Declaring "What happens at CIIS is very nearly unique in the world of higher education...it is also revolutionary," educational activist Parker Palmer delivered the commencement address at the Institute's 39th annual graduation ceremony on May 20 at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

Palmer urged the 2007 graduating class of 225 students to "carry this revolutionary seed out into the world with a depth of commitment, passion, skill, and knowledge that will allow this very important revolution to gain greater traction in the world and start making more headway, more difference."

Palmer defined CIIS’s “revolutionary” education as an "intellectual and cultural transformation that takes the reality and power of the inner world just as seriously as our culture takes the reality and power of the outer world." No one is truly educated, he asserted, "until heart and mind have been joined with action and we have learned to think and act the world together rather than think and act the world apart."

At the ceremony, CIIS awarded Palmer with an honorary doctorate in Integrative Teaching and Learning. “Parker Palmer has dedicated himself to a lifelong pursuit of integrating the most challenging and dynamic issues of our time—vocation, self-worth, education, diversity, community, leadership, spirituality and social justice,” said President Joseph Subbiondo in his citation. “Through his passionate commitment to the exploration of the inner self as well as analysis of organization structure, he challenges educators to renew their vocation and rethink the “why” of the educational enterprise.”

Palmer is a writer, teacher, and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality, and social change. His work spans a wide range of institutions—colleges and universities, public schools, community organizations, religious institutions, corporations, and foundations. He serves as senior associate of the American Association of Higher Education, as senior advisor to the Fetzer Institute, and is the founder and senior advisor for the Center for Courage & Renewal.

Palmer is an accomplished author. Among his books are The Company of Strangers: Christians and the Renewal of American Public Life (1983), To Know as We are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey (1983), The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life (1998) and A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life (2004).

Palmer has been awarded eight honorary doctorates and several national awards, including two Distinguished Achievement Awards from the National Educational Press Association, an Award of Excellence from the Associated Church Press, and major grants from the Danforth Foundation, the Lilly Endowment and the Fetzer Institute. The Leadership Project, a 1998 U.S. survey of 10,000 administrators and faculty named Palmer one of the 30 most influential senior leaders in higher education and one of 10 key “agenda-setters” of the past decade.  

In February 2007, Palmer was the opening keynote speaker at CIIS’s groundbreaking conference in February, Uncovering the Heart of Higher Education.