Commencement 2024

Undergraduate Ceremony Remarks by President Ron Liebowitz

Transcript

Good morning.

Members of the Board of Trustees, honorary degree recipients, members of the Brandeis National Committee, faculty, staff, alumni, honored guests, families and friends of our graduates, and most especially the graduates of the class of 2024, it is my distinct pleasure and honor to welcome you to the 73rd commencement ceremony of Brandeis University.

The students we recognize today have worked hard and overcome significant adversity to achieve this milestone. For many of you graduates today, this is your first opportunity to walk the stage as your high school graduations were canceled due to COVID. Today is your day to celebrate all you have accomplished through what have in many ways been unprecedented times. On behalf of the extended Brandeis community, I offer my congratulations.

[Audience applauding]

Today is also a day for your families, friends, and loved ones who have been with you throughout your studies and who also didn't have the opportunity to see you walk in your high school graduation ceremony. Let us all here recognize those family members and friends whose devotion and support have contributed significantly to all that we are celebrating today. So please join me in thanking those who helped you to succeed in earning your Brandeis degrees.

[Audience applauding]

I also ask those present to join me in thanking the faculty and staff at Brandeis, whose teaching, mentorship, and support have helped these graduates today succeed and earn their baccalaureate degrees. Thank you as well.

[Audience applauding]

And last but not least, I also want to take a moment for us to convey our appreciation and thanks to the members of the Brandeis staff and many volunteers whose weeks of preparation have made this commencement weekend possible. Let's thank them as well.

[Audience applauding]

Among the many special guests with us today is one with a unique tie to our university's history, Louisa Brandeis Popkin. Louisa is our namesake Justice Louis Brandeis' great-granddaughter and a great friend of our university. Louisa is also the niece of Frank Brandeis Gilbert, who is Justice Brandeis' grandson. Frank attended the founding convocation of the university in 1948 at Boston Symphony Hall and was a regular at every commencement exercise from the university's first one in 1952 until his death in 2022. Louisa has taken up the mantle of representing the Brandeis family, for which we are most grateful. Our history may be relatively brief as major universities go, but it is filled with great achievement. An important part of that history is our enduring connection to the Brandeis family. So please join me in welcoming Louisa and Frank's wife Ann Gilbert here as well. Welcome.

[Audience applauding]

Now to our graduates. First of all, the entire Brandeis community is so proud of you and all that you have accomplished to be here today. You of course know perhaps all too well that your college experience began under the uncertainty of the COVID pandemic. Yet you persevered and adapted to new ways of learning, and when the pandemic came to an end, you were determined to create and recreate community, a slow and challenging task and one that has tested all of us. But I believe this test has prepared you in unseen ways for the kinds of challenges you'll face in any endeavor following Brandeis. We who have watched you are so confident about your future because you have shown your metal and resilience in navigating very difficult four years. Take with you what you have learned here and build upon it, confident in yourself and in what you absorbed from your classes, in late night discussions with other students, during office hour visits with your faculty mentors. In your everyday interactions with staff, from competing in athletics, from your prodigious volunteerism in local communities, and through your participation in and leadership of student clubs and organizations. You have been educated with the same values that motivated our founders 75 years ago, values rooted in the Jewish tradition, most importantly, ones that compel you to think critically and act compassionately. These values will serve you well as you pursue your careers and your dreams.

This morning, three individuals, Ken Burns, Roy DeBerry, and Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, will join your class as honorary members. Each has being committed to repairing the world, inspiring and improving the lives of so many. And each should serve as a role model as you chart your future. You are Brandeisians, which means you follow in the footsteps of so many who have made a difference across all professions and in all corners of the globe. So congratulations once again, and all the best to the class of 2024. Thank you.