Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" was delivered on September 18, 2007, at Carnegie Mellon University's McConomy Auditorium. Over 450 Carnegie Mellon students, staff members, and friends of Pausch attended the lecture, leaving only standing room as this was more than the auditorium could hold. Pausch later commented about this in an interview, saying "A couple of hundred people in a room, looking and listening and laughing and applauding – hopefully at the appropriate times – that gives a lot of validation to my kids that a lot of people believe in this, and a lot of people who knew me believe that I did my best to try to live this way." The first introduction of the speech as well as the series of lectures was given by Indira Nair, the Vice Provost for Education at Carnegie Mellon. Nair first explained the university's aforementioned lecture series called "Journeys", in which eight more professors from Carnegie Mellon would share their insights on their professional and personal experiences over the years.
Cornel West
In 2011, West participated in a "Poverty Tour" with Tavis Smiley, his co-host on the Public Radio International program "Smiley & West". The tour became a two-part special on their radio program as well as a five-night special on the PBS television program "Tavis Smiley". They recounted their experience on the tour in their 2012 bestselling book "The Rich and the Rest of Us". The stated aim of the tour was to highlight the plight of the impoverished population of the United States prior to the 2012 presidential election, whose candidates West and Smiley stated had ignored the plight of the poor.In 2013, West referred to Obama's speech at the 50th anniversary celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech as contradictory and as "pretty words that hide ugly deeds." West then goes on to state, "Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. Barack Obama's got drones. Martin Luther King Jr. had prophetic missions. Barack Obama's got deadly missiles that he’s ready to use."