A student looked at the front page of the Justice last week and asked me, "Who the hell is this lady?" Good question.Margaret H. Marshall is chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. She will also be the keynote speaker at commencement next month. Brandeis should be honored to have Marshall visit, because she is currently one of the most controversial figures in the country.
What's most remarkable about her appearance at commencement is that it will be precisely one year after Marshall ordered the state of Massachusetts to allow gay marriage.

Marshall is only the second woman to serve on the court, and the first woman to hold the position of chief justice. Before last year, her judicial record had established her as a conservative jurist. However, I doubt she will ever be considered conservative again since she shook up Massachusetts-and the rest of the United States-when she presided over the court that made this controversial decision.

The case has its share of vehement opponents. Emile Goguen, a state representative from Fitchburg (sadly, my hometown), introduced a bill which aims to remove Marshall from the bench, along with the other justices who comprised the majority in Goodrige.

Marshall is truly an important figure in Massachusetts, but how did she come to be the commencement speaker for the class of 2005?

John Hose, executive assistant to University President Jehuda Reinharz, described to me the process that Brandeis follows in order to choose its commencement speaker. Anyone in the Brandeis community can suggest a candidate for an honorary degree. The Board of Trustees then selects whom to approve. From the list of approved honorary degree candidates, Hose said, "...the president alone makes the selection of whom to invite for any particular commencement and which of those honorees to invite to deliver the commencement address." This rather exclusive process seems inadequate.

However, Marshall seems to respond well to opposition, and lessons she has learned in conflict might be valuable to Brandeis students. As a college student in her native South Africa, she began fighting apartheid when she was 19 years old. She was president of the National Union of South African Students from 1964 to 1966. Being an activist leader of a highly controversial group placed Marshall in some danger.

When she came to Massachusetts to attend Harvard, it was with encouragement from union members who feared for her safety. She delayed her return to South Africa upon discovering that previous presidents of her union were being arrested. She continued her activism from Massachusetts. Eventually, she decided to make her home here.

Our chief justice gave the commencement address at Tufts University in 2003. In her speech there, she told the assembled graduates: "Your teachers have taught you to be open-minded and curious; they have taught you to be impatient with things as they are, and not to take excuses for answers," she said.

Marshall's words could be applied to our current situation. As the orchestrators of our own futures, we need to ask important questions. Can we be open-minded about what she has to say? Are we looking for answers and not excuses? Considering that she has already prompted me to do a lot of thinking, I'm looking forward to Marshall's speech.