Usually the many Ethics Alarms train wreck graphics are reserved for official Ethics Train Wrecks, but not this time. The episode under consideration didn’t involve an actual train, but Ohio State alum Chris Pan‘s commencement address to about 12,000 2024 graduates was somewhat more literally akin to train disasters, at least ones involving trains leaping the tracks.
Outkick has tagged the speech the “Worst Commencement Speech Ever.” I doubt that it is that, but Pan’s self-indulgent blather might be the most unethical one ever—if there have been more unethical addresses, I’m not sure I would want to hear them even as an analytical exercise.
Let’s start with the fact that Pan conceived the speech while he was high on the psychedelic drug Ayahuasca. He admitted this later, and appears to be proud of it, or think its funny, or something. This makes him an Ethics Alarms certified asshole as well as an Ethics Dunce. When people are trusting you to perform at your best in support of an important task, project or event, you don’t impair yourself with foreign substances—not alcohol, not uppers or downers, and definitely not mind altering drugs. Doing so is deliberately defying common sense, personal responsibility, and well-established societal standards.
Moreover, you risk a debacle like the speech you will see in this video. If you like, you can skip the glowing introduction by OSU President Ted Carter, though it provides useful context as Pan was to humiliate Carter as well as himself. It’s a bit like knowing that they called The Titanic “unsinkable” before it sank on its maiden voyage. Pan starts speaking at the 1:47 mark.
Well.
Aside from the boilerplate commencement clichés, there is nothing useful or inspiring about Pan’s address, unless you consider the epiphany, “Wow, so that’s what a toxic narcissist is like!” useful. By definition, nobody who thinks that performance is appropriate at a commencement ceremony has any credibility regarding philosophy, conduct, deportment or life. He treated the graduates with condescension and as if they were first-graders. One sing-a-long is filler at best in a speech, two is unforgivable. (Don’t get me started on the choice of songs). But that’s trivial compared to his using a commencement as an excuse to do a bitcoin infomercial. That’s a bait-and-switch similar to my experience of being invited to what I was told was a Cinco de Mayo party and discovering that it was really a solar panel promotion event. But I was the only one conned in that instance. There were 12,000 victims of Pan’s hustle.
Incredibly, it wasn’t even the only hustle in the speech: Pan also exploited his invitation to hawk his (ugly) “word” bracelets.
Pan’s self-aggrandizing crap has OSU President Carter disowning the fiasco, saying that didn’t select Pan as the speaker because the process was “underway before he became President.”
“I did not review his speech. I did not know what he really was going to speak about, and again, it wouldn’t matter because once he gets the microphone, he’s got the microphone. It was certainly an interesting speech. I would say very nontraditional. There were some that liked it and a lot that didn’t,” Carter said. “Non-traditional” is a good weasel word. Yes, it’s traditional for commencement speeches not to embarrass the school, its president, and any one with a degree.
Three other points as long as I’m here:
- Pan misstates the parable of the blind men and the elephant. It wasn’t three men, it was six.
- What amateurish PowerPoint. It’s not that hard to make slides professionally and well, and even easier to find someone (like my late wife) who knows how to design them.
- Dragging poor president Carter into his nonsense was particularly cruel.
Ethics Alarms 
And here I was thinking the state comptroller who made a crassly partisan political speech and substituted the name of our arch rival school for ours not once but three times was as bad as it could get. I don’t know how I could have had a career in the arts, as I obviously lack imagination.
First, this guy is in his mid 40’s and still acting like this? I could see this from a ‘valedictorian’, but this guy is mid-life. Second, who selected this guy? Did they actually talk to him, did they actually know him? Why was he selected and why didn’t they know what he was going to talk about?
Finally, it is NOT the worse commencement speech of all time. It isn’t as bad as Ted Turner at UNC. His was so bad the university swore off ‘celebrity’ commencement speakers. He was drunk at 11 AM on Mother’s Day to the point that he was slurring his speech heavily. He couldn’t complete a thought. After 30 minutes of starting one story, stopping, then starting another one (without ever finishing one), he stopped, look at the audience, and slurred “I just have 1 thing to say to you people…get marriage counseling!”. Then he sat down. To make it worse, the night before, one of the black fraternities decided to play ‘Russian Roulette’ with a semi-automatic pistol and killed one of the graduates (for Mother’s Day).
The marriage of Turner and Jane Fonda has to be one of the most fascinating pairings of all time. We won’t see the inevitable movie or series about it until Jane’s demise, but what a story!
I’ll take a more sympathetic approach, agreeing with OSU president Carter’s restrained view that it was “non-traditional”.
I’ll start by saying I have no memory of my undergraduate commencement speaker. My memory stops with crossing the podium proudly with two close friends from my particular school. I honestly cannot recall if there even was a speaker.
My master’s degree commencement, I have no memory of the content of the speech, just the general tone. I was in an an early morning haze, as was likely most of the stadium. It was given by a guy named Michael Moore, and I didn’t even realize it was that Michael Moore, until another graduate threw his commencement cap onto the basketball court below and stormed off. I tuned in just long enough to pick up the speaker was a left-wing lunatic. The ending probably got a mix of golf claps and boos (again, don’t remember), but they gave Moore a Doctor of Letters for his effort, so there’s that.
Pan’s delivery was amateurish and cringy, of course, but aside from hocking Bitcoin (where it sounded like he was an undisclosed investor in the two firms) it was pretty standard content. I give him credit for making it memorable and interesting, unlike my commencement speakers (admittedly, I turned of the recording for a moment when he started hawking Bitcoin). Even the singalongs could be defended as particular to his story of using song to overcome depression.
Pan’s credentials for giving the speech are that of a seasoned tech-executive. This gives him credibility when he says tech companies and the media are looking for eyeballs, and spin their content in the direction of money. He also informs the students that inflation is real, and that their money is only worth 75% of what it was when they started college (what are the odds that OSU taught them this?). He also encourages reaching out across the political divide, however trite this may be (though was undermined by his naive hippy flower-in-gun, give-peace-a-chance conclusion toeing up to the anti-Israeli party line).
The speech was interesting enough that the graduates might actually remember and take some of it to heart. That they sang along indicates there was some charisma that might not fully translate to video. Especially important were the cautions against trusting the tech media from someone credible to deliver it. The effectiveness, however, was undermined by his unrehearsed delivery, opening it up to ridicule and potentially alienating graduates who rewatch or see the negative commentary later.
“But I was the only one conned in that instance.”
I wouldn’t be too sure about that. The MLM marketing scam entices the would-be participant with the promise of being one’s own boss & earning a lot of money. The only real way to earn money is to get a bunch of other people to buy into the thing, so the gullible person who buys into it tries to recruit their friends, relatives and anyone else they know into joining up. Eventually, friends and family get tired of being seen as potential recruits so – in desperation – the hapless man or woman then starts getting people in the door by any means necessary; hence, the business meeting disguised as a party trick.
You probably lucked out by being delayed. If you’d gotten there on time, as many of those other people did, you might’ve found yourself in that captive audience. No doubt, a number of people who thought they were guests had this presentation sprung upon them and didn’t feel they could reject their host’s “hospitality”.
Pan was, of course, extraordinarily irresponsible for not taking the honor seriously. Unfortunately, so much of this generation wants to be entertained and these types of ceremonies tend to become bread and circuses on both stage and in the audience.
But, it would have been harder for these seniors to have walked out of their commencement ceremony than it would have been for your neighbors so-called guests to have said, “Thanks, but no thanks” and left. For all we know, a couple of the would-be 5th of May partiers did leave before you got there. Maybe there’s a senior or two who did, as well.
Oh, I could regale you with tales of all of my ostentatious walk-outs!