As prepared for delivery at the 2025 Commencement of Franklin & Marshall College

Good morning!

Welcome, trustees, faculty, and professional staff. Welcome, families! A warm welcome to all those watching the livestream. And, now for the stars of today’s ceremony, GOOD MORNING, CLASS OF 2025!!!

You, graduates of 2025, are near and dear to my heart. We are on parallel tracks in some important ways. Like you, I am about to leave F&M. Like you, I’ve been suffering from my own kind of “senioritis” for the last few months. What a mix of emotions! Nostalgia, excitement, a sense of achievement, regret to be leaving a place and people I love. Some certainties, but also many big questions.

In short, my dear friends, you and I are living another big “ampersand moment”! When I was sitting where you are now, I was terrified AND it was great. I didn’t know what would happen, AND it all worked out in unexpected and wonderful ways.

What a long road you have traveled! Think back to the spring of 2021, four very full years ago.How were you copying with COVID? Many of you were studying at home. You were practicing social distancing. You probably had a stack of N95 masks by the door, and in every bag and coat pocket. Campus visits were mostly out of the question. Many of you had to apply for and make a decision about college without ever visiting. To come to F&M, you were making a huge leap of faith!

And now, four years later? There’s no doubt that you are graduating into a divided world.

During your years here, colleges and universities have had to find ways to allow for free expression and diversity of thought to co-exist, to allow for hard questions asked in thoughtful ways, and to make sure that democracy is not only studied, but strengthened. It’s hard work, and we don’t always get it exactly right.

Luckily, to quote a sentence often attributed to our founder Benjamin Franklin, “Out of adversity comes opportunity.” And let’s not forget that you are Diplomats!

In one of my first speeches when I arrived at F&M, I used the phrase, “The world needs Diplomats.” It turned out to be the right instinct. Seven years later, I’m adding four words to that short sentence: The world needs Diplomats now more than ever.

During your time here, you’ve done the hard work to develop the skills you will need in your lives beyond these gates. You have found your voice. Very importantly, you have also listened actively, debated, found productive compromise, taken the time to connect with those who hold opinions different than yours. You have learned to reach across difference, a precious skill that is all too rare. You will carry these skills with you as one of your greatest assets.

A graduate from last year wrote to me recently, to say that she has hung onto something I said to her class. What I said was, quite simply, “You are well prepared.” I say the same to you, Class of ’25. You are very well prepared. You are an accomplished crew! Some of you are still working out what will come next, which should not worry you. It will happen quickly! Others are moving on to law school, Ph.D. programs, med school, internships, gap years for work experience, travel abroad, community service through programs like Teach for America. For all of that – and for every other career shift you can expect in your working lives – you can move with agility, thoughtfulness, the ability to formulate meaningful questions, to articulate big, complex thoughts, to work in cross-functional teams (which, as all the research shows, results in the best outcomes). Like all the classes before you, you will place well, you will quickly rise to leadership positions, and you will– to quote our College mission statement – lead lives of meaning.

I am going to end with a nerdy, linguistic, language comment. It has to do with the meaning of the expression “farewell.” The expression has its derivation in an imperative, meaning, “Go forth and fare well.” It can also be a subjunctive: “May you fare well.” We are saying “farewell” rather than goodbye. As Diplomats forever, you will always be part of this community. We hope to see you soon and often. We hope you will support those coming along behind you. And in the meantime, we know that you, like the generations before you, will, indeed, fare well. I and everyone around you, will be watching with great interest and endless amounts of love and admiration.

Farewell, dear friends, and thank you.