I have the special honor and privilege today to welcome doctor Benjamin s Carson junior senior.
Excuse me.
United States I'm a junior, so I get confused sometimes.
The United States secretary of housing and urban development as our honorary degree recipient and 2018 commencement speaker.
It's also a pleasure to welcome his wife, Candy, who joined us as well today.
As many of you know, secretary Carson has a long and distinguished career in medicine and public service.
His dedication to helping others is central to his work, and he has shown incredible fortitude in pursuing both his professional career and family life.
Born in Detroit, Michigan to a single mother with a third grade education, doctor Carson is a definition of resilience and determination.
Raised by his mother who instilled a deep love of education, doctor Carson graduated from Yale University with a degree in psychology and went on to pursue a career in medicine.
As a doctor, he became director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center at age 33 and earned fame for his groundbreaking work in separating conjoined twins.
As a courageous physician, he's endeavored to restore dignity to those who, in the face of the modern world, may be lost.
This mission of helping to save these fragile lives is not unknown to the future of our graduates here today.
Every person here is endeavoring to make a difference on the individual level, showing the importance of just one heart, one mind, one soul.
Doctor Carson, you are distinguished man of science and healing.
Your story lifts the hearts and minds of those of us gathered here today.
You have used your renowned and influence to inspire new hopeful paths for young people and show that a searching mind and generous spirit are crucial in one's endeavor in this life.
In gratitude for the best qualities of humanity that shine through your work, it is my honor today to bestow on doctor Benjamin Carson the honorary degree, doctor's doctor of humane letters, honoris causa.
Well, thank you so much and, congratulations to all the graduates.
Father Charles father Charles and Bishop Burbridge, and distinguished faculty, graduates, and their families.
I'm very honored to be here today to receive, this degree and to be forever more connected with this great university and, such a beautiful place of worship that we're in today.
I'm greatly humbled by the dedication of this university to its mission and by the commitments of graduates who embody that vision, seeking to ensure the moral resolve with which we should go forward in our professions to serve others in a Christian way.
I'm impressed with the work of DMU faculty in developing an integrative model of the human person and the innovative approach of healing that that brings.
Speaking of healing, it was the only thing that ever interested me as a youngster, medicine.
I love the stories, church and Sabbath school about missionary doctors who traveled all over the planet, a great personal sacrifice frequently in danger to bring not only physical, but mental and spiritual healing to people.
And to me, they seem like the most noble people on the face of the earth.
And I decided when I was eight years old that I would become a missionary doctor.
And that was my dream from the age of eight until 13.
At which time, having grown up in dire poverty, I decided I'd rather be rich.
So at that point, missionary doctor was out and psychiatrist was in.
Now, I didn't know any psychiatrist, but on TV they seem like rich people.
You know, they they lived in mansions, drove jaguars, had these big plush offices, and all they had to do was talk to crazy people all day.
Yeah.
Seemed like I was doing that anyway.
So I said, you know, this is, I said, this is gonna work out extremely well.
And I I started reading psychology today.
I was the local shrink in high school.
Everybody brought me their problems.
I would sit them down and stroke my chin, say, tell me about your mama.
And, and then I majored in psychology in college and had some great professors like Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud and I was all gung ho.
I was gonna be the world's greatest psychiatrist.
And then I got to medical school and I started meeting a bunch of psychiatrists.
Actually, some of my best friends are psychiatrists.
But, you know, I I realized that that probably wasn't where my talent was Because I think God gives every one of us special gifts and talents.
And I stopped and I asked myself, what are you really really good at?
And I realized I had a lot of eye hand coordination, the ability to think in three dimensions.
I was a very careful person, never knocked things over and said, oops.
It's a good characteristic for a brain surgeon, by the way.
And and I love to dissect things and and I put all that together and that's how I came up with the idea of neurosurgeon.
A lot of people thought that was a strange idea.
At that time, there had only been eight black neurosurgeons in the world.
But you know, I didn't worry about that because when God gives you a talent for something, he doesn't care where you came from.
He doesn't care what you look like.
He cares whether you develop that talent that he has given you.
And he's given each one of you graduates special talent.
There's some things that each one of you is better at than anybody else in here.
And one of the things that really leads to great success is recognizing what it is.
It was, realizing my talents that was one of the most important things in retrospect and one of the most liberating moments in my life.
It gave my life a goal, something to work toward.
And when things were tougher than I expected, I believed that God meant for me to continue on because of the talents he had given me.
Now, sometimes the good Lord is rather dramatic in the way that he shows up in our lives.
I remember, you know, going off to Yale.
And I must admit, you you know, coming from an inner city high school in Detroit going off to Yale, I thought I was the smartest person in the world.
And if not, certainly in the top five.
But, you know, it didn't take long before I was severely disabused of that notion.
And I was starting to think just the opposite.
And toward the end of that first semester, I was failing freshman chemistry.
Now, you can't fail chemistry and be pre med.
I mean, you just don't go to medical school if you fail chemistry.
And but there I was and I was not even close to passing, but we had a very merciful chemistry professor.
He was either merciful or sadistic.
I'm not sure which.
Because he said, anyone who's failing, I'll give you double credit on your final exam.
Just to give you that last hope before you went down.
So there I was the night before the final exam and I was just praying.
I said, Lord, I always thought you wanted me to be a doctor, but but it looks like I'm gonna fail chemistry.
I'm not gonna be a doctor.
So would you tell me what it is you really want me to do?
Or preferably, and alternatively work a miracle.
And and, you know, I I took out that big thick chemistry textbook and I I was gonna memorize the whole thing that night.
Well, of course, I fell asleep.
And I dreamed I was in a big auditorium, just me all by myself and there was a nebulous figure working out chemistry problems on the blackboard.
And I awakened early that morning and that dream was so vivid in my mind.
I I quickly looked up the stuff that I had seen in the dream.
And I went off to take the exam the next morning and I opened the test booklet and it was like the twilight zone.
The first problem was one of the ones I dreamed about.
That was easy.
And the next one and the next one and the next one, right through the exam, I aced the whole thing.
And, you know, I just I just thank God.
And I said, you're never gonna have to do that for me again.
I know you want me to be a doctor.
I know there's no question about it.
And, and he didn't have to do that for me again because I I did learn to study.
But but I came to believe that that God has special things for us to do.
If we listen to him, he will guide our lives and through him we can do extraordinary things.
And by working through that understanding both in our lives and our professional work, we have the capacity for positive change.
Now, many of you have already led very full careers and this experience has been enhancing your work.
Others are just embarking on a new vocation.
And for many, this is an important turning point.
The wonderful thing about your group is that you're all already heading in the right direction.
Through your education, you've already made a commitment to understanding the fact that people are holistic.
Their whole beings are mental, their spiritual, and their physical.
We have enormous challenges with mental illness in our country.
So I I was correct about that when I was 13.
And we need to be healers.
We see it all around us just today in Texas with the shooting and the school.
Many people killed.
Mental illness abounds throughout our society.
And there's a calling for each of us to do what we can about it.
We're trying to do that at HUD right now, where we've created something called Envision Centers.
The first ones will be open next month in Detroit.
And, there's a verse in the bible, Proverbs twenty nine eighteen, it says, without a vision, the people perish.
And, so first we call them vision centers, but then we figured everybody would think they were getting glasses.
So now, it's called the Envision Center, but it's a place where where we bring the need in juxtaposition to the resources.
There's a lot of resources in our country at the federal level, the state level, the local level, private sector, the church, faith based organizations, nonprofits.
And it's amazing what happens when you can bring those together and make them available because we have a lot of poor people, we have a lot of disadvantaged in our society, and we've actually been responsible for cultivating an atmosphere that leads people like that.
And now we need to be responsible for creating the right opportunities for people to climb out of dependency and to realize the dream that is there in this country for everybody.
But we have a responsibility to help people to get there.
It will take transforming belief and the inherent dignity of every life when others you encounter might lose sight of that truth.
And also, it will take knowing what our limits are and what things need to be left in the hands of God.
I believe you've been blessed by a tremendous foundation from this great institution.
Through a Christian framework, you're able to go about your life's work and God's work through you.
If we're going to help people live a full life flourishing according to God's will, that is what it will take.
Few additional thoughts, because as hard as this was to achieve, that is your degree today, there's still a lot more in store.
Some Some of the things I learned in my lesson, in my lesson of life, continue to train harder than everybody else.
Continue your search for excellence.
God has prepared you for the next step, but by no means does that mean learning stops with a degree.
This should be a source of joy.
Lifelong education and more importantly, learning how you learn, because everybody learns differently.
I found that out when I got to medical school.
You know, at the University of Michigan, I remember that first set of comprehensive exams, I did terribly.
I did so badly that my advisor advised me to drop out.
He said, you're not cut out for medicine.
You're just going to to torture yourself and everybody else, so why don't you get out now?
That's the person who's supposed to help me.
Okay?
Get through.
I was devastated.
I went back to my apartment and I said, Lord, I I need you to show me what to do.
I don't know what to do.
And I I started thinking.
I said, what kind of courses have you always struggled with?
What kind of courses have you done very well in?
And I realized I did really well in courses where I did a lot of reading and I struggled in courses where I listened to boring lectures because I don't do well with boring lectures at all.
I just tone them right out and it doesn't do me any good.
And I was listening to six to eight hours worth of boring lectures every day.
So I made the executive decision to skip the boring lectures and to spend that time reading.
And the rest of medical school was a snap after that.
And, I remember some years later going back to my medical school as the commencement speaker, and I was looking for that advisor.
Because I was gonna tell him he wasn't cut out to be an advisor, you know, because because, you know, there are so many people who are just negative negative negative And they can always tell you why something won't work, but they never seem to invest any time or effort in being positive.
And I hope that in your spheres of influence, you will change that dynamic.
If you train harder than anyone else and search for excellence in every aspect of your life, you'll be confident but not cocky.
You'll trust in the skills that you've gotten and that in combination with trusting in God makes all the difference in the world.
I remember one case with a little girl in New Mexico, she was in status epilepticus.
That means she was having seizures constantly, twenty four seven.
She couldn't breathe because of the seizures.
She had paralyzed on one side, hadn't spoken for several months, was on a ventilator.
And her mother heard about some of the work we were doing at Johns Hopkins with a procedure called cerebral hemispherectomy, where we take out half of the brain in children with intractable seizures and sometimes they're able to control it.
And she contacted us and made arrangements for her to come up on a medical transport.
And, I and some of my colleagues felt that even though she was older than most of the patients who underwent a hemisorectomy, that she would be a reasonable candidate.
One of the other neurologists, very famous guy, no one knew who I was at that time.
He said, no.
Absolutely not.
You can't do that.
And he called the dean and the president of the hospital.
You cannot let Carson operate on this patient.
Many other people have weighed in on this.
Well known people throughout the country.
This is ridiculous.
We don't wanna get a black marker in the name of Johns Hopkins.
And then he made a big mistake.
He went to a conference in Rome and left the patient there in the hospital.
And I said, this is our big chance.
And I I went and talked to the mother and said, we need to do this.
And she agreed.
And I did the hemispherectomy.
And when he came back from Rome, she was off the ventilator.
She was starting to move the side that hadn't moved for a while.
The seizures had stopped.
She went on to make a great recovery.
And you know, he never had a negative thing to say to me after that.
But why was I willing to do that?
Because I had done the requisite studying.
And I knew he could say what he couldn't do, but he couldn't say what I couldn't do.
But more importantly, I had prayed.
I had asked God for guidance, asked him for wisdom, which I always do.
I learned to do that as a teenager.
And there's never been a time when he has forsaken me.
Never a time when he has let me down.
And, even now in my position, at HUD, we have a lot of difficult things that we have to do if we're gonna get people out of poverty.
We have to go against a lot of the things that have been put in place for decades.
And when you do things like that, you know, you don't make everybody happy.
You know, it's sort of like, you know, fledgling birds.
They don't like their parents very much when they push them out of the nest, but pretty soon they're soaring like eagles, and then they appreciate it.
And there isn't anybody that God made in this country who cannot soar like an eagle, who doesn't have tremendous potential behind them.
And, you know, as you go through life, not everything will be smooth.
There will be problems along the way, but do remember who's in charge.
And remember to treat the people around you the right way, because the people you meet on the way up are the same ones you meet on the way down.
And you get a lot more done when you treat people the right way.
I remember I always got a lot more cases done in the operating room because I had a very good relationship with the cleaning people and everybody else.
So sometimes I'd get a mop and start cleaning the floor myself and they didn't like that so they would really get in there and start working.
But it makes a big difference when you treat people the right way.
And you'll have to work with people.
Real success you'll gain by working with other people.
I remember in one case of Conjoined Twins, you know, I had done a number of them by that time.
This was a a set from Europe.
And, you know, rather than do that case myself, I said, I'm in the number one neurosurgery department in the country.
We've got specialists in neurovascular disease and with tumor work and with skull based work and all kinds of things.
What if we have a lot of people involved?
We had 18 neurosurgeons in teams to come in to do the part of the operation that they were the world expert in.
Do you know we were ten hours ahead of schedule?
What a difference it makes when it doesn't matter who gets the credit.
When you just look at the goal, when you work with people, and you have total respect for them, and they will develop total respect for you in the same way.
It'll make all the difference in the world.
And the last thing I wanna leave you with is you're all gonna have tremendous fears of influence.
And can you imagine how many people will be impacted by what you do, what you say, how you act?
And I implore each of you to use that sphere of influence to fight one of the most destructive things that exist in our country right now, and that is hatred and intolerance.
There are those who were driving wedges between all of our people based on every demographic, race, income, religion, age, gender, political affiliation.
It doesn't matter.
We happen to live in a very strong nation.
A nation that cannot be brought down from the outside, but a nation that can be destroyed from within.
And that's what happened to the Roman Empire.
They were so strong, no one could bring them down, but then they lost their vision.
There was no right.
There was no wrong.
Everything was relative.
They lost their identity.
They didn't know where they were going.
They became easy prey for the barbarians.
We can do so much better.
We all have that sphere of influence.
God has given that to us.
God has blessed our nation.
God has given us values and principles.
And if we live by those values and principles, not only will we have a great nation, but we will have one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Congratulations, and thank you.