A warm welcome to the parents, family and friends of the CISAC Honors Class of 2025, this marvelous group of students whom I’ve had the pleasure and honor of working with over the past couple of years. They are simply a wonderful group, so my first words are addressed to you parents: thank you for raising them to be the bright stars that they are.

You know, it is a turbulent time in our country. What is going on in Los Angeles is very worrying; it takes me back to my growing-up years, when National Guard forces were deployed, it seemed like frequently, to ensure little kids could go to school, or college campuses stayed quiet. They weren’t quiet—protest was everywhere in the waning years of the Vietnam War. In the end, protest was justified. The war ended, and we took a big blow to our international power and influence. But we recovered.

So with these thoughts in my head, I went this week to visit Filoli, the historic mansion and garden, just north of here in Woodside, of a man named William Bowers Bourn II. Mr. Bourn, who build the estate between 1915 and 1917, knew how to make money—he owned one of California’s richest gold mines and an early San Francisco water company, Spring Valley Water. He was an original robber baron, and he had an interesting motto, “Fight for a just cause; Love your fellow man; Live a good life”: that’s where FI-LO-LI comes from, Fight, Love, Live.

Most important for our purpose today, a family of trolls has come to spend the summer at Filoli, a group of six created by Thomas Dambo, a famous recycling artist. Made out of wood from old shipping pallets, the trolls are huge and endearing, well worth a visit if you can make the time during this busy weekend. Each has a different job to do: listening to the earth, making beautiful things out of found plastic, growing plants in unexpected places. They have come, it is said, to “save the humans.”

I enjoyed my evening visit, but woke with a start the next morning thinking, “It’s not the trolls who are going to save the humans, it’s the Class of 2025!” And so I firmly believe, because I have gotten to know your children. Many of them took my classes, and many of them visited me to get my advice as they tussled with their honor theses over these last months. They had a hard struggle, but they were totally committed to the challenge—they changed and adjusted when they needed to, and kept at it out of the joy of discovery. One of them even emailed me over the December holidays, so excited by a modeling run that she couldn’t wait until January to tell me about it. That is what I call real learning, and that is what Stanford is all about.

I went to see every one of their thesis presentations, and each of your children could have stood up and expounded in a graduate school setting. Their work was original, well-researched, interesting, and beautifully presented. So I repeat, thank you, parents, family and friends, for raising them to be the bright stars that they are. They are ready, the Class of 2025, to save the humans.

And now I would like to turn to you, our CISAC Honors students, to offer up some advice—as is the normal practice at graduation ceremonies. This advice was hard-won early in my career, so I hope it will help you as you take your next steps.

The first is, “never apologize.” You may have noticed, and especially you ladies (it seems to be a female thing), that you want to start your sentences by saying “I’m sorry”. I did it once in graduate school, when a professor asked why tomatoes are so uniform in size and hard-skinned—these were characteristics of what were called “cello-pack” tomatoes. You won’t remember them, but I’m sure your parents do. I raised my hand and said, “I don’t know anything about growing tomatoes but…” The professor said, “Stop right there! Just say what you have to say! Never apologize!”

It is excellent advice! If you start by apologizing, everyone listening to you already doubts what you have to say. By the way, I had the answer right on the cello-pack tomatoes: they were grown that way, with uniform size and hard skins, so that machines could pick them. That may not seem like such an original thought nowadays, but it was in the 1970s, when I was in graduate school.

My second piece advice is “take good risks.” This is especially sound advice for you, the Class of 2025, who will see the work force and job scene rapidly transmogrifying during your careers. It’s not so usual in Silicon Valley, but in other places, people have been able to stay put in a single place of work, rising in the business or government world and not having to move. This kind of stability simply won’t exist anymore—but you already know that.

What you have to think about as you move from place to place is, what are the good risks, and what are the poor ones? I’ll give you, again, an example from my own career. I left my undergraduate program at Georgetown fifty years ago, in 1975. As I said, it was another turbulent time in our history. In 1975, we saw the fall of Saigon, continuing impacts from the oil embargo, rampant inflation, and a poor jobs picture.

After a period of searching, I had two opportunities offered to me: one was a full-time entry level government job at the Library of Congress, $7000 a year! It offered stability and a government career. I might have risen to be the head librarian in the Russian Reading Room! It would have been a good career.

The other opportunity was a part-time research assistant job at the RAND Corporation, helping the senior Soviet military analyst, a man named Thomas Wolfe, write his book on the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, SALT I. I decided to take the risk of that part-time job, and it turned out to be a great one. I learned so much from Tom Wolfe—he was a wonderful mentor—and I spent a decade at RAND before going to work at the White House for President Clinton.

I never could have known it at the time, but thirty-five years later, I ended up negotiating the latest nuclear arms control deal with the Russians, the New START Treaty. In a word, think about your opportunities; listen to advice from your mentors, friends and family; but take good risks.

Knowing you as I do, I can say your preparation has been super for going out into the world and doing just that. So, remember my advice, stay in touch, and “Fight for a just cause; Love your fellow man; Live a good life.” You are ready, Class of 2025, to save the humans.

Originally posted on substack.com