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How to Write a Great Speech, According to the Obamas’ Speechwriter

By Liam Freeman

It was the summer of 1998, the end of her junior year of college, when Sarah Hurwitz fell in love with the art form of writing the perfect speech, having scored an internship at the White House in Vice President Al Gore’s speechwriting office. “Every day, his staff used words to move, inspire, comfort, and empower people,” she recalls. “I still can’t imagine a better way to spend a career.”

And what an extraordinary career Hurwitz’s has been. After graduating from Harvard Law School, she became the chief speechwriter for Hillary Rodham Clinton on her 2008 presidential campaign. Eventually, she returned to the White House, serving as the head speechwriter for first lady Michelle Obama and as a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama between 2009 and 2017.

Here, Hurwitz shares 11 nuggets of speechwriting wisdom that she’s garnered along the way so that you can shine at your next public address, whether that be a televised political debate, a work presentation, or a toast at your best friend’s wedding.

1. Channel the person who is speaking

The true art of speechwriting isn’t scripting someone—it’s channeling their voice. My first step when writing a speech for Mrs. Obama would be to sit down with her and ask, “What would you like to say?” She knows who she is, and she always knows what she wants to say. She’s also a naturally gifted speaker and writer, so I’d transcribe as she talked, forming the basis of the first draft.

2. Research and understand your audience

Who are you talking to? What are they concerned about? Why are you speaking to them? How well do they know you? What’s the venue? If Mrs. Obama was speaking at a university, for example, it was important to understand the history and student body of that university. If you’re giving a toast at your best friend’s wedding, you need to know if you can tell a story that’s a bit edgy or if their family will get offended.

3. Know that structure is destiny

If you have a bad structure, you can’t have a good speech. Every paragraph should flow logically from one to the next. When I’m trying to figure out the structure of a speech, I’ll often print it out and cut it up with scissors so I can move parts around. It’s only then that I realize the order is wrong or I see that I’m repeating myself or I notice that certain passages could be combined.

4. Seek multiple opinions  

It’s really important to ask other people to look at your speech—as many as possible, especially if you’re speaking to a community that you don’t know well. You need to find someone from that audience who understands its cultural sensitivities and norms so you speak in a way that inspires people rather than causing offense.

5. Throw the rulebook out of the window

Writing to be read and writing to be heard are two very different skills. Spoken language doesn’t need to conform to grammar and punctuation norms. I often use ellipses instead of commas to indicate pauses because they’re easier to see. It’s fine to space things weirdly on the page or add notations if it helps you—all that matters is how the words sound coming out of your mouth.

With that in mind, you should edit out loud. Don’t just sit looking at your computer screen—print the speech out, practice delivering it, and edit as you go.

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6. Listening is the key to great speaking

There were hundreds of occasions when Mrs. Obama gave me feedback that ultimately influenced how I write. My drafts would be covered in her handwritten edits: “Are the transitions seamless? Is the structure logical? Is this language the most vivid and moving that it can be?” And I would learn from those edits.

As I write, I hear her voice in my head saying things like, “This part is getting bogged down in the weeds,“ “we’re missing the beating heart,” “we’re missing the real human side of this issue.” Hone your ability to identify the weakest parts that aren’t working.

7. Speak like you usually do

It’s fine to ask yourself, “What will make me sound smart or powerful or funny?’”or “What does the audience want to hear?” But your first question should really be, “What is the deepest, most important truth that I can tell at this particular moment?” All too often people focus on how they’re going to say something rather than on what they’re actually going to say.

Then, when they give a speech, they often take on an overly formal and stiff giving-a-speech voice or they slip into their professional jargon and use words that no one understands. If something feels unnatural or awkward when you say it, go back and rewrite it until it sounds like you.

8. Show, don’t tell

This may sound like a basic writing tip, but it’s rare that people execute this well. If you’re bored during a speech, it’s probably because the person is telling not showing. Mrs. Obama didn’t start her 2016 Democratic National Convention speech by saying: “On my daughter’s first day of school at the White House, I was nervous, afraid, and anxious.” She said: “I will never forget that winter morning as I watched our girls, just 7 and 10 years old, pile into those black SUVs with all those big men with guns. And I saw their little faces pressed up against the window, and the only thing I could think was, What have we done?” It’s such a searing image. Anytime you find yourself using a lot of adjectives, stop, step back, and think about painting a picture for people instead.

9. Don’t let technology get in the way

We’re living in the age of Zoom, and many people are delivering speeches virtually, which creates a whole new set of challenges. The audience often has their cameras turned off, or even if they’re on, there’s a disconnect. For this reason, I’d advise against a lecture-style format on Zoom. Instead, opt for interview style—give your host a set of questions to ask you so you can convey your message. This back-and-forth is more engaging via video calls.

10. Watch the clock

People are distracted today and have limited bandwidth to listen to what you are saying, so it’s really important to focus your message. Do you want them to feel reassured, courageous, fired up? Whatever the emotion, really think about that as you’re writing your speech. As for the length, it depends on your venue. If you’re doing a toast at your best friend’s wedding, keep it to five minutes (it’s not your wedding!), and for a keynote speech, no longer than 20 minutes.

11. Consider the format

Unless you have an incredible memory, don’t put yourself under added pressure by trying to learn your speech by heart. That said, what you read from matters. Some speakers are most comfortable with their speech when it’s written out verbatim. For others, reading a speech word for word feels awkward. Try experimenting with different formats, such as bullet points or cue cards. If you’re printing your remarks out on paper, keep the text on the top two-thirds of the page—otherwise, as you get to the bottom of the page, you’ll have to bend your neck to look down, and you’ll end up swallowing your words and breaking eye contact with your audience.  *Sarah Hurwitz ’s debut book, Here All Along (Penguin Random House), is out now.

Obama’s former speechwriter reflects on time White House.

Imagine being the speechwriter for the most powerful person in the world. That was  Cody Keenan ’s job. He was the chief speech writer for former President Barack Obama during some of the most pivotal times in modern American history.

Keenan looks back on those days in his new book, “Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America.” It takes readers behind the scenes of the Obama administration for ten days in June 2015, after a horrific shooting at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with Keenan about his new book.

Cody Keenan   was the Senior Advisor and Director of Speechwriting for former President Barack Obama. He is the author of the new book “Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America”

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He wrote for a president. What Cody Keenan can teach you about crafting a great speech

• Weinberg College

Northwestern alumnus Cody Keenan ’02 isn’t psychic — and that’s probably for the best.

If, on June 17, 2015, he knew what the next 10 days held in store, he might have been overwhelmed by the pressure. The dramatic week-and-a-half stretch began with a mass shooting in a Charleston, South Carolina, church and ended with two landmark Supreme Court decisions that changed American life forever. As President Barack Obama’s chief speechwriter, Keenan was in charge of writing speeches, statements and a heart-wrenching eulogy, all in response to the deluge of historic events.

“Luckily, I didn’t have the benefit of foresight,” Keenan said. “I wasn’t burdened by the knowledge of what was coming or how the Supreme Court would rule on marriage equality and the Affordable Care Act. We grappled with these events in real time, just like everyone else.”

Keenan shares his memories of those fateful, fleeting days in his new book “Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America.” The gripping account is so engrossing that readers will forget they already know the outcome of these events. Instead, Keenan creates a wholly immersive narrative that pulls readers into the whirlwind, as hours collapse into seconds and intense pressure reaches a fever pitch.

Now a member of the Northwestern faculty, Keenan teaches a course on speechwriting at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He will participate in two upcoming campus events — a virtual talk on Tuesday, Sept. 27 and an in-person appearance Friday, Oct. 7 , during Homecoming and Reunion Weekend — to reflect on his past experience and share stories from the book, which comes out on Oct. 4.

> Related: Learning to write like a president sounds

Keenan talked to Northwestern Now about writing under pressure, the art of penning a great speech and the importance of embracing empathy to reach diverse audiences.

It has been seven years since those events. Why did you write this book now?

I still worked for President Obama until early 2021, so I had ethical concerns over writing a book that was largely about him while still on his payroll. But I posted a Twitter thread on the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality (Obergefell v. Hodges). I wanted to show America at its best and remind people what this country is capable of. My “tweetstorm” sort of took off, and I realized there might be a book in all of this. 

After writing speeches in Obama’s voice for so long, was it difficult to pivot to your own?

After writing for Obama for so many years, I adopted parts of his worldview. But we have very different writing styles. In general, speechwriting is quite different from writing a book. With speechwriting, you’re writing for the ear, so it needs to be more colloquial. The audience isn’t able to read along with you. You want to keep sentences shorter, so they are easier for the speaker. You also have to add tips and tricks to keep your audience’s attention. Even just adding phrases like “Listen up” or “Now, this is important.” It might sound silly or weird to write that way, but it helps grab attention. In my own writing, I’m a little more blunt. But I can afford to be blunt in ways the president could not.

You had to confront the concept of race after the white supremacist attack in Charleston. As a white man, how did you handle that?

On the outside, Obama and I couldn’t be much more different. But we share a worldview, and that made it easier to get into his head and imagine what he would say if he had the time. That’s easier with policy speeches. With topics surrounding race, it was always tough.

The most important thing about speechwriting — besides being able to string sentences together — is having a sense of empathy. You have to understand your audience and try walking in their shoes. But there are limits to empathy, in terms of imagination. I’ve never been racially profiled, asked for my ID or had to have a conversation with my child about what to do when a police officer approaches you. For speeches like that, I needed more time with Obama before I got started. Ultimately, they’re his words — not mine. Speechwriters are never putting their own views into a speech. So, I tried to get as much guidance from him as I could before beginning. That helped a lot.

What was it like having the president as your editor?

He has very high expectations. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to deliver a good draft because he expected it. But then he could always take that draft to a higher place. Whatever we gave him, he made it better. We just didn’t want him to have to do that work, so we went all out to get him a draft that was up to his standards. The reason our relationship worked so well was because I could give him material that might shake loose another thought. If a sentence was good, he would tack on other ideas to make it great. That’s when we were at our best.

What was the most difficult speech or statement that you had to write?

The eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney and the other victims of the Charleston shooting, for sure. We also had to write statements just in case the Supreme Court ruled against Obamacare or marriage equality. Those were difficult and sad to write. How do you speak to a country where people are grieving because they can’t marry the person they love? Or are about to lose their health insurance? But the Charleston speech was the hardest because it had a few third rails: race, the Confederate flag, guns. And, going into it, we knew everyone would be watching with high expectations. It felt like navigating a minefield, and we just wanted to get to the other side.

How did you cope with that pressure?

I always write better under pressure and with a deadline bearing down on me because there’s no time to overthink. I also had a great support system. My wife (my fiancée at the time) was, and still is, my ultimate supporter. She gives me my best ideas. Our White House was, I think, unique in that more people stayed through the entire presidency than any other. The presidential primary campaign was so long and contentious that we were really forged into a family. We loved each other. That might sound cheesy, but it’s true.

What tips do you have for Northwestern students who want to become speechwriters? 

Take my class! This is such a tough field to break into because of a Catch-22. You need a portfolio of speeches to get a job, but you don’t have a portfolio because you’re just getting started. In my class, students produce 10 different speeches, so they have a collection when they graduate.

If you can’t take my class, talk to professors and deans who give speeches and ask if you can help. Or write some op-eds, which really are like mini-speeches. Just start writing. As with anything else, the more you do it, the better you get.

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Cody Keenan: How I wrote Barack Obama’s speeches

. . .which he then rewrote. the ex-president’s speechwriter reveals their collaborative art.

US president Barack Obama addressing members of the public at Gollege Green, Dublin, during a ceremony as part of his visit to Ireland in May 2011. Photograph: Alan Betson

My family left Ireland for America seven generations ago. To the best of our knowledge, Patrick Keenan left Cork sometime in the 1770s. He was counted in the first American census. His son, Peter Keenan, was born in America. On my mother’s side, John McThomas left Dublin around the same time, fought for America in the Revolution, and was buried in a national cemetery in Ohio.

As far as I know, I was the first in my family, on either side, to return. My first visit was with my best friend back in 2005. We were broke, relied on the kindness of strangers and camped wherever we could – a town park in Kinsale, a beach outside Galway, a farm in Dingle.

My second visit, in May 2011, was a bit different. Surely, it was something my ancestors could not imagine. I flew over in a highly modified 747, crossing the sea they had sailed, with the first black president of a country they helped settle. Hundreds of people were lined up along Moneygall village’s main street, waving Irish and American flags.

Barack Obama is two generations closer to Ireland than I am. And I know people have a laugh at how Moneygall has made the most of that relationship. But it is not a relationship that should be discounted.

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Much has been made of his Kenyan ancestry. But remember, he only met his father twice. He was raised by his white mother and white grandparents. That side of his family is one he holds just as dear. Moneygall’s favourite great-great-great-grandson really does have a soft spot for Ireland and its people. He revealed as much in his address to the people of Ireland that day, delivered to a throng that had gathered along Dublin’s College Green:

It was remarkable to see the small town where a young shoemaker named Falmouth Kearney, my great-great-great-grandfather, lived his early life. He left during the Great Hunger, as so many Irish did, to seek a new life in the New World. He travelled by ship to New York, where he entered himself into the records as a 'labourer'. He married an American girl from Ohio. They settled in the Midwest. They started a family.

It’s a familiar story, one lived and cherished by Americans of all backgrounds. It’s integral to our national identity. It’s who we are – a nation of immigrants from all over the world…

We call it the American Dream. It is the dream that drew Falmouth Kearney to America from a small village in Ireland. It is the dream that drew my own father to America from a small village in Africa. It is a dream that we have carried forward, sometimes through stormy waters, sometimes at great cost, for more than two centuries.

It’s not something he would have imagined when he was a young Chicago politician, bringing up the rear of the St Patrick’s Day parade, followed only by the sanitation workers picking up the pieces. It is not something that, for my first 26 years or so, I could have imagined, either.

Growing up, I had always taken a keen interest in politics, because my parents argued about it on a regular basis – but I began university with plans of becoming a surgeon. Chemistry class altered those plans pretty quickly. I dedicated myself instead to political science, and after graduation, I moved to Washington DC.

Cody Keenan, who served as director of speechwriting for President Barack Obama. ‘In less than 10 years, I went from mailroom intern in Congress to chief speechwriter in the White House,’ he says. Photograph: Lawrence Jackson/The White House

After a dozen failed interviews, I finally became one of 100 interns under someone for whom I will always be grateful: John F Kennedy’s kid brother, Ted. It remains my best political learning experience.

I was at the Democratic Convention in 2004 when a young state senator from Illinois introduced himself to the country. I must have talked about that speech a lot, because that is when I got my shot. One day, my overworked boss poked his head around the corner and asked, “hey, can you write a speech?”

I had never considered speechwriting. But I lied and said yes. I stayed up all night panicking my way through it. That one led to a few more. And eventually, a colleague connected me with senator Obama's chief speechwriter Jon Favreau. We hit it off, and I became an intern all over again, this time in Chicago, on an upstart presidential campaign; this time the only intern.

And as our poll numbers rose, and our crowds grew, so did my opportunities to write. We won and went to the White House. I moved into a West Wing office with Jon. And I never stopped working my tail off so that when he left, and Obama had to choose a new chief speechwriter, I was the only choice to take his place.

In less than 10 years, I went from mailroom intern in Congress to chief speechwriter in the White House.

What goes into a good speech? Well, the first thing I can tell you is that there’s no alchemy to it; no magic formula. It’s more art than science, and after 3,577 speeches in the White House, I admit a lot of it is not art, either. I have been fortunate, though, to work for someone who views it as a craft; as a way to organise his thoughts into a coherent argument and present them to the world. He takes it seriously. He was anonymous when he walked into that Boston hall in 2004, and a political rock star when he walked out. That is what a speech can do.

To this day, by the way, he reminds me that he wrote that one by himself. All the time.

He’s a frighteningly good writer, which makes my job both harder and easier. Harder because I will stay up all night to get him a draft he will be happy with. Easier because if I do not hit the mark, he is there to back me up. And when it came to any speech of consequence, President Obama was actively involved in the product. We would often begin the process for big speeches by sitting down with him in the Oval Office. We called it “The Download”. He would walk us through what was on his mind, what he wanted to say, and we would type as fast as possible.

He would always begin with the question, “what story are we trying to tell?”

Once we got his download, we would get to work, and get him a draft. He would often work on it himself until well past midnight. And this may sound counter-intuitive, but it was always a good thing to hear that he had a lot of edits. It did not mean he disliked what we put down. It meant we gave him what he needed to do the job.

When I was drafting the Charleston eulogy, for example – the speech in which he sang Amazing Grace – I stayed up for three days straight trying to make it perfect. I handed the draft to him the afternoon before the speech and went home to sleep. Right before I turned in, I got an email from him asking me to come back and meet him at 11 o’clock that night.

He told me he liked the first two pages. But he had rewritten the next two pages in just a few hours. It was annoying. Still, I apologised for what I saw as letting him down. But he stopped me and said, “Brother, we are collaborators. You gave me what I needed. The muse hit. And when you have been thinking about this stuff for 40 years, you will know what you want to say, too.”

Jon was good at building the big case and laying out the big argument. That was not my strength. I went for people’s guts. I wanted to build moral and emotional cases. I wanted to make people feel something. A sense of connection. A sense of belonging. A sense of being heard. That’s a pretty important part of storytelling.

And I think the best story we ever told came in a 2015 speech in Selma, Alabama.

In 1965, a group of mostly black Americans set out to march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery to demand their right to vote. They barely made it across the town bridge before their non-violent protest was met with violent resistance. The images shocked the conscience of the country and pushed President Johnson to call for a Voting Rights Act.

The idea that just 50 years later, a black president would return to commemorate what they did was extraordinary enough. We could have gone with a safe, simple speech commemorating the anniversary. People would have understood the symbolism. It would have been enough.

US president Barack Obama walks alongside Amelia Boynton Robinson (second right), one of the original marchers; first lady Michelle Obama; and US Representative John Lewis (second left), Democrat of Georgia, and also one of the original marchers, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to mark the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches on March 7th, 2015. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

But the week before, a Republican politician went on television and said this: “I know this is a terrible thing to say . . . ” By the way, if you begin a thought that way, you don’t have to finish it. Free advice. But he continued, “I do not believe that the President loves America . . . He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country.”

I was pissed about it. It was more dog whistle nonsense designed to delegitimise the first African American president – and, I might add, the first president to win more than 51 per cent of the vote twice since Dwight Eisenhower almost 60 years earlier.

“No Drama Obama”, true to form, was not ruffled. He thought it was a comment that merited no response. He did, however, think it was an idea worth taking on. Who gets to decide what it means to love America? Who gets to decide who belongs and who does not? Who gets to decide what patriotism is all about? And we came up with the thesis of that speech:

What could be more American than what happened in this place? What could more profoundly vindicate the idea of America than plain and humble people, the unsung, the downtrodden, the dreamers not of high station, not born to wealth or privilege, not of one religious tradition but many, coming together to shape their country’s course?

What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this, what greater form of patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?

The rest of that half hour made up my favourite speech. It was our purest collaboration. At one point, I made a joke that our story is too often told, in political speeches at least, as if the Founding Fathers set everything up, some Irish and Italians came over, we beat the Nazis, and here we are. But there is more to our story than that. This felt more complete, more honest. He said well, let’s include some characters from our story. “Go come up with some America.”

I grabbed my speechwriters, and we came up with: “Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea, pioneers who braved the unfamiliar, followed by a stampede of farmers and miners, and entrepreneurs and hucksters. Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer, and Susan B Anthony, women who could do as much as any man and then some.” We made it a big open casting call:

Immigrants and Holocaust survivors, Soviet defectors, the Lost Boys of Sudan. Slaves and ranch hands and cowboys and labourers and organisers.

The GIs who liberated a continent and the Tuskeegee Airmen, and Navajo code-talkers, and the Japanese Americans who fought for this country even as their own liberty had been denied. The firefighters who rushed into those buildings on 9/11. The volunteers who signed up to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. The gay Americans whose blood ran in the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down that bridge.

The inventors of gospel and jazz and blues, bluegrass and country, and hip-hop and rock and roll, all our very own sound with all the sweet sorrow and reckless joy of freedom.

That’s what America is. Not stock photos or airbrushed history, or feeble attempts to define some of us as more American than others. We respect the past, but we don’t pine for the past. We don’t fear the future; we grab for it. America is not some fragile thing. We are large, in the words of Whitman, containing multitudes.

If there is one Obama speech I could make people watch, that is it. It was the best, most joyous distillation of the way he sees what this country is and can be. It was the idea that through the hard work of self-government, generations of Americans, often young Americans, often without power or title, often at great risk to themselves, have looked upon our flaws and worked to widen the circle of our founding ideals until they include everybody, and not just some.

That is how I see politics. This collective endeavour; the balance between the realism to see the world as it is, and the idealism to fight for the world as it should be anyway.

It was the exhausting, fulfilling work of those 2,922 days in the White House that gave my career meaning. But when I feel the tugging temptation of cynicism, I reach for my proof point that this whole messy endeavour of democracy can work: the 10 most hopeful days I ever saw in politics.

They began in the darkest way imaginable – a mass shooting in the basement of a Charleston church. A black church. It threatened to reopen the kinds of wounds and spark the kinds of recrimination we saw more recently in Charlottesville. But it did not unfold that way. The families of the victims forgave their killer in court. Then, there was a public recognition of the pain that the Confederate flag stirs in so many citizens, and actual introspection and self-examination that we too rarely see in public life, to the point where that flag finally came down from the South Carolina state capitol.

At the same time, it was a week when the supreme court could rule on any case, at any time, with no heads up. So while we worked on the president’s eulogy for Charleston, we were busy drafting several other statements in case he had to speak quickly.

Thursday morning, boom: Obamacare was upheld as constitutional for the second time. Obama spoke. Friday morning, boom: marriage equality becomes a reality in America. Obama spoke. An hour later, we boarded Marine One to fly to Air Force One, which would ferry us to Charleston.

I was still working in his changes to the eulogy for that afternoon. He had added the lyrics to Amazing Grace overnight. And just before he stepped off the helicopter, he turned and said, “you know, if it feels right, I might sing it”. Exhausted, I simply said “okay”. And that night, we returned to a White House that was no longer white – but bathed in the colours of the rainbow. We wrote 10 speeches in those 10 days – plus a few that never had to see the light of day.

Those 10 days were on my mind as I added these words to President Obama’s farewell address:

Ultimately, that's what our democracy demands. It needs you. Not just when there's an election, not just when your own narrow interest is at stake, but over the full span of a lifetime. If you're tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try to talk with one in real life. If something needs fixing, lace up your shoes and do some organising. If you're disappointed by your elected officials, grab a clipboard, get some signatures, and run for office yourself. Show up. Dive in. Persevere. Sometimes you'll win. Sometimes you'll lose. Presuming a reservoir of goodness in others can be a risk, and there will be times when the process disappoints you. But for those of us fortunate enough to have been a part of this work, to see it up close, let me tell you, it can energise and inspire. And more often than not, your faith in America – and in Americans – will be confirmed.

– Cody Keenan is a speechwriter who has worked with former US president Barack Obama for more than a decade. From Whence I Came – The Kennedy Legacy, Ireland and America, is edited by Brian Murphy & Donnacha Ó Beacháin. It is published by Merrion Press and dedicated to the memory of former Irish Times columnist Noel Whelan, 1968-2019

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Cody Keenan Shares Lessons from Professional Journey to Obama White House

President barack obama’s chief speechwriter spoke at a studiolab lecture event.

Even though Cody Keenan (WCAS ’02) has enjoyed a career that’s taken him from couch-surfing in Washington, DC, while looking for a job, to working as a low-level staffer worker in legendary US senator Edward Kennedy’s office, to President Barack Obama’s chief speechwriter, there are lessons from his journey that are universally applicable. 

One of those lessons: there is no such thing as a set career path.

“If I had sat down when I was in college and said, ‘OK, here is the trajectory I’m going to take and the decisions I’m going to make to be the chief speechwriter in the White House for the first Black president 10 years from now,’ that wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t happen,” Keenan said. “It only happens because you say yes to crazy things.”

For Keenan, that meant volunteering to write a floor speech for Kennedy when he didn’t know how to write a speech, or spending a month in Iowa before the state’s 2008 caucuses to help Obama turn out voters. Keenan’s ability to earn those opportunities stemmed from another valuable lesson:

If you’re asked to do something at your first job, do it the best you can.

Early in Keenan’s time working for Kennedy, a senior staffer pulled him aside and suggested he improve his attitude toward menial tasks. Subsequently, Keenan resolved himself to tackle everything with gusto, whether it was making copies or cleaning up after the senator’s dog.

“This first job won’t determine what you do, but what you get out of it and what you make out of it will determine where you end up, how much you learn, how you conduct yourself,” Keenan said. “Especially in politics, but I think it’s true everywhere, if you are that person who says yes, who works hard, is cheerful, you’ll go really far.”

Especially in politics, but I think it’s true everywhere, if you are that person who says yes, who works hard, is cheerful, you’ll go really far.

Cody Keenan

Keenan spoke January 24 during “A Day with Cody Keenan: Finding the Silences: Building Calm into the Chaos,” the fourth installment of the Personal Development StudioLab’s Curious Life lecture series, following events with Karen May ,  Arshay Cooper , and  Susan Garcia Trieschmann . Since leaving the White House, Keenan has authored the New York Times bestseller Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America (Mariner Books, 2022) and has served as a visiting professor in political science at Northwestern, flying in from New York once per week to teach a class.

Keenan is also a partner at Fenway Strategies, a boutique speechwriting and strategic communications firm founded by Obama's first chief speechwriter Jon Favreau and national security spokesman, Tommy Vietor.

Under Obama, Keenan learned plenty. He watched the former president manage duress by simplifying the meals he ate, limiting his attire to a handful of suit, shirt, and tie combinations, or reserving an hour per day for “POTUS time” that was dedicated to writing or reading.

For Keenan himself, the job of crafting speeches daily for the president was stressful, especially in times of crisis. There were sacrifices Keenan had to make — missing weddings and giving up weekends and maybe losing some friends because of his schedule. To cope, Keenan would take walks and cook and read letters to Obama before going home for the day.

Though the stakes aren’t the same, that’s also a valuable lesson for students as they navigate college and their entry into the professional world.

“Rituals became a way to stay calm because we were never off duty,” Keenan said. “Anything I knew I could do every day… if I felt like a hot-air balloon flying around, those were the things that brought me to the ground.”

About the Personal Development StudioLab 

Codirected by  Joseph Holtgreive , assistant dean for undergraduate engineering, and  Bruce Ankenman , professor of industrial engineering and management sciences, the Personal Development StudioLab is a space where students develop and practice their life approach, as they hone their craft and connect with themselves and others, to create a better future. 

The StudioLab supports the McCormick School of Engineering and Northwestern University by providing students with courses, opportunities, resources, and events that increase awareness, understanding, and healthy responses to their physical, emotional, and cognitive experiences.  

Through this environment, the StudioLab helps transform students into mindful, curious, whole-brain thinkers who integrate all elements of their being to best clarify, frame, and address the important and complex problems of life in a meaningful and fulfilling way.

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Obama Speechwriter Cody Keenan Writing Memoir ‘Grace’

By Brent Lang

Executive Editor

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The speechwriter who helped President Barack Obama pen his stirring address memorializing the victims of the Charleston church massacre will release a memoir about his time working in the White House.

Sugar23 Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books & Media, has acquired “Grace: A President, His Speechwriter, and Ten Days in the Battle for America” by Cody Keenan, one of the 44th president’s chief wordsmiths. The title is a reference to Obama’s eulogy for the victims of that mass shoot. He closed his remarks at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by leading a chorus of “Amazing Grace.”

“Grace” will be released in 2022. Keenan’s book will focus on 10 days in Obama’s presidency, during which he helped write addresses for the president dealing with everything from a public debate on the Confederate flag to Supreme Court rulings on healthcare and gay marriage. The publisher says the book will chronicle “a whirlwind of dramatic moments too implausible for a full season of ‘The West Wing.'”

“’Grace’ started with a string of tweets on the second anniversary of that week,” Keenan said. “At first, all I wanted to do was tell a story to show what this country can be at its best and what writing with Barack Obama is actually like when the stakes are highest. The years since have only added context to how those 10 days help make sense of the broader sweep of American progress and backlash, this clash of two fundamentally opposing visions of America — and this feels like the right time to finally sit down and write it all up.”

Popular on Variety

Keenan worked with Obama since 2007, rising from a campaign intern in Chicago to his chief speechwriter at the White House. He continued to work with Obama after his presidency concluded. Sugar23 is a media company launched by veteran manager and producer Michael Sugar. The company founder’s many credits include “Spotlight” and “The Knick.”

“’Grace’ offers an extraordinary glimpse into the mind of President Obama, and it introduces another prolific American thinker to the world, Cody himself,” said Sugar. “To be in proximity to Cody and to help publish ‘Grace’ is one of the true honors of my life to date.”

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Obama speechwriter Cody Keenan set to publish memoir 'Grace' in 2022

NEW YORK — The White House speechwriter who helped President Barack Obama work on his response to the Charleston church massacre in June 2015 has a book deal. Cody Keenan’s memoir is set around the time a white supremacist murdered nine Black parishioners in South Carolina.

“Grace: A President, His Speechwriter, and Ten Days in the Battle for America” will be published in fall 2022, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books & Media announced Tuesday.

Keenan will note that the Charleston tragedy was soon followed by other historic events. Within days, protesters called for the removal of the Confederate flag that had long flown on Statehouse grounds in Columbia, a demand met that July. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court announced two historic decisions, ruling that same-sex marriage was protected under the Constitution and upholding much of Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

The book’s title refers to a theme of Obama’s response to Charleston and to one of the most emotional moments of his presidency: his singing of “Amazing Grace” during his eulogy at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church for one of the victims, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney.

″'Grace’ started with a string of tweets on the second anniversary of that week,” Keenan said in a statement issued through the Houghton Mifflin imprint Sugar23 Books.

Check out: USA TODAY's weekly Best-selling Booklist

“At first, all I wanted to do was tell a story to show what this country can be at its best and what writing with Barack Obama is actually like when the stakes are highest. The years since have only added context to how those 10 days help make sense of the broader sweep of American progress and backlash, this clash of two fundamentally opposing visions of America — and this feels like the right time to finally sit down and write it all up.”

Keenan began working with Obama in 2007, when the future president was a first-term senator from Illinois. Keenan served as deputy director of speechwriting during Obama’s first term and as director during Obama’s second term. Other presidential addresses he worked on included Obama’s eulogy for Sen. Edward Kennedy in 2009 and his 2015 speech marking the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” when state troopers in Selma, Alabama, beat and teargassed civil rights marchers.

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Jon Favreau on Speechwriting, Life After D.C. ... and Melania Trump

By David Hochman

• July 21, 2016

LOS ANGELES — Stretched out on his living-room couch here, Jon Favreau watched Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention on Monday night with little more than a passing interest, since he was already thinking of bed and an early flight the next morning.

At that point, as a former speechwriter for the Obama White House, he was still marveling at the parade of speakers who had passed earlier on his TV screen, including Antonio Sabato Jr. and Scott Baio, with Donald J. Trump emerging W.W.E.-style in a bright fog to the sounds of Queen’s “We Are the Champions.”

It could not get any more surreal, he remembers thinking at the time.

And then it did.

About 8:30, around a half-hour after Ms. Trump’s speech ended, Mr. Favreau noticed on his Twitter feed that someone had retweeted a post from the journalist Jarrett Hill stating that there were striking similarities between the speech that had just been given and the one that Michelle Obama had delivered in Denver at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

That prompted him to rewatch Mrs. Obama’s speech. “When I saw ‘word is your bond’ from Melania’s speech, I instantly recognized the phrase from Michelle’s,” he said in an interview on Tuesday. Mr. Favreau had already tweeted his own reaction to his 121,000 followers, starting with an expletive and adding: “They’re nearly identical. Someone is seriously fired.”

Mr. Favreau certainly had reason to be interested. As the chief speechwriter for the 2008 Obama campaign, Mr. Favreau had hired the woman who wrote Mrs. Obama’s address. But the incongruity did not stop there.

As he tweeted a few minutes later: “Sarah Hurwitz, Michelle’s head speechwriter, used to be Hillary’s. So the Trump campaign plagiarized from a Hillary speechwriter.”

For Mr. Favreau (not to be confused with the actor of the same name ), it was an unexpected moment back in the political fray, one he thought he had largely left behind. In March 2013, feeling burned out, he left the president’s inner circle after eight years of hope, change and writing cheesy jokes for the turkey pardons .

He and some fellow D.C. exiles now run a communications consulting firm in Los Angeles, Fenway Strategies , and he has been emerging from the ghostwriter shadows with opinions of his own.

In many ways, Los Angeles is the un-Washington for Mr. Favreau. “It’s an industry town, but it’s not really my industry,” he said, although he occasionally toys with the idea of screenwriting. “People here talk about things other than government policy, like technology, sports and, you know, ‘The Bachelor.’”

Mr. Favreau, 35, still eats and breathes politics. He has a weekly podcast on The Ringer, a digital venture started last month by Bill Simmons, the sports columnist who was editor in chief of the website Grantland , which shut down last fall. Mr. Favreau pops up to talk politics on MSNBC or with Chelsea Handler on Netflix , looking tanned and relaxed (“Your girlfriend told me not to sleep with you,” Ms. Handler said as they hugged goodbye).

“ Keepin’ It 1600 ,” the podcast Mr. Favreau hosts with Dan Pfeiffer, another former Obama adviser , is a combination wonkfest on election minutia and uncensored forum. Expletives fly freely, and “insane” is perhaps the most frequent word used to characterize Mr. Trump.

“Jon can talk like an actual person rather than one of those tightly wound D.C. dudes in pleated khakis and a blue shirt,” said Jon Lovett, who has been a guest on the show. Mr. Lovett, a writer and producer for TV shows like “1600 Penn” and “The Newsroom,” also worked as a speechwriter under President Obama.

It was 2004 when Mr. Favreau first encountered his future boss at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Having gotten his start in Washington in Senator John Kerry’s press office through an internship at the College of the Holy Cross, Mr. Favreau, at 22, was suddenly charged with the excruciating task of informing the senatorial candidate from Illinois that he had to remove a rousing line from his keynote address that Senator Kerry wanted to use. Mr. Obama was not pleased, but he made the change.

Mr. Favreau joined Mr. Obama’s team a year later, and in 2009, he became the second-youngest chief White House speechwriter in history.

With his Ben Affleck smile and smidgen of a Mass Pike accent to match (he grew up just outside Boston, in Winchester), Mr. Favreau made the gossip pages with uncomfortable regularity.

He and the actress Rashida Jones were spotted dashing into his Dupont Circle apartment building. During the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, a photo surfaced of him , shirtless and with a buzz cut, playing a drinking game at a Georgetown bar.

More notorious was the Facebook shot someone posted of Mr. Favreau groping a cardboard cutout of the incoming secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. Her office let him off gracefully, but Mr. Favreau learned an important policy lesson. “Don’t act like a moron,” he said.

Over old-fashioneds at Soho House West Hollywood, the private members’ club down the block from his apartment (“This is sort of my second office,” he said), Mr. Favreau appeared fit and happy in a gray T-shirt, jeans and crisp maroon Vans.

The go-go life that had him on call 24/8 in Washington has given way to staring at his phone while in gym clothes yelling about Trump University. “I decided to write for The Ringer partly because it gives me a platform, but also because people come dressed to work, and it’s not just my goldendoodle I’m talking to,” he said.

His circle in general is tighter than it once was. Mr. Favreau’s brother, Andy, an actor, lives across the street. Mr. Lovett, also a neighbor, said he lives close enough “to access Jon’s Sonos system from my couch to play my entrance music.”

Over the Fourth of July weekend, Mr. Favreau became engaged to his live-in girlfriend of four years, Emily Black , who works on nonprofits for Sunshine Sachs, the public relations consultancy. “The culture of L.A. has mellowed Jon a little, but he’ll still wake me up at 6 a.m. to tell me whatever ridiculous thing Trump just said,” she said.

He was on a trip to Los Angeles for a 2009 fund-raising dinner with President Obama at George Clooney’s house when it struck Mr. Favreau that there was more to life than drafting floor statements on Patriot Act reauthorization. As Mr. Favreau put it, “It was hard to have a real relationship, I didn’t sleep a lot, and there was the Christmas I told my parents, ‘Let’s hurry up and open presents because I have an inaugural address to write.’”

Cody Keenan , the director of speechwriting since Mr. Favreau’s departure, said, “This job is great but exhausting, and I completely understand why he needed to step away.” Mr. Keenan said he still texts with Mr. Favreau nearly every day and consults with him on speeches and the perspective that comes with living outside the Beltway.

Even without a political post (Mr. Favreau said he had no plans to return to Washington), he believes he plays an important role in supporting the Democrats this campaign season. Although he came to “despise” Mrs. Clinton in 2008, he learned to appreciate how well informed and hard-working she was as secretary of state. Today he says he is a fan.

“I believe, with Hillary, that we are stronger together,” he said, “and that this country is a better place when you expand the opportunities to every single person: rich, poor, Muslim, Mexican, gay, woman.”

Mr. Favreau caught himself slipping into speechmaking mode and laughed.

“Whatever I do in life, I end up in the same place,” he said. “Writing about politics, talking about politics. I tried to quit. I can’t quit.”

An article last Sunday about the former White House speechwriter Jon Favreau referred incorrectly to the political office held by Barack Obama when he spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was a candidate that year for the United States Senate seat from Illinois; he had not yet been elected to that post.

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Jon Favreau

WSB Exclusive Speaker

Founder, Crooked Media, Host of Pod Save America; Assistant to the President and Director of Speechwriting for President Barack Obama (2009-2013)

A mastermind in crafting the most evocative and unforgettable speeches of our time, Jon Favreau, shares his insights and experiences from working alongside the President and provides inspiration to future leaders entering lives of public service.

Jon Favreau'S SPEAKING FEE Under $25,000

Presidents’ words can move people, persuade a country and define their place in history. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “Speech is power.” President Barack Obama’s director of speechwriting, Jon Favreau, not only rose to the challenge of being the second-youngest chief speechwriter in White House history but crafted some of the most evocative and unforgettable speeches of our time, unleashing the voice of a new generation. Considered one of the President’s most trusted and influential staffers, often referred to as his “mind reader,” Favreau played an indispensable role in the development—and success—of his most pivotal speeches. He began working with then-Senator Obama in 2005 as his speechwriter and transitioned to the 2008 presidential campaign. From the iconic “Yes We Can” 2008 New Hampshire primary night speech to the historic inaugural addresses of 2009 and 2013, Favreau’s work captured the historical significance of Barack Obama’s presidency, while connecting the zeitgeist of a nation with the message of its leader. Featured in TIME magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” and in GQ’s “50 Most Powerful People in D.C.,” Favreau is the co-founder of communications firm, Fenway Strategies, co-host of one of America’s most popular podcasts, Keepin’ It 1600 , and a columnist for The Ringer . Providing audiences with an intimate glimpse of his experiences in the White House, Favreau shares his unique insights that will compel future leaders in their fields to reach their full potential.

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The journey into a life of public service.

When Jon Favreau—director of speechwriting for President Barack Obama (2009-2013)—joined the White House at age 27, he became the second-youngest chief speechwriter in United States history. Sharing illuminating anecdotes from a career spent working alongside the Commander in Chief on the two most pivotal presidential campaigns in recent history, in the West Wing and throughout the world, Favreau conveys his own life experiences, his aspirations to balance idealism with the reality of politics and insights to inspire others to consider public service and develop their skills as future leaders.

Words Matter: Storytelling with President Obama in an Age of Sound Bites

The significance of meaningful and effective words cannot be overrated, especially when a critical message is needed to stand out in a 24/7 news cycle and break through the constant noise of social media.  Jon Favreau—director of speechwriting for President Barack Obama (2009-2013)—knows this all too well as he has worked on some of the most important communications coming from the OvalOffice.  According to Obama chief advisor David Axelrod, he has had his “stamp on all the great speeches from 2005 to early 2013” and always sought to tell a compelling story rather than string together a collection of sound bites. However, it is not simply a sheer talent with words that has made Favreau a success. While his rhetorical prowess has played a role, what sets Favreau above the rest is his unique ability to “see” or get behind the words—to capture the essence of an issue and create dialogue that clearly and powerfully articulates what it is about that issue that matters and why we should care. As former right-hand man and “mind reader” to arguably one of the greatest orators in United States history, Favreau offers his audiences valuable insight on how precisely—from conception to delivery—to “get behind the words we speak.” In the process, he discusses the significance of “mining” resources for inspiration, creating scripts that speak from and to the heart and “walking the walk” of talk.

What other organizations say about Jon Favreau

Jon Favreau is such an amazing person! Today was one of the most beautiful graduations that Greengates has ever had. Our students, teachers and parents were more than impressed. Jon’s speech was perfect, he was perfect! Education Programs

Jon Favreau was fantastic and a huge hit with our crowd! I think everyone was impressed with how smart and down-to-earth he is. He was incredibly gracious to take pictures and chat with several speechwriters before his presentation. Publishing

Thank you so much for your work to make the Jon Favreau lecture possible! We had a fantastic experience, and the students in attendance really enjoyed his speech. Jon was very engaging with our students at dinner and the reception following the lecture, and they are still talking about how much they liked him! Universities & Colleges

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Jon Favreau, President Obama’s head speechwriter, is departing

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WASHINGTON — Jon Favreau’s career took off when, at age 23, he interrupted U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama during a speech rehearsal to offer some suggestions for improvement.

That cheeky move led to a seven-year tour as Obama’s lead speechwriter, an assignment that ends March 1 as Favreau considers trying his hand at another form of drama — as a screenwriter, perhaps in Los Angeles.

The departure subtracts a vivid personality from the president’s operation, defined since the beginning by Obama’s spoken words and the team that wrote them.

After Favreau landed in the White House four years ago, he became the most recognizable in a coterie of young staffers. Sporting aviator sunglasses and a buzz cut, he occasionally lit up social media with his antics.

PHOTOS: President Obama’s past

People magazine named him one of the world’s most beautiful people. He went out with actress Rashida Jones, best known for her role in “The Office.” One night, as he and some friends played a shirtless game of beer pong in Georgetown, someone snapped a photo that ended up on the blog FamousDC, with the headline: “White House Gone Wild.”

But about the writing, Favreau was always serious, telling peers it was a solemn responsibility to remain in sync with the president’s thinking.

“When they’re working together, it’s like watching two musicians riff,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s longtime advisor. “Jon’s stamp is on all of the great speeches, from 2005 until now.”

Favreau will turn over his seat to Cody Keenan, a Chicago native who is taking the lead on writing the State of the Union address. Keenan is an original member of the team of twentysomethings that Favreau assembled for a tough assignment: writing for a writer with exacting standards.

Favreau declined Monday to discuss his departure.

PHOTOS: Armed presidents

In a statement, Obama said, “He has become a friend and a collaborator on virtually every major speech I’ve given in the Senate, on the campaign trail and in the White House.”

They didn’t start off as collaborators. Obama was an Illinois state senator running for the U.S. Senate when they met in 2004. He was preparing to deliver the Democratic National Convention speech that would launch his national career. Favreau was working as a junior speechwriter for the party’s presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who is from Favreau’s home state.

Kerry’s staff had spotted an overlap between Obama’s speech and the one their boss planned to deliver, and they sent Favreau to tell Obama to trim his text.

“It was an unbelievably cruel thing to do, to send the 23-year-old in to do that job,” Axelrod joked.

After Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate, he hired Favreau. Favreau then moved to Obama’s 2008 campaign and into the White House, where he earned a reputation as someone who could write speeches and parry with senior officials and Cabinet secretaries who wanted to put their fingerprints on the work.

If there were any doubts about him, Favreau quickly dispelled them when he wrote the first inaugural address and the president’s healthcare speech to Congress, said David Plouffe, a longtime Obama advisor.

PHOTOS: President Obama’s second inauguration

“Jon wasn’t going to come in with a draft that was not Barack Obama-like,” Plouffe said. “The president never has to worry that he’s going to get something and have to say, ‘This isn’t my voice.’”

Keenan is known for his handling of heartbreak and sadness. He was the lead writer on Obama’s speech at the Tucson memorial after the shooting of then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

Favreau plans to stay in Washington for a while, but he has often told friends that he wants to pursue screenwriting, as did former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett, the co-creator of the new comedy “1600 Penn.”

His time in the White House should serve Favreau well, Plouffe said.

“He can write comedy, history, drama, suspense,” he said. “He’s got the whole range.”

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A Former Speechwriter Looks Back On His 'Hopey, Changey' Years With Obama

Terry Gross

President Barack Obama speaks at the 2014 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in Washington, D.C. Speechwriter David Litt, who helped craft the president's comedy routine that night, says, "Some of the joke is always that it's the president telling a joke." Olivier Douliery/Getty Images hide caption

President Barack Obama speaks at the 2014 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in Washington, D.C. Speechwriter David Litt, who helped craft the president's comedy routine that night, says, "Some of the joke is always that it's the president telling a joke."

David Litt was 24 years old and just a few years out of college when he landed a job writing speeches for President Barack Obama — an experience he calls "surreal and completely terrifying."

Though he was initially assigned the speeches no one else wanted to write, Litt eventually became a special assistant to the president and senior presidential speechwriter. His duties included writing jokes for the short comedy routine Obama performed annually at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinners.

Litt says a lot of those jokes worked because they were coming from the president. "As I retell them, I often am reminded of this, because people give me a look like, 'Really? That was funny?' And I'm like, 'Yeah, you have to hear the president tell it.' "

Other speeches led to unintentional political controversy. When Litt wrote Obama a Thanksgiving address that neglected to mention God, conservative media criticized the president for the omission. The blowback taught Litt a valuable lesson. "Your job as a speechwriter is not just to write good speeches," he says. "Your job is to keep in the back of your mind the fact that there's a whole industry of people trying to take your words out of context — and that's politics."

Litt's new memoir is Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years.

Interview Highlights

Thanks, Obama

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On meeting Obama for the first time

I was about two years out of college, maybe three. I graduated in 2008 and I started writing at the White House in 2011. ...

I remember the first time I met the president. He asked me a question — "How's it going?" — and I literally blacked out. I don't know what I said to him, because I was so afraid to meet this person who had had such an impact on my life already — and also, by the way, was the president of the United States.. .. I had exactly one thought in that moment which was, "I did not realize we were going to have to answer questions." ...

I think that ability to function normally [while] under intense pressure, that's actually the hardest part of a White House job. It's not being brilliant all the time. It's being competent, even though there's all these incredibly difficult, high-stakes things happening around you.

On the ground rules for writing jokes for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner

It's not like there was a memo written, but there was just a sense of who the president is and what he would feel comfortable with. The jokes were always trying to make sure that we were getting at some truth that was important, and also if we were kind of targeting someone with a joke, that it was someone who deserved it and [told] in a way that they deserved it.

Politics & Pop Culture

Larry wilmore on 'breaking taboos' at the white house correspondents' dinner.

I mean, every year we would get pitched jokes, and this was totally fine. It's everyone's job to pitch everything that they think of. But you'd get jokes making fun of, let's say Chris Christie's size, and we never would use that in a speech because that's not the thing about Gov. Chris Christie that is worthy of mockery. ... We would make sure that it was about the political, not about the personal, [which] I think was important. I will say that President Obama was often the one pushing us. His words were, "Can we make this sharper? Can we make this edgier?"

On Trump declining to attend the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner

At Al Smith Dinner, Donald Trump Turns Friendly Roast Into 3-Alarm Fire

I was not surprised that he didn't go, because I had watched him at the Al Smith Dinner, which is kind of the Correspondents' Dinner of the presidential campaign, and he got booed during that dinner — and it is more or less impossible to get booed during a dinner like that. I mean, politeness is kind of the core virtue of a society like the Al Smith Dinner, and he still managed to do it, so I think he understood that it wasn't going to go well if he came. He just does not have the ability to deliver the kind of jokes that presidents are supposed to, and that people appreciate from their presidents.

I was still disappointed that he didn't give it a shot and he didn't try to meet the standard that has been set. Not in terms of comedy, but just in terms of self-deprecation. In terms of acknowledging that you're only human. You may be the president of the United States, but you're also just a person and you have flaws and you make mistakes. And there's a way of using those jokes to acknowledge them through comedy, and I think that is an important democratic tradition in its own way. I wish that President Trump realized that and he was willing to participate in it. I'm sadly not surprised he was not.

On President Trump's inaugural address

When I think about Trump's speeches, I honestly wish that my biggest concern was the rhetoric or the words that he's using. And it's impossible to get past the thoughts that he's conveying and the argument that he's making.

The line [in the inaugural address] ... about "American carnage" is a perfect example. It seems to me that that's a departure from all previous presidents who have tried to be optimistic, who have tried to say, "This is the best of what America can be." And Donald Trump, because of his style as a candidate, he needs you to believe that America is falling apart because his argument is, "I alone can fix it."

And so at every moment he is saying these things that are not at all in keeping [with] what we would think of as presidential — they're trying to make America seem worse than it actually is, rather than make us realize that America could be better than it's ever been before. And so it's not a speechwriting concern, it's not a matter of rhetoric — it's a matter of what this person is trying to express. And I find it disturbing as a speechwriter, but even more disturbing as an American.

On leaving the Obama White House in 2016 because of burnout

It was sad. It was bittersweet knowing I somehow was in a position where I got to regularly interact with the president of the United States and that wasn't going to happen again.

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'i basically ran on adrenaline': a staffer remembers obama's white house.

But it also seemed so surreal and so much luckier than I ever could've imagined that I got to do that at all, that I didn't find myself saying, "Oh I have to do this another two or three times." It was like winning the lottery. It was this moment of saying, "I got unbelievably lucky and I'm just going to enjoy that." ...

I miss being a part of something that's so big, and I miss helping people — not the president, but Americans. I miss highlighting their stories and bringing them to national attention. That was a special thing.

Sam Briger and Therese Madden produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Nicole Cohen adapted it for the Web.

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I spent my 20s as an Obama speechwriter. Here’s what he taught me about growing up.

And what the job taught me about rejecting Trumpism.

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Share All sharing options for: I spent my 20s as an Obama speechwriter. Here’s what he taught me about growing up.

In 2011, when I was 24, I was hired as a White House speechwriter. My first thought (after “holy crap!”) was that someone must have made a mistake.

It’s not that I thought I had no talent whatsoever. It’s just that I knew there were more than 300 million people in America. Sure, some of them were babies. But a lot of them were adults. It seemed unlikely that I was the best We, the People, could do.

In some ways, I clearly wasn’t. (In my new book, Thanks, Obama , I describe getting discovered, in my underwear, changing clothes in the coat closet of Air Force One. It’s the kind of predicament I suspect a slightly more mature human would be able to avoid.)

But that’s one reason I’m so grateful I got the chance to work in the Obama White House. For several years I was forced — often against my will, almost always against my instincts — to act like an adult.

My years in Obamaworld taught me the value of perseverance. As a 21-year-old, newly smitten with a candidate and his inspiring campaign, I assumed that doing good always felt good. Otherwise, why bother?

I now know better. Today when I think about what I admire most about President Barack Obama, it’s not his rhetorical style or his charisma. It’s his refusal to give up, even when changing the country felt deeply, painfully not fun. I’ll never forget the day after the 2014 midterms, a shellacking to end all shellackings. According to the traditional Washington script, POTUS was expected to apologize profusely, beg forgiveness, and radically scale back his goals.

Here’s what he said instead: “The principles that we’re fighting for, the things that motivate me every single day and motivate my staff every day — those things aren’t going to change.”

There were days when we knew we were on the right side of history and lost anyway. But President Obama was willing to keep fighting through them. And because he did, millions more Americans have health insurance, thousands of troops are home from war, and LGBTQ Americans across the country can marry the person they love — even in the age of Trump.

The unglamorous work of decision-making

Eight years in Obamaworld taught me the value of patience. In the Obama White House, we enjoyed keeping track of what the press referred to as POTUS’s “Katrina moments,” catastrophes from which he would supposedly never recover. A surge of undocumented minors at the border; the Ebola epidemic; the disastrous launch of Healthcare.gov — time and again, reporters, Republicans, and often even our allies insisted the wheels were coming off the bus.

In those moments, it would have been easy for the president to do something, anything, as long as it was drastic. Impulsiveness can often pass for decisiveness, especially when the stakes are high. But President Obama remained calm and thoughtful. He made changes: After the Healthcare.gov launch, for instance, we began more often “red-teaming” initiatives, assigning a designated pessimist to figure out what could possibly go wrong. But he made those changes methodically, with an eye toward long-term outcomes rather than short-term perception. At a time when the news cycle has shrunk to mere minutes, that’s not easy to do.

It taught me the value of discipline. I came to believe that what President Obama did, better than anybody, was distill complicated issues to their essence. Whether he was reading a policy memo or a punchline, he could identify its most important element. And perhaps most crucially, he had the self-control to pay attention to that element while delegating other, less important pieces to staff. One secret to solving big problems, I discovered, is knowing which little problems to ignore.

The real meaning of “the adult in the room”

There are plenty of other things I learned while at the White House. For instance, that decisions are only as good as the decision-making process. That generosity is a habit and not a trait. That all human beings, even presidents, look goofy chewing gum.

But here, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is the single most valuable lesson I learned in my 20s: There are no grown-ups, at least not in the way we imagined as kids. There’s no room full of all-knowing elders in charge.

True, people often referred to POTUS as “the adult in the room.” But it took me years before I fully understood what that meant. As much as I admire and respect him, President Obama wasn’t perfect. Not every decision he made was correct. What made Obama the adult in the room was the way he defined his priorities. Children strive only for pleasure; adults strive for fulfillment. Children demand adoration; adults earn respect. Children find worth in what they acquire; adults find worth in the responsibilities they bear.

And while it turns out the world has no all-powerful grown-ups, it has an overwhelming number of children. They come in all ages, from every walk of life and every corner of the political map.

More than anything else, or perhaps at the root of everything else, this is what worries me about our current political moment. Yes, Donald Trump is the oldest person ever to become president. But he’s also our first child commander-in-chief.

In this scary political moment, when a 71-year-old kid is the most powerful person on Earth, we could be forgiven for dreaming of Obama’s return. Maybe he’ll come back and save us, the way our parents swooped in and picked us up when we were little, and lost, and afraid.

It’s a comforting fantasy. But if we want the sense of possibility and decency at the heart of the Obama movement to return, we will have to be our own grown-ups. We will have to save ourselves. That’s the idea at the heart of democracy. None of us is the best of We, the People. But we are all we’ve got — and if each of us does their part, we’re good enough.

I remain an optimist — in the long term, anyway — because of and not despite what I’ve learned about being an adult. If there are no perfect grown-ups, it means that generations before us had to figure things out too. Our heroes were human beings. In their own messy and imperfect way, they preserved government of, by, and for the people, and handed it down to us.

If we reject Trumpism not just as a political philosophy but as a way of life — if we define ourselves by our responsibilities instead of our possessions, if we seek fulfillment over fleeting pleasure, if we earn respect instead of demanding adoration — then I believe we too can protect the democracy we love.

David Litt is the author of the New York Times best - selling memoir Thanks, Obama , from which this essay is adapted. He is also the head writer for Funny o r Die DC.

First Person is Vox's home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines , and pitch us at [email protected] .

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Barack Obama Meets Jen Psaki: An Embarrassing Moment and How She Recovered (Exclusive) 

In her new book, 'Say More,' the former White House Press Secretary and MSNBC correspondent reveals what she's learned from her years in D.C.

Scribner; Patrick Randak/MSNBC

Readers may know Jen Psaki as the White House Press Secretary under President Barack Obama , but the journalist also went on to serve under President Joe Biden and launched an MSNBC show that was later given a second slot ahead of Rachel Maddow. And now she's sharing her story, in a new book.

Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World , out May 7 from Scribner will offer lessons she's gleaned from the campaign trail, the briefing room and even motherhood.

Below, in an exclusive excerpt from her new book, Psaki reveals an awkward moment that happened the first time she met Obama (and another one, not too long after), how she recovered from it and what she learned about communication and self-advocacy that's inspired her along her career journey, so far.

I was still  in my twenties when I started working on Barack Obama ’s presidential campaign. The then-senator from Illinois was a rising star in the Democratic Party who came to national attention after delivering a speech that brought the 2004 Democratic National Convention to its feet.

I was actually backstage in the hall that night, tasked alongside speechwriter Jon Favreau with prepping John Kerry’s daughters to speak at the convention the next night. I wish I could say we had both witnessed Obama’s historic speech live, but instead we were backstage with the sisters as they debated about the speaking order, just as my sisters and I probably would have. 

Theo Wargo/WireImage

By the time I was working at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee with Rahm Emanuel, Obama was the most popular campaign surrogate—the politician most often asked to campaign for other Democrats. A lot of us already believed he would be the next president of the United States.

The first time I met him was months after I started working on the campaign and I’d been dispatched from Chicago to be the press staffer at a 2007 fundraiser in Cincinnati. When I arrived, I met up with members who escorted me to the tarmac and asked me to sit in Obama’s car so that we would be ready to leave when he arrived. While I waited, I wondered what I should say to this already larger-than-life figure. I thought I’d come up with a pretty good line when all of a sudden he opened the door and sat down. 

“I bet you are wondering who I am and why I’m in your car?” 

Never miss a story — sign up for  PEOPLE's free daily newsletter  to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer , from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

I felt pretty proud of myself that I spit it out. That didn’t last long. Somehow, in my slightly nervous delivery, I caught the arm of my purse on the door handle and half the contents flew across the backseat and into Obama’s lap. Pens, lipstick and possibly a tampon. He may have jumped, slightly, before giving me a subtly ironic look as he helped pick up my belongings now strewn across the floor of the car.

This pales in comparison to the time just a few months later when I made the poor choice of jumping over a literal hurdle at a campaign event, splitting my pants down the middle. I landed in a media report after Obama made an offhand comment that my pants looked “pretty X-rated.” 

Pool/ABACA/Shutterstock 

Obama is calm and cerebral, in many ways the opposite of Rahm. He didn’t typically shout orders at staff (which made it that much scarier when he even slightly raised his voice). And when a staffer made a mistake, Obama’s reaction often reminded me of my mother, who simply says she’s “disappointed.” 

Of course, dumping my purse into Obama’s lap wasn’t really a mistake; it was actually a good way to break the ice. My first actual mistake in this job came during the first campaign summer of 2008, when I missed a bus that was supposed to take me and a group of reporters from an event to Obama’s plane.

We weren’t stuck discussing a breaking news story. We were playing basketball in the gym and lost track of time. I am not even a hardcore basketball player; we were just taking a little break during a multi-day set of campaign events. Instead of traveling on that bus in the candidate’s motorcade, as we were supposed to,  we had to take taxis and got stuck in horrible traffic. 

The plane didn’t leave without us, but by the time we got there, the Democratic nominee had been waiting an hour, mostly because he didn’t want to leave the reporters stranded. I sheepishly walked up to the front of the plane to apologize, bracing to get yelled at by an understandably upset Barack Obama for the first time. 

“You are normally an A student,” he said, always the constitutional law professor deep down. “So I am going to let this one slide.” 

Sometimes you can be both inspired and intimidated by someone’s public persona. The first few years I worked for Obama, from the campaign to the White House, I was nervous every single time I was expected to talk in his company. For starters, he’s legitimately brilliant and uniquely thoughtful in how he approaches big, challenging issues, and you often had the feeling he knew not only everything you were about to tell him but also everything you were supposed to be telling him but hadn’t had the time or high-enough IQ to learn. He holds his cards close to his chest.  

While he loves a good debate or conversation, and often seeks out the quietest person in the room for their thoughts, he can be uninterested in extensive feedback, especially if it is of the bloviating variety. It wasn’t my job at the time to provide him with a great deal of direct information, but I became paralyzed by the fear of saying something stupid, or inappropriate, in front of him.

As a result, I would try to blend into the back of the room and hope he wouldn’t ask me a question. I would even suggest others go in my place to meetings he’d be attending. 

That fear was exhausting. Every day I was trying to navigate my job and daily responsibilities while also handling my insecurity and nerves about interacting with my boss. I couldn’t picture myself actually having a substantive role in those meetings. I couldn’t even envision what I would contribute. I believe they call this impostor syndrome. 

My solution at the time was to throw myself into being a team player. I sent detailed notes to my direct bosses so that they would be prepared for meetings, and I volunteered to call back reporters on their behalf when they were busy. I didn’t speak up or question much.  

I worked long hours and developed a reputation for being one of the more organized and calm members of the team.

But that deference didn’t exactly position me as someone who could strategically drive an agenda—or who could grow into a much bigger role. This fear led me to worry that Obama saw me as an obedient junior staffer and not someone he could rely on for strategic or press advice—and given how I’d attempted to blend into the scenery, he wouldn’t be wrong to do so.

Shutterstock

I called Robert Gibbs, who had been the White House press secretary during the first two years of Obama’s first term, for advice on how I could shift the President’s perception and establish myself as the person who deserved to be the one briefing him for political interviews and public engagements on the road—how I could possibly see myself as equipped to give the president feedback.

Gibbs’ advice has always stuck with me because it was so simple—and delivered with a hint of his trademark southern drawl. “Act like you belong there,” he said, “because you do, and at a certain point everyone else will believe it, too.” I took the advice, and while I still remember the level of intense nervousness before my first campaign trip that year, after a while it got easier. I did start to believe I belonged there.

Excerpted from  Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World  by Jen Psaki. Copyright 2024 © by Jen Psaki. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC

Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World by Jen Psaki is on sale May 7, and available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.

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Chris Pan gave bizarre Ohio State commencement address — here's who he was picked over

Michelle Obama, Lizzo, LeBron James, Michael Phelps and Trevor Noah topped the list of prospective speakers for Ohio State University's 2024 spring commencement ceremony , according to commencement speaker recommendation lists obtained by The Dispatch.

Absent from those lists was Chris Pan, the social entrepreneur and Ohio State alum who was ultimately selected to deliver the commencement address. Pan was listed as a possible Ohio State commencement speaker for 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, but not for the 2024 spring commencement.

Higher education: Ohio State graduates show solidarity for Palestine, tragedy over death during commencement

VIDEO: Buckeye Nation shamed by Chris Pan's awful commencement speech

Pan delivered a polarizing speech during Sunday's spring commencement ceremony that some on social media called disrespectful, embarrassing and bizarre.

The speech included two brief musical numbers, to "What's Going On?" by the 4 Non Blondes and "This Little Light of Mine" written by Harry Dixon Loes — and espoused how he thinks Bitcoin is "a very misunderstood asset class," which was met by groans from audience members. (He promised everyone in attendance a free bracelet from his company, MyIntent, "as an apology for listening to me talk about Bitcoin.").

Pan said before Sunday that he was high on ayahuasca, a psychedelic liquid made from heating or boiling multiple psychoactive plants from South America, while drafting his speech , according to posts on his LinkedIn and Instagram accounts. Pan also said he tried using ChatGPT and artificial intelligence to write his speech.

"Got some help from AI (Ayahuasca Intelligence) this week to write my commencement speech for 60k grads and family members at Ohio State University next Sunday," he wrote in  a LinkedIn post  before graduation.

How did Pan end up being chosen to be commencement speaker?

Many have questioned how and why Pan ended up being chosen to give the spring commencement address in the first place.

Ohio State President Ted Carter told reporters on Wednesday that Pan was on a nomination list of possible commencement speakers dating back to 2019.

According to the 2019-2020 commencement speaker recommendations, Pan was listed as a possible speaker for OSU's summer and winter graduation ceremonies. He was listed again the following year for summer and winter graduations. Pan had not been a recommended speaker for any commencement ceremonies since.

Ohio State spokesman Ben Johnson said the process for selecting a speaker is cumulative and speakers can be drawn from previous recommendations.

"The Office of the President, Commencement and Special Events makes the final decision to match potential speakers with spring, summer or autumn commencement based on a variety of factors, including speaker availability," Johnson said.

How are Ohio State's commencement speakers selected?

The selection process for who will be Ohio State's spring commencement speaker begins the previous winter.

The university charges a Commencement Speaker Advisory Committee , compromised of a rotating list of students and employees, with developing a slate of potential speakers for its December, May, and August Commencement ceremonies.

An online nomination portal is open year-round. This year's final slate of speaker recommendations was drawn from nominations submitted between Feb. 1, 2022, and Jan. 31, 2023.

Next, the Commencement Speaker Advisory Committee reviews the nominations and provides feedback on them. The committee meets to discuss nominations and share any additional comments. Final recommendations were made by the committee on Feb. 15, 2023.

While all three of the university's graduation ceremonies draw thousands of graduates and their guests, spring commencement holds special significance.

"Given the importance of the May Commencement as a major event for the university, the committee will seek to identify a slate of speakers of national or international stature befitting a ceremony celebrating 10,000+ graduates," according to the committee's website.

Potential speakers, according to the committee, should be or have the following qualities:

• A good public speaker;
• In a position to deliver a meaningful message with relevance for our graduating students;
• A leader in their field or linked to important and compelling issues;
• Name recognition (especially for May Commencement);
• Core values consistent with those of Ohio State’s mission, vision, and values.

Who was recommended to speak at Ohio State's spring commencement?

According to this year's commencement speaker recommendations, the committee developed its short list of speakers using the following characteristics: "Dynamic and energizing; someone who has an important message to share, humble; down to earth, evokes emotion, builds on good logic, relevance of character; well-rounded, energetic, experienced speaker; celebrates students; well known; authentic; natural and conversational; short, concise, and to the point."

While many people were listed as prospective speakers, it is unclear whether any were offered to speak or were available and willing to do so.

This year's committee said former First Lady Michelle Obama was its No. 1 pick for May graduation, as she "outperformed other nominations in terms of interest" and was "almost two times as popular" as other nominees.

Her husband, former U.S. President Barack Obama, gave the spring commencement speech in 2013.

Two speakers who appear on both lists were Harvard Professot Mahzarin Banaji and NBA player and Akron native LeBron James. Both "should be prioritized for the May commencement but would also be suitable speakers for the August and December commencement ceremonies," the committee said.

"There was strong interest in LeBron James, so he was placed high on both lists, with the understanding that his availability may be challenging for certain ceremonies while he is still playing in the NBA (playoffs)," the committee said.

Three committee members said U.S. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps "would carry a strong message for young graduates, especially regarding mental health and resilience."

One of the student members "noted that the graduates of the August and December commencement ceremonies deserve as notable of speakers as the May commencement ceremony, and that there shouldn’t necessarily be a distinction between the ceremonies."

Committee members also recognized that a student voice at graduation, either in introducing the commencement speaker or in giving a short speech themselves, "would be deeply empowering."

Sheridan Hendrix is a higher education reporter for The Columbus Dispatch. Sign up for Extra Credit, her education newsletter,  here .

[email protected]

@sheridan120

White Coworker Tried to Run Over Black Employee At Chicago’s Water Department and Superiors ‘Did Nothing,’ Discrimination Lawsuit Says

A proposed $5.8 million settlement for Black workers who were victims of racism, discrimination, retaliation and harassment at Chicago’s Water Department is awaiting review and approval by city leaders.

The settlement was announced on Monday, May 6, a month before a class action lawsuit filed by 12 current and former Black employees of the department was due to go to federal court for trial. Former Chicago mayor and current U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel may have been called upon to testify, according to a report by the Chicago Sun-Times.

“The racism lasted for decades and affected countless Black employees, which raises the question of why the city’s uppermost leaders failed to act,” said the employees’ attorney, Vic Henderson, who disclosed the settlement amount. “The sad and most obvious answer is that they did not care. Shame on them.”

Many of the plaintiffs in the case worked for the Water Department for decades, but they allege they only make up a fraction of the countless Black workers who were victims of corporate racism.

Filed in 2017, the lawsuit accused white supervisors of passing them over for promotions, refusing to give them the same treatment as their white counterparts when they were injured on the job, and harassing them with racial slurs and jokes that were sent through email and said directly to their faces.

One of the plaintiffs, Derrick Edmond, worked for the Water Department for 33 years. He told the Sun-Times that he once had to go through 18 interviews to get a promotion that was being held for a “young white candidate.”

“What they want you to do is get discouraged and don’t go to the interview no more — and many of us do that. But I said I’m not stopping,” Edmond said. “So, I … kept on going. Then, they gave me the job and they turned around and took it back.”

Another plaintiff, Leslie Travis Cook, worked at the department for 20 years, the Sun-Times reported. She said a supervisor once threw a stapler at her, and a co-worker tried to run her over with a car. When she reported it to city officials, she said they “did nothing” and “dismissed” the co-worker’s action in the car as “horseplay.”

According to CBS News , there were also many emails filled with racist language, including racist jokes about former President Barack Obama, Black NASCAR drivers and Black Lives Matter members and supporters.

In one email labeled “Obama Angry with Texas,” the user wrote, “Obama will be making no more public speeches in Texas … He claims every time he gets up on stage to make a speech, some South Texas cotton farmers start bidding on him.”

Another with the subject line, “Black NASCAR Drivers?” in explaining the reason Black people are not really in the sport claimed, “there are no black NASCAR drivers” because “Pistol won’t stay under front seat,” “Engine noise drowns out the rap music,” and “They keep trying to carjack Dale Earnhardt Jr.”

The suit also alleges the supervisors’ behavior emboldened other white employees to follow suit.

“Observing the discriminatory pattern of treatment of African-American employees and hearing the racially derogatory language, other Caucasian employees learned that racially discriminatory behavior would not only be tolerated but that they themselves should engage in such behavior,” the lawsuit states.

Still, another email between two city employees said, “I really need to get out in the woods again if not to just be with the critters, but also to eradicate all the BLM idiots and all the bull—t from the idiots and criminals that back these.”

The aforementioned emails were uncovered, along with many other racist ones, during an investigation by Chicago’s then-Inspector General Joseph Ferguson. In 2018, after completing his review, Ferguson called for seven city employees to be fired from the Water Department.

They included Barrett Murphy, who then served as commissioner for the Water Department; William Bresnahan, a managing deputy; and Paul Hansen, who was the superintendent of the department’s North District at the time. Hansen is also the son of former Chicago Alderman Bernard Hansen.

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What's the best state for you », why the speech by kansas city chiefs kicker was embraced at benedictine college's commencement.

Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker may have stirred controversy for his proclamations of conservative politics and Catholicism, but he received a standing ovation at the May 11 commencement ceremony at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas

Why the Speech by Kansas City Chiefs Kicker Was Embraced at Benedictine College's Commencement

Nick Ingram

The Benedictine College sign is seen Wednesday, May 15, 2024, in Atchison, Kan., days after Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker gave a commencement speech that has been gaining attention. Butker's speech has raised some eyebrows with his proclamations of conservative politics and Catholicism, but he received a standing ovation from graduates and other attendees of the commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 11. (AP Photo/Nick Ingram)

Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker may have stirred controversy in some quarters for his proclamations of conservative politics and Catholicism on Saturday, but he received a standing ovation from graduates and other attendees of the May 11 commencement ceremony at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

The fast-growing college is part of a constellation of conservative Catholic colleges that tout their adherence to church teachings and practice — part of a larger conservative movement in parts of the U.S. Catholic Church.

Butker's 20-minute speech hit several cultural flashpoints.

Butker, a conservative Catholic himself, dismissed Pride month as consisting of the “deadly sin sort of pride" while denouncing abortion and President Joe Biden's handling of the pandemic. He said women are told “diabolical lies” about career ambition when “one of the most important titles of all” is that of homemaker. He said this is not time for “the church of nice” and in particular blasted Catholics who support abortion rights and “dangerous gender ideologies.”

WHAT IS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE?

Benedictine College is a Catholic college in Atchison, Kansas, that traces its roots to 1858. It is located about 60 miles north of Kansas City., and has an enrollment of about 2,200.

LOTS OF COLLEGES ARE CATHOLIC. WHAT MAKES IT DISTINCTIVE?

In some ways, Benedictine College sounds like a typical Catholic college. Its “mission as a Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts, residential college is the education of men and women within a community of faith and scholarship,” according

to its website.

But its home to more traditional expressions of Catholicism, such as the Latin Mass, all-night prayer vigils and a strict code of conduct. Its mission statement further cites its commitment to "those specific matters of faith of the Roman Catholic tradition, as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and handed down in the teachings of the Church.”

The school gets a high ranking from the Cardinal Newman Society, a group that touts nearly two-dozen conservative colleges that exhibit what it calls “faithful Catholic education." That includes upholding church teachings and Catholic identity while providing ample Masses and other devotional activities in shaping their students.

The society seeks to differentiate schools that “refuse to compromise their Catholic mission” from those that have become “battlegrounds for today’s culture wars.” Others praised by the society include Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., Ave Maria University in Florida and Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio.

The society's ranking says Benedictine benefits from having monks in residence, multiple Masses and prayer groups, spiritually focused organizations and theology programs with professors with a “mandatum" of approval from the local bishop.

HOW HAS THAT RESONATED WITH STUDENTS?

Benedictine's enrollment has doubled in the past 20 years. Some 85% of its students are Catholic, according to the Cardinal Newman Society.

Students told The Associated Press in interviews they embrace the college's emphasis on Catholic teaching and practice.

“It’s a renewal of, like, some really, really good things that we might have lost,” one student told the AP in its recent article on the revival of conservative Catholicism.

OTHER FACTS

Annual tuition for full-time undergraduates is $35,350, but Benedictine says 100% of its students receive some form of financial aid.

Benedictine’s sports teams, called the Ravens, compete in National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. Its athletics department says it is committed to ”setting the highest standards for academic success, athletic competition, ethical behavior, fiscal responsibility, and spiritual development.”

HOW DID GRADUATES REACT TO BUTKER’S SPEECH?

Video of the commencement shows virtually all the graduates and spectators rising to a standing ovation, but student interviews showed a more mixed reaction.

ValerieAnne Volpe, 20, who graduated with an art degree, lauded Butker for saying things that “people are scared to say.”

“I was thinking about my dad, who was also here, and how he’s probably clapping and so happy to see what he would say is a real man (reflecting) family values, good religious upbringing and representation of Christ to people,” she said. “You can just hear that he loves his wife. You can hear that she loves his family.”

Kassidy Neuner, 22, said the speech felt “a little degrading” and gave the impression that only women can be a homemaker.

“I think that men have that option as well,” said Neuner, who will be spending a gap year teaching before going to law school. “And to point this out specifically that that’s what we’re looking forward to in life seems like our four years of hard work wasn’t really important.”

Elle Wilbers, 22, who is heading to medical school in the fall, said the Catholic faith focuses on mothers, so that portion of the speech wasn’t surprising. She was more shocked by his criticism of priests and bishops “misleading their flocks” and a quip comparing LGBTQ+ Pride month to one of the seven deadly sins.

“We should have compassion for the people who have been told all their life that the person they love is like, it’s not okay to love that person,” Wilbers said. “It was sort of just a shock. I was like, ‘Is he really say this right now?’”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Copyright 2024 The  Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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