The Mountaintop and The Valley: U.S. Attorney Damian Williams Delivers Columbia Law's Commencement Address

Thank you for that introduction. 

Dean Lester.  Distinguished faculty, alumni, and administrators.  Thank you for having me here today.  To the proud families and friends.  Thank you for everything you have done to support these new graduates. To the little kids in the audience, I promise this is not a long speech.  And to the mothers.  Of course, yesterday was Mother’s Day – your day.  I hope you got everything you wanted, but if not, today’s graduation is one more gift.  Let’s give all the mothers a big round of applause. They have poured so much love into your cups.    

And finally, to the spectacular class of 2023. Congratulations on this incredible achievement.  

You are an impressive bunch.  And I am honored to be in your presence and to be your commencement speaker.  But I’m not gonna lie… it’s a little intimidating to address you.  For two reasons.  First of all, you are, without question, some of the brightest legal minds to wear the cap and gown this year.  And, second, and I don’t know if I should be admitting this, but … this is my very first commencement speech.  First one I've ever given.  No pressure, right? 

But, look. Knowing that I was coming here, and speaking to you, has focused me in a good way.  It’s fair to say that you’ve been on my mind.   

This is a rare opportunity to catch an extraordinary group at an extraordinary moment in history.   We live in a time when very little is stable and sturdy.  You can just feel it.  We’ve got these big, tectonic plates that are shifting in ways that are profound and hard to predict.  We are grappling with deep questions about the Rule of Law and the strength of our democracy.  Fundamental rights are being contested in the courts and at the ballot box.  Artificial intelligence and machine learning open up new possibilities for innovation and, at the very same time, raise new questions about the ethics of it all….  The planet warms.  The guns of war are hot in Europe.  And illegal guns flow too freely here in New York City.  And all across this nation, from Buffalo, to Uvalde, to Louisville, to Allen, the tragedies roll in one after another after another, like a relentless ocean tide.  And it seems like our tears can’t keep up.  And, at a time when we need each other most, our discourse – the way we talk to each other –  has broken down.  It’s too frequently filled with bluster and bile.  It has made us quick to judge and slow to listen.  And harder for us to speak with one voice as a people.  

This is the world we live in.  The world you inherit.  The world that you must navigate and will ultimately lead as lawyers – in private industry, in non-profit organizations, and in government.  

There is so much for us to talk about.  So much that is urgent.  But here’s the thing.  I decided that I don’t want to talk about any of that today.  That is not how I want to spend our time together. 

I have been drawn to something different when I think of you.  I recognize that this graduation is a triumph.  The fulfillment of a long-held dream.  And here you are standing on this mountaintop of achievement.  But at the same time I strongly suspect that this new professional peak and the title that comes with it  – LAWYER – reveals very little about who you fundamentally are at your core.  And the journey that brought you here.  Yes, you worked hard.  Yes, you took class after class and exam after exam.  But in many ways your new title is the worst possible lens for taking the measure of your life. Its gaze is too narrow. It doesn’t reveal any essential truths about how you’ve lived. Or who you’ve loved.  Or who you’ve lost.  Or what you’re proudest of.  Or what you may have come to regret.  

And, look, I say all of this with full recognition that I am standing here right now as your graduation speaker because of my title.  Because of the office I hold and because I’m the first Black person in history to hold it.  I get that.  But, just like you, my title obscures more than it reveals. It doesn’t tell you anything about who I am or the path I’ve traveled in life. It’s the thing that gets talked about the most, but in so many ways, it’s the thing that matters the least.

It is tempting to look at a person’s life as a collection of titles and achievements.  To read it like a resume.  To view it as a series of mountaintops.  She achieved this and then she achieved that. He accomplished this and then he accomplished that.  As if it is possible to go through life, leaping from peak to peak.  We cheer the mountaintops but get mighty quiet about the valleys in between.  As if the valleys are not part of the journey too.  

It doesn’t make any sense to me.  Never has.  Show me a mountain without a valley.  I’ve never seen it.  And I bet you haven’t either.   

A full life is filled with both.  Success and failure.  Love and loss.  Joy and pain.  Hope and despair.  Confidence and doubt.  If you focus on one but not the other, you lose a sense of who we are.  And lose sight of the grit and growth that can only be forged in the valley.  It would be like reading a book and skipping every other chapter.  By the end you would have no idea what really happened. And yet this is often how we tell our stories.  

Not today.  Today I am going to speak to you.  Not you, the lawyer.  Not you, the title.  But, you, the person underneath the graduation gown.  

And, yes, while we’re on this mountaintop together, we’re going to talk about a valley.  Just one.  But an important one.  One that so many people quietly struggle with in life.  I know I do.  And many of you probably do too.  I want to talk to you about doubt.  And when I say doubt, I’m not talking about some legal standard.  Like beyond a reasonable doubt.  I’m talking about self-doubt.  That feeling, that questioning, that unwelcome voice that sometimes whispers and sometimes booms.  

This is the voice that for some of you may have been loudest when you were 1Ls trying to figure out how this law school thing worked.  How to read a case.  How to be prepared for the dreaded cold call in class.  It’s the voice that made some of you question whether you belonged in the same class with all those people who seem so impressive and so smart.  And convinced that Columbia made a huge mistake in letting you in and maybe even a little panicked that they would find out soon enough.  

Let’s be real.  That voice of doubt is a stubborn thing that doesn’t always go away.  Some of you may still be hearing that voice right now – even though you’re wearing the blue gown that proves you have earned your place.  

So … where does this bogeyman come from?  And who let him in? I’m sure everyone has a different story.  

I’ll go first.  I’ll tell you exactly when my self-doubt started. 

I was 5 years old.  A little Black boy with a really bad stutter, growing up in the Deep South.  My parents were trying to get me into a new school – the same school that my older sister went to.  But I had to take an admissions test.  Now, I was too young to know it, but this was an IQ test.  And I remember the day: I sat in a big conference room with one adult, who helped usher me through the test.  And I thought I did fine.  But when the scores came back, the school told my parents that my IQ was extremely low.  I think the technical term was that I had “borderline intellectual functioning.”  But this was the early 80s, and things were a little different. So folks told me that I was “borderline retarded.”  That was the label I remember.  Even at 5 years old, I knew that wasn’t good.  

My parents didn’t believe the results.  And it’s more than that.  They were flat-out suspicious of the score.  They pushed the school to let me take the test a second time.  And eventually I did.  And the results of the second test were very different.  So there was a compromise.  I was admitted to the school, but on two conditions.  First, the school would not remove the low IQ score from my record.  And, second, I had to be placed in what was known as the “slow” class because, it turns out, my IQ score was the second lowest on record.  

So there I was, 5 years old, branded slow and with the data to back it up.  I have no real memories of first and second grade because I slept through a lot of it.  The school eventually removed me from the slow class and bumped me up into the “fast” class in third grade.  But, as you might imagine, because I was checked out for the first two years of school, I struggled to keep up with the other kids.  And this struggle went on for years.  And even when I caught up, and eventually started to do well in school, I chalked it up to dumb luck or extreme hustle.  Anything – literally anything – but natural talent.  I was convinced I didn’t have that.

My own doubt used to be this wild thing, this … beast … that could not be tamed.  And it would roar so loudly that it would drown out the other voice, the quieter voice, telling me that I was good and worthy.  

It’s hard to shake that off.  And not everyone wanted me to.  I remember a day or two before I graduated high school, there was a celebration for the seniors.  I was graduating at the top of my class and finally starting to feel confident.  But then, just then, an old teacher of mine pulled me aside at the celebration and, I’ll never forget it, with a chill in her voice, she quietly reminded me that I had the second lowest IQ on record.  

Now… none of what I’ve just shared with you is anywhere in my official biography.  I didn’t have to disclose it to the United States Senate before they confirmed me.  That’s because it’s not an achievement.  It’s not a triumph.  It’s not one of my mountaintops…  It’s a valley.  But you don’t know me if you don’t know this.  

Yes, it is possible to fly high.  And at the very same time have doubt that runs deep.  And here’s the thing – those two facts are not in tension.  They are in harmony.  Just like the mountain and the valley.  They are part of the same story.  It doesn’t make the story flawed.  It makes the story true.  

Now, why am I telling you all of this?  And why is it important that I say it to this group, on this day?  

I’m telling you this because, even with this new degree that marks you as excellent and gifted and prepared, many of you will quietly wrestle with doubt as you go through your careers.  And I want you to know this.  You are not broken.  You are not less than.  And, most importantly, you are not alone.  No one — no one — has it all figured out, in law or in life.  Not me.  Not the professors sitting behind me.  And definitely not the folks out there in the world who pretend otherwise.  Don’t be fooled by those people.  I mean, they are obviously faking it.   

I’m telling you this because these myths – the myth of the easy path, the myth of boundless confidence, the very perception of perfection – these myths need to be shattered and swept away once and for all.  They will clutter your thoughts and impede your journey as lawyers and as leaders.  And I want you to pay them no mind.  

I’m telling you this because I still feel doubt in some way, shape, or form, every single day.  But now my doubt sits side-by-side with my confidence.  My doubt grounds me.  It checks me.  It humbles me.  And that’s a good thing.  It has made me a better leader.  And a better person.  

I’m telling you this because when you experience those moments of doubt, we need you to believe.  To have faith in yourself.  To push through.  To be big even when you feel small. And speak up even when you feel like your voice doesn’t matter or isn’t welcomed.  

And I am telling you this because there is simply too-much-at-stake for you to be paralyzed by doubt.  Remember all the urgent problems of our time that I said we wouldn’t talk about today? The rancor and war, the fights over the Rule of Law and constitutional rights.  The very future of democracy.  Well, those problems will be there for you tomorrow.  And this nation will turn to you soon enough to help solve them. That is no easy task. The clients you represent and the causes you champion will demand your attention, your focus, your creativity.  And, above all, they will demand your belief in yourself. 

This world gains nothing if you are quiet.  You made it to this mountaintop because of who you are.  Embrace it.  You made it to this mountaintop because of your voice.  Use it.  You made it to this mountaintop because you belong in all the places – from the courtroom to the boardroom.  Own it.  

And along the way, yes, you may doubt yourself from time to time.  That’s ok.  Others may doubt you more.  That’s ok too.  Let them.  As a wise man once said: “haters gonna hate.”   

And even if you don’t always believe in yourself, know that I believe in you. Know that the people behind me believe in you.  And know that everyone out there – your family and your friends – the people who raised you and love you, they’ve believed in you since Day One. 

And come what may – the good and the bad, the high and the low, the mountaintop and the valley – know that it’s all part of a beautiful journey that you are on and we are proud to witness.   

Congratulations Class of 2023. I wish you the best of luck.