Article snippet: Most popular on bostonglobe.com Based on what you've read recently, you might be interested in theses stories From the Archives | January 12, 1993 This article is from the Boston Globe archives. It was originally published on January 12, 1993. It was too much for Hillary Rodham to take. Here was the speaker at her Wellesley College commencement -- US Sen. Edward W. Brooke -- addressing the 401 seniors who had come of age during the trauma of Vietnam, the civil rights struggles, the murders of Robert F. Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But rather than offering a thoughtful analysis of the times, Brooke glossed over the issues that so troubled these young women. And Hillary Rodham would not tolerate it. She had been chosen as the first graduating senior in Wellesley history to speak at commencement, and she had spent weeks preparing for this moment. When she rose to the platform and said she wanted to respond to some of Brooke’s points, there was a palpable stiffening among parents. Undaunted, Hillary Rodham proceeded, in a performance her classmates say they will never forget, to deliver an extemporaneous rebuttal of Brooke. It was not so much her words -- for they seem mild in retrospect -- as it was the fact that in 1969 she dared to challenge a sitting United States senator. “We feel that for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of the possible,” she said. “And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what a... Link to the full article to read more