Parents, families and friends, members of the Board of Trust, esteemed faculty, valued alumni, dedicated staff:
What an honor it is to join you in celebrating the hard work and remarkable achievements of the Vanderbilt University Class of 2025!
Graduates, one of the greatest privileges I have as chancellor is to look out from this podium and see you all assembled here, at the threshold of the rest of your lives.
In your faces, I see joy. I see pride. And in one or two cases, I see the consequences of last night’s poor decision-making. But mostly when I look out at you, I see promise. I see so many stories about to unfold.
It is customary for me as chancellor to send you off with some parting words—a benediction, if you like, from your alma mater.
Here is what I want to tell you:
You are stepping into the world at a moment of great and rapid change. From the economy to technology to geopolitics, much is in flux. Every day brings news of some tectonic shift.
The uncertainty this creates is profound and persistent and can be deeply unsettling. Wherever we turn, there seem to be more questions than answers.
Eleanor Roosevelt said of her era, “We cannot tell from day to day what may come. This is no ordinary time. No time for weighing anything, except what we can best do for the country as a whole. And that rests, that responsibility, on each and every one of us as individuals.”
Dealing with uncertainty is hard. We can retreat into fear, or we can face our challenges with courage and the goal to make this moment our proudest moment. We do not choose the hand destiny deals us, but we can choose to play that hand well—to the best of our ability, and with the right attitude.
Leaders never give in to either despair or wishful thinking. We need to face the facts of our situation with the utmost realism but hold onto the faith that we will prevail.
Class of 2025, the message I want to leave you with is this: You are made for this moment. You have what it takes to meet it. And meet it you must.
Today you join an unbroken chain of graduates reaching back to our first proper commencement in 1877—a class that walked into a world still being remade by civil war. Since then, graduates like you have left Vanderbilt during two grinding World Wars…the Great Depression…the horrors and triumphs of the Civil Rights era…the Great Recession…and, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic.
What those students discovered is what I want to remind you of today: As Vanderbilt graduates, you have what you need to meet this moment and the challenges of your time.
To begin with, you have learned the art of radical collaboration—working with others across different expertise and understanding. This is vital, because no one solves complex problems or achieves great things alone. And no single person, organization or sector has all the answers. Whatever you do next, you will join others with common purpose, and you will be most successful if you cast your net for expertise wide.
You have also learned to take risks and innovate—to put your own ideas forward. This took courage, and it is courage that will serve you well as you walk through life and find that some of the existing maps and ready answers no longer apply. Growth of any kind takes courage. And this insight is at the root of our motto: “dare to grow.”
One of the most vital lessons I hope you have learned here is to stay open to other viewpoints. Never stop developing this ability. Polarization is the plague of our time. It does more than just doom us to a life of uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinners. Polarization, and the rush to righteousness by too many in our civic life, is America’s greatest obstacle to progress, to solving the problems that threaten every one of us, regardless of our politics.
The writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has warned of the danger of knowing only a single story about other people and places. She said: “It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.”
Seek out other stories, other viewpoints—even those you do not like—so that you might better know the world. So that you can avoid the trap of righteous illusions. So that you might stay open to the better argument. And so that you might be continuously reminded of our common humanity.
The Community Creed we asked you to live by these past four years calls on us to openly engage with ideas and experiences…to treat one another with respect…to be connected with each other…and to be courageous. Unlike your Commodore Card, the wisdom of the Community Creed never expires. Carry it with you always. After all, Cornelius Vanderbilt himself charged us with “helping to strengthen the ties that should exist between all sections of our common country.”
And finally, among the greatest assets you take with you into this uncertain time are your values and your very own purpose. These have been shaped by your family, perhaps by your faith communities, by those you count as heroes and role models, and by your hard-won experience. But I hope they have also been shaped by what you’ve learned at Vanderbilt. In the end, you must choose your purpose and your values for yourself. Clarify them and let them always be your North Star and the common ground you find with others you might otherwise differ with.
This, graduates, is the first part of my message to you: You have what you need to meet this moment.
The second part is: Go use it. Don’t wait. Don’t stand on the sidelines.
Don’t hope for an easier moment. Don’t hold your gifts in reserve and let somebody else do the difficult tasks. Whatever you care about, whatever you’re planning next—commit with everything you have. Meet the world on its own terms starting right now.
Moments of uncertainty and challenge are when we grow the most. Setting off into the unknown demands our best. It demands creativity and heart. The foggy road ahead can stop us in our tracks or it can inspire us to light the way.
And I promise you, the moments when you walk into the unknown and improvise, using all your skills and all your knowledge—these are the moments you will look back on and say, “That was when I was most alive.”
This is timeless wisdom.
In Ancient Rome, Seneca warned against being a mere spectator of life.
Shakespeare wrote that “Our doubts are traitors, / And make us lose the good we oft might win / By fearing to attempt.”
Theodore Roosevelt declared that all credit belongs to the one “who is actually in the arena…who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
And no less than Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Graduates, this is your moment, your calling. Get in the arena. With whatever gifts are yours, get in the arena and use them.
