Commencement 2021

“Empathy is core to humanistic thought and the liberal arts — central, then, to your Mount Holyoke education.” 

Trustees, honored guests, members of the faculty, colleagues, our distinguished graduates, the class of 2021, good morning, good afternoon, good evening — wherever you are in the world,  I join Karena Strella, chair of the Mount Holyoke Board of Trustees, in extending to you a warm welcome as we join together in celebrating Mount Holyoke’s exceptionally accomplished class of 2021, Frances Perkins scholars, graduate students and our distinguished honorary degree recipients. 

Throughout this ceremony, you will hear from members of the Mount Holyoke faculty who bring greetings and congratulations on behalf of their department colleagues. And, before we begin, I would like to take a moment to recognize all the faculty who have worked with great dedication and intellectual energy to be present with you today, class of 2021, as you take the degrees that you richly deserve. Along the way, you have also been supported by the generous and loyal staff of the College, and I know that they, too, join me in congratulating you and sending you from this cherished place with their warmest wishes for your continued success and happiness.

This is not how any of us imagined this moment, nor how we envisaged celebrating the achievements of those receiving degrees today. There is no greater joy than that of being in community with family and friends, trustees, faculty, staff and alums, as we mark this point of arrival, this transitional moment, and this new beginning for our new graduates. As in 2020, the public health conditions, the travel disruptions, and the dispersal of our graduates due to the global pandemic recommended a different approach, and we hope that you will find a way, across the miles, to create a unique celebration wherever you are, and to participate in the one that we have created for you.

In preparing for this day, for this, Mount Holyoke’s 184th Commencement, I have been struck by two things: the care and concern, the empathy, that everyone involved has brought to the discussion and the planning — the desire to ensure that, whatever the location and situation of each one of our graduates, they could participate in this moment, and surrounded by those who helped them reach this milestone. 

Secondly, I have been moved by the commitment to celebration, to renewal and to hope, after these long months of isolation, social and political division, and a national reckoning with racism. As we all hope for a radical departure from injustice, suffering and loss, and an end to this pandemic, and as we gather to reflect on your last 15 months as students and your individual journeys to graduation, I am struck by the ways in which empathy is core to humanistic thought and the liberal arts — central, then, to your Mount Holyoke education — and a much needed response to our present moment and to our collective future. Empathy is the most important of human attributes — it is a pillar of social understanding and of our interactions. It is the connective experience that underpins friendships as much as it fuels advocacy and collective action.

And it begins with curiosity. Curiosity about others and about yourself. And if ever a moment needed curiosity it is this one. This moment in time, this moment in human history, is one that is anything but clear or certain, and that is why it will be especially important for you to be and to remain curious about yourselves, to embrace the unfamiliar to the best of your ability, and to understand your own vulnerabilities. This not only so that you can thrive, but so that you can connect with others, others close to you, like you, and others who may take a very different perspective or have nothing in common with you. Strength grows from introspection, from knowing yourself, but your curiosity also finds greater purpose when it is directed toward others, and used to connect with them, and their struggles and pain, empathically. To do this requires courage, for as Maya Angelou says, while we may all have empathy, “we may not have the courage to display it.”¹

The deep and engaging work you have done across the liberal arts at Mount Holyoke — the studies of the human mind and a variety of organisms; the reading, creative writing and literary criticism; the coding, neural networks and robotics; the critical social thought and study of gender, race and societies; the systems, languages, ideologies, cultures, histories and religions you have encountered — these have all prepared you to be curious, to ask critical questions, to seek out answers, and to use your talents to create connections of every kind, to be courageous in your learning and empowered in your pursuit of what is interesting, what is good, what is right, and what is just. 

To reach this point, you have spent many hours in disciplined work of every kind — in labs, in the library, on the field, in the studio and on stage, through the lens of the microscope and the camera, and, of course, on Zoom. You have spent time in conversation and discussion. You have been shaped by that work and those exchanges as much as you have shaped them. In this process, you have become the person you are, and, together, you have grown as the class of 2021, a class that knows that curiosity, courage and empathy are the foundations of collective endeavor and leadership and can bring about radical change.

Public philosopher Jonathan Krznaric, identifies six habits of highly empathic people, and not surprisingly, these habits include curiosity. He  tells us that we should cultivate curiosity about strangers; challenge prejudices and discover commonalities; try another person’s life; listen hard — and open up; inspire mass action and social change; and develop an ambitious imagination.²

The great opportunity of a Mount Holyoke experience and education is that it fosters such endeavors: It exposes us all to lives and perspectives different from our own; invites us into intimate conversations, encourages us to share our most fundamental beliefs, commitments and experiences; and drives us to reach beyond curiosity for its own sake, beyond a kind of voyeurism that such personal interactions can sometimes create,³ in order to make a deep empathic connection that is not only life-changing for both parties but that can be world-changing. 

Joining you today, in receiving degrees from Mount Holyoke, are three individuals who have distinguished themselves in three very different ways. Two of them are Mount Holyoke alums,  Rabiya Javeri-Agha, class of ’83 and Chloé Zhao, class of ’05 — and the third, Yo-Yo Ma, made the great life choice of marrying Jill Hornor, Mount Holyoke class of 1974. Today, alongside your accomplishments, class of 2021, we will celebrate theirs, and  the many ways in which empathy has been a part of their careers and their success, bringing great vision and with it great change. You will hear more about them in just a moment, but each of them has demonstrated these many qualities, made empathy and an ambitious imagination a part of their professional practice in a way that serves to advance their art form, their profession, and our global human connection and condition.

Empathy then, is a practice and an opportunity, but as Claudia Rankine reminds us, it is not in and of itself enough: “Empathy,” she says, “is not a cure.” Rather, by making empathy a central part of your own engagement with others, and a part of your own ambitious imagination, you, class of 2021, can be empaths who make radical change — whatever the ways you are able to make a difference may be. That is what this experience and education have prepared you for, what has brought you “to this day and to this door,” to adapt Mary Lyon’s 1837 welcome for this moment of departure and the new intellectual, professional and personal adventures upon which you are about to embark. 

May you accomplish great things, and may you do so with the advancement of humankind always at the center, and with generous curiosity, ambitious imagination, unlimited courage, and, especially, with great empathy.

Congratulations, class of 2021.

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¹ Kate Murphy, “Maya Angelou,” New York Times, April 20, 2013.

² Jonathan Krznarik, “Six Habits of Highly Empathic People,”Greater Good Magazine, November 2012. See also his RSA Talk.

³ For example, Claudia Rankine reminds us in “The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning” that “there really is no mode of empathy that can replicate the daily strain of knowing that as a black person you can be killed for simply being black.”

⁴ Kellaway, Kate. “Claudia Rankine: ‘Blackness in the White Imagination Has Nothing to Do With Black People.’” The Guardian, 27 Dec. 2015.