[Dean Peter Henry]: It is now 
my pleasure to introduce
Charles Murphy, Professor of Management
practice and an MBA alum, Class of 1974.
Professor Murphy has taught at NYU Stern
for more than a decade, following a
successful career as an
investment banker and 
an electrical engineer.
Many of you have taken his
course in investment 
banking and many of
his former students 
now themselves hold
high-level positions 
in financial
service organizations. 
Charlie distills
deep experience 
and knowledge into
memorable and 
instructive anecdotes. He is
a rich playbook as it 
were, from which to
draw and many lessons
learned to share.
Today Charlie will take 
a few minutes to
share with the graduates what I didn't
get around to telling you in the
classroom. Please welcome to the lectern,
Professor Charles Murphy.
[Audience applauds]
[Prof. Charles Murphy]: If we were 
in Ireland, this would be
called a holy, which 
is a big celebration.
Unfortunately my cousins aren't here
with the beverage carts but that will
come later. 
I was trying to figure out
how to start this and 
the joke between
the Dean and myself 
is he knows I never
really write a speech. 
I kind of think
about stuff as I'm 
walking around. As I
was reading the New York Times this
morning, I saw the word
'kaleidoscope' and
I kind of started laughing because I
actually have one. So I went down to my
office and I looked into the
kaleidoscope trying to get my thoughts
collected and I'd looked it up and sure
enough, there were these absolutely
brilliant facets and I said to myself,
"That was you, that was you two years ago.
You were all the best, but you were all
individuals" and then I turned it and
as you turn it, as you know, you wind up
forming these spectacular patterns these
geometric patterns that become
absolutely beautiful. That, you know,
meaning what? Over the last two years
look at how many, I'll get there relax,
behave yourselves or I'll talk about the
snapchat pictures I got from Puerto Rico.
[Audience laughing]
Look what you've become over the last
two years. How many friends you have?
How many different cultures you've met?
You are a global person. 
The only note I have is
because I don't want to get it wrong and
he's my former partner and he would kill
me, is a note, that's from Larry Fink,
who's on our board, as you know.
Larry Fink's annual shareholder meeting letter
this year and he says we believe that
teams with diversity of experience,
backgrounds and perspectives make better
decisions and drive more innovation than
homogeneous teams. 
That's what you are!
Now I'm an old guy and one thing I'll
say to you is 'don't lose that' 
When you
make the money and you will, that's the
easy part, just work hard and a little
bit of luck and you've got it.
It's good to hear, parents, right
Don't lose what
you have right now because the world's
going to need it and it's a very special
gift. You're very lucky to have gone
through the two years that you have.
So appreciate it. 
If we were in class I'd
say this is module two 
and module two is a
concern and my concern
is as I walk down
here, I had the iPod in and listening to
a couple of tunes like always.
Everybody's saying. "Who is the weird old
guy?" and one of my favorites of Don Henley
came on and he was singing in this
eclectic song which actually like called
'dirty laundry'. We live in a world with a
lot of dirty laundry, meaning what?
Well, in the song he's an anchor for the
network news and he relates that the way
he gets his ratings is by finding up
dirt, matter of fact, the refrain is
something like, "Kick them when they're up,
kick them when they're down." It's the
world we live in today. There's a great
German word that sums it up, which I heard,
probably first heard in Zurich
about 40 years ago - 'Schadenfreude'.
There is a lot of schadenfreude in the world.
Meaning what? Meaning 
I hope that person
doesn't do well because I really want to
do well. It's a basic human
characteristic that's not going to go
away. Now why is that important?
It is important because the state of
Technology means the person sitting next
to you right now is essentially
a Global TV station, a media company
because of the following. 
You're going to
have it much harder than we had it in
terms of staying on point, having a moral
compass, being ethical, building a
reputation having integrity. How come?
Because everybody's got you online, on
the screen constantly and the one common
is your reputation is everything.
It takes your career to build, it
takes five seconds to disappear. So work
on that and it's a continuous process.
over the rest of your life, you'll see
how many people fail who don't keep that
in the back of their mind.
Module 3: A commitment from you.
Earlier this year,
one of my favorite actors Leonard Nimoy
died. Leonard Nimoy, as we know, is the
iconic Mr. Spock. As a side joke, as I
was sitting in my office trying to
figure out how to get to this piece, I
was looking at pictures of Spock on the
internet and suddenly I hit the wrong
key and the Dean came up. 
[Audience laughs]
And one interesting fact, I'll give you to make
you think about it a little bit. If you
kind of draw those pointy ears on Peter,
yeah..[audience laughs].. I'm convinced he is Vulcan.
He is tall, he is lean, he is in great shape, he is
unbelievably logical and he is pretty
smart. Now why do I bring up Spock?
Well, in one of my favorite movies, Spock
saves the enterprise like always and he
goes down and turns off the reactor and
winds up getting covered with whatever
and he is mortally wounded and he is dying
and Captain Kirk shows up like always at
the last minute and he is on the other
side of a glass partition and he says to
Spock - 'Weissbach' and Spock looks at him
and says the very famous words which are
actually very important to me as I will
say to you in one minute because the
"Needs of the many outweigh the needs of
the few or the needs of the one."
I actually say that or think about it
every single day of my life. Why? Because
there is a lot of people on this planet.
You are the fortunate.
You owe them. 
You're going to help fix
their problems. 
You're going to help
solve the two and a half billion more
people when you are my age, in terms of
getting them water and sanitation and
housing and health care and pensions and
infrastructure. We've heard a lot about
that over the last week. That is your
obligation to society. Don't forget about
it. Most people say they are problems. Murphy
would say the are opportunities. Many of
you will get incredibly wealthy, working
on those opportunities and solving those
problems. So keep that in the back of
your mind. Now as faculty representative,
I can say for my cohorts on the stage
who, I obviously am biased in saying, are
the best. We would like to thank you for
sharing a major part of your lives for
the last two years. 
And as a boy growing
up in the Bronx, in an apartment with one
screen and one bathroom. Think of that,
students. I frequently would watch Bob
Hope give specials and at the end of
which he would always say, 
"Thanks for the memories. Congratulations."
[applause]
