May 28, 2015
Welcome Remarks
Dear graduating students, family, friends; dear members of the faculty; dear members of our remarkable Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health community:
What a pleasure it is to be with you today as we celebrate this rite of passage. For the Class of 2015, today marks a major transition as you move from being students of this great School to its newest alumni. I am deeply honored to be among the first to congratulate you on this critical milestone.
Congratulations, too, to all who have supported you on this journey—families, friends, teachers, mentors. It’s often said that it takes a village to raise a child. The same can be said of completing graduate education. Everyone here today has been the beneficiary of so many others who offered support and paved the way. This day is theirs as well.
As I look out over this gathering, I am filled with a mix of emotions. There is pride and excitement for all that you’ve accomplished and for all that you will go on to do. But there is also some bittersweet sadness. This is my seventh commencement ceremony as dean. It is also my last, as I—like you—prepare to move on to my next chapter.
Of all the many things I will miss about this School, one of the most significant is you, our students. Your energy and commitment has been evident every day both in the larger world and within the School, from your work with Student Government to Students for Nepal to your efforts for increased diversity and inclusion in our classrooms to your engagement in the pursuit of social justice—not to mention everything you’ve done to prepare for careers that will transform the face of public health.
You arrived on campus from all over the world–from 32 countries and 34 states plus the District of Columbia in the United States. Fifty-nine percent of you are women—a number that underscores the enormous changes of the past century in public health and at this School, which began as an all-male institution.
And while each one of you will graduate from this same School, the degrees you are about to receive reflect your diverse goals and interests—and the wonderfully diverse paths your careers are likely to follow. Five-hundred-nineteen of you will graduate today: 28 with a Ph.D., 51 with the Doctor of Science, 12 with the Master of Arts, 323 with the MPH, and 132 with the Master of Science degree.
Endings—and beginnings—are a time to take stock. I do so now with a full heart. My years at this School here have been among the most rewarding of my career, and the past 18 months, in particular, have been extraordinary. In October 2013, we launched the celebration of our Centennial, marking 100 years since what was then known as the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers opened its doors to a tiny inaugural class of just eight students. Since then, this School—its students, alumni, faculty, and staff—have been in the vanguard of public health progress in fields ranging from the life sciences to epidemiology to global health policy. The 20th century saw a 30-year increase in life expectancy, with 25 of those years generally credited to public health advances, many of which evolved from work at this School.
And then, as our centennial year ended and we moved into our second century this past fall, an event as unexpected as it was thrilling occurred: This School received the largest gift in Harvard University history. I am pretty sure that no one in their wildest dreams could have ever predicted this.
The transformational gift from the Chan family’s Morningside Foundation was spearheaded by our alumnus Gerald Chan—someone who once sat where you sit now and went on to forge a remarkable path at the crossroads of science and business. From the start, it was very much a family affair, pushed forward both by Gerald and his brother Ronnie, and a living embodiment of the values imparted by their parents—by their late father, T.H. Chan, a person passionate about education, and their mother, a committed nurse, passionate about health. Their gift also reflects the power of mentorship, as Gerald’s close relationship to Professor Jack Little during his student years helped to launch both his career and his connection to this School.
It is appropriate that our new name—the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health—reflects the global nature of our work as we move through the 21st century. The name itself reflects a true partnership of East and West, just as so many of us—including today’s speaker Leslie Ramsammy and, of course, I myself—reflect a vital partnership between North and South. Thanks to the Chan family gift, and to the support of so many other benefactors, I will leave my deanship confident that this School is positioned to change the world at a time when public health progress depends as never before on global collaboration.
In recent months, I’ve been in a reflective frame of mind. Thinking back over my lifetime, I’m struck by how often our greatest opportunities appear unexpectedly. I suspect this is not uncommon.
As public health leaders, we seek to prepare for the unexpected. This is central to our mission. All too often, the unexpected takes terrible forms. We saw this in the Ebola outbreak that began over a year ago. We saw it in terrorist acts, including the Boston marathon bombings of two years ago and the attack on a Kenyan shopping mall that tragically took the life of our alumna Elif Yavuz as well as dozens of other people. We see it in the deaths of black men while in the custody of police, a crisis that continues to plague American cities large and small, and in natural disasters such as Nepal’s horrific earthquake. For the past century, this School’s faculty and alumni have been on the front lines of these and countless other public health crises, wherever and whenever they arise. In the words of Jonathan Lavine, our capital campaign chair, “we run towards the fire, not away from it.”
But the unexpected is not always a bad thing. To the contrary, in my experience, it often marks the appearance of great opportunities. This is important. Indeed, if I could impart just one message today, it would be the necessity of staying alert, of recognizing that opportunities often show up in surprising ways.
There is a quote from Winston Churchill that I’ve kept on my desk since my years as Secretary of Health in Mexico. The language is dated—I would hope that if Churchill were to write today, he would say “person,” not “man”—but here is the quote as written: “To every man there comes in his lifetime that special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered a chance to do a very special thing unique to him and fitted to his talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds him unprepared or unqualified for work which would be his finest hour.”
In recent weeks, I’ve found myself reflecting on an aspect of this quote that I’d never focused on before. That figurative tap. How do you recognize it? How do you know when an opportunity is calling your name, offering you the chance to do that very special thing? That is the pre-condition to everything that follows. Because you can be fully prepared and fully qualified, but if you fail to notice the tap, the opportunity is lost as surely as if you had never prepared at all.
It has never been more important to understand this. We live at a time when traditional career paths are in flux, if not breaking down. I often talk about this being an age of career plasticity, when people shift in and out of sectors, functions, and fields. The burgeoning world of social entrepreneurship is further erasing the dichotomy between doing good and doing well, as reflected in Gerald Chan’s career and so many others.
What does this mean for you, our graduating students? For one thing, it means that you are likely to make more and bigger transitions than any previous generation. It also means that traditional career paths are less and less likely to offer the best route to fulfillment.
In my experience, there are no surer ways to miss that figurative tap than to commit yourself to a career trajectory and then go on cruise control—or to let the world’s approval guide you instead of looking inward. As a graduate of this great School, you will enjoy impressive opportunities, but not all of them are going to be the right opportunities for you. As students, you have honed your intellects, but to make the best use of your attributes, you must also consult your heart. You are not just creating a resume. You are creating a biography. You are creating a life—your life—, with all the beauty, wonder, and, yes, sometimes pain, that this entails.
As you move forward from today, I urge you to make decisions based on your deepest values. The resulting path may sometimes appear less linear, less coherent than one that results from more conventional choices. But do not let that stop you. Rather consider the old metaphor of life as a river. At the formation of a delta, multiple smaller rivers branch off. But they remain part of the same river, flowing towards the same sea.
My own life and career have very much followed this model. My river has been public health and higher education. The distributaries have carried me to a wide range of roles across sectors—academic institutions, international organizations, government positions, foundations. At first glance, some of these choices may seem surprising to a casual observer but that’s only because they miss the underlying purpose. What’s important is not what distinguishes these roles but rather what unites them. All of them flow towards a single sea—a better healthier world.
It is this river—and this sea—that will continue to unite all of us all for the rest of our lives. Today, you join our extraordinary alumni community, now more than 12,000 strong. In this group you will find great diversity but also great unity of purpose: To make the most of what Harvard President Drew Faust has called a “public health moment.” As graduates of this School, this is now your moment. Your gifts to the world will be many and great. You are our legacy.
Closing Remarks
I’m sure you have heard the saying that “from those to whom much is given, much is expected.” As students of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, you have benefited from many gifts—from your teachers, mentors, fellow students, and family, to name just a few. Now is the time to offer your own gifts in service to others. Now is the time to focus outward—to be alert to that figurative tap of which Winston Churchill wrote. I have no doubt that, as you do this, you will change the world.
Our lives are not just our own. They are infused by all whose wisdom and love give our existence meaning. I am more grateful than I can say for those who have enriched my years at this School. And today, in particular, I am grateful to you, the Class of 2015—for all you have already done and all that you will do.
For me, this Commencement is different from all others during my time as dean—because this time I am preparing to leave with you. For both you and me, this is an ending, but it is also a beginning.
And now: Will all graduates please rise.
As a sign of your entry into the company of learned women and men, you may now move your mortar board tassels from right to left.
This moment marks the end of your time as students and the start of your life as alumni of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. As you move into your next chapters, I wish you lives filled with the joy of acting in service to the greater good, whatever that may look like. Be open to the unexpected and unconventional. Please accept my deepest congratulations—and my best wishes for the brightest of futures.
Photo: Kent Dayton
Additional Coverage
Harvard Chan graduates urged to stay alert to unexpected opportunities
Commencement video
Commencement slideshow
Commencement photo gallery
Award winners
Loan relief awards help students address public health disparities
Commencement Eve photo gallery
Student speaker Shaniece Criss address
Alumni Association President Anthony Dias address