Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was announced Friday as the Class of 2017 Valediction speaker for final exercises on May 19. Deborah McDowell, literary studies professor and director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, will address graduates of the College on May 20, and Robert Pianta, dean of the Curry School, will address the rest of the graduates on May 21.
Santos, who has been in office since August 2010 and ends his second term in August 2018, is the 32nd President of the Republic of Colombia and the sole recipient of the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize, which was given to him for his "resolute efforts to bring the country's more than 50-year-long civil war to an end.”
Colombia has been engaged in a civil war for more than 50 years, one of the longest civil wars in the modern era, with at least 220,000 total Colombian casualties and about seven million people displaced as a result.
After lengthy deliberations towards peace between Santos and the Social Party of National Unity, and the opposition, the FARC guerillas, Colombian voters voiced their opinion in a national referendum in October 2016.
The referendum failed with a less than one percent margin — approximately 50,000 votes. Opponents of the peace agreement said they believed it would have been too lenient towards the rebels and reward criminal behavior.
Immediately after Santos’ hard-fought negotiations were rejected in the referendum, he called the opposing party to participate in a broad national dialogue to protect the idea of peace for the country.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it believes Santos “has brought the bloody conflict significantly closer to a peaceful solution, and that much of the groundwork has been laid for both the verifiable disarmament of the FARC guerrillas and a historic process of national fraternity and reconciliation.”
In late November 2016, Colombia's Congress approved a new peace deal with the FARC.
Santos’ son, Esteban Santos, is a fourth-year Batten and College student at the University.
“Before he was going to be giving the graduation speech, he was just going to be a regular dad, proud of his son. But now, it’s a two way thing,” Esteban Santos said. “Now I’m very proud that my father is going to give the speech.”
Because the University does not pay its speakers nor offer honorary degrees, the Fourth-Year Trustees Graduation Committee has a history of reaching out to speakers with a connection to the University, fourth-year Engineering student and committee member Naveed Tavakol said. The committee recently reached out to Esteban to see if his father would be interested in speaking.
“I, of course, said that he would love it,” Esteban said. “It is a great honor and privilege to be the speaker at a graduation, especially at U.Va.”
Tavakol defined the ideal graduation speaker as “someone who has the innate drive to come to U.Va, to speak at our University and really take that as an important event in their life.”
Santos’ peace negotiations were the fourth attempt at negotiations that would disarm the FARC guerrillas. Esteban remembers the disappointment from Oct. 2, 2016, the day that the “no” vote won, and the way that his father quickly turned around to negotiate again with the opposition for peace.
“Everyone wants peace, I think it just became very political,” Esteban said. “My father said, ‘we cannot risk going back to war for 50,000 votes.’”
Five days later, his father was granted the Nobel Peace Prize.
Esteban said he thinks his father has fostered transformation for the better in his home country.
“[This speech] is a great opportunity to send a message to the fourth-years that are going to go out into the real world where there’s a lot of things going on,” Esteban said. “People are scared or uncertain. [My father] can give a message to them that life is full of surprises but you have to keep your head high and persevere.”
McDowell said in an email to The Cavalier Daily that she is humbled to have been selected to speak in addition to Santos.
“I am deeply honored — and humbled — to have been invited to address the graduates of the College,” McDowell said. “The opportunity to speak to them, their families, and my colleagues fills me with tremendous pride, and I hope that I can prove myself worthy of the honor.”
Pianta expressed similar sentiments about his role in Finals Weekend.
“It is an extraordinary honor to have the opportunity to speak at graduation,” Pianta said in an email statement. “Speaking to the 2017 graduates of the professional schools is for me a chance to reflect on the many roles our graduates will play in improving the world through their work.”
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