I first met Henry shortly after I became President of Tufts.  Dick Chait introduced us.  I had already read his classic book, “The University, An Owner’s Manual.” For some reason, Henry decided to take me under his wing and tutor me, just like an Oxford Don.

Our classroom was quite unusual l – Henry’s table at Legal Seafoods.  Same table, same meal, tuna sashimi, every time. 

During my ten years at Tufts, Henry never gave me any advice.  Instead, he asked questions.  Probing questions.  I felt like I was back in law school learning by the Socratic method, except now Socrates was sitting across the table from me.  So, he asked, why did you take this job? How are you going to raise the scholarly reputation of the place? Are the faculty likely to rise to this challenge or challenge your plan? What are you going to do to win them over? Tufts doesn’t have any money. (He was right.) How are you going to pay for what you want to do? I could go on.

Each question was focused on elevating Tuft’s scholarly reputation. To accomplish this goal, he stressed, I needed to raise the quality of both the faculty and the students.  Henry impressed upon me that this was the most important job of any president.  He also told me that the way to win over the faculty was to help them do their best work – their best teaching and their best scholarship.

Not all of our conversations were about universities.  He shared with me the unlikely journey that brought him to Harvard. He never forgot his roots as an immigrant from Danzig and a refugee from oppression. He recognized that he was the embodiment of the American Dream. He loved this country deeply, always proud of his military service.

During my time at Tufts, I also got to know Nitza.  She was Henry’s not-so-secret weapon. When Henry started to get frail, we moved our meetings to their home, where we had three-way conversations.  Nitza never hesitated to correct Henry when, in her estimation, he got things wrong, something I think very few of us ever attempted. In that respect, Nitza has never stopped being an Israeli.  And whatever the dispute, Henry almost always relented with a warm smile aimed at the love of his life.

I joined the Corporation shortly after the governance reforms which expanded the Corporation from six to nine members and created committees. Once again, Henry asked questions, but they were now focused on Harvard. As the Chair of the newly created Finance Committee, I told him about how I proposed, and the University instituted annual benchmarking against our peers. This effort looked at a large number of metrics and ratios to gauge how we were doing relative to MIT, Stanford and Yale. Henry was perplexed.  Why would we ever compare ourselves to anyone, he asked?  In Henry’s mind, Harvard was truly exceptional in every meaning of the word.  From his perspective, Harvard was unto itself, and he spent a good part of his life trying to keep it that way.

When I was asked to become a candidate for the job I hold now, I went to Henry for advice.  I told him I had doubts.  I told him that when I looked in the mirror, I did not see the President of Harvard.  In fact, I saw Derek.  Henry was baffled. Why would anyone not want to be President of Harvard, he asked incredulously.  In fact, Henry revealed his own preferences when he declined the Presidency of Yale.  As he explained, he did not believe that Yale would really accept a Jew from Harvard as its President.  But more importantly, Yale was not Harvard and he believed it never would be. I heeded his advice, one of the few times he offered it directly, and here I am.  And Henry was right yet again; there is nothing quite like the presidency of Harvard.

Henry Rosovsky was a singularity. I never met anyone like him and doubt that I ever will.  There is a wonderful word in Yiddish, sechel, that is often translated as wisdom and Henry was certainly wise.  But the full translation of sechel is “the ability to think, to weigh, the strength to judge, and then, to come to a decision.”  That was Henry, and we all miss him.  He loved Harvard and we loved him.

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Whatever your dreams are today, I wish for you what you wish for yourself—and I hope that living a meaningful life is high on your list. What do I mean by that?

You have worked extremely hard to earn your Harvard degree, but you are also extremely fortunate to be sitting here today. With education, with good fortune, comes responsibility, and that responsibility includes looking beyond your own success to help others.

No one accomplishes anything in life on their own. At the beginning of this ceremony, I asked you to recognize your friends and families who have supported you, and you did. But you have also received support from countless others. For example, those who pushed and encouraged you, and who may have recognized something in you that you did not recognize in yourself; those who had confidence in you even before you proved yourself worthy of their trust; those who extended themselves to open doors for you. And to all these, you can add the invisible others: those who volunteered their time to create organizations that have been central to your life; those who worked to build institutions that nurtured your capacities, talents, and ambitions; those who helped to sustain and strengthen this great university, which I hope has left its mark on you, and from which you now graduate.

I could go on.

Soon it will be your turn to extend a helping hand and to create hope and opportunity for others. We expect this of you—and more.

I have never met anyone who thinks the world we live in is perfect. This statement is equally true of liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, and those across the political spectrum. So, if you believe this world is imperfect, the only way it will get better is if good people like you work to repair it. This is now your responsibility.

Harvard gave me a great education, but it also raised my expectations for myself. It opened my eyes to what is possible. At my Commencement, I never imagined that someday I would be standing here giving the final remarks at your Commencement. I hope—as you find your way through life—that you will have similarly pleasant surprises.

And now, to all of those who helped me along the path of life, to those who gave me opportunities that I never could have imagined, to those who gave me the extraordinary responsibility and helped me to lead Harvard over these past five years, and those who helped me do so, thank you. And to Adele, my wife of 48 years who has been my partner on this incredible journey and all others, thank you. I love you. Like all of you who are graduating today, I will seek to repay all those who have helped me by trying to help others and to find ways to repair this world.

As I prepare to take my leave, I am reminded of a quotation from a book of wisdom called Ethics of Our Fathers. It is the meditation of a great teacher and scholar. “I have learned much from my teachers, more from my colleagues, but most from my students.”

To the Class of 2023, thank you for teaching me so well. I am grateful to each and every one of you for being a constant source of hope and optimism. Serving as your president has been the privilege of my life. I look forward eagerly to celebrating all that you will do for the world—and all whose lives will be made better by your good work.

To the Class of 2023, thank you, farewell—and Godspeed!

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For me, it is far more.

On September 14, 1942, my mother, Ruth, was packed into a cattle car like this one with her family and the other Jews from her hometown of Londorf, Germany. They were being transported to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic. Many of them died en route, the living and the dead jammed together.

A few years later, my mother and her family were packed into another cattle car bound for Auschwitz. Her parents and her sister died there. She was forced to work. She was transported again. She survived unspeakable conditions.

In early January of 1945, the Russians liberated my mother. She was the only survivor among her family, the only survivor among the people who had been transported from her hometown—one of 120.

She was 18 years old. She was the same age as our first-year students in Harvard College.

For many of you, this cattle car is a reminder of the consequences of hatred and bigotry.

For me, it is the family I never met.

Hate Ends Now Project

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I am humbled by this acknowledgment because it comes from you—my peers in higher education. You know better than anyone else what it takes to persist in leadership roles at colleges and universities. If the assertion that our institutions move at a glacial pace is accurate, it is safe to say that our roles sometimes leave us out in the cold.

ACE does many things for higher education. But, for me, this is among its most important contributions: meetings where we learn, where we grow, and where we connect—and commiserate. This community has meant a lot to me throughout my career. And I thank each of you for supporting ACE, for acknowledging me with this award, and for working together to improve higher education.

When you spend fifty-plus years in rooms like this one, you meet lots of interesting people. I want to begin by remembering one of those people, our friend and colleague Molly Corbett Broad.

For me—and I suspect for some of you and countless others—Molly was the steel hand in a velvet glove. Tough but elegant. She was outspoken, plainspoken, and softspoken—an unlikely combination that is all too rare these days. She led this body and others with distinction, and she was a model of service in North Carolina and elsewhere. She will be missed.

I also want to recognize Bob Atwell for whom this lecture is named. While I never had the privilege of working with Bob, he helped to lead and shape this organization to be what it is today. It is an honor to be the 2023 Atwell Lecturer.

In preparing these remarks, I thought about how much the world has changed since I took office—and how much it has stayed the same.

At my inauguration in 2018, I shared some of the challenges higher education was facing: people questioning the value of sending a child to college, people asking whether colleges and universities are worthy of public support, people expressing doubts about whether colleges and universities are even good for the nation.

Five years later, partisan divides have further intensified these criticisms. Meanwhile, backlash against American higher education has led to efforts to limit what we teach and how we teach it, to politicize our governance processes, and to discredit diversity as an essential component of our educational missions.

We cannot ignore these critiques, but we must not yield to them. Each of us has a role to play—to use whatever bully pulpit we have at our disposal—to stand up for the values that define our institutions, that define all of higher education. This is hard work, work that takes years before it bears fruit, necessary work that ensures the relevance and the persistence of our institutions.

Standing up for our values demands, in part, that we address an insidious set of actions—and a persistent set of inactions—that threaten part of our core mission; namely, creating hope and opportunity through education.

I speak of efforts to restrict immigration, to deny access to international students and scholars, and to deny access to people who come to this country seeking freedom and opportunity, and a better life for themselves and their families. In determining who is worthy, the US increasingly seems to prefer those who speak English, who come with highly valued skills, who already have resources, and in many cases, who look a lot like me.

I suspect if these criteria had been applied to many of us, to our parents or our grandparents, we would not be in this room today. I am certain that I would not be.

Both of my parents were immigrants, refugees in fact. My father was born in Minsk and came to this country as a child with his family to escape the pogroms of Eastern Europe. My mother came from Germany. She was a survivor of Auschwitz, the only member of her family and the only Jew from her town to survive. She came here on the second Liberty Ship that brought refugees from Europe after the war. Neither of my parents spoke English. Neither had any resources. Neither had any demonstrable skills. All they had was a yearning for freedom and opportunity.

I am standing here as living proof of the power of education to transform lives. My father worked an assortment of menial jobs so he could afford to attend Wayne State University—an urban, regional public, at night. Wayne State changed his life and, in the process, mine. So, to any who are here from Wayne State—or from the other “Wayne States” in this country—thank you, thank you, thank you.

I have been extremely fortunate. Where else in the world can one go, in one generation, from off the boat, with literally nothing, to enjoy the kind of life and opportunity that I have enjoyed?

Immigration and education made my life possible—and I have never lost sight of that fact.

Given my personal background, I have found the last ten or so years of paralysis in our Capitol around immigration reform deeply disturbing and depressing. Given my professional background, I have found them detrimental. Efforts to restrict immigration have a profound impact on how each of our institutions is able to fulfill its mission.

We limit immigration at our peril. Why? Because immigration furthers our national interest. And because immigration defines our national identity.

Let me speak to the first issue of national interest.

We live in a world where human capital is the only truly scarce capital. Financial capital moves at the speed of light, worldwide, in search of higher returns. It is no longer necessary for nations to be endowed with valuable natural resources, a different kind of capital, to be wealthy. Just look at Singapore, the Netherlands, or Israel. It is human capital that determines the wealth of nations today, the ability to attract, create, and retain human capital. Our institutions do precisely that. We recruit scholars and students from around the world. We provide them an environment where each can flourish. And our foreign students and scholars enhance the experience of everyone else on our campuses. This ecosystem helps to support the best higher education system in the world. How do we know that? Because we stand the test of the market. The rest of the world keeps sending us their best and their brightest to work and study here—and when they graduate, they do amazing things.

Consider the Fortune 500 companies. More than 40% of them were founded by immigrants or their children, often educated in the United States. And those companies span some 68 industries and employ almost 15 million people around the globe.

Or consider Nobel prizes. Of US Nobel laureates who have received these prizes since 1901, some 15% were not born in America. These individuals have taught generations of students who have become leaders in their fields. They have strengthened their academic communities, and this country and our economy, through their scholarship, and they have collaborated with colleagues near and far. These collaborations, in turn, strengthen connections between countries—connections that can take on outsized importance in times of tension.

Let me take this idea closer to home. This same pattern repeats itself in higher education. In the Boston academic community alone, many of our most prominent institutions are led by immigrants. The new president of Tufts, Sunil Kumar, is from India. The recently retired president of MIT, Rafael Reif, is from Venezuela. The president of Bunker Hill Community College, Pam Eddinger, is from Hong Kong. The president of Northeastern University, Joseph Aoun, is from Lebanon. And the president of UMass Boston, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, is from Argentina. All of them were educated, at least in part, in this country.

At Harvard, one quarter of our students are international. One third of our faculty were born or educated outside of the US. I suspect this pattern repeats itself at many of your institutions.

America thrives when the world’s best join us to pursue research that fuels discovery and innovation. International students challenge our most talented domestic students in the classroom, and these international students bring another dimension of diversity to our campuses. They often seek to build families and careers in the US after graduation, but—even if they leave this country—some of our values go with them—and their relationships with classmates persist.

Unfortunately, our longstanding preeminence as a top destination is not assured. Our competitors aspire to attract these same students with governments offering more favorable pathways to permanent residency and financial incentives for top faculty, students, and staff.

So, immigration is truly in the national interest. Higher education helps to serve this national interest by attracting and educating students from around the world. And those same students make our campuses more interesting and more lively in countless ways.

Now on to how immigration defines our national identity.

Ours is a country that has always prided itself on being a beacon of freedom and opportunity for others.

It brings me pain knowing that my parents—and I suspect some of your parents or grandparents—would not recognize this country today. We are turning our back on those seeking a better life, a better future for themselves and for their children. I am speaking about people who are unlikely to win a Nobel Prize, start a company, or become a college president. I am speaking about people who come here because they seek to escape bigotry, hatred, violence, or poverty, people who come here with temporary protected status. These people, too, are worthy of our embrace. How we treat the least powerful among us is one measure of the virtue of any society.

We need an immigration system that is smart, compassionate, and fair. Ultimately, creating such a system is the job of Congress. We cannot do it ourselves. However, for those of us who have influence in Congress, we need to use it to advocate for change.

Consider the case of Dreamers or students who do not even qualify for DACA, students who are here without legal status. I suspect every institution represented at this meeting has at least some of these individuals enrolled—students who were brought here by their parents and who have only known life in this country. These students live in a state of suspended animation, never knowing if they will be allowed to contribute their talents to this country. And students ineligible for DACA face additional challenges: no ID means no flying, which means no travel home during breaks unless home is close by. Pursuing paid work or pursuing academic dreams is complex and convoluted in the extreme. This is not speculation on my part. I can tell you that what our country is putting some of our most ambitious young people through is unconscionable.

These students cannot advocate successfully for themselves. They need our help. But what can we do?

We must amplify the stories that exist within our communities, stories of individual students whose prospects are profoundly affected by our politics and our policies. Stories matter. They reveal the true cost of our policies by making them personal and visible.

I think about Jin Park, a DACA student from Harvard. He was the first Dreamer awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, quite a journey for a 7-year-old boy who arrived in the US with “home alone”—the title of the movie he watched on the trip from South Korea—his only English words.

When he received the Rhodes, it was unclear if Jin could accept it. Though our law permitted him to travel to Oxford, he risked not being able to return to this country when his studies concluded. We enlisted our senators and our congressman to gain a special exemption for Jin. Following Oxford, he returned to Cambridge, where he is pursuing his MD in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. He is an outstanding talent. Making life difficult for him—and for others like him—does not advance our national interests; it alienates our national treasures.

But telling stories is not enough. We also must act. In 2019, one of our first-year students, a young Palestinian, was denied entry without explanation when he arrived at the airport in Boston. He was returned to Lebanon on the first available flight without ever getting past Customs. We did everything within our power to get him a new visa so that he could be admitted to the country in time to start the first semester of his college life with his peers. I used his plight to illustrate the disruptions and delays—the scrutiny and suspicion—that were at the time being directed at international students and scholars in the name of national security. This remarkable young man, who traveled a long and difficult path from a refugee camp in Lebanon to Harvard, will graduate in May.

Less than a year after that incident, during the pandemic, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sought to require international students to leave the US if their colleges or universities switched to online instruction. It was a cruel and reckless directive that was set to disrupt the lives of more than a million students during a public health crisis. Harvard, together with MIT, led a nationwide effort to see it overturned. We sued and we won. In a little more than a week, the government rescinded the directive, and more than one million international students were spared having to return to their countries in the middle of a pandemic.

And when I say, “we won,” I mean we won—all of us here today. While Harvard and MIT led the charge, we would have failed without the constant and unambiguous support of ACE and many other organizations, and of colleges and universities across the country. To all of you, thank you for being there for us—and for all of our international students.

Most actions are not that conspicuous. I think of the 56 Harvard employees who have become American citizens through our Bridge Program in the past five years. This wonderful program enlists students, staff, and alumni to help individuals learn English, pass the citizenship exam, and raise their sights for their own work and careers.

I suspect many of you have similar programs on your campuses, but if not, this program could be easily replicated and, since most of the work is done by volunteers, it is extraordinarily cost effective.

One of the best speeches given at my inauguration was from a staff member, Calixto Sáenz. Calixto credits the Bridge Program with his successful career ����ר��. He came to the United States from Colombia seeking a better life. Like many hardworking immigrants, he took a low-paying job. He was a cashier at a Harvard Medical School cafe so he could enroll in a UMass Lowell master’s program. The Bridge Program helped him get an internship with the IT help desk. From there, he got a full-time job working in a lab. He moved up the ranks quickly and became the director of our microfluidics core facility, one of the largest labs ����ר�� Medical School. We can—and should—implement programs such as this one at our institutions. Together with UMass Lowell, we altered the trajectory of Calixto’s life.

And if you want examples of how to do it best—don’t look to Harvard. Can you believe I said that? I’ll say it again: If you want examples of how to do it best, don’t look to Harvard.

Look to our community colleges and minority serving institutions, and to our colleagues who lead them. Nearly a third of their student populations come from immigrant backgrounds, and many of them are adult learners. What I have just described as noteworthy for Harvard is routine for institutions that are addressing needs that go far beyond the needs of most four-year colleges and universities. In addition to providing a pathway to a degree, they also help clear hurdles to achievement encountered by many adult students. They come in such a variety of forms that enumerating them would take the rest of this lecture.

If there are heroes among us today, they are our colleagues at our community colleges and minority serving institutions who are fulfilling a responsibility to those who have already made it here, to those who want an opportunity to participate in what has always been called the American Dream. These heroes are upholding the values of this country on a day-to-day basis, and they deserve better state and federal support. The rest of us should be advocating on their behalf. We must do more to partner with these institutions and to support their work in ways that they find useful. I believe that is not only possible but also necessary if we hope to meet our collective obligation to this country—and to those who are eager for their chance to contribute to its excellence.

As I like to say, talent is flatly distributed; opportunity is not.

I’ll leave you with some words of wisdom from our very own Bob Atwell. “[ACE is] based on persuasion, moral persuasion. But we don’t have authority over anybody. Do we have influence? Yes, I think we do. So we have seen our role to be one of attempting to lead by persuasion, but not anything else.”

Moral persuasion is a very powerful thing. Today, I appeal to your sense of fairness. All of us are in this room because of the generosity and work of those who came before us. We now need to ask ourselves, what are we going to do to ensure that future generations have the same opportunity that we did?

I hope the answer is “everything in our power” because this country needs our help. Our institutions change lives. We need to do everything we can to ensure that the American Dream survives. We should accept nothing less.

Thank you.

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Thank you, Lie Leena and Travis.

On behalf of the entire University, I want to welcome each of you to Junior Family Weekend. I always look forward to this event. It is an opportunity to meet the families who have entrusted their young people to us. But today is a bit bittersweet for me since it is the last time I get to welcome folks to this event, as I will be stepping down at the end of June.  Not to worry. I have a fabulous successor – Claudine Gay, currently dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which means she oversees the College. You will love her.

My remarks today are divided into four parts: First, a compliment. Second, an observation. Third, a suggestion. And, finally, some advice.

So let’s start with the compliment. The fact that you are sitting here today is indication that you have done your job well. You all have raised incredibly smart, interesting, creative, hardworking, idealistic, and, if I am honest, sometimes challenging kids. Those are the qualities we sought when we admitted them, and we have not been disappointed. But I also want to give your kids a compliment on their admirable selection of their families. I told you they were smart, and they are.

Second, an observation. No one skates through life without encountering adversity. Your students have already faced more than their share. I know about a few of their personal challenges because they have told me their stories. I have my own group of first year advisees. I also try to meet as many students as possible. I learn a lot about their backgrounds when we talk. I always admire how they have overcome the personal challenges they have faced. But every student in the Class of 2024 also has faced an enormous collective challenge – the pandemic. It has robbed them of much of their young lives – the last few months of their senior year in high school, always a special time, and a first year of college that was radically different from their expectations and unlike that experienced by any other class. If there is a silver lining to their experience, it is that they have already demonstrated that they are incredibly resilient. While I would have not wished the pandemic on anyone, this resilience will serve them well in life. They will encounter future challenges, and they will be prepared.

Third, a suggestion. While you are here, go out of your way to get to know your kid’s friends because they are likely to keep reappearing in your lives. Most students form friendships in college that last them a lifetime. I know what I am talking about. I met three of my best friends during the first two days of orientation my freshman year. No, not here. I went to a small technical school down the street – MIT. The four of us lived together on and off throughout college. When we graduated, we shared an apartment. One of my roommates introduced me to my wife, Adele. He married Adele’s roommate. In fact, my three roommates and I all got married in four successive weekends in June 1975. As we all approach our 48th anniversary, we are all still married. We have shared all of life’s passages together: the birth of children, buying our first houses, the marriage of our kids, major career decisions, and the birth of grandchildren. (Between the four couples we have 17 of them.) My point is the friends your kids make ����ר�� are likely to keep reappearing in their lives and yours. Get to know them now and eventually you will think of them as extended family.

Finally, some advice. Your kids are closing in on the end of their junior year. This is the time when they start to get nervous about what comes after college. The fact that they think that most of their Harvard classmates have already figured things out only adds to their anxiety. My advice is to tell them to relax. Their first job will not be their last. And even a choice of what to study in graduate school will not bind them to a particular career path. Whatever they think they are likely to do as they start their final year ����ר�� will often change. To illustrate this point, let me go back to my roommates. When we graduated, we all started graduate school at either Harvard or MIT. At the time, we all were convinced of our future paths. In fact, none of us wound up doing anything close to what we thought we were going to do. This also proved true of many of our classmates. I guarantee you I never thought I would be president of any university let alone Harvard. In fact, I never even dreamed of being an academic. Life happens. Most of our careers are a series of fortuitous accidents. On the day you retire, it all makes sense. Encourage your kids to relax, to be thoughtful about their choices, but caution them not to over plan. As the saying goes, man plans and God laughs.

It has been a pleasure sharing these last three years with your kids. Best of luck to them. I can’t wait to see what they all do, but I am confident that, whatever it is, they will make you as proud as you are today.

Thank you.

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Good morning.  My name is Larry Bacow and as President of Harvard University I would like to welcome you to this celebration of life for our dear friend, colleague and teacher, Paul Farmer.

One of the greatest gifts of the presidency is the gift of knowledge—knowledge of our faculty, knowledge of their work, knowledge of their skill.

Before I met Paul, I had read about him—I had read his own writings and those who wrote about him—but nothing could have prepared me to hear him speak in person. His searing and vivid descriptions of reality, his impassioned yet measured aspirations for humanity, opened my eyes more fully. His devotion—to every person—opened my heart more fully. My time with him was a gift I will cherish forever. 

The Jewish tradition offers us a beautiful idea. There are, it asserts, in every generation, thirty-six righteous people — 36 in Hebrew is lamed vav—or 36 lamed-vavniks, whose commitment to justice justifies the existence of the world. These people are not known to us, in fact, they are not even known to themselves which means that any one of us could be one of them. 

Paul, I believe, was a lamed-vavnik, a person who walked among us for a time to remind us that none of us travels alone. We proceed through life alongside one another, revealing, witnessing, and practicing humanity on the journey. Every step we take—as individuals and through the institutions we build and renew together—can move us—should move us—closer to our ideals.

Thank you, Didi, for sharing your husband with the world. Thank you, to the Farmer children, for sharing your father with the world. We in this room—and countless others—are all the better for your generosity and for the generosity of the entire Farmer family.

May you find peace in today’s embrace of the Harvard community. And may memories of our friend and colleague be for you—and for all of us—a blessing.

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Thank you for welcoming me—for welcoming my loved ones—today. We are honored to be here representing our family.

Thank you, Mr. Hausner—thank you, Jens—for reaching out to me earlier this year and for organizing this event.  My gratitude for your efforts cannot be put into words.

Thank you, citizens and residents, for acknowledging the Jews of Londorf, for recognizing the injustice and inhumanity to which they were subjected in life.

It is never too late to do right, and I appreciate the kindness that this effort represents. Thank you for this mitzvah—Hebrew for “good deed.”

I stand before you—together with my sister—together with my children—as the descendants of the only survivor among those taken from this town—taken from their homes 80 years ago today.

My mother, Ruth Wertheim, was transported to Theresienstadt along with her parents, Leopold and Emma, and her grandfather, David. Her sister, Inge, had already been arrested. My mother was 15.

My mother’s family all perished in Auschwitz. They were among six million Jews murdered.

Six million is a number beyond understanding.

So, here I am, one man. My sister, one woman. My sister’s children and my children have children of their own.

The sweetness of life cannot be put into words.

The bitterness of life can.

As a grandfather watching my grandchildren grow and change, I find myself imagining what it might have been like to spend some of my childhood in the loving embrace of my mother’s parents.

As an uncle and a great uncle, I find myself imagining what it might have been like to have known my mother’s sister, what it might have been like to have visited my aunt, to have played with my cousins.

The grief of descendants is the grief of imagination.

The work of remembering must be the work of imagining, of trading contemplation of six million lives for confrontation with one life, with another life and then another, throughout our lives.

Imagine the people who are not here today. The children, the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren of my mother’s neighbors, of my mother’s friends. Imagine the lives they might have led, the joys and sorrows they might have experienced, the good deeds they might have done.

It is one thing to recognize the dead, one thing to place a plaque in their memory. It is another thing—more important and more difficult—to speak up for the living.

May each of us pledge—here, today—to do the mitzvah – the good deed – of raising a moral voice in response to bigotry, hatred, and injustice, not just where we live but everywhere. May we give voice to those to those whose voices have been silenced; to those who may appear different from the majority.

If we are successful, we will spare future generations the sad task of holding ceremonies like this one. We will create more opportunities for more people to do mitzvot – good deeds. And we will remember the power that lies within each and every one of us to do right.

This day is for many, many people. But, for me, this day is for Ruth Wertheim, one of some six million. This day is for Ruth Bacow, my mother, one of one.

Thank you.

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Good morning, friends. Thank you for joining me here in this sacred space at the heart of our campus. I cannot imagine a better way to begin my last academic year as your president.

What will this semester bring for me? For you? For our community?

It’s been years since those questions existed outside of the pandemic, outside of testing cadences, dashboard statistics, and contingency plans. Yet—despite the procession and persistence of variants—it finally feels as if we can live life again. And I want to take a moment to recognize that change—and to be filled with gratitude and hope for it.

So, here we are, imagining the future together. A lot could go right this semester—a lot could go wrong. Nothing is certain except for one thing: If you and I are doing our jobs—are doing what this institution expects and demands of us—what this nation needs of us—what this world needs of us—we will be arguing.

Everywhere the stakes have gotten higher, and what we have to lose—a functioning democracy, a habitable planet, the list goes on—has become clearer and clearer. Gone are the days of quiet assurance and polite acquiescence. If we stand for Veritas, we must speak for Veritas. We must be both its bearer and its defender.

Being quick to understand and slow to judge does not mean being unwilling to argue—it means arguing in a way that celebrates and strengthens our mission, that demonstrates the power of knowledge and the forbearance of wisdom.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks’ argument for argument is among the most compelling I have encountered. We ought to argue, he asserts, “out of a desire to discover the truth, not out of cantankerousness or a wish to prevail over [our fellows],” not “out of envy and contentiousness and ambition for victory.”

When we argue for the sake of the latter, he continues, “what is at stake is not truth but power, and the result is that both sides suffer. If you win, I lose. But if I win, I also lose, because in diminishing you, I diminish myself […] The opposite is the case when the argument is for the sake of truth. If I win, I win. But if I lose, I also win—because being defeated by the truth is the only form of defeat that is also a victory.”

Rabbi Sacks referred to this type of argument as argument not for the sake of victory but for the sake of heaven. As we begin again to imagine the future—as individuals and as a community—may we all find ways to resist the lure of righteousness. May we embrace the possibility of transcendence through argument. And may we live life again with greater appreciation of its fragility—and for our dependence on one another.

Our beloved Harvard—and all of the institutions that preserve and protect truth—must endure. And we must do all that we can to see that they do, with gratitude and hope for our time and for times to come.

Thank you—and take care.

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