Near the end of her speech, Streep turned from the personal to the political, telling the Barnard graduates that they stood at a historic inflection point. For the first time in history, most advanced degrees were being awarded to women. It had been barely a hundred years since women were even allowed into academic buildings except to clean them. Around the world, poor women who used to be property now owned property. Streep urged the graduates to recognize these changes not as the 'new normal' but as part of an ongoing, unstoppable transformation. The 'cracks in the ceiling, cracks in the door, cracks in the Court and on the Senate floor' were evidence that change never stops — and the class of 2010 had both the opportunity and the obligation, by virtue of their education, to speed that progress in addressing global challenges from poverty to human trafficking to the AIDS crisis.