My Notre Dame roommate sent me a link to your recent article discussing the dispute on campus between the respective organizations of Democratic and Republican students regarding the issue of inviting President Trump to deliver the commencement address to the Class of 2025, as well as your editorial supporting such invitation, regardless of your editorial board’s concerns about the president.
You cogently, and in detail, described the long history of Notre Dame promoting civil discourse with many of our presidents and other important national figures, and the public role taken by Notre Dame’s presidents, faculty and students throughout it’s history at times of crisis in our country.
I agree with your conclusion that the president should be invited to give the 2025 commencement address, though I too am not a supporter of him.
I have been a lifelong registered Democrat. I have dealt with him personally as a lawyer successfully representing a major oil company he sued. I believe he poses a serious and unique danger to our constitutional order, our democracy, our economy, our shared values and the world that will be passed on to my eight grandchildren. But I have a suggestion and rationale that I did not see in what I have read in the Observer. You are right about civil discourse — but that is a two way street.
To explain it, I would like to first give you the perspective from my era, that of the class of 1968, and the involvement of our class in the turmoil of that year. Much of this was covered then in the Observer, and I was a regular columnist.
Many historians have written that 1968 — with the country split over the war in Vietnam, civil rights, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and all the resulting riots in inner city ghettos, student protests, the killing of students at Kent State and the horror of the Democratic Convention in Chicago — was an important turning point in the history of our country. It seemed as if suddenly faith in our major institutions was upended and the country was in chaos.
My classmates had many conflicting views about the war, but we were civil. And as always has been the tradition at Notre Dame, in prior wars and subsequent wars, regardless of their personal views, a large number of my classmates went off to fight for their country in Vietnam, and many died, were wounded physically or mentally, and returned to a country that at that time often showed them no thanks for their sacrifice.
Unfortunately, I believe historians in the future will be writing, that like 1968, the year 2025 will mark an historic and terrible turning point in our nation’s history, which has radically improved to better the world order, the global economy and the lives of people here and elsewhere. That is why we should invite the president to Notre Dame.
The year 1968 and the involvement of students in what happened was a major story. At the time of graduation, both Time and Newsweek magazines (which were major publications at that time) did cover stories on “The class of 1968.” They each picked a handful of universities to focus on. As could be expected, Notre Dame was one as the top Catholic university covered.
I was the valedictorian of the class of 1968. That was a unique year for figuring out what to say to your classmates about the importance of what we had learned at Notre Dame and what we faced going out into the world. The New York Times wrote an article discussing the valedictory addresses at a handful of major universities. Of course, one which they wanted to cover was the one from Notre Dame, the representative Catholic school. So the administration approved the address I had written and we sent a copy to the Times. They discussed it and quoted from it in the article.
When I read the editorial and story about the issue of inviting President Trump to give the 2025 commencement address, all that happened at ND that year came back to me, especially all the arguments and discussions about the war and other political issues tearing our country apart like a cancer, with effects that took decades to heal — just like we face in 2025.
And I remembered my valedictory address. And I thought: let Trump come to Notre Dame and speak whatever he wants to a captive audience of thousands of students, faculty, administrators, parents, siblings and friends. But then the civil discourse starts and he is part of the captive audience. And someone he has to listen to should then speak.
I don’t know how Notre Dame handles its valedictory addresses at graduation now, but I would hope that a student, the Notre Dame valedictorian of the class of 2025, could explain to him what he or she had learned at Notre Dame with its Christian message.
How to live one’s life. The joy of living your life giving to others. The reasons why Americans are willing to die for their country. The generations of people from all over the world that have immigrated to the United States throughout its history and worked hard, and built businesses giving us great new products and technologies and found cures to terrible diseases, and struggled to create a better life and great opportunities for their children and grandchildren. And how satisfying that is to them.
How this mix of people from many countries, of different races and religions and cultures, through all its troubled history, has built a unique country that effectively leads the world and can make life better for all of humanity. And that is what we learn at Notre Dame and it is at the core of Christian faith and our national history and our duty to humanity. Maybe, just maybe, that message, that day might get through and change the course of history.
Thomas D. Brislin
class of 1968
Feb. 24
