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.
