Bill Gates Speech - Harvard Commencement 2007

Posted on previous blog at 04/12/08

I saw this video about a month ago and really enjoyed it! In the link you can also read all the speech!

It’s a 25min speech of Bill Gates on the 356th Harvard Commencement, on June 7, 2007.

In this occasion, Mr.Gates was receiving an honor’s diploma (or something like that…I don’t know exactly how it was called) regarding the 30 years of graduation he would had if he had graduated in his class (class of ‘77).

Mr. Gates started the speech with really funny lines, including, but not exclusively, talking about the relevance of this diploma on his career, referring himself as a bad influence, and talking about his personal life experience regarding women:

“I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.”

“I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year… and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume. “

“I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class… I did the best of everyone who failed.
But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today. “

“Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.”

After that, the speech gets serious talking about social inequalities, and warning people, specially the graduate students, to care about the world’s despairs:

“Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?
Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty… the prevalence of world hunger… the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school… the children who die from diseases we can cure?
Should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged?
These are not rhetorical questions—you will answer with your policies. “

It sounded like a really good speech, full of emotion and hope in the young people.

If you’re also interested on other speeches from the last year’s Harvard Commencement, you can take a look at Harvard Commencement 2007. There you can find other interesting speeches, as from Bill Clinton.

A little p.s. here: It was kind of funny, because I actually have a good friend (Gustavo Lima) from Brazil (my co-worker here at Microsoft) that graduated from Harvard last year, and (obviously) he was there live on the speech and “sharing” graduation with Bill Gates.