Syracuse University

Syracuse University is a private university located in Syracuse, New York. The student body of Syracuse University is comprised of approximately 22,000 students, and the university employs approximately 1,500 academic faculty members. George Saunders delivered the commencement address of Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences in the spring of 2013. Saunders attended Syracuse University as a graduate student before becoming a faculty member.

Kindness

Kindness is the central concept of Saunders’s commencement address, thusly mirroring the central role in human life that Saunders states should be occupied by kindness. Saunders defines kindness as the willingness to remove attention away from one’s personal concerns and to give attention to the needs of others. Saunders urges his audience to always act in service to kindness and to constantly pursue ways of increasing one’s average level of kindness towards others.

Selfishness

Saunders argues that while most people...