By the authority vested in me by the Charter of Brown University and the Board of Fellows of the Corporation, I hereby declare the 256th Commencement of Brown University convened.
Welcome to this beautiful place, on this glorious day!
This is a special moment. When you walk back up the hill, you will no longer be Brown students. You will be Brown alumni – members of the great Brown Class of 2024!
Before we get started, I want to give a shoutout to two groups of students who couldn’t be here today – those who are competing in national championships for sailing and ultimate frisbee.
And I want to start by telling this class – all of you – why you are so special. And you know it. Your college experience was very unusual. It started with a global pandemic that killed too many people and ground the world economy to a halt. It ended with dreadful violence that has claimed the lives of too many Palestinians and Israelis, and generated tension, unrest and activism on college campuses.
I am certain that this was not what you expected when you applied to Brown. But it’s almost certain that you will experience other important global events in the future. My hope is that what you have learned at Brown has left you better equipped to live, and lead, through momentous times.
A question for all of you: How many of you did not have an in-person high school commencement? Show of hands! For those of you who raised your hands, today is doubly important. Maybe it’s four years too late, but I want to congratulate you and your families on completing high school. And doing so in such a brilliant way that we were thrilled to welcome you to Brown!
But it wasn’t just your high school graduations that were affected. Most of you spent the fall of 2020 in limbo – you weren’t high school students, but you weren’t truly college students.
BrownUMemes – created by a member of your class – had a post that fall that listed the six scariest things on Earth, in ascending order. It started with the dark, clowns and sharks. It progressed to serial killers and death. And it ended with “Being Stuck at Home for 100 More Days.”
But the purgatory of that fall eventually ended. Finally, you got here. Some in the spring, others later.
It was better, but it was far from ideal. You masked. You took COVID-19 tests. You put on hold doing many of the things you love – artistic performances, athletic competitions, and the simple joy of hanging out with large groups of friends.
Gradually, life improved. I taught a first-year seminar in the summer of 2021, and walking into class the first time without masks was such a joy!
During that spring and into the summer, you became a class with a very distinctive talents.
You turned the Main Green into a Library, with rings of laptops charged by power strips plugged into the lampposts.
When upper-class students returned, they were horrified that you renamed the “New Dorm” into “The Greg,” which they didn’t like.
You enjoyed a beautiful Rhode Island summer, lounging on furniture that gradually made its way into the backyards of off-campus students.
Over the past few weeks, so many of you have told me that your experience during that first summer created a special bond – durable bonds between you and a strong sense of community. Perhaps these bonds helped hold this class together even during the difficult time that we find ourselves in.
And so, I want to thank you – for your resilience, your perseverance, your humor (even the BrownUMemes that made fun of me!), and your kindness and support for each other – maybe because of the challenges you faced.
Before I award your degrees, I want to tell you a story about Brown’s history, which holds lessons to take with you. A few weeks ago, a former distinguished Brown faculty member – John Tomasi, who is now the leader of the Heterodox Academy – referred me to a book on the history of higher education by John Thelin.
This book describes a surprising fact about Brown that I had never known. In the early days of higher education in America, the college rolls listed students by family rank – in other words, by their parents’ prominence in society. Imagine what it would have been like to march across a commencement stage in order from “most prominent” to “least prominent.”
The first college to reject this practice was… you guessed it… Brown University. Brown’s earliest Commencement program made a point that graduating students were listed alphabetically by last name. Amazing. Alphabetical order! What a radical idea!
This story tells us that what matters to Brown – what has always mattered to Brown – is not where you come from, but where you are going.
I know that you are going to great places. And I know that you’re going to make Brown University proud. And I hope you return, again and again, to this place in the years to come.
Now, would you like to get your degrees?!
