Jamie Dimon had one message for the graduates of 2010 – “never stop holding yourselves and others accountable.”

Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., stood in front of more than 4,000 Syracuse University and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry students in the Carrier Dome Sunday as the keynote speaker for the 2010 commencement. The choice of Dimon had received considerable protest from students since the university announced him as the commencement speaker on March 25.

Despite the protests leading up to the ceremony, students remained calm and respectful during Dimon’s speech. A group of students had led a campaign for students to take off their graduation robes during Dimon’s speech, but only five to ten graduates did so. Throughout most of his speech, Dimon captured the audience and was even stopped a few times by rounds of applause.

Although the protest did not happen as planned, Dimon brought up the opposition to his address. He began by telling the graduates he had personally spoken with one of the student protestors, Mariel Fiedler. And Dimon found some of Fiedler’s concerns legitimate, but disagreed with others, he said. He agreed that it is important to see the value in holding people accountable.

“Today I will talk about what it takes to be accountable and hope it might give some value to you in the years to come,” he said. “I do not mean to imply that I did everything right. Any lesson I learned, I learned by making mistakes.”

Dimon told the students being accountable means having the courage to do what is honest even under pressure. Being accountable requires thinking critically, he said, because it isn’t always easy to know what the right thing is. In his industry, the banking industry, he said he has seen many people embarrassed by failing to address the mistakes they make.

One of the best ways to learn is by listening to arguments you don’t agree with, he said. Socialists should read Milton Friedman, capitalists should read Karl Marx, Republicans should listen to Democrats and vice versa, he said.

Dimon also touched upon the financial crisis. He told graduates that while the economy is in bad shape, it is getting better. And though some may have already faced tough times, the best way to move on is to persevere.

As an example of perseverance, he pointed to the people in the financial industry who tried to stop the financial crisis before it happened, working long hours and sleepless nights.

“They weren’t trying to earn money or score points,” he said, but stop the crisis because they knew how it would affect ordinary people.

“It takes humility and humanity to be accountable,” he added.

He told the graduates that humility means recognizing the people who came before them and paved their way, from parents to teachers to their ancestors who built this country. And he encouraged the graduates to continue paving the way for generations to come. Together, he said, this generation can help more children graduate high school. Together, they can build sustainable energy practices for the future.

Dimon urged the graduates to recognize that, above all, their future is up to them.

“It’s up to you to determine how you want your book to be written,” he said. “It’s a choice – don’t let others write it for you.”

Published on May 15, 2010 at 12:00 pm