Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, and I'm John Stone Street.

Throughout this month, hundreds of thousands of graduates will walk across stages and begin a new stage in their own journey of life.

Many will sit through boring, pointless, or otherwise uninformed graduation speeches in the

process that are unhelpful microcosms of what happened to them in the classroom.

Perhaps the greatest commencement address of the modern era was given in 1978 by renowned

Soviet dissident Alexander Soltanitsin.

His prophetic voice to that year's Harvard graduation class stressed the importance of civil

courage and the pursuit of truth. The trajectory of Harvard commencement addresses ever since,

however, has been quite inconsistent. This year, in fact, grads will hear from the late-night

comedian Conan and O'Brien. I guess he'll at least be funny. Henry Adams once quipped that the transition

from President George Washington to President Ulysses S. Grant was sufficient evidence to refute

Darwin's theory of evolution. The same could be said of Harvard commencement speakers.

As Harvard alum Charles Kessler quipped, so much for natural selection.

Important to understanding this time of year and all that it means is the choice of words

we use to describe these events.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word graduated as an adjective goes back to

the 1600s, and it simply means to have received or hold a university degree.

Yet, to have merely graduated lacks special significance.

Consider the growth and the number of college graduates in America today,

driven by the massive expansion of higher education institutions,

degree modalities, and the seemingly endless supply of federal financial aid.

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