“Listening Will Be the Hardest Part”

Let me introduce you to a couple of my ghosts. As I stand here, I think of my two grandfathers—Lawrence Crowder and Robert Styles...

Return to main article:

Let me introduce you to a couple of my ghosts. As I stand here, I think of my two grandfathers—Lawrence Crowder and Robert Styles. Lawrence was English, Robert Irish. Both fought in the First World War: Lawrence in the trenches outside Ypres, Robert in the dust of Palestine. We still have a wrinkled photograph of Robert standing in the Garden of Gethsemane after British forces entered Jerusalem in November 1917. I didn’t know either of them personally, but I carry their names in my own, and those images, along with fragments of family stories, have followed me through my life.…

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Richard Lawrence Robert Crowder

[T]here is a sense of possibility which pervades this place, and which can make us each rise to the call of our ghosts.

See also: Full text

For me, that vocation is the work of a diplomat. I leave here for Brussels, to [work on] the European Union’s collective foreign policy. As it happens, I will be working just a few miles from Ypres, where my grandfather fought. When I contemplate the job ahead of me, I realize Harvard has taught me that listening will be the hardest part. It is all too easy to react to what others are saying with our own views. But finding the space in which to digest, and moving to a response which heals rather than perpetuates conflict, is a much harder task. It forces us to accept that there is no monopoly on the truth.

~Richard Lawrence Robert Crowder, M.P.A. ’07, in the Graduate English Address during the Commencement Exercises, June 7

Most popular

What Trump Means for John Roberts’s Legacy

Executive power is on the docket at the Supreme Court.

“AI Anxiety”

The Undergraduate on the uneasy collision of technology and writing

How Maga Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

Explore More From Current Issue

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio smiling beside the pink cover of her novel "Catalina" featuring a jeweled star and eye.

Being Undocumented In America

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s writing aims to challenge assumptions. 

James Muller in white lab coat leaning on railing in hospital hallway.

Free Speech, the Bomb-and Donald Trump

A Harvard cardiologist on the unlikely alliances that shaped a global movement to prevent nuclear war

Man, standing in small group of people outside the courthouse, holding a sign that reads "HANDS OFF HARVARD" in red letters

Harvard’s Summer In Court

What Columbia’s settlement means for the University