today that comes to an end. Today is your Commencement.
Yours will be a shambolic journey, steeper and more twisted than mine, across less stable ground. There will be no clear-cut path to follow. The changes you will face will test your resilience and your humanity; more so than any generation before you. The surety you will carry with you will be your Connecticut College experience. You will stumble. You will get lost. You will not be heard. You will make mistakes. You will want to give up, and you will blame others- them. Your worst moments will be what shape you, not your best. Your steps will not be measured by what you achieve or how much money you make, but by how much you give to others, and the strength of your connections. Your courage and curiosity will determine your success, not your talents. Your happiness will be measured by your generosity of spirit.
When I reached for my diploma, I had no idea what I had acquired. It would take another forty years for me to come to understand the magnitude of what I held in my hand, and why it mattered. To all the parents who have made this moment possible, the professors gathered, the board of trustees, and the leadership of this extraordinary and privileged bastion of freedom, thank you. Thank you, President Chapdelaine for standing up for us. Thank you for defending my education. I have no doubt I would not be the person I am today but for the liberal arts education Connecticut College provided me.
200 years ago, it was an escaped slave, Frederick Douglass, who remarked: No greater benefit can be bestowed upon a long benighted people, than giving to them, as we are here earnestly this day endeavoring to do, the means of an education.... Education means emancipation. It means liberty... the uplifting by which men can only be made free....
All You need is Love (Recorded song)
There’s nothing you can do that can't be done
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung
Nothing you can say, but you can learn
How to play the game
It's easy.
There’s nothing you can make that can't be made
No one you can save that can't be saved
Nothing you can do, but you can learn
How to feel inside
It's easy.
There’s nothing you can know that isn't known
Nothing you can see that isn't shown
There's nowhere you can be that isn't where
You're meant to be
It's easy.
... Love is all you need...
On a cold December evening in 1981, a Conn college classmate, Daniel Hays, rushed onto the lecture hall stage in Cummings Art Center as the curtain was about to go up on a play I was directing. Distraught, he whispered in my ear that John Lennon had been murdered, gunned down; a man so monumental to my generation, and those who followed, he could only have been a Beatle. We’d killed him. Imagine.
All You Need is Love was broadcast live to over 400 million people in 25 countries- the largest audience ever aggregated in human history. No politician or head of state was allowed to participate in the broadcast. In the tumult of the violent, fractured chaos of the 1960’s, we gathered around our television sets and radios, and listened - together; young and old, black, white, men, women, rich, poor, Catholic, Muslim, and Jew, gay and straight, liberal and conservative - not because we didn’t have our differences, but because for just three minutes we had the opportunity to feel heard, connected. I am you the Beatles sang. You are me. We are us. There was no them. There was no they. There was nothing to figure out, just choices- Choices - written by a man who could not read or write a note of music- thus telling us, it was a song we too could write. Four young men, your age, with no prospects or education, became us. Looking beyond what they could see, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr needed to create a better world. What they showed us is that ordinary people, you and me, can do extraordinary things. In the words of anthropologist, Margaret Mead: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has.
All You Need is Love begins with the French National Anthem “Marseilles”. You can hear Glenn Miller’s swing/Jazz masterpiece, “In the Mood” alongside Bach’s Invention #8 in F major- “Greensleeves”. What the Beatles did was give back ourselves to ourselves-. different cultures, different eras- Europe’s classical traditions, the American experience; immigrants and slaves. In binding us together, they reinvented our story, connecting a new, younger generation determined to find a different path. Their songs mattered, not because they were Beatle songs, but because they became our songs. John Denver, who wrote Take Me Home Country Roads, said to me when I asked him how he knew he’d written a good song, remarked, “When it becomes yours.” In a short three and a half minutes, the measure of a great artist. The Beatles challenged a prevailing mind-set seeming able only to deliver intransigence, instability and chaos- sexism, racism, and, of course, war, both at home and abroad. Mostly, they gave us a reason to. They connected us by changing how we feel.
A few years ago, I was standing in Abbey Road Studios with Ringo, waiting for Paul to show up. He turned to me and said: “It’s good to be a Beatle again.” “But you are a Beatle,” I said to him. “Not at home” he answered. “As I was leaving the house, my wife, Barbara, told me to empty the garbage. Richie, you can be a Beatle after you empty the garbage.” I realized in that moment, what being a Beatle meant. At home, alone, Ringo was just Ritchie, emptying the garbage. Connected with John, Paul, and George, a Beatle.
Ringo never had the privileges you and I have been afforded. Neither did Steveland Judkins, a blind, black boy from Saginaw Michigan. Born in the racial tumult of the 1950’s -what chance did he have to complete high school or go to college? He didn’t. 100 million records and 25 Grammy awards later, I guess you’d have to ask Stevie Wonder. Reginald Dwight, my friend, Reggie, a pudgy, gay, English boy with coke bottle glasses- Who’d have expected him to amount to anything. 300,000,000 records sold and multiple Emmy, Grammy, Tony, and Oscar awards, he wrote the best-selling song of all time. With a passion for Chopin and Bach, Elton John single handedly returned the piano to the center of popular music after the emergence of the electric guitar. He’s raised over $600,000,000 to support HIV related programs in 55 countries. Charting more than 115 pop hits, Carol Joan Klein, a Jewish girl from New York City became the most successful female songwriter in history when women were not considered relevant, let alone legitimate songwriters. Carole King created the pathway for all the women songwriters we have today. And she did it in spite of what we men said she could or couldn’t do. Who doesn’t love A Natural Woman. Henry Deutschendorf I first reached out to when I was a student at Connecticut College. I thought I needed his permission to use his songs in a play I was writing for a class assignment. Growing up an air force “brat”, he was forced to move from base to base, making it impossible to make friends. His grandmother gave him a guitar in the hope it might ease his loneliness. The poet laureate of Colorado, he wrote what is now both the West Virginia and Colorado state songs. Only the second artist to outsell the Beatles, by the mid 1970’s John Denver would rise to become the biggest selling artist in the world. The conversations we’re having today regarding global warming and the environment reached the entire world for the first time, because of how his songs made us feel.
These kids succeeded because they had nothing to lose. They weren’t burdened by the privileged expectations of their families and social milieu. If they failed in life no one would have thought much of it because none of them were ever expected to succeed. You are. You’ve been given every advantage, every privilege. This is your burden. The Bible says, For whom much has been given, much is required. The songwriter and Fulbright Scholar, Kris Kristofferson wrote: Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. You’ve got everything to lose. You are going to have to fight for your freedom like no generation before you. The burden you carry, and threats you face, will make your journey the most challenging and consequential in human history.
So, how did these young music artists do it? They reinvented themselves, becoming a part of something more than what they had been given. Courage fueled their success, irrespective of their talent. Instead of blaming the world for their station in life, they changed it. And we didn’t care if they were Black, gay, a man or a woman. We didn’t care if they came from another country. We cared about them because of how they made us feel. All of you in the LGBT community, if you want to celebrate and feel the power and magic of your you-ness, crank-up Elton John’s “The Bitch is Back”. Listening to that song, who doesn’t want to be gay! That’s connection- and it’s timeless. Our music, our art, can penetrate our differences when no other human experience can. That’s why it matters.
Elton John said to me, when we were recording The Bridge, that, for him, being an artist was the greatest privilege because you get to Come and risk it all or die trying. Few of us ever get to experience what it is to be that alive.
The world out here doesn’t care about you in spite of what you think you deserve. We care about the guy who went to the two-year trade school down the road and learned how to maintain and repair the landing gear on our airplanes. Your college degree does not give you standing in the world. It gives you choices, and the opportunity to have standing, but you must stand-up. Your Instagram, Tik-Tok, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter skills won’t land the plane. Texting is not talking. Twitter is not a conversation, and Tik-Tok will not make you smarter. AI is a digital machine and you’re an analog creature. Rather than connecting you and me, it connects you to a machine. It will tell you how to feel, hence what to think, ergo, how to act. AI is engineered to take you out of life, replacing your process with theirs, making you redundant. How can you know what matters if you haven’t engaged, been a part of the process. AI means artificial intelligence. As spectacular a tool as it might yet prove to be, you need to know we have invented a drug a hundred thousand times more lethal than Fentanyl and we are already addicted to it. It’s not for me to care if you submit an AI paper for class. You’re the one giving up your voice, ceding your power.
Your degree is not about the stuff you learned, it’s about the knowledge you’ve gained, born from your process. AI can only give you an outcome. And it doesn’t need you. Information is not knowledge. Acquiring information is not thinking. Good answers require good questions, and your answers require you to think. That’s what Connecticut College demanded of you. That’s what AI will erase. We, today, largely live, breathe, and define our happiness, right and wrong, and the “truth” according to the curated digital dictates of the internet and social media my generation created. We spend our time on the internet looking for validation, thinking it’s connection. Social media is engineered to re-direct your focus, artificially inflate your value, and tell you what you should think and want. It’s hard to connect when you don’t know who you’re connecting to. Everyone is not anyone.
The Dictionary defines Liberal as “Willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own; open to new ideas.” The word traces back to the Latin word liber meaning “free”. As we stand here now, the very idea of Liberal Arts is under direct assault.
Fifty years ago, a woman with no college degree, stood where I am standing now to receive the Connecticut College Medal. A woman, who, at your age, was denied the right to vote because she was a woman. It was her journey, and those of so many great women, that gave rise to Connecticut College. Undeterred, she fought back, and would go on to become President of the League of Women Voters. In these times, her oft repeated question to me, haunts me. “So, what are you going to do about it?” she’d say when I was confronted by a difficult challenge. In my small way, I hope my words today honor her; her commitment to Connecticut College and my education. Percy Maxim Lee was my grandmother.
We glibly talk about leadership as if we expect someone else to solve our problems. There is no someone else. Just you and me. So, I ask you, as I look at what you face, and what is happening to our country, what are you going to do about it?
Inspired by the connection I made while a student at Connecticut College, I, again, reached out to John Denver. I wanted to produce a project to bring global awareness to the extinction crisis we face. Together, we created the Wildlife Concert. John had written a song that the record company did not want to include. They wanted “hits”; more Take Me Home Country Roads. John insisted the song we recorded be included. Introducing it, he said: The Zen Buddhists’ say, as air is to the bird, as water is to the fish, so is resentment and regret to humankind. On the one hand there is much resentment, fear and anger, at the idea that our lives have to change because the way we live is not sustainable. But how much will there be to regret if we continue down the path we are on.
After the broadcast, a reporter challenged him, suggesting that the world’s problems were so big what difference could one person make. “It’s easy” he said. “Follow your heart. Do what you can do that you are moved to do, but do something. Instead of tossing your cup on the ground, if each of us picked up one piece of garbage that was not ours, there would quickly be no more garbage. It’s easy, he said. The Beatles told us that sixty years ago! The only difference between then and now is that we’ve run out of time.
If you need guidance, if you want to know what’s going on, if you want to understand your human story, pay attention to our artists. They’ve long since given us the answers we seek. They know how you feel, and can express it, because they are you. The power of art is that it connects us, blindly. No machine can provide meaning, tell your story.
You have a voice. You now have an education. Use it. You do what you can do; what your heart and spirit compel you to do. I’ll do what I can do - and if we come together, there isn’t a problem we can’t solve, after all, we created them. You matter, perhaps more than any generation that has come before you; the challenges you face, the most perilous. Your choices will determine America’s future- humanity’s future. It’s in your hands now. What I know, is that without the person seated next to you, you and I are not going to make it. It’s that simple.
I can’t change what you do or think. But I can change the way you feel. As a writer and artist, that’s what I can do. It may not seem like much, but I can’t make a strong enough argument to change the way you think. This is why art matters, what makes it so very powerful. Science can’t provide meaning, only evidence.
We can’t think our way to a changed world, until and unless we change our feelings. It is your heart that will empower you to find your place in the world- connect you- tell you who you are. Everything else is just stuff. As May Angelou said, People will forget what you say, they will forget what you do, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
We aren’t running from the danger before us so much as retreating from vulnerability. Even in the presence of people and spaces of trust, the idea of being fully seen, without armor, feels so foreign today, so we choose the predictability of oppression over the uncertainty of what freedom might require.
Hours before he was murdered, John Lennon finished recording a song for his son. Take my hand, he sang. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. Paul told us: the movement you need is on your shoulders. George offered us hope; Here Comes the Sun. But, perhaps, Ringo said it best: We all live in a yellow submarine... In the end, together, their final words, in their final song: The love you take is equal to the love you make.
You have the power to change the world, and you’re standing, in it. Do it. Take action. Make your voice heard. If you don’t stand-up for our world, now. If you won’t stand-up for our home here on spaceship earth, there will be nothing to stand up for tomorrow. I can’t save the world, but together we can. Together, we can make a world of difference.
The song that John Denver and I, together, had to fight so hard to get heard, reached over a billion people. My hope, today, is that it might too, ignite something in your heart. It is a song whose journey, for me, began here at Connecticut College.
Remember, when it is darkest is when the stars shine brightest. I have faith in you. It is your light and vision that will lead us out of this darkness. There is no one else. And, if you let me, I will join you.
Amazon (Recorded song)
There is a river that runs from the mountains
That one river is all rivers
All rivers are that one
There is a tree that stands in the forest
That one tree is all forests
All trees are that one
There is a flower that blooms in the desert
That one blossom is all flowers
All flowers are that one
There is a bird that sings in the jungle
That one song is all music
All songs are that one
It is the song of life
It is the flower of faith
It is the tree of temptation
It is the river of no regret
There is a child that cries in the ghetto
That one child is all children
All children are that one
There is a vision that shines in the darkness
That one vision is all of our dreams
All of our dreams are that one
It is a vision of heaven
It is a child of promise
It is the song of life
It is the river of no regret
Let this be a voice for the mountains
Let this be a voice for the river
Let this be a voice for the forest
Let this be a voice for the flowers
Let this be a voice for the desert
Let this be a voice for the ocean
Let this be a voice for the children
Let this be a voice for the dreamers
Let this be a voice of no regret
Maxim Langstaff ’81, a Grammy- and Emmy-nominated multimedia writer and producer, will deliver the keynote address at Connecticut College’s 107th Commencement on Sunday, May 18.
Langstaff’s creative and editorial work in TV, film, music, print and radio has reached hundreds of millions of people worldwide. A master storyteller who is at work on his second novel, he is recognized for his vision, versatility and commitment to conservation and the natural world.
His many credits include producing the multimedia Making of Sergeant Pepper with Sir George Martin, featuring Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and Phil Collins. He wrote, produced and directed the most comprehensive filmed history of the Beatles through the eyes of their producer. Many artists have collaborated with Langstaff on projects he has created, written and produced, including Herbie Hancock, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Joni Mitchell, B.B. King, Tony Bennett, Vince Gill, Michael Tilson Thomas, Smokey Robinson, Stephen Schwartz, Jack White, Glen Campbell, Jeff Beck, Carole King, Dave Grohl and Willie Nelson.
He is the creator and executive producer for the PBS documentary series Soundbreaking. His collaboration with John Denver produced the Wildlife Concert and the highest-rated music program in cable TV history. He is the co-founder and former playwright-in-residence of the National Youth Theater at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. He is a graduate of the Putney School, Connecticut College and the National Theater Institute and was a participant in the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
Langstaff has deep ties to Conn. His sister, Lee Langstaff ’78, and two cousins, Virginia Lee ’70 and Josephine Heminway ’85, are also Conn grads. His grandmother, Percy Maxim Lee, a political and social reform activist who was president of the League of Women Voters, served on Conn’s Board of Trustees and received the College Medal in 1976.
At the Commencement ceremony, the College will present Langstaff with the degree of doctor of humane letters honoris causa, in recognition of his contribution to the arts and arts education.