--- title: Filmmaker Steven Spielberg Speech Harvard Commencement 2016 | TIME description: canonical: https://time.com/video/uppNoYKe/ og:title: Filmmaker Steven Spielberg Speech Harvard Commencement 2016 og:description: og:url: https://time.com/video/uppNoYKe/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/uppNoYKe/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Filmmaker Steven Spielberg Speech Harvard Commencement 2016 twitter:description: twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/uppNoYKe/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Filmmaker Steven Spielberg Speech Harvard Commencement 2016 > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Filmmaker Steven Spielberg Speech Harvard Commencement 2016 [Watch (HLS stream): Filmmaker Steven Spielberg Speech Harvard Commencement 2016](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uppNoYKe.m3u8) (20:09)  _Published 2016-05-31_ --- Jul 27, 2023 8:11 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Arianna Huffington speech-Colby College 2016 Commencement](/video/vQftro90/) ### Arianna Huffington speech-Colby College 2016 Commencement [Daniel Day-Lewis and Steven Spielberg Q & A](/video/DcHly7CX/) ### Daniel Day-Lewis and Steven Spielberg Q & A [TIME Interviews Steven Spielberg](/video/UKkCumXf/) ### TIME Interviews Steven Spielberg --- ## Transcript [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Our principle commencement speaker this afternoon has twice won the Academy Award for Best Director. As a result, he's quite used to waiting until the end of a long program before getting up to speak. [ LAUGH ] I'm thrilled to introduce Steven Spielberg. Jaws was one of the first films I saw in a movie theatre. To this day I remember being terrified even though you don't actually see that shark until halfway through the movie. [ LAUGH ] But over the past four decades his movies have firmly established his place as one of America's greatest filmmakers. Reading just a partial list of his many works Is to recount some of our countries most iconic, most acclaimed and most successful movies. After Jaws there was Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark and the other Indiana Jones movies. ET the extraterrestrial. The Colour Purple. Jurassic Park, Schindler's List [ APPLAUSE ] Amistad Saving Private Ryan. Minority Report. Lincoln. Bridge of Spies. We can go on for quite a bit. When you hear that you're about to see a Steven Spielberg movie you know that you're going to see something memorable. You'll be entertained and also challenged. He's won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of America, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Kennedy Center Honor. Last year he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our country's highest civilian honor. We're privileged to have him here with us this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming Mr Steven Spielberg. [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you, thank you. President [ UNKNOWN ] and Paul Troy. Thank you so much. It's an honor and a thrill to address this group of distinguished Alumni and supportive friends and cavelling parents. We've all gathered to share in the joy of this day, so please join me in congratulating Harvard's class of 2016. [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] I can remember my own college graduation, which is easy since it was only 14 years ago. [ LAUGH ] How many of you took 37 years to graduate? [ LAUGH ] Because like most of you I began college in my teen But sophomore year I was offered my dream job at Universal Studios, so I dropped out. I told my parents that if my movie career didn't go well I'd re- enroll. [ LAUGH ] It went all right. [ LAUGH ] But eventually I returned for one big reason. Most people go to college for education and some go to for their parents but I went for my kids. I'm the father of seven and I keep insisting on the importance of going to college but I hadn't walked the walk. So in my 50s, I re- enrolled in Cali State Long Beach And I earned my degree. [ APPLAUSE ] I just have to add it helped that they gave me course credit in paleontology for the work I did on Jurassic Park. [ LAUGH ] That's three units. For Jurassic Park, thank you. Well, I left college because I knew exactly what I wanted to do and some of you know too. But some of you don't. Or maybe you thought you knew but are now questioning that choice. Maybe you're sitting there trying to figure out how to tell your parents That you wanna be a doctor and not a comedy writer. [ LAUGH ] Well what you choose to do next is what we call in the movies the character finding moment. Now these are moments you're very familiar with like in the last Star Wars The Force Awakens when Rey realizes the force is with her [ LAUGH ] Or Indian Jones choosing mission over fear by jumping into a pile of snakes. Now in a two hour movie you get a handful of character defining moments. But in real life you face them everyday. Life is one strong, long string of character defining moments. And I was lucky that at 18, I knew what I exactly wanted to do. But I didn't know who I was. How could I and how could any of us because for the first 25 years of our lives, we are trained to listen to voices that are not around. Parents and Professors fill our heads Wisdom and information, and then employers and mentors take their place and explain how this world really works. And usually these voices of authority make sense, but sometimes doubt starts to creep into our heads and into our hearts, and even when we think that's not quite how I see the world It's kinda easier just to nod in agreement and go along and for a while I let that going along define my character. Because I was repressing my own point of view because like in that Nielson song everybody was talking at me so I couldn't hear the echos of my mind. And at first The internal voice I needed to listen to was hardly audible, and it was hardly noticeable kinda like me in high school. But then I started paying more attention and my intuition kicked in. And I want to be clear that your intuition is different from your conscience, they work in tandem but here's the distinction. you conscience Shout. Here's what you should do while your intuition whispers, here's what you could do. Listen to that voice that tells you what you could do. Nothing will define your character more than that. Because once I turned to my intuition And I tuned into it. Certain projects began to pull me into them. And others, I turned away from. And up until the 1980s, my movies were mostly, I guess what you could call, escapist. And I don't dismiss any of these movies, not even 1941. [ LAUGH ] Not even that one and many of these early films reflected the values that I cared deeply about and I still do. But I was in a celluloid bubble because I cut my education short. My world view was limited to what I could dream up in my head, not what the world could teach me But then I directed the Color Purple. And this one film opened my eyes to experiences that I never could have imagined and yet were all too real. This story was filled with deep pain and deeper truths, like when Shug Avery says, everything wants to be loved. My gut, which was my intuition told me that more people need to meet these characters and experience these truths. And while making that film I realized that a movie could also be a mission. I hope all of you find that sense of mission. Don't turn away from what's painful. Examine it, challenge it, my job is to create a world that lasts two hours, your job is to create a world that lasts forever. You are the future innovators, motivators, leaders, and caretakers, and the way you create a better future is by studying the past. Jurassic Park writer, Michael Crichton, who graduated from both this college and this medical school, liked to quote a favorite professor of his who said that if you didn't know history, then you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree. So history majors, good choice. You're in great shape [ APPLAUSE ] Not in the job market, but culturally. [ LAUGH ] The rest of us have to make a little effort. Social media, that we're inundated and swarmed with, is about the here and now, but I have been fighting and fighting inside of my own family to get all my kids To look behind them, to look at what already has happened. Because to understand who they are is to understand who we were and who their grandparents were. And then what this country was like when they immigrated here. We are a nation of immigrants, at least for now. So, [ LAUGH ] [ APPLAUSE ] So, to me this means we all have to tell our own stories, we have so many stories to tell. Talk to your parents and your grandparents if you can, and ask them about their stories. And I promise you, like I have promised my kids, you will not be bored. And that's why I so often make movies based on real life events. I look to history not to be didactic, cuz that's just a bonus. But [ LAUGH ] I look because the past is filled with the greatest stories that have ever been told. Heroes and villains are not literary constructs, but they're the heart of all history. And again this is why it's so important to listen to your internal whisper. It's the same one that compelled Abraham Lincoln An Oscar Schindler to make the correct moral choices. In your defining moments, do not let your morals be swayed by convenience or expediency. Sticking to your character requires a lot of courage, and to be courageous you're gonna need a lot of support. And if you're lucky, you have parents like mine. I consider my mom my lucky charm. And when I was 12 years old, my father handed me a movie camera, the tool that allowed me to make sense of this world, and I'm so grateful to him for that, and I am grateful that he's here at Harvard sitting right down there. [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] My dad is 99 years old. [ APPLAUSE ] Which [ APPLAUSE ] Which means he's only one year younger than Widener Library. But unlike Widener, he's had zero cosmetic work. [ LAUGH ] [ APPLAUSE ] And Dad, there's a lady behind you, also 99, and I'll introduce you after this over, okay? Great. [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] But look, if your family's not always available, there's back up. Near the end of It's a Wonderful Life, you remember that movie It's a Wonderful Life? Clarence the angel inscribes a book with this, no man is a failure who has friends. And I hope you hang onto the friendships you've made here at Harvard. And among your friends, I hope you find someone you want to share your life with. I imagine some of you in this yard may be a tad cynical, but I wanna be unapologetically sentimental. I spoke about the importance of intuition and how's there no greater voice to follow, that is until you meet the love of your life. And this is what happened when I met and married Kate. And that became the greatest character defining moment of my life. Love, support. [ APPLAUSE ] Courage. Intuition [ APPLAUSE ] All these things are in your hero's quiver but still a hero needs one more thing, a hero needs a villain to vanquish. And you're all in luck. [ LAUGH ] This world is full of monsters. And there's racism, homophobia, ethnic hatred, class hatred. There's political hatred and there's religious hatred. As a kid I was bullied for being Jewish. This was upsetting, but compared to what my parents and grandparents had faced, it felt tame. Because we truly believed the anti- Semitism was fading, and we were wrong. Over the last two years nearly 20, 000 Jews have left Europe to find higher ground. And earlier this year I was at the Israeli Embassy when President Obama stated the sad truth. He said We must confront the reality that around the world antisemitism is on the rise. We cannot deny it. My own desire to confront that reality compelled me to start, in 1994, the Shoah Foundation. And since then, we've spoken to over 53, 000 Holocaust survivors. And witnesses in 63 countries and taken all their video testimonies. [ APPLAUSE ] And we're now gathering testimonies from genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, Armenia, and Nanking Because we must never forget that the inconceivable doesn't happen. It happens frequently. Atrocities are happening right now. And so we wondered not just when will this hatred end? But how did it begin? Now I don't have to tell a crowd of Red Sox fans that we are wired for tribalism. [ LAUGH ] But beyond rooting for the home team, tribalism has a much darker side. Instinctively and maybe even genetically, we divide the world into us and them. So the burning question must be, how do all of us together find the we? How do we do that? There's still so much work to be done, and sometimes I feel the work hasn't even begun. And it's not just anti- Semitism that's surging. Islamaphobia is on the rise too. Because there's no difference between anyone who is discriminated against, whether it's the Muslims, or the Jews, or minorities on the border states. Or the LGBT community, it is all big one hate. [ APPLAUSE ] And to me, and I think to all of you, the only answer to more hate is more humanity. We gotta repair [ APPLAUSE ] You have to replace fear with curiosity. Us and them. We'll find the we by connecting with each other, and by believing that we're members of the same tribe, and by feeling empathy for every soul, even Yalies. [ LAUGH ] And [ LAUGH ] Make... No, no, no. My son graduated from Yale, thank you. [ LAUGH ] And make sure this [ LAUGH ] Wow. [ LAUGH ] But make sure this empathy isn't just something, that you feel [ LAUGH ] Make it something you act upon. That means vote, peaceably protest, speak up for those who can't, and speak up for those who may be shouting but aren't being heard. Let your conscience shout as loud as it wants if you're using it in the service of others. And as an example of action and service of others You need to look no further than this Hollywood worthy backdrop of Memorial Church. Its south wall bears the names of Harvard alumni like President Faustus already mentioned, students and faculty members who gave their lives in WWII. All told, 697, 000 souls who once tread the ground where we stand now were lost. And at a service in this church in late 1945, Harvard President James Conant which President Faust also mentioned, honored the brave and called upon the community to reflect the radiance of their deeds. 70 years later, this message still holds true because their sacrifice is not a debt that could be Repaid in a single generation. It must be repaid with every generation just as we must never forget the atrocities, we must never forget those who fought for freedom. So as you leave this college and head out into the world, continue please to reflect the radiance of their deeds, or as Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan would say Earn this. And please stay connected. Please never lose eye contact. This may not be a lesson you wanna hear from a person who creates media. But we are spending more time looking down at our devices than we are looking at each other's eyes. [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] So forgive me, but let's start right now. Everyone here, please find someone's eyes to look into. Students, and alumni, and you too, President [ UNKNOWN ], all of you turn to someone you don't know or don't know very well. They might be standing behind you or a couple of rows ahead. Just let your eyes meet. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] That's it. That emotion you're feeling is our shared humanity mixed in with a little social discomfort. [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] But, if you remember nothing else from today, I hope you remember this moment of human connection. And I hope you all had a lot of that over the past four years, because today you start down the path of becoming the generation on which the next generation stands. And I've imagined Many possible futures in my films, but you will determine the actual future. And I hope that it's filled with justice and peace and finally, I wish you all a true Hollywood style happy ending. [ LAUGH ] I hope you outrun the T- rex, [ LAUGH ] Catch the criminal, And for your parent's sake, maybe every now and then, just like E. T. Go home! [ LAUGH ] [ SOUND ] Thank you. 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