Speaking to 2018 graduates at the University of Maryland on Sunday, it wasn’t until 19 minutes into a 22-minute speech that former Vice President Al Gore mentioned President Donald Trump’s name.
But his address nonetheless marked a commencement ceremony that pushed graduates to fight what both Gore and university President Wallace Loh described as challenges to American democracy.
Gore, nowadays best known for his advocacy to fight global warming that earned him a Nobel Prize in 2007, urged the graduates to vote in large numbers in the coming years, suggesting that America’s “experiment” with the Trump administration should, like some scientific ventures, “be terminated early for ethical reasons.”
“Your generation has a mission ahead of it,” Gore said. “I hope that you will find the will to succeed. In America, the will to succeed is, in fact, a renewable resource.”
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