Im president of flair and i am so happy that you joined us for this very interesting. Look at four different first ladies and some of their rhetorical responses. Um before we begin this afternoon, id like to thank floyd flares inaugural institution lifetime members American UniversityRider University the White House Historical association, the Massachusetts Historical Society and our newest inaugural lifetime institutional member the Gerald R Ford president ial foundation. Were glad to have you with us. In the interests of time. Id like to take this next few minutes to introduce the four people who will be part of the afternoons program. Were going to be starting with nancy keegan smith. Nancy is former director of the president ial Materials Division at the National Archives and Records Administration. She has written lectured and published on first ladies. Since the 1980s including Lady Bird JohnsonMichelle Obama and the records of modern first ladies a Founding Member and inaugural lifetime member of flair. She serves as our vice president. Dr. Diana carlin is professor emerita of communication at Saint Louis University and a retired professor of Communication Studies at the university of kansas. She has researched and taught about first ladies for 30 years and has written chapters on martha, washington Lady Bird Johnson, Barbara Bush Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama. Diana is also a Founding Member and an inaugural lifetime member of flair and she serves the organization as our treasurer. Dr. Ann mattina is professor and chair of communication at Stonehill College her research focuses on american womens public activism spanning from the early 19th century to the current day. In addition to conference presentations on first ladies. She has published several rhetorical studies of Hillary Rodham clinton. And is an inaugural lifetime member of flare. And finally, but certainly not least dr. Tammy v hill tammy is associate professor of communication and the senior associate dean of the college of communication at boston university. Dr. Viejos books include moms in chief the rhetoric of republican motherhood and the spouses of president ial nominees 1992 through 2016, melania and michelle first ladies in a new era and connecting with constituents identification building and blocking in the contemporary National Convention addresses. Tammy is also an inaugural lifetime member of flair. Its my pleasure at this moment to turn the program over to nancy keegan smith. Nancy youre muted its a pleasure to be here today and to welcome all of our people and i think we have a very Interesting Program lined up recent first ladies and their speeches have often tackled issues as leaders of society ladybird johnson said that while the job had no assign duties a podium is there she chooses to use it from the very Rich Holdings of the president ial libraries of the National Archives and Records Administration on first ladies. We will hear four keyments of speeches by Barbara Bush Hillary Clinton laura bush and Michelle Obama, which had a powerful impact after watching these our panel of experts will analyze and discuss them. We can go to the next slide on mrs. Bush. Mrs. Purchase humor and attitude toward what is important in life are clearly shown in a speech. She made at Wellesley College on june 1st 1990. She had not been the first choice and her selection caused controversy on the campus. Lets see and hear some of her speech. And diana now, i know your first choice today was alice walker. Guess how i know. Known for the color purple instead. You got me known for the color of my hair and as you said off from wellesley, i hope that many of you will consider. Making three very special choices the first is to believe in something larger than yourself to get involved in some of the big ideas of our time i chose literacy because i honestly believe that if more people could read write and comprehend we would be that much closer to solving so many of the problems that plague our nation and our society. Early on i made another choice, which i hope youll make as well whether youre talking about Education Career or service. Youre talking about life and life really must have joy. Its supposed to be fun. One of the reasons. I made the most important decision of my life to marry george bush is because he made me laugh. Its true. Sometimes we laugh through our tears, but that shared laughter has been one of our strongest bonds. Find the joy in life because his Ferris Bueller said on his day off. Life moves pretty fast and you dont stop and look around once a while youre gonna miss it. Im not gonna tell george you clap more. Paris and your clap for george the third choice that must not be missed is to cherish your human connections your relationships with family and friends. For several years youve had impressed upon you the importance to your career dedication and hard work. And of course, thats true but as important as your obligations as a doctor a lawyer a Business Leader will be you are a human being first and those human connections with spouses with children with friends or the most important investment you will ever make from that powerful speech we will go to mrs. Clinton mrs. Clinton was clearly a first lady with many different public roles one of which was to use her platformist first lady to push strongly throughout the world for equal rights for women. Lets hear some of her there is one message that echoes forth from this conference. Let it be that human rights are womens rights and womens rights are human rights rights once and for all and among those rights are the right to speak freely and the right to be heard women must enjoy the rights to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries if we want. Freedom and democracy to thrive and endure it is indefensible that many women in nongovernmental organizations who wish to participate in this conference have not been able to attend or have been prohibited from fully taking part. Let me be clear. Freedom means the right of people to assemble organize and debate openly it means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them mistreating them or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions. Just like mrs. Johnson mrs. Bushs early role was defined by an unexpected National Tragedy 9 11 on november 17th. 2001 laura bush made history while advocating for a worldwide effort to focus on the brutal treatment of afghan women and children by the town van machine during the weekly president ial radio address, mrs. Bush was the first first lady to deliver the address in its entirely good morning. Im laura bush and im delivering this weeks radio address to kickoff a worldwide effort to focus on the brutality against women and children by the alqaeda terrorist network and the regime its supports in afghanistan the taliban. That regime is now in retreat across much of the country and the people of afghanistan especially women are rejoicing afghan women know through hard experience what the rest of the world is discovering the brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorist. Long before the current war began the taliban and its terrorist allies were making the lives of children and women in afghanistan miserable 70 of the Afghan People are malnourished one in every four children wont live past the age of five because health care is not available. In may of 2013 mr. Obama in her speech to Bowie State University students challenges them in a way only misses obama can do to make education a priority and to set an example for those who will follow them. When it comes to getting an education. Too many of our young people. Just can be bothered. Today instead of walking miles every day to school. Theyre sitting on couches for hours playing video games watching tv. Instead of dream and of being a teacher or lawyer Business Leader, theyre fantasized and about being a baller or rapper. Right now right now one in three African American students are dropping out of high school. Only one in five African Americans between the ages of 25 and 29 has gotten a college degree. One in five but lets be very clear today getting an education is as important if not more important than it was back when this university was founded. As my husband stand up and reject the slander that says a black child with a book is trying to act white. Reject that in short be an example of excellence for the next generation and do everything you can to help them understand the power and purpose of a good education. We have now heard four segments were first ladies have effectively used their podium on subjects as different as a role of a woman in society on the taliban on human rights and on the importance of education, i would now like to turn over the panel to my good friend and colleague diana carlin to start the discussion and analysis of these and other first lady speeches. Thank you, nancy. And ann and tammy are joining me here. Were going to run this more or less like a panel. So youll see all three of us as nancy said were just going to take the speeches in order and also well probably throw in some examples of some other women if it fits that particular speech and i would say please put your questions. Theres an email address to send the questions to and you dont have to ask just about these first ladies these four if you have questions about any others, please do that also as nancy said when she started Barbara Bushs speech was mired in controversy. Alice walker was the choice of the class and when she turned them down the administration decided on their own to invite barbara bush. I did a lot of research on this speech. Its a bush library and among the many papers. I found related to it where the scheduling papers where they had originally decided. You know, they just put this invitation in as if it were any other commencement address they werent aware of what had happened to get barber the invitation and at one point they werent even sure they were going to include it because the gorbachevs were going to be in town and she had another commitment in boston to go dedicate something the watch out for the ducklings at a park. So then they decided to do it and when they worked on this speech they worked on it at along with all of our other commencement addresses. So it wasnt that much different from our other commencement addresses one thing nancy didnt mention was this speech was one of the top third speeches of the 20th century as was Hillary Clintons beijing speech George Hw Bush did not have a speech in the top 100 that barbara did so to kind of kick this off, you know commencement speeches arent usually very memorable. And dont capture first ladies give tons of these they dont capture a whole lot of attention except for the city where they happened and this one got worldwide attention. Not just because the controversy but also because of the message and to kind of put this in a little more context. She was the last of the World War Two generation first ladies, then we got to the baby boomers with Hillary Clinton, and she was really dealing with some general issues. So tammy and ann, i dont know which he wants to start first. Why do you think this captured the attention of these women after they were not really excited about having somebody who they believed had simply gotten where she was because of who she married um, go ahead kim if youd like to start. Sure, no problem. So i think there are a couple of things about this speech that make it worthwhile and well, theyre a bunch of things that make it worthwhile, but i think one of the reasons why it was so captivating particularly for that audience was possibly because it was so unexpected. They had sort of come into as an audience come into the speech with a bit of a chip on their shoulder with those expectations of what can she possibly say to us and the speech itself is really built around the question of diversity and embracing diversity in different kinds of ways and i think couching the conversation that she did in couching the conversation the way that she did barbara bush actually made it so much more relatable to these the women in the audience and then also the broader audience and so because it was unexpected because they didnt think she was going to deliver much and because she brought so much of her personality into this speech as well and demonstrated her ability to be thoughtful to be engaging to be really respectful of who they were and also challenging them to be more than what they thought in ways that they might not have expected. I think thats all why it kind of captivated the particular audience and then the ways in which she used different kinds of metaphors and stories and anecdotes throughout and also had lots of wonderful little laugh lines. Some of them were planned some of them were, you know, spontaneous. I think those moments just made her so endearing and also reinforced the overall message that she was trying to across and so i think thats why its a message that still endures. Plus the message itself is enduring. I mean believing in something larger than yourself life must have joy cherish your human connections like its hard not to really like that message and then the way that she delivered it. Great. I also was very interested in the fact that one of the things that she does immediately in. This speech is recognized the controversy. We heard the little clip at the beginning about i know you wanted alice walk or known for the color purple. She makes a joke, obviously about the color of her hair, but theres also a line in the very beginning as well that we didnt see where she kind of gives a shout out to the class president her new best friend. Thats how she refers to her. So you can you can only imagine and and nancy you probably know the answer to this. They must have had some discussion amongst the Platform Party prior to them actually arriving on the scene, you know up on the up on the podium to deliver that speech. She clearly had with the class president. Clear about this. So what shes trying to do, i think in what she does beautifully in this speech is she gives us i think a subtle very gentle reproach to this to this class. And it is about women choices in life. And she does it in that only only the way that barbara bush could do it in terms of her humor and that selfdeprecating humor and also a little bit of pop culture in there. I wont tell george you loud you had a Ferris Bueller had a higher louder applause line and he did that kind of thing. Shes very comfortable and shes very informal i think in a lot of ways. I also think that its very important to point out that she had mrs gorbachev with her. I think that the two first ladies being on that stage together was also a very powerful visual for us and and in terms of historical memory as well. I would also say to you. She speaks to even though theyre generally different. She speaks a lot to things that Hillary Clinton picks up on later as first lady and that is womens choices are womens choices. They should not be dictated by you know, whatever whatever the political. Whim of the day is and that were lucky we have these choices. So i i find it remarkable for all of those reasons. Yeah, just and for for some background she and the class president had actually had a phone call. Okay, she writes about this in her memoir and they had had a phone call prior to her actually arriving and and began that conversation then which is why she she really talks in the speech too about were going to have a conversation. As i said, this was when when they were planning this speech it was going to be basically the speech she gave at Saint Louis University where i you was i think Community College and then when the cot when the controversy hit when the students found out shed been invited and 125 of the 600 signed a petition complaining and wanting it withdrawn. And shed also invited ask the president if she could invite mrs. Gorbachev before all the controversy started so it wasnt like she did that as a way of deflecting the controversy. She actually had done that ahead of time. And so then when all this hit they they pulled in some of george bushs speech writers said we have to do something a little even though we have the basic message, and she said that she didnt want to complain explain or apologize in any way for any of this and one other thing she did at the beginning that you didnt see. I wish you all need to just go watch the whole speech. Its you and at the president at the bush library site, but she talked about the fact that she had been invited along with her husband too wellesley when they came back from china. And you know her husband was the wasnt an ambassador yet, but they went to china right after nixon opened it and that the two of them jointly spoke and she talked about how open the students were and how they embraced diversity so tammys point. She really set this up to say, this is a place where you acce