Abdul El-Sayed’s commencement speech in 2007 was so good it led Bill Clinton to tell him to go into politics at just 22 years old

Long before Abdul El-Sayed was delivering speeches on the campaign trail, he was selected to give one of the biggest speeches of his life: a student commencement address at the University of Michigan in 2007. And it ended up even impressing former President Bill Clinton.

Standing before thousands of graduates, their families, and faculty, the then-22-year-old Michigan native tried to put into words what made the university experience so meaningful. But his answer wasn’t the knowledge accumulated in lecture halls or the job qualifications that came with graduating from one of the country’s top public universities. Instead, he focused on something much harder to quantify.

“The Michigan difference is us. It’s the students,” El-Sayed said. 

“It’s in the diversity of names, faces, stories, and experiences with which we decorate this great place. It’s in the time that we’ve spent in self-assessment, self-improvement, and thought. It’s the questions that we’ve asked and those that we’ve answered. It’s the care we’ve shown, the people we’ve........

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