Former President Jeffrey Lehman '77 on the art of public speaking This fall, the University published An Optimistic Heart: What Great Universities Give Their Students ... and the World, a collection of the major speeches that Jeffrey Lehman '77 gave during his two years as Cornell president. With an initial print run of 500 copies, the book is available through the Cornell Store and online.
Cornell Alumni Magazine: Why publish a volume of your Cornell speeches? Jeffrey Lehman: Speaking as a university president is an unusual human activity. This was a chance to reflect—especially in the last chapter—on what that activity meant for me. The speeches I selected are all about Cornell in particular, and also about the more general relationship between a great university and the larger society. CAM: What's the meaning of the title? JL: The speeches stress the importance of maintaining an "optimistic heart"—patience in the face of complexity and challenge. A related theme in the book concerns Ezra Cornell's statement, "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." For many people that statement has been a puzzle: How could any institution provide instruction for any person in any study? Isn't that an unattainable goal? An optimistic heart helps one recognize the value of unattainable goals. They are like a horizon that we walk toward, constantly receding, unreachable. Yet by walking steadily in one direction we are able to travel a great distance. CAM: Unlike many institutional leaders, you chose to write all of your own major speeches. Why? JL: Even the best ghostwriters can't take great risks. So when you have someone else write your speech, it necessarily limits your ambition. Moreover, I have found that when I write a speech myself, I develop the argument more deeply. In the act of writing, in moving from draft to draft, I imagine how it will sound to someone who would disagree. Of course, the downside is that when you take a risk that flops, you have nobody to blame but yourself. CAM: Did you write far in advance? JL: I tried, but I did end up with my share of all-nighters. And inevitably I would keep tinkering up to the last minute. I would print the speech in a very large font, triple spaced, and put it into a three-ring notebook, and I would sometimes continue to mark it up while I was standing there, waiting to go on. CAM: In the age of the sound bite and the text message, is the formal speech becoming a lost art? JL: I think it remains viable, because we remain surrounded by issues that don't have simple answers. An honest, authentic response to a difficult problem can't be framed in three sentences. CAM: For many people, public speaking is the stuff of nightmares. What's your advice about feeling at home in front of a crowd? JL: I make a point of never speaking in a strange room. I always go to where I am speaking beforehand, sit where the audience will be, and go onstage to make myself feel comfortable. When you're giving the talk, it helps to speak slowly and to use pauses for effect. That makes it easy for your audience to follow what you're saying. It also makes it easy for you to read ahead, remind yourself of what the next couple of sentences will be, and maintain eye contact. CAM: Did you ever get stage fright? JL: I was anxious before every speech. Literally. But once I started to speak I would usually relax. Then I was in heaven. CAM: In the book, you talk about delivering your first commencement speech— "Dirt," which cites Sartre and Vonnegut in a discussion of the slippery slope of moral compromise—the day after Bill Clinton addressed the same audience in Schoellkopf. What was it like to have such a tough act to follow? JL: I was terrified by the idea of speaking the day after President Clinton, and that motivated me to write the best speech in the book. But when I stood up in Schoellkopf I was still worried about the mechanics of addressing 40,000 people: Did I need to speak even more slowly? Would there be an echo? I fretted about those things all the way through. CAM: Why do you use pop culture references in your speeches, like the Star Wars films or the movie Zoolander? JL: Partly to help the audience stay alert for twenty minutes. Most university presidents are academics by training, used to speaking to other professors. But as presidents we often speak to audiences who live in the world of action. So we have to be careful not to sound too academic, too self-absorbed, too precious. It was important to me to signal, especially in speeches to students, my belief that academic ideas have relevance to their lives. CAM: You may be the only Ivy League president to quote the wisdom of The Dude from The Big Lebowski. JL: I took one line from the film—"That's just, like, your opinion, man"—and ran with it in a slightly different direction from what The Dude intended. I used it as a way to urge students not to slip into believing that "opinions" are things we can't discuss, that "respecting" others' opinions means we have to consider them all equally sound. I was suggesting that such thinking would cost students one of the best parts of undergraduate life: staying up late, eating subs from the Hot Truck, and arguing with friends about issues that matter. CAM: Of all your speeches, the talk with The Big Lebowski reference seems to be the one that sticks in people's minds. JL: In that same speech, I also talk about an idea of John Keats called "negative capability," which is very important. When I talked with students about it later, few remembered Keats—but they all remembered The Big Lebowski. CAM: In your State of the University address at Reunion 2005, you announced your resignation—but not until the very end. In journalistic parlance, you buried the lede. Why? JL: Because I wanted the rest of the speech to be heard, and I knew as soon as I announced I was stepping down, that would be it—no one would hear anything else. — Beth Saulnier
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