I would like now to introduce Jason King, Chair and Associate Professor of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, Tisch School of the Arts, who will present the candidate for Doctor of Fine Arts: Trustee Brett Rockhand. Please escort the candidate to the lectern.
Taylor Swift, blazing singer-songwriter, producer, director, actress, pioneering and influential advocate for artist rights, and philanthropist. You have brought joy and resolve to hundreds of millions of fans throughout the world.
One of the best-selling music artists in history, you have crossed genres, demographics, age groups, and borders of all kinds to touch lives around the globe. With nine original studio albums, two re-recorded studio albums, five extended plays, three live albums, and fourteen compilations, you have sold well over 100 million album units, earning awards and honors in every category.
You have used the remarkable platform you earned to galvanize support for the Equality Act to prevent discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. You have spoken out and supported initiatives to protect women and girls from harassment and sexual assault.
You have donated significantly to victims of floods and tornadoes, cancer research, literacy programs for children, and public education. You have fearlessly challenged the exploitation of music artists and successfully championed their right to be compensated for their work.
Taylor Swift, you are a role model across the world for your unprecedented talent and accomplishment, your fierce advocacy for protection of those facing discrimination, and your commitment to speaking out forcefully, eloquently, and effectively on behalf of all artists. By virtue of the authority vested in me, I am pleased to confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa.
I am now pleased to introduce Taylor Swift, who will respond on behalf of the honorary degree recipients.
Hi, I’m Taylor. Last time I was in a stadium this size, I was dancing in heels and wearing a glittery leotard. This outfit is much more comfortable.
I would like to say a huge thank you to NYU’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Bill Berkley, and all the trustees and members of the board, NYU’s President Andrew Hamilton, Provost Catherine Fleming, and the faculty and alumni here today who have made this day possible. I feel so proud to share this day with my fellow honorees Susan Hockfield and Felix Matos Rodriguez, who humble me with the ways they improve our world with their work.
As for me, I’m 90 percent sure the main reason I’m here is because I have a song called “22.” Let me just say, I am elated to be here with you today as we celebrate and graduate New York University’s class of 2022.
Not a single one of us here today has done it alone. We are each a patchwork quilt of those who have loved us, believed in our futures, shown us empathy and kindness, or told us the truth even when it wasn’t easy to hear. Those who told us we could do it when there was absolutely no proof of that.
Someone read stories to you, taught you to dream, and offered up some moral code of right and wrong for you to try and live by. Someone tried their best to explain every concept in this insanely complex world to the child that was you as you asked a million questions.
If they aren’t with us anymore, I hope you’ll remember them today. If they are in this stadium, I hope you’ll find your own way to express your gratitude for all the steps and missteps that have led us to this common destination.
I know that words are supposed to be my thing, but I will never be able to find the words to thank my mom and dad, my brother Austin, for the sacrifices they made every day so I could go from singing in coffee houses to standing up here with you all today because no words would ever be enough.
To all the incredible parents, family members, mentors, teachers, allies, friends, and loved ones here today who have supported these students in their pursuit of educational enrichment, let me say to you now: welcome to New York; it’s been waiting for you.
I’d like to thank NYU for making me technically, on paper at least, a doctor. Not the type of doctor you would want around in case of an emergency unless your specific emergency was that you desperately needed to hear a song with a catchy hook and an intensely cathartic bridge section.
I never got to have a normal college experience per se. I went to public high school until 10th grade, and then finished my education doing homeschool work on the floors of airport terminals. Then I went out on the road for a radio tour, which sounds incredibly glamorous, but in reality, it consisted of a rental car, motels, and my mom and I pretending to have loud mother-daughter fights with each other during boarding.
As a kid, I always thought I would go away to college, imagining the posters I would hang on the wall of my freshman dorm. I even set the ending of my music video from my song “Love Story” at my fantasy imaginary college where I meet a male model reading a book on the grass.
However, I really can’t complain about not having a normal college experience compared to you because you went to NYU during a global pandemic, being essentially locked into your dorms and having to do classes over Zoom. Everyone in college during normal times stresses about test scores, but on top of that, you also had to pass like a thousand COVID tests.
I imagine the idea of a normal college experience was all you wanted to, but in this case, you and I both learned that you don’t always get all the things in the bag that you selected from the menu in the delivery service that is life. You get what you get, and I would like to say to you wholeheartedly, you should be very proud of what you’ve done with it today.
Now you leave New York University and go out into the world searching for what’s next, and so will I.
As a rule, I try not to give anyone unsolicited advice unless they ask for it. I have been officially solicited in this situation to impart whatever wisdom I might have to tell you things that have helped me so far in my life.
Please bear in mind that I in no way feel qualified to tell you what to do. You’ve worked and struggled and sacrificed and studied and dreamed your way here to dare, and so you know what you’re doing. You’ll do things differently than I did and for different reasons.
So, I won’t tell you what to do because no one likes that. I will, however, give you some life hacks I wish I knew when I was starting out my dreams of a career.
The first is: life can be heavy, especially if you try to carry it all at once. Part of growing up and moving into new chapters of your life is about catch and release. What I mean by that is knowing what things to keep and what things to release.
You can’t carry all things: all grudges, all updates on your ex, and all enviable promotions. Decide what is yours to hold and let the rest go. Oftentimes, the good things in your life are lighter anyway, so there’s more room for them.
Second, learn to live alongside cringe. No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively. Cringe is unavoidable over a lifetime. Even the term “cringe” might someday be deemed cringe.
Enjoy your enthusiasm for things; it seems to me that there is a false stigma around eagerness in our culture of unbothered ambivalence. This outlook perpetuates the idea that it’s not cool to want it. The people who don’t try are fundamentally more chic than people who do. Never be ashamed of trying.
As you leave the structure and framework of school and chart your own path, remember that every choice you make leads to the next choice. There will be times in life when you need to stand up for yourself, appropriate moments to apologize, and times when the right thing is to fight or to turn and run.
Times to hold on with all you have and times to let go with grace. Sometimes, the right thing to do is to throw out the old schools of thought in the name of progress, and sometimes it’s to listen to the wisdom of those who have come before us.
You won’t know what the right choice is in these crucial moments. The scary news is you’re on your own now, but the cool news is you’re on your own now.
I leave you with this: we are led by our gut instincts, our intuition, our desires and fears, our scars and our dreams. You will screw it up sometimes; so will I. Hard things will happen to us. We will recover, we will
