Their memories and hopes
With so many deserving students graduating each year, the Commencement Office has the unenviable task of selecting just three speakers to address the nearly 32,000 students, faculty, alumni, parents, and guests who assemble for Morning Exercises in Tercentenary Theatre. Each spring, a competition is held to find one undergraduate and one graduate orator to deliver five-minute speeches from memory, in English, and — in a nod to one of Harvard’s oldest traditions — one student to give a speech in Latin. For many years, the oratories were thesis defenses given in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The Latin remains, but now the speakers representing the Class of 2014 will proffer addresses that encompass the personal and the global, presented with wit and wisdom. Timothy Barry-Heffernan, Latin speaker Timothy Barry-Heffernan has spent most of his years at Harvard College immersed in his concentration, mathematics, and his secondary concentration, computer science. So it might seem surprising that...