 Each year, the Ford School's graduating students are asked to elect people to play key roles at commencement. One faculty member is chosen to speak to the class, and our BAs and master's graduating classes choose a representative student speaker as well. As the faculty speaker, the classes of 2022 elected professor Betsy Stevenson. Betsy Stevenson is a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan. She's a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves on the executive committee of the American Economic Association. She served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisors from 2013 to 2015, where she advised President Obama on social policy, labor market, and trade issues. She earlier served as the chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor from 2010 to 2011. Betsy specializes in work on the effects of public policy on families and on women. And I'm delighted to welcome her now to speak on behalf of the faculty. Graduating class of 2022, I am so happy to see you here. An incredibly honored that you chose me to address you and the ones who love you. I watched a lot of previous Ford School graduation speeches in preparation for today. And I learned that people do a better job sticking to five minutes when a member of Congress is holding a gavel with a countdown clock in front of the speaker. Lucky for me, Dean Barr has yet to implement that. There's a familiar rhythm to most graduation speeches just like there is a familiar rhythm to life. We celebrate your accomplishments. We applaud your hard work. We are inspired by the fresh ideas you've brought into the classroom. As we look forward, we are energized by the change we know you can bring to society the difference you will make and the mark you are about to make on the world. But the pandemic broke the familiar rhythm of life. And when I asked myself, why did the class of 2022 choose me? I realized that you didn't choose me for my accomplishments. You chose me for being in the thick of it with you. For the shared disappointment we felt, the challenges we faced, the mental health struggles we encountered as we all endeavored to march forward, even though all of the familiar patterns of life had broken, even though the very fabric of our society seemed to be dissolving in front of us. When most of you applied to the Ford School, the pandemic had yet to start. The U.S. economy was booming. Women held more than half of all jobs in the economy. More mothers were in the labor force than ever before in the United States. In January 2020, I said in an interview with NPR, I can't imagine what could happen that would disrupt women's upward trajectory. I couldn't imagine. I'm sure that few of you could have imagined. As you applied to the Ford School, you envisioned being in rooms full of your classmates, debating policy issues late into the night long after everyone else had departed Wild Hall. And there we were in the fall of 2021, facing each other on Zoom. Graduate students, including some of you here in this room, took a stand against the university, asking for more safety, more clarity, and better partnerships with all stakeholders. Others felt torn about whether to cross a picket line when they had given up so much to be here, even if it was just virtually. And yet the worst of the pandemic was yet to come. These were not the experiences you hoped for, but they are the experiences that have shaped you. They are the experiences that will allow you to bring an even greater vision for change in a world that desperately needs change. While each and every one of you did your best to work through these difficult times, for some of you, the schoolwork that you had been trained your whole life to do became overwhelming. While for others, it became easier, an escape from the pandemic. As a faculty, we had to look harder to teach each of you where you were emotionally. The beauty of that experience was that the discrepancy between how each of us appears and how we are actually doing melted away. To paraphrase Frank Brunei, we all had to look for each other's invisible sandwich boards that itemize our personal hardships and hurdles. Suffering from COVID, just lost a loved one couldn't say goodbye. I'm not sure I can afford to be here, crippled by anxiety. As we looked for each other's invisible sandwich boards, we developed empathy. I say we because I was right there with you. We all, students and faculty alike, needed to dig deep to find as much empathy as we could for each other. And really for everyone. An empathy for everyone is where the hard work is. It's easy to have empathy for those who face an injustice in the world that engers you deep in your bones. The work. The work is in finding empathy for those who anger you deep in your bones. Why should we find this empathy? We need this empathy to enact change. Only when you can understand can you begin to persuade. Only when you can empathize can you begin to find common ground. Let me step back and explain why I love teaching policy students and take a moment to share with your family and friends what a policy degree is. And throughout, I hope you will see why I think through this development of empathy, you, the graduating class of 2022, have gotten the best policy education of any other graduating class. As an economist, my goal is to teach students how to use economics and policy. To be successful using economics, to be a successful economist in policy, all the economics you need is a deep understanding of principles of economics. That's the truth. But you have to be able to move from the textbook to the playbook. And a key part of moving from the textbook to the playbook is being able to understand how people are likely to respond to the ways in which a policy shapes and changes their lives. Doing so requires empathy. And of course, policy is more than economics. You have learned from political science, sociology, history, and of course, statistics and values and ethics. Your job as a policy student is to integrate across the many disciplinary fields you have learned from so that you can be effective along all of the dimensions that matter. Developing policies that shape incentives for individuals to get the outcome you want. Communicating the policy proposal in a way and at a time that a policymaker will be receptive to your idea. Considering the social, emotional impact and spillover effects that lead policies to shape not just outcomes for individuals but for whole communities. And figuring out how you communicate and implement policy decisions in the best way to minimize negative effects on communities. It all comes together in the most important part of the public policy degree, learning how to write. If policy schools were ranked on memo writing, Ford would be number one. You learn writing by writing. So even if you're winting at the memory of all that writing, know that it was the most important thing you did. And communicating is about empathy. You have to care about your listeners, your readers. Who are you talking to? How are they hearing you? Why should they want to listen? You have to listen to me today. But will you hear me? Only if I have heard you. And you did teach me. As some of you may remember, I reflected on one of these learnings in an interview with the New York Times last summer when I explained that I was teaching about the disincentive effects of unemployment insurance and how it can discourage people from working, a concept economists call moral hazard. When one of you raised your hands and said, is it really moral to use the thread of hunger to motivate people to work? I didn't have a good answer. Because this is where you now come in. Policy is about values. It's your turn to decide on the values that you believe should guide society. Many of you know my policy priorities. But today is not about me. It's about you. I want to learn more from you as you take your place in the world and begin to advocate for what you believe in. And I know you are going to, in the words of Lin-Manuel Miranda, blow us all away. My advice to you as you go forward is to remember that sometimes it gets hard. And those are the moments that define you. Sometimes you fail. And those are the moments in which you grow the most. The past few years have been hard. And there have been failures for many of us. Use the empathy that you developed along with the more concrete tools to build a stronger, more humane, and more just society. Now notice that I have ended at the familiar rhythm and pattern of hope that comes from you, the future. You will inspire us all going forward. And I look forward to seeing what you, the class of 2022, do. Thank you.