WASHINGTON -- Vice President Kamala Harris achieved another first for women Friday when she addressed the graduating class of the U.S. Naval Academy, becoming the first female commencement speaker in the school's nearly 175-year history.
The vice president's speech focused on some of the Biden administration's most urgent challenges, like the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and a host of increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity threats -- occurrences she called "warning shots" that would require a military trained to counter them.
"A gang of hackers can disrupt the fuel supply of a whole seaboard," Harris said. "One country's carbon emissions can threaten the sustainability of the whole Earth. This, midshipmen, is the era we are in -- and it is unlike any era that came before."
Harris' speech at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. was her first to focus on the military, and it came as the Biden administration accelerated its withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, well before the Sept. 11 deadline set in April.
Harris has said she was the last person in the room before President Joe Biden made the decision to pull troops from the country, nearly two decades after they were first deployed.
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She told the graduates that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack had "shaped your entire life and it shaped our entire nation." She said the pandemic had similarly redefined American life.
"If we weren't clear before, we know now: The world is interconnected. Our world is interdependent. And our world is fragile."
Presidents and vice presidents deliver commencement speeches to the different service academies on a rotating basis, and Harris was the first to return to the Naval Academy since former President Donald Trump took the stage in 2018 and declared that, after his election, the United States was "respected again."
The current administration emphasized what Biden has said repeatedly: Democracy is reaching an inflection point.
"No class gets to choose the world into which he graduates," Biden told a class of Coast Guard graduates this month. "The challenges you're going to face in your career are going to look very different than those who walked these halls before."
Harris' visit was meant to signal that the current White House's relationship with the military had changed. When she arrived in Annapolis, Harris laid flowers at the grave of Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who, even after his death, was a frequent target of Trump's.
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Harris also threw in a reference to the Biden administration's efforts to vaccinate young people.
"You guys rolled up your sleeves and got vaccinated," she told the crowd of maskless graduates. "You made it to this day."
Harris, the first woman and person of color to be vice president, was not the only person who made history on Friday at the Naval Academy. Among the graduates at the commencement was Midshipman 1st Class Sydney Barber, the first Black woman in the academy's history to serve as brigade commander.
Barber, of Lake Forest, Ill., wears a distinctive set of six stripes on her uniform and was responsible for much of the brigade's daily activities as well as for the professional training of other midshipmen.
A pair of Barber's shoulder boards are on display in Harris' ceremonial office, said a senior aide to the vice president. Harris and the midshipman spoke recently on a private Zoom call and complimented each other on being the first Black women in their respective roles.
"You may be the first to do many things," Harris told Barber, according to an aide who recounted their conversation. "But make sure you're not the last."
It has been 46 years since women were given permission to enroll in the service academies.
