Tavis Smiley urged UF students to find their calling during his speech Thursday night.
Besides the importance of leadership, Smiley also spoke about the meaning of Black History Month and Barack Obama's presidency.
"We celebrate black history today because somebody did something yesterday, and if we don't do something today, there is no black history to celebrate tomorrow," he said.
UF is not just preparing students to find jobs but to pursue leadership. The heart of leadership is love and service for other people, he said.
More than 300 people attended his speech at the Phillips Center for Performing Arts.
Accent Speaker's Bureau helped collaborate Smiley's attendance with Black History Month. UF paid about $40,000 to bring Smiley, who hosts a late night TV talk show on PBS and "The Tavis Smiley Show" on NPR.
In his speech, Smiley said black leaders and not black people are the reason Black History Month is celebrated today.
In disagreement with the suggestion that Black History Month should no longer be celebrated since Obama has become president, Smiley emphasized black history is essential to American history.
"If there was no Frederick Douglas, then there was no Abraham Lincoln," he said.
He challenged UF students to think where their football and basketball championship teams would be without their black players. He encouraged them to think what music in America would be like without black artists.
Still, Smiley said it was important that students hold Obama accountable.
He said getting Obama elected was the easy part to building a racially equal country. The real challenge is for Americans to push the president to do the right thing during his term.
"The minute you start governing, you start disappointing," Smiley said. "We got to push him into his greatness. We can't abandon our post now."
He pointed to shortcomings, such as Obama's failure to appoint a leader of the Department of Commerce in the midst of an economic crisis.
