49. Editorial Note
On May 17, 1981, President Ronald Reagan delivered the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. Prior to the address Father Theodore Hesburgh, Notre Dame’s President, conferred an honorary doctor of laws degree upon the President. Speaking at 3:11 p.m., Reagan began his address by referencing one of his most famous motion picture roles, that of Notre Dame football player George Gipp in Knute Rockne—All American, noting that actor Pat O’Brien, who had played former Notre Dame football coach Rockne, was also in attendance at the ceremony. In the course of the address, the President predicted an end to communism: “The years ahead are great ones for this country, for the cause of freedom and the spread of civilization. The West won’t contain communism, it will transcend communism. It won’t bother to dismiss or denounce it, it will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.” (Public Papers: Reagan, 1981, page 434) The complete text of the President’s address is ibid., pages 431–435.
In his personal diary entry for May 17, the President wrote: “Father Hesburgh met us at the airport and we drove to Notre Dame. It was commencement for 2000 graduates but there must have been 15,000 all told in the auditorium. Pat O’Brien was there also to get an honorary degree. It really was exciting. Every N.D. student sees the Rockne film and so the greeting for Pat & me was overwhelming. Speech went O.K. and I was made an honorary member of the Monogram Club. When I opened my certificate I thought they’d made 2 copies—they hadn’t, the 2nd was to ‘The Gipper.’ He died before graduation so had never been made a member.” (Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries, volume I, January 1981–October 1985, page 40)
During the President’s June 16 news conference, United Press International (UPI) reporter Dean Reynolds, referencing the Notre Dame address, asked the President if recent events “in Poland constitute the beginning of the end of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” The President responded: “Well, what I meant then in my remarks at Notre Dame and what I believe now about what we’re seeing tie together. I just think that it is impossible—and history reveals this—for any form of government to completely deny freedom to people and have that go on interminably. There eventually comes an end to it. And I think the things we’re seeing, not only in Poland but the reports that are beginning to come out of Russia itself about the younger generation and its resistance to long-time government controls, is an indication that communism is an aberration. It’s not a normal way of living for human beings, and I think we are seeing the first, beginning cracks, the beginning of the end.”
[Page 172]Later in the news conference, when asked if he would provide an outline of his administration’s overall foreign policy, as he had yet “to make a major foreign policy address,” the President commented: “Well, there seems to be a feeling as if an address on foreign policy is somehow evidence that you have a foreign policy, and until you make an address, you don’t have one. And I challenge that. I’m satisfied that we do have a foreign policy.
“I have met with eight heads of state already, representatives of nine other nations. The Secretary of State is making his second trip and is now in China and is going to meet with the ASEAN nations in the Philippines and then go on for a meeting in New Zealand. The Deputy Secretary of State has been in Africa and is now returning by way of Europe. I have been in personal communication by mail with President Brezhnev.
“I don’t necessarily believe that you must, to have a foreign policy, stand up and make a wide declaration that this is your foreign policy. I’ve spoken about a number of areas. We are going forward with a program, a tripartite program, dealing with Central America and the Caribbean. We have tried to deal with various areas of the world—both Asia, Africa, and in Europe. And so as to an address, I definitely did not do one at commencements, because I happen to believe, as I said at Notre Dame, that it has been traditional for people in my position to go and use a graduation ceremony as a forum for making an address that was of no interest particularly or no connection to the occasion, but just for wide dissemination. And I thought that the young people who were graduating deserved a speech, whether good or bad, that was aimed at them.” (Public Papers: Reagan, 1981, pages 519–520, 520–521)