BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

At Stanford, Tim Cook Speaks Truth To The Powerful

Following
This article is more than 4 years old.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The diplomas are packed away. The band is back in normal clothes, or at least some kind of clothes. Even the tree has stopped dancing. But the words of Tim Cook to Stanford’s graduating class of 2019 continue to reverberate among grads, their parents, alumni, and the tech industry as a whole. A more urgent and personal Tim Cook appeared at Stanford Stadium on Father’s Day morning to give Stanford's 128th commencement address. Graduates, a plurality heading to the tech and financial fields, were treated to only a snippet of the obligitory “change the world” entreaty, witnessing instead a powerful indictment of the limitations of technology.

Filmateria Digital

Cook was greeted like a rock star from the tech-savvy crowd. He waved at the graduates like the celebrity he is to them. Cook focused his praise not on the unicorns who have minted billions since Stanford spawned The Silicon Valley, but rather on “the builders” which included, predictably, Stanford grads Hewlitt and Packard, Stanford friend Steve Jobs (whose widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, serves on Stanford’s Board of Trustees), but also, less predictably, the fomentors of the Stonewall riots, whose courage to stand up to authority and demand that they were human, too, reached the life of a young boy in Alabama who was to go on to become the openly gay CEO of Apple. With the 50th anniversary of the riots approaching beginning June 28, Cook’s speech served as a major public platform for him to weigh in on the epochal nature of that event.

Cook stressed the importance of humanity and called on the new generation of technology leaders to remember the value of freedom and “thinking different” as they create rules for their disruptive innovations.

Filmateria Digital

During a perfect late spring morning, at a time of peace and prosperity, to a throng of young grads now holding an elite credential,  Cook’s message to the assembled was incongruently plaintive. His admonition of the charlatanism of Theranos: ("The false promise of miracles in exchange for a single drop of your blood") and narcissism of the current political climate (he urged humility, quoting the author Madeleine L’Engle: “Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else”) struck the appropriate chord for this audience of graduates of an institution that prides itself on iconoclasm and original thought.

Cook seemed to be saying that the times have given us prosperity, now let’s use it to make the world more just and human-centered. While his words seemed almost anodyne to a news audience reading about the speech, they were assuredly not within the stadium itself. Stanford, after all, is the alma mater of a cadre of the offspring of the very types of leaders who Cook was taking to task. The children of Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Scott McNealy and Steve Jobs attended The Farm. Cook was certainly aware that the audience was filled with technology leaders and investors. He was speaking his truth not just to the graduates, but to the powerful.

Flmateria Digital

I spoke with several graduates after the speech and asked them about their reaction. For the most part, if they paid attention at all, they appreciated Cook’s challenge to a higher calling. Most consider Cook to be a rock star, and were thrilled that he took the time to send them off into their future. But one student I spoke with seemed to understand the import of what Tim Cook was trying to achieve with his commencement address: “It’s not enough to make money,” she told me. “You need to make things better for the people around you.”

Follow me on TwitterCheck out my website