Commencement 2022


Wherever You Go, Hold Your Community Accountable

I hope that, after you graduate today, you will remember the lessons of this experience. Do something with the enormous privilege that is a Harvard education. Try to make the world a better place.


A Letter From Harvard’s Faculty Deans to the Classes of 2020 and 2021

It is finally your moment for gowns, mortarboards, speeches, bagpipers, marching bands, swing bands, last-chance dances, and champagne toasts. Harvard — and all of us — are all dressed up and waiting for you. Welcome back, Classes of 2020 and 2021! The time for our long-awaited reunion is finally here.


The World Beyond the Bubble

As graduating students leave the shadows of the Harvard bubble, we urge them never to return as undergraduates. Remain alert, alive, awake; protest what you oppose and champion what you cherish. Speak up, write at length, and confront difficult questions head-on. Let every blunder be a path to a more thorough understanding of reality.


Act and Vote with the Climate in Mind

As I reflect on my message to you I wonder: will you remember what I write? I fervently hope so, since my message is to implore you to ask our alma mater to do more to address the climate crisis.


Some Exceedingly Excellent Advice

And with that I salute you, classes of ’20 and ’21! Congratulations! Enjoy! Respect your elders! Seize the day! Take back the night! Go into the office! Vote! And one more thing, if I may be so candid: save the Harvard-Yale jokes for your 50th reunion. You can absolutely make them work. But they are best delivered bald.


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