Enough with politicians rolling out tone-deaf stump speeches and academics shilling their websites. This year’s commencement speaker should be someone with chutzpah. Someone with guts. This year’s speaker should be retired Marine Corps General James “Mad Dog” Mattis.
The transition from the comfortable intellectualism of academia into the uncomfortable reality of the outside world promises to be difficult for us future graduates of Hillsdale College. Life outside academia is hard. Finding meaningful work, maintaining a healthy marriage, and continuing the enrichment of our learning, like all good things, comes with challenges. Battles await the class of 2016.
General Mattis makes perfect sense. The man knows how to fight and win. Mattis became famous for leading the first Marines into Afghanistan in 2001. He overcame the challenges of moving amphibious troops into a landlocked country through savvy diplomacy and a gutsy decision to fly right to the edge of the range of his transport helicopters.
In 2003, Mattis led the 20,000 men of the 1st Marine division into Iraq. His units moved 500 miles in 17 days, the longest sustained march in Marine history. Mattis’ tactical acumen led to the quick defeat of the Hussein regime with few casualties. His fierce dedication to victory earned him the moniker “Mad Dog” from his men.
The lessons from his success in defeating insurgent forces in the second Battle of Fallujah shaped American counter-insurgency doctrine, and in 2010 Mattis became the head of U.S. Central Command. He oversaw 200,000 troops in the Middle East and Asia until his retirement in 2013.
Mattis is a terrific public speaker. He’s witty, straightforward, and eminently quotable. His talk “The Meaning of Their Service,” published as an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this April, was celebrated throughout the military and beyond as a brilliant tribute to the veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But it’s not Mattis’ military success or public speaking ability that makes him the best choice for commencement speaker. Rather, it’s the way in which he approaches conflict through the lens of liberal education. When asked about his success in combat, Mattis points to his study of history and great books. Indeed, his personal library once numbered more than 7,000 volumes. During every deployment, he carried a copy of the “Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.”
In a famous letter to a subordinate before the Iraq War, General Mattis had this to say about his own liberal education: “Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed (successfully or unsuccessfully) before. It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.”
The challenge for the graduating class of 2016 lies in finding a way to fit the life of the mind into a life of action. General Mattis has done this well. His emphasis on the human over the technological element in combat and his attention to history helped guide his men to victory while sustaining minimal casualties.
Mattis was always on the front line with his men, demonstrating by example how a leader ought to act. We Hillsdale graduates will have our own front lines to confront, whether in the boardroom or the classroom, in our homes or in the public square. We need a commencement speaker who will leave us with more than just a lecture on American history or pithy advice. We need hard-won wisdom and inspiration. We need an address that will lift our eyes from the sadness of leaving Hillsdale to the opportunities and challenges that await us. We need General Mattis.
