Brandeis Magazine

Brandeis held its 73rd Commencement exercises for more than 1,400 undergraduate and graduate students on Sunday, May 19, in the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center.

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns delivered the keynote address during the morning’s undergraduate Commencement ceremony. Literary scholar and former Brown University president Ruth J. Simmons addressed graduate students at a separate ceremony in the afternoon.

Both speakers asked graduates to embrace difference, and open their minds and hearts to others.

“Whenever someone suggests to you, whoever it may be in your life, that there’s a ‘them,’ run away,” Burns said. “Othering is the simplistic, binary way to make and identify enemies, but it is also the surest way to your own self-imprisonment.”

Burns encouraged graduates to remain curious, commit to lifelong learning, and immerse themselves in nature as a way of gaining perspective on their own experiences.

“Be in nature, which is always perfect, and where nothing is binary,” he said. “Its sheer majesty may remind you of your own atomic insignificance, as one observer put it. But in the inscrutable and paradoxical ways of wild places, you will feel larger in spirit, just as the egotist in our midst is diminished by his or her self-regard.”

In her address to graduate students and their families, Simmons spoke about the essential vitality different ideas, individuals, and groups contribute to society.

“We continue to struggle with what it means to share a country with individuals and groups vastly different from who we are, from what we want, from how we believe, and from how we see the world,” she said. “Yet, if we are to survive, no, really thrive as a nation, we must come to value the role of difference in exploiting the rich reservoir of knowledge and perspectives available to us. We can best achieve that with a conscious and robust process of opening our minds and hearts to others.”

During the ceremonies, Burns received an honorary Doctor of Creative Arts. Simmons and civil rights activist Roy DeBerry ’70, GSAS MA’78, PhD’79, each received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. International women’s-rights advocate Ruth Halperin-Kaddari received an honorary Doctor of Laws. Rabbi David Ellenson (z”l), who was recognized internationally for his research in Jewish thought, ethics, and history, posthumously received a Doctor of Humane Letters; Ellenson died in December shortly after learning he would receive the degree.

In all, 752 students earned bachelor’s degrees. The university also awarded 163 master’s degrees and 59 PhDs in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 189 master’s degrees and 11 PhDs in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, 189 master’s degrees and five PhDs in Brandeis International Business School, and 101 master’s degrees in the Rabb School of Continuing Studies.