Jeffrey Sachs, the renowned economist and sustainability advocate, presented the Connecticut College graduates with two competing strands of thought pulling at American society. One strand was represented by Arizona's immigration crackdown, indefinite detention of non-Americans, hundred-billion-dollar wars in countries barely understood, and Goldman Sachs proclaiming it was doing 'God's work' while deceiving clients. The other strand was represented by thousands of volunteers rushing to Haiti after the earthquake, students joining Teach for America and the Peace Corps, labs working on disease control, and online activists defending the marginalized. Sachs urged the graduates to choose the optimistic course — the one based on cooperation and mutual gain — arguing that the aggressive, defensive approach condemns us to waste resources opposing others and become reckless gamblers with the fate of the planet.