Stanford International Relations Commencement Speech: Audrey Huynh, ‘19
The following is a speech written by Audrey Huynh, who majored in international relations and minored in human rights. Audrey was selected as a student speaker at the International Relations (IR) diploma ceremony on June 16, 2019 at Stanford University.
When I applied to Stanford in 2014, I wrote my personal statement on the conversations that took place at my family’s dinner table. I reflected on the ways in which these conversations instrumentally shaped my worldview and sense of self, and shared my aspirations for the kinds of conversations I would one day have in college. Despite my great ambitions, nothing could have prepared me for the opportunities for conversation I found at Stanford. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that, as an undergraduate, I would sit at a table with a Supreme Court Justice, a UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, a former director of the CIA, or a Senior Advisor to a former President of the United States. While 18-year-old Audrey had certainly fantasized about a Monday afternoon I might spend sitting in an oversized armchair across from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, discussing the importance of women’s representation on the Supreme Court over a plate of dark chocolate Sprinkles cupcakes, no part of me believed that it might actually come true. And yet there she was, one Monday afternoon, the notorious RBG, an arm’s length away, insisting that there will not be enough women on the Supreme Court until there are nine and reminding us that we must live not for ourselves, but for our communities.
These are exactly the kinds of conversations we have all been a part of in our last four years as International Relations majors at Stanford, with some of the world’s most influential leaders in foreign policy, economics, law, and social justice, as well as some of the most influential future leaders in these fields: each other.
One of the first tables I had a seat at during my time at Stanford was Professor Jim Fearon’s. It was my first day of college, and 16 of us sat around a long rectangular table in a stuffy 3rd floor room in Cubberley. Professor Fearon mysteriously swirled his coffee mug around in circles, as he does, and we all waited in nervous anticipation. Over the course of 10 weeks, we learned about the phenomenon of civil war through the lens of Syria, an ongoing crisis unfolding before our very eyes. Our conversations often felt like secret policy conferences, where Professor Fearon, one of the most influential international relations scholars of our time, would share his highly coveted insight and policy predictions with all of us, as we frantically transcribed his every word and questioned our own preconceived notions about the origins of ethnic conflict.
Fast forward to fall quarter of my junior year, when I participated in the Stanford in Washington program. By day, my classmates and I interned in the U.S. Congress, the State Department, and leading policy think tanks. By night, we took classes with deputy assistant secretaries of state, world-famous journalists, and senior attorneys at the Department of Justice. Many of us stood in the halls of the Senate the day thousands of dreamers stormed the capitol to advocate for their rights to an education and citizenship in the U.S. As a first-generation American, I remember looking out at the endless stream of students and feeling as if I could have just as easily been one of them.
The morning after the Vegas shooting, I sat in a room with counsels on the Senate Judiciary Minority Committee and watched them fervently negotiate over the content of a new gun control bill, in the hopes it might actually pass.
One lucky afternoon, I scored the last seat in the Senate hearing room to watch Attorney General Jeff Sessions testify before Congress regarding Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, keeping a tally in the upper right corner of my notebook of the number of times he said “I don’t recall”.
Needless to say, some of these opportunities were more inspiring than others.
For my IR honors thesis research, I travelled to Vietnam, where I sat across the table from Vietnamese diplomats, prisoners-of-war, and former communist revolutionaries as they described their experiences with the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. “We must all understand this history,” they told me, “only then can we move forward.”
The opportunity to study abroad as an IR major also took me to Cape Town, South Africa, where I found myself sitting around a massive marble table in the halls of the South African parliament on the day President Jacob Zuma was ousted from office. The cheers that erupted through the building were deafening.
While all of these moments have been integral to my understanding of the world and of the people in it, I realize now that I have only been able to make sense of these moments through conversations with all of you, my peers; these are the conversations that have fundamentally shaped who I am today as a scholar, as a leader, and as a human being.
The conversations have been in my freshman seminar with Professor Fearon, where students from around the world, India, Bahrain, Mexico, Turkey, gathered together each week to share a seemingly infinite supply of diverse perspectives on civil war and ethnic conflict.
The conversations have been at Stanford in Washington, where my favorite part of every day was dinner in the SIW dining room, surrounded by friends, many who are in the audience today, as we discussed our passion for criminal justice reform, memes of Rex Tillerson, and the latest gossip in the Pentagon.
The conversations have been in Cape Town, across rickety pool tables at the college dive bars that lined Long Street, where my friends and I learned about the continued legacy of apartheid from local university students as they inquired why American students found it so difficult to talk about race.
Here on campus, these conversations have taken place at tables in Wilbur Dining and Coupa and Encina Hall with my fellow IR students, the people I believe will one day become the future directors of the FBI, judges for the International Criminal Court, our next U.N. Secretary General, and president of the United States. It is the conversations we have had on everything from the spread of radical extremism and nuclear non-proliferation policy to how to meet our applied econ requirement without taking Math 51. The late nights we’ve spent wondering about the future of this country and of the world we will leave for generations to come. These conversations are what I will miss most about college.
I will miss that no idea has ever been too big or too ambitious for these tables. Over the last four years, the energy and innovation that has sprung from these conversations has restored my faith in this country and in our collective ability to change the world.
In a matter of years, I know that you all, the Class of 2019, will be sitting at some of the most influential tables in the world. You’ll be meeting with activists and government officials and community organizers in every corner of the globe.
My hope is that we will approach these tables with some of principles we have developed throughout our college years: the optimism and ambition we had as freshman, the flexibility and open-mindedness we developed as sophomores, the communication skills we honed as juniors, and of course, a healthy dose of pragmatism. Thanks, senior year.
I hope we will make space for new ideas and opinions, no matter how different they are from our own.
I hope that we will always consider those who are not sitting at the table with us and make every effort to include and elevate their voices.
I hope that we will continue to believe in the power we each hold as individuals, and remember the tremendous responsibility that comes with it.
What a great privilege it is has been to have a seat at the table with all of you: to have been given four years of life to think critically about the world around us in the company of the most creative, compassionate, brilliant thinkers that I know.
Congratulations to the Class of 2019!
Here’s to a lifetime of meaningful conversation.
View more graduation highlights via Instagram. For more information about Stanford University’s 128th Commencement, click here.
