President Bok, former President Rudenstine,incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, membersof the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates: I’ve been waiting more than 30 years tosay this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.” I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor.
I’ll be changing my job next year … andit will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume. I applaud the graduates today for taking amuch more direct route to your degrees.
For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimsonhas called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of myown special class … I did the best of everyone who failed. But I also want to be recognized as the guywho got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at yourgraduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewerof you might be here today.
Harvard was just a phenomenal experience forme. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn’teven signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dormroom late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn’t worry about gettingup in the morning. That’s how I came to be the leader of theanti-social group.
We clung to each other as a way of validatingour rejection of all those social people. Bill Gates addresses the Harvard Alumni Associationin Tecentenary Theater at Harvard University’s 2007 Commencement Afternoon Exercises. Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most ofthe guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds,if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson thatimproving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.
One of my biggest memories of Harvard camein January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun makingthe world’s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software. I worried that they would realize I was justa student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: “We’re not quite ready,come see us in a month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the softwareyet.
From that moment, I worked day and night onthis little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginningof a remarkable journey with Microsoft. What I remember above all about Harvard wasbeing in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimeseven discouraging, but always challenging.
It was an amazing privilege – and thoughI left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and theideas I worked on. But taking a serious look back … I do haveone big regret. I left Harvard with no real awareness of theawful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunitythat condemn millions of people to lives of despair.
I learned a lot here at Harvard about newideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances beingmade in the sciences. But humanity’s greatest advances are notin its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education,quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.
