Michelle Obama told college graduates to run toward contentious places instead of away from them, in a commencement address at Oberlin College on Monday.
“Today, I want to urge you to actively seek out the most contentious, polarized, gridlocked places you can find,” Obama said. “Because so often, throughout our history, those have been the places where progress really happens — the places where minds are changed, lives transformed, where our great American story unfolds.”
Oberlin is one of three colleges this year to win a challenge by the first lady, where students produce videos showing how they’re creating immersion experiences for high school students.
Obama used her speech to encourage nearly 700 Oberlin graduates to embrace what she termed the revolutions of their time, including criminal justice reform, human rights, economic inequality and climate change.
And she challenged students to seek out those who are different from them.
“You might be tempted to re-create what you had here at Oberlin, to seek out like-minded individuals,” the first lady said. “You need to run to, not away from, the noise.”
Oberlin was the first U.S. institution to regularly admit women and blacks — a distinction Obama noted, saying the college is likely the only one she could have attended two centuries ago.
She also pointed to Martin Luther King Jr. and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as examples of Americans who plunged into controversy to do what they believed was right.
“These folks didn’t let the ugliness and the obstacles deter them,” Obama said. “They didn’t just give up and retreat to the comfortable company of like-minded folks, because they understood that this is how democracy operates. It is loud and messy, and it’s not particularly warm and fuzzy. And believe me, I know this from personal experience.”
