Aug. 16, 2020: Convocation Address

Good evening members of our distinguished faculty and staff. And welcome, Bucknell University Transfer Students and Class of 2024!

This night is obviously a break from tradition. Though, despite the accommodations we have made, I urge you to reflect on and appreciate the magic of this moment. Yes, we have been forced to set aside some of the pageantry and ceremony—regrettably—but this official inauguration as members of the Bucknell community remains a defining moment in your lives.

You are about to embark on a path that leads to the discovery of new knowledge and new perspectives. You will be presented unfamiliar challenges; with the help of our faculty and staff, you will find ways to overcome them.

You will change. You will grow. You will find your trajectory in life. And thanks to the unique benefits of a liberal arts education, you will gain the power to alter the course of that trajectory at will, allowing you to always explore new passions, chase new dreams, or dedicate your talents to more urgent causes.

Most importantly, as a Class—as a community—you will find ways to connect, to bond, and to thrive. Together, you will discover the hard-won inspiration that conceals itself in moments of difficulty and uncertainty. And, while it can be hard to see it now, I promise that you will make positive memories here at Bucknell that will stay with you for a lifetime.

I typically don’t need to tell Bucknell students to have a good time. But this may be the first time in eleven years that I felt compelled to encourage students to do so—that is, to safely and responsibly have a good time—but I do urge you to find joy in your years here. It is essential to your success and personal well-being. All of us at the University will be working hard to make this time memorable for you.

Traditionally, I have used my Convocation address to encourage students to not view their years at Bucknell as a haven from the problems of the world. Instead, I have encouraged them to seek out the world’s problems and do their part to solve them. This year is obviously quite different. You have arrived on campus in the midst of a global crisis from which there is no haven. We have no choice as to whether we will engage this crisis or not. We are forced to act—every time we go out into the world—we are forced to act, in ways big and small.

At times, the weight of that responsibility will feel heavy. But I want you to find strength in the fact that you are about to dedicate the next years of your life to the pursuit of knowledge at a time when our nation is yearning for educated minds, informed opinions, and perspectives shaped by fact, evidence, and truth. There is also a desperate need for dynamic, adaptive, well-rounded thinking—the type of thinking nurtured by the liberal arts. We’ll need it to carry our country through the complexity of this time.

Now, and ever in the future, our nation will lean on those leaders whose worldviews and intellect are as deep as they are wide.

Leaders who are students of history—who appreciate the moments in our past that can guide our actions today and give us hope.

Leaders schooled in business, finance, and ethics—who understand the tides of our economy and how to share our collective resources when they are most needed and where they can do the most good.

Leaders who have studied psychology and sociology—who can help address the emotional toll of a society separated by masks and social distancing, and who can weigh the costs and benefits of every decision to open or close, come together or stay apart.

To that end, we need leaders with an abiding appreciation for science—who ultimately put their faith in conclusions that withstand the trials of repeated criticism, testing and experimentation.

Last year, I shared the words of chemist Louis Pasteur who, more than 100 years ago, convinced the world of the radical idea that germs are the cause of contagious diseases. Considering the particular challenge we face today, I thought it was appropriate to evoke his words again.

In an address to his colleagues, Pasteur advised them to, “Worship the spirit of criticism… Without it,” he argued, “everything is fallible.”

When schools and businesses began to close in March in response to the pandemic, it seemed that this challenge would define this moment in history.

Then, suddenly, two months later, we watched in horror as a white police officer murdered a black man named George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. For two minutes and 53 seconds of that time, Mr. Floyd was unresponsive. Before losing consciousness, he cried out for his late mother, knowing he was about to die.

As a nation, we wondered again, “Would there be justice?”

If America had come close to truly fulfilling the vision of its founders—a vision for equality across humanity—this question would not come with such an uncertain answer. Unfortunately, our nation has repeatedly let down, held back, and purposely undercut underrepresented communities, particularly Black America. We have much more progress to make in forming a more perfect union.

This summer, the Bucknell staff and faculty actively worked to meet and rise above the expectations of this moment—to respond to the righteous calls for justice.

For our part, we are establishing new, permanent roles in our University’s leadership and creating institutional channels of communication that will elevate the often-unheard diverse communities on our campus.

We are making systemic changes too, through employee training and improvements to the curriculum, that will make embracing and understanding racial diversity an integral part of our daily lives.

We are also dedicating finances to support an Anti-Racism Fund to sustain these important initiatives. We cannot simply offer one-time responses to appease the initial calls to action.

As a community, we must find the moral courage to no longer attack racial justice in incremental steps. We should pause when we hear ourselves say, “This may be the stance we should take, but it will offend some people.” Rather, we should demand of ourselves, a more just declaration, “This will offend some people, but it is the right thing to do.”

In President Barack Obama’s recent eulogy of Congressman John Lewis, the President told a story about the Congressman when he was just about the age of so many of you. The year was 1960. The Supreme Court had recently ruled that segregation of interstate bus facilities was unconstitutional, so Congressman Lewis and Bernard Lafayette bought two tickets for a Greyhound bus ride through the south to test the new ruling.

As President Obama told it, “At every stop, through the night, apparently the angry driver stormed out of the bus and into the bus station. And John and Bernard had no idea what he might come back with or who he might come back with. Nobody was there to protect them. There were no camera crews to record events.”

The President put the actions of the two young men into perspective, saying, “John was only twenty years old. But he pushed all twenty of those years to the center of the table, betting everything, all of it, that his example could challenge centuries of convention, and generations of brutal violence, and countless daily indignities suffered by African Americans.”

As someone who grew up witnessing the racial strife of the 1960s—watching the progress of civil rights legislation being met by the bitter, unfounded hatred—I find myself incensed watching so much of history repeat itself this many decades later.

At the same time, while some of the societal anguish of my youth has returned, so have the reminders of humankind’s boundless ability to dream and explore.

My ten-year-old son has taken an interest in space exploration, just as I did watching the Gemini and Apollo missions. I so vividly remember watching that “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” This summer, while life here at home was so embroiled in conflict, my son and I watched as our world demonstrated its fullest potential beyond the safety of our atmosphere.

On July 30, NASA launched the Perseverance rover. “Perseverance” — I love that word, especially now. For the next seven months, it will fly through space before landing on Mars where it will spend a year recording new and fascinating data. Increasingly, we take achievements like this for granted, but consider the challenge of this mission.

Earth and Mars are two celestial bodies, floating in space 300 million miles apart. There is no Earthly comparison for that distance. The planets are constantly moving—rotating and revolving. And yet, NASA set out to launch this 2,200 pound rover on the tip of a rocket travelling more than 24,000 miles per hour with the goal of not only reaching Mars, but landing the rover safely in a crater only 28 miles wide. Simply astounding.

Of course, while this mission should leave every one of us in awe, I’d argue it still doesn’t compare to the risk, spectacle and wonder of taking humans to space. Three days after Perseverance left Earth, two astronauts returned. After two months at the International Space Station, the astronauts climbed back into their spacecraft—owned and operated by a private company, which was a first—and undocked while orbiting the Earth at 22 times the speed of sound. The speed and friction of their atmosphere reentry raised the exterior temperatures of the spacecraft to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Miraculously, they splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico at a gentle 15 miles per hour. Safe and sound.

As hard as these last few months have been—and as challenging as the next few months will be—achievements like these give me hope. They should give you hope too.

Humankind will be successful in creating a vaccine that will bring an end to this pandemic.

Together, we can end the divisions, strife, and violence caused by systemic racism.

With an education…with a commitment to lifelong learning…with open minds and open hearts…there is no limit to what we can accomplish.

And if you are wondering, “Who will lead the achievements of the future?”; “Who will create the world we wish to see?”

I would answer, “That’s precisely why you are here. Tonight, is only the first step.”

Congratulations, again, Class of 2024. We cannot wait to see what you accomplish.