(applause)

R-U rah-rah!

(applause)

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Everybody, please have a seat.

Thank you, President Barchi, for that introduction.

Let me congratulate my extraordinarily worthy

fellow honorary Scarlet Knights, Dr. Burnell

and Bill Moyers.

Matthew, good job.

(applause)

If you are interested, we can talk after this.

(applause)

One of the perks of my job is honorary degrees.

(laughter)

But I have to tell you, it impresses nobody in my house.

(laughter)

Now Malia and Sasha just say, "Okay, Dr. Dad, we'll

see you later.

Can we have some money?"

(laughter)

To the Board of Governors; to Chairman Brown; to

Lieutenant Governor Guadagno; Mayor Cahill;

Mayor Wahler, members of Congress, Rutgers

administrators, faculty, staff, friends, and family

-- thank you for the honor of joining you for the 250th

anniversary of this remarkable institution.

(applause)

But most of all, congratulations

to the Class of 2016!

(applause)

I come here for a simple reason -- to finally settle

this pork roll vs.

Taylor ham question.

(laughter and applause)

I'm just kidding.

(laughter)

There's not much I'm afraid to take on in my final year

of office, but I know better than to get in the middle

of that debate.

(laughter)

The truth is, Rutgers, I came here because you asked.

(applause)

Now, it's true that a lot of schools invite me to their

commencement every year.

But you are the first to launch a three-year campaign.

(laughter)

Emails, letters, tweets, YouTube videos.

I even got three notes from the grandmother of your

student body president.

(laughter)

And I have to say that really sealed the deal.

That was smart, because I have a soft spot for grandmas.

(laughter)

So I'm here, off Exit 9, on the banks of the Old Raritan --

(applause)

-- at the site of one of the original

nine colonial colleges.

(applause)

Winners of the first-ever college football game.

(applause)

One of the newest members of the Big Ten.

(applause)

Home of what I understand to be a Grease Truck

for a Fat Sandwich.

(applause)

Mozzarella sticks and chicken fingers

on your cheesesteaks --

(applause)

I'm sure Michelle would approve.

(laughter)

But somehow, you have survived

such death-defying acts.

(laughter)

You also survived the daily jockeying for buses, from

Livingston to Busch, to Cook, to Douglass,

and back again.

(applause)

I suspect that a few of you are trying to survive this

afternoon, after a late night at Olde Queens.

(applause)

You know who you are.

(laughter)

But, however you got here, you made it.

You made it.

Today, you join a long line of Scarlet Knights whose

energy and intellect have lifted this university to

heights its founders could not have imagined.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, when America was still

just an idea, a charter from the Royal Governor -- Ben

Franklin's son -- established Queen's College.

A few years later, a handful of students gathered in a

converted tavern for the first class.

And from that first class in a pub, Rutgers has evolved

into one of the finest research institutions

in America.

(applause)

This is a place where you 3D-print prosthetic hands

for children, and devise rooftop wind arrays that can

power entire office buildings with clean,

renewable energy.

Every day, tens of thousands of students come here, to

this intellectual melting pot, where ideas and

cultures flow together among what might just be America's

most diverse student body.

(applause)

Here in New Brunswick, you can debate philosophy with a

classmate from South Asia in one class, and then strike

up a conversation on the EE Bus with a first-generation

Latina student from Jersey City, before sitting down

for your psych group project with a veteran who's going

to school on the Post-9/11 GI Bill.

(applause)

America converges here.

And in so many ways, the history of Rutgers mirrors

the evolution of America -- the course by which we

became bigger, stronger, and richer and more dynamic, and

a more inclusive nation.

But America's progress has never been smooth or steady.

Progress doesn't travel in a straight line.

It zigs and zags in fits and starts.

Progress in America has been hard and contentious, and

sometimes bloody.

It remains uneven and at times, for every two steps

forward, it feels like we take one step back.

Now, for some of you, this may sound

like your college career.

(laughter)

It sounds like mine, anyway.

(laughter)

Which makes sense, because measured against the whole

of human history, America remains a very young nation

-- younger, even, than this university.

But progress is bumpy.

It always has been.

But because of dreamers and innovators and strivers and

activists, progress has been this nation's hallmark.

I'm fond of quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,

who said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but

it bends towards justice."

(applause)

It bends towards justice.

I believe that.

But I also believe that the arc of our nation, the arc

of the world does not bend towards justice, or freedom,

or equality, or prosperity on its own.

It depends on us, on the choices we make,

particularly at certain inflection points in

history; particularly when big changes are happening

and everything seems up for grabs.

And, Class of 2016, you are graduating at such an

inflection point.

Since the start of this new millennium, you've already

witnessed horrific terrorist attacks, and war,

and a Great Recession.

You've seen economic and technological and cultural

shifts that are profoundly altering how we work and how

we communicate, how we live, how we form families.

The pace of change is not subsiding;

it is accelerating.

And these changes offer not only great opportunity, but

also great peril.

Fortunately, your generation has everything it takes to

lead this country toward a brighter future.

I'm confident that you can make the right choices --

away from fear and division and paralysis, and toward

cooperation and innovation and hope.

(applause)

Now, partly, I'm confident because, on average, you're

smarter and better educated than my generation --

although we probably had better penmanship --

(laughter)

-- and were certainly better spellers.

We did not have spell-check back in my day.

You're not only better educated, you've been more

exposed to the world, more exposed to other cultures.

You're more diverse.

You're more environmentally conscious.

You have a healthy skepticism

for conventional wisdom.

So you've got the tools to lead us.

And precisely because I have so much confidence in you,

I'm not going to spend the remainder of my time telling

you exactly how you're going to make the world better.

You'll figure it out.

You'll look at things with fresher eyes, unencumbered

by the biases and blind spots and inertia and

general crankiness of your parents and grandparents and

old heads like me.

But I do have a couple of suggestions that you may

find useful as you go out there and conquer the world.

Point number one: When you hear someone longing for the

"good old days," take it with a grain of salt.

(laughter and applause)

Take it with a grain of salt.

We live in a great nation and we are rightly

proud of our history.

We are beneficiaries of the labor and the grit and the

courage of generations who came before.

But I guess it's part of human nature, especially in

times of change and uncertainty, to want to look

backwards and long for some imaginary past when

everything worked, and the economy hummed, and all

politicians were wise, and every kid was well-mannered,

and America pretty much did whatever it wanted

around the world.

Guess what.

It ain't so.

(laughter)

The "good old days" weren't that great.

Yes, there have been some stretches in our history

where the economy grew much faster, or when government

ran more smoothly.

There were moments when, immediately after World War

II, for example, or the end of the Cold War, when the

world bent more easily to our will.

But those are sporadic, those moments, those episodes.

In fact, by almost every measure, America is better,

and the world is better, than it was 50 years ago, or

30 years ago, or even eight years ago.

(applause)

And by the way, I'm not -- set aside 150 years ago,

pre-Civil War -- there's a whole bunch of stuff there

we could talk about.

Set aside life in the '50s, when women and people of

color were systematically excluded from big chunks

of American life.

Since I graduated, in 1983 -- which isn't that long ago --

(laughter)

-- I'm just saying.

Since I graduated, crime rates, teenage pregnancy,

the share of Americans living in poverty

-- they're all down.

The share of Americans with college educations

have gone way up.

Our life expectancy has, as well.

Blacks and Latinos have risen up the ranks in

business and politics.

(applause)

More women are in the workforce.

(applause)

They're earning more money -- although it's long past

time that we passed laws to make sure that women are

getting the same pay for the same work as men.

(applause)

Meanwhile, in the eight years since most of you

started high school, we're also better off.

You and your fellow graduates are entering the

job market with better prospects than

any time since 2007.

Twenty million more Americans know the financial

security of health insurance.

We're less dependent on foreign oil.

We've doubled the production of clean energy.

We have cut the high school dropout rate.

We've cut the deficit by two-thirds.

Marriage equality is the law of the land.

(applause)

And just as America is better, the world is better

than when I graduated.

Since I graduated, an Iron Curtain fell,

apartheid ended.

There's more democracy.

We virtually eliminated certain diseases like polio.

We've cut extreme poverty drastically.