 Good morning! Good morning! To President Sullivan, Provost Prilak, Senator Leahy, and Governor Scott, distinguished Vice President's deans, faculty, and staff, and most importantly, to the University of Vermont Class of 2019. Congratulations! So I know you graduates have worked hard to earn the achievement we are honoring today, but as has already been said, it's the people in your life who we are also here to honor today. So graduates, I ask you to stand and show some love to those people, your parents, your community, your siblings, your teachers, those people back home who have made your journey possible. Today, you honor them. Now, today is special for many reasons. It's a celebration of excellence and of the promise your future holds. It's the end of one chapter and the beginning of another, but today is also special for an additional reason. You came to this magical community called Burlington, Vermont from different places, different towns and states and countries all over the globe. You came to your degree by different paths. You took different courses and different majors, and even when you were on campus, you spent time with different people, engaged in different activities. And after today, you will go off in your own directions to different jobs in different cities and you will lead different lives. And yet, here we are together. And the fact that we are here together at this time in this place is remarkable. It's remarkable because this is a unique, wonderful moment in your lives. But it's also remarkable because in this new digital world, we are told often and we are led to believe that our differences, our differences are reasons for a division rather than unity. So class of 2019, this is a defining characteristic of our digital era, whether it's algorithms that segment and select information we see based on our previous clicks and lights or media that is incentivized to confirm our beliefs rather than deliver the facts that help educate us and make us better citizens or some of our leaders who rally the extremes rather than serve a common good and purpose. And so as a result of this, we jump to judgment and disagreement too often turns to dehumanization. We miss opportunities to turn difficult and challenging moments into teachable ones from which we can learn and grow. We lose touch with the shared values, the shared experiences, our shared aspirations, those aspirations that bind us together in this country and who make us who we are. My message to you today is simple. It doesn't need to be this way. And I know this to be true from my own journey. You see many aspects of who I am as a person as an American might be labeled different. I am black. I am gay. I live in Manhattan, that tiny island moored off of the United States that seems sometimes a little unmoored from reality. And I spend much of my time traveling across the country and around the world meeting courageous, resilient, visionary people fighting poverty and injustice and inequality in the world. All of these things, the things that make me different define in some ways who I am. And they're a part of my story that equally define me that are harder to see, which in some ways set me apart. I was born to a single mother in a charity hospital in rural Louisiana. As a child, we lived in a little shotgun shack in a small rural community in East Texas. And I attended public schools. I was in the first class of Head Start in 1965. And my college was financed through Pell grants and private philanthropy. And as an African American growing up in the American South, I certainly encountered bitter racism. But I also encountered enormous generosity from people who provided me support and encouragement, people who believed in my potential. So you see, in spite of the differences I presented and the challenges I encountered, I always felt that my country, that America had my back. I had good people of goodwill cheering me on and pushing me forward. Indeed, my story is an American story, a story of what is possible, of what can happen when we, the people, live up to our ideals. And when we do fulfill these ideals, the fact of our differences does not hold us back in the very same way that the fact of our differences is not really what divides us. I believe, I believe that the differences among us and the divisions between us, these are separate things. One does not inevitably lead to another. And yes, we are different, but our differences are our strength. Our division, on the other hand, is a liability. A liability that has been exacerbated and exploited, I believe, because of the corrosive inequality that today is widening the gap in American society. More than what we look like or where we come from, or how we worship, inequality is tearing our communities and our country asunder. Economic inequality exfixiates the very American idea of economic and social mobility. It creates unprecedented wealth gaps, sorting us into circles where we only engage with people of similar means and perspectives. Persistent racial and gender inequality cause the sins of our history to infect the present and imperil our future. Inequality in part helps to explain the gaps between the experience of rural Americans and urban Americans and entrenched the polarization of our political institutions. And inequality doesn't just cause our challenges. It also prevents us from joining together to solve our common problems. It undermines our hope for the future and erodes our faith in one another. We are less willing to trust one another and less willing to extend the benefit of the doubt. Too often we rush to judgment assuming the very worst intention of others. Now I'm not naive. I know that in this country there are people. There are people for whom hate and harm is the intention. From Charlottesville to Pittsburgh we have witnessed the painful, pernicious impact of hate in America. And while there are certainly racist and anti- semites and homophobes and prejudice in America today, this is not the character of who we are as a nation, of who we are as a people. Most Americans believe in our ideals, our American ideals of equality and justice for all. But in order for these ideals to be realized, we must stand up to embolden bigotry. And so graduates, I ask you, I implore you not to build walls, but to build bridges and to build relationships. Because when I reflect on my own story, I know I did not get here alone. None of us have. It was not the simple fact of my presence or some superficial measures of diversity or inclusion that led me to the great honor of serving as president of the Ford Foundation or the great honor of addressing you here today. It was often people, people who were different from me, extending their humanity, extending their generosity and their privilege to benefit me, leaving their comfort zones behind and spanning a divide. It was people I didn't know, some who I came to know later, who had faith in me, who invested in me, and who sustained me on my American journey. My story is proof of what can happen when people choose to transcend their differences and build bridges and build relationships. You, too, are proof. And on its best days, so is this country I love. America always has been a product of people choosing to bind themselves together, actively choosing. We are, we, the people. We are a pluribus unum out of many one. Out of our differences, we can ascend from cooperation to collaboration to innovation. Out of our differences, there is hope, there can be unity, there can be equality and justice. And this is not just a message for you graduates who are Americans because this is bigger than the United States. Out of many countries, we are one planet, one future. Our destinies transcend geography and borders, which brings me back to where I started, the celebration of difference and all of the possibility that difference unleashes. Out of many paths, out of many graduates, you are one class. And while you have many careers and choices in front of you, I hope you will keep one objective in mind. To make this a more fair and just world. So I ask you graduates, what bridges will you build? What new relationships will you initiate? What justice will you serve? And what will you make possible for someone else? Many of the bridges you cross will not be physical structures of concrete or steel. They will be relationships you forge through hard work and attention, respect and care, listening and love. And the best relationships are those in which you can be yourself and better yourself. If my experience is any indication, this is especially true of relationships with graduates of this great university. My partner in life of 26 years, David Beitzel, was a proud member of UVM's class of 1980. David passed away suddenly, tragically, in January. But he taught me so much about life, about our common humanity. We were very different people, very different backgrounds from very different places. But we found each other despite those differences and enriched each other's lives because of those differences. Relationships with other people, friendship and family, professional, romantic, incidental and intentional. Relationships are essential. No matter how different we may seem to be, they strengthen our empathy, our compassion, our humanity and widen our perspectives. And if we build bridges and bonds of connection with others, then when injustice affects one of us, we know deeply and personally that it affects all of us. When we bind ourselves to others, when we recognize that our fates are bound together, we can put those small things aside. We can make a world where stories like mine are more probable, more likely, indeed, more common. We can shrink the gaps of inequality and grow justice in its place. It won't be easy, class of 2019, because justice takes time. It takes work. It takes love. And it takes risk. I hope you will find ways to build these bridges. I hope that you will find ways to listen and be curious and be present and be proximate. I hope you embrace difference and reject division. Class of 2019, I know you will answer the call. I know the future will be much better for it. It is yours for the taking. It is yours for the making as of today. Good luck, best wishes and Godspeed class of 2019.