 Welcome everyone, please have a seat. I'm Michael Barr, the Joan and Sanford Wildean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. It was a pleasure to meet many of you yesterday at our graduation open house, to see many of you from a distance in the big house, and it is my honor to welcome you here this afternoon for our 2018 commencement ceremony. My first is Dean. I'll begin by briefly introducing the members of the platform party with more to say about each of our speakers later. With me on stage is our keynote commencement speaker, innovator, activist, philanthropist, the distinguished David Bonette. David we're so honored to have you here, we look forward to your remarks. We're honored too to be joined by one of the University of Michigan longtime leaders, Vice President for Student Life, Royster Harper. Royster, thank you so much for being here. I'm pleased as well to be joined by a number of my faculty colleagues. We have Elizabeth Gerber, our associate dean for research and policy engagement. Ford School Professor John Cicciari, who directs our international policy center and will be reading the names of our graduates as they cross the stage. Starting on my left, Professor Alan Dierdorf, who's directing our undergraduate program this year. Professor Brian Jacob, who's the director of our PhD program. Professor Paula Lance, our associate dean for academic affairs and director of our master's program. And we have Professor Megan Tomkins-Stang, who has been elected by our graduating students to deliver the faculty address. We also have with us two wonderful students elected by their classmates to provide the student commencement addresses. Our soon-to-be Ford School MPP graduate, Juan Jaime Castilla, and BA graduate, Seo Jung Kim. We are gathered this evening to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of 193 truly outstanding students. As dean, I have the great honor of talking with you about these wonderful graduates, these smart, engaged women and men who will be leading our communities for the next half century. I'm so glad that your sons and daughters, your friends, your colleagues are graduating from a school of public policy now at this point in our history. We all know that these are challenging times for our nation and for our world. We see fractious, debased political discourse all around us. We see gridlock and partisanship in our nation's capital. We see an increasing mistrust in institutions and leaders. We see loud challenges to evidence, to facts, to expertise. That landscape, those challenges. That's why now, perhaps more than ever before, policy schools and policy professionals are beacons of hope for our future. Our school is named for the University of Michigan's most distinguished graduate, America's 38th president, Gerald R. Ford. In 1938, Gerald Ford was studying law. War was looming across Europe. Ford was an ardent isolationist. Yet three years later, when America entered World War II, he volunteered for the Navy, where he eventually saw action in the Pacific and served with distinction. After the war, he returned to Grand Rapids. His perspectives on the world had been transformed. He successfully ran for Congress in 1948 as a vocal challenger to the isolationist foreign policy of the longtime incumbent in his district. Decades later, reflecting back on the impact of that war, President Ford said, Some people equate civility with weakness, compromise with surrender. I strongly disagree. I come by my political pragmatism the hard way. For my generation, paid a very heavy price in resistance to the century we had of extremists, dictators, utopians, and social engineers. Civility and compromise are not weakness, not surrender. They're essential to democracy. They're essential to building coalitions that can effectively advocate for social change. At the Ford School, we are committed to playing a leading role in rebuilding a public discourse that is bipartisan, evidence-based, and inclusive. We believe in a civil civic discourse, one that must begin with a shared understanding of and belief in facts. And so our graduates have learned to analyze complicated data sets, to think analytically, to evaluate costs and benefits. They know their stuff, and that's a firm foundation to build on. Equity too requires communication, and so they've learned to speak and write clearly and persuasively. And it requires empathy. Our graduates have learned to think critically, ethically, compassionately, to listen, really listen, across difference. In the years to come, we'll be growing our work in this area. We'll host public events that model reasoned in evidence-based dialogue. We'll help to train our students to bridge difference, productively discuss contested topics, and negotiate. We'll engage in problem-solving to help tackle some of the world's toughest problems, and we'll show our country how powerful a truly diverse and inclusive community, one working across difference to solve those problems, just how powerful that can be. Now I'd like to tell you a little bit about our world-class faculty and outstanding staff who have worked so closely with our graduates these past two years. Our faculty hold joint appointments all over campus. Economics, political science, sociology, math, history, business, law, social work, education, natural resources, information, urban planning. Their expertise is broad and it is deep. They are thoughtful, enthusiastic teachers and mentors. And they are actively engaged with critically important public policy challenges here in our community and around the world. The Ford School professional staff are also a source of our school strength as well. Our terrific staff team recruited, counseled and supported today's graduates. Let me please ask all Ford School faculty and staff to stand. Please join me in thanking them. What an amazing group. What an amazing group. There are others in this room that I want to acknowledge that deserve thanks and recognition. That's all of you. Our audience includes over 800 family members and friends, along with some 400 others who are tuned in to our live web stream. You've raised these students. You've nurtured them, counseled them and consoled them. Our students would not be here without you. Graduates, please take this chance to thank your loved ones for their support over all these years. Now, let me tell you a bit about these amazing students, what they've given to us and to each other, and how they've changed the Ford School for the better. 113 students have earned a master's degree. They hail from 16 different countries. Between them, they speak an astounding 23 languages. They include a Rumsfeld Fellow and our first ever joint degree student with a prominent Costa Rican business school in Kai. They lead highly active student organizations. For example, the International Policy Student Association, which among other things led an ambitious trip to the United Nations last month. Another group is called SKIP, our Students of Color and Public Policy, who organized a tremendous set of high-profile events this past year and helped the school celebrate Black History Month. Coherts of students often end up describing themselves as a family. How's this for a family? No fewer than four babies were born to our master's students while they were here in school. Two married couples are among our graduates. And tomorrow morning, a couple who met here at the Ford School will exchange their wedding vows at the Michigan Union. Congratulations. Let me tell you a little bit about the 78 students who have earned a bachelor's of art in public policy. Asked recently to reflect on our BA graduates, a staff member sighed and said simply, I love them. They have been part of the university's finest liberal arts programs. In small classes with Michigan's top faculty, our BA curriculum trains students to think critically and across disciplines, to understand policy challenges and to develop solutions. Today's BA graduates include a Rhodes scholar, who spoke at this morning's University commencement. And let me tell you she did a wonderful job. 17 Phi Beta Kappas and 21 Angel Scholars. They include founding members of an exciting new student group called We Listen, designed to foster empathy and dialogue across difference. They include students who participated in our first-ever policy course and study trip to Costa Rica this year. They write for the daily, lead campus-wide student government, advocate passionately and wisely for the causes they believe in. These students are truly the leaders and best across a wide variety of activities on campus. They are also apparently very, very serious about broom ball. Two-time captain. We celebrate as well, it's my job to embarrass the speakers. So watch out, David. We celebrate as well two students who have earned a PhD in public policy and economics, an innovative program for students who want to pursue research careers in social science disciplines and who see themselves as deeply committed to the study and improvement of public policy. Taken together, the classes of 2018 are serious students, hard workers, dedicated leaders. Nearly all of these students entered the Ford School just before the 2016 election. In the wake of that election, we've seen political divides widen and xenophobia and racism increasingly emerge. It's been a challenging couple of years on campus in many ways and perhaps especially for a community such as ours that is so engaged in civic life and in politics. That is why our work is so urgent. That is why the graduates before you are so essential. That is why we must redouble our efforts to become a beacon for diversity and inclusion, for a civil civic discourse, for tackling the world's problems together. Last month, we hosted an inspirational speaker, Kumi Naidu. He was the leader of Greenpeace International and later this summer is going to become the next president of Amnesty International. Kumi told a story from back in 2004 when he was working with a global call to action against poverty, trying to construct a broad-based grassroots coalition for change. Two of his key constituencies in that effort were the women's movement and the faith-based movement. Two groups committed to social justice but divided over the issue of abortion. Kumi worked with them until they could find a solution. The two groups argued and fought until they finally came up with a way forward. The phrase, the global call to action against poverty is committed to reproductive health. That statement was less than what the women's movement wanted. It was more than what the religious community wanted. But both of them could live with that compromise in order to work together on poverty, and both of them felt at the end of the day that the other group had been heard. Kumi said, I think it's about managing difference and respecting the difference. The challenge of a coalition is whether we can bring people together across those differences where we focus on the things that we agree on. Kumi paused and then he went on to say, and always there are many more things that we agree on than we disagree on. I've known Kumi a very long time since he fled the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1987. We've been friends since graduate school. We were housemates together. I'd say that we sat in a graduation hall like this one, just like you are doing today, but neither of us managed to make it to our commencement ceremonies. Let me just say, I have been where you graduates are at this moment in your life, and you're going to be okay. You're going to be okay. You may not figure things out right away, but trust your training and trust your classmates. Keep listening for allies. Keep fighting for change. To all of our graduates, we need you to do this work. Build bridges. Respect differences. Look for values you can agree on. Create constructive coalitions to get things done. Your time at Michigan is drawing to a close, and you are probably having some mixed feelings about that. You might not miss the weather, certainly not today. And surely you're looking ahead, commencing, excited for new challenges and new cities. But I know you'll miss a lot of things from your days in Ann Arbor. At the very least, Dominic's, Rick's, Charlie's, Diego's dog, Sophie, Saskia's sugar cookies, our unofficial Mr. Congeniality, Mr. Yu. You'll miss the free food that appears throughout the academic year. Maybe you'll miss our pop-up food trucks, smoking out the law school, donuts and coffee. Of course, most of all, you'll miss each other. Next year, your friends and classmates may not be close by. But I promise you that the ties you've made here, ties forged in dialogue and hard work, as well as in fun, will endure and will help sustain and propel you. Graduates, we are proud of you, and we're all going to miss you. Congratulations and best wishes to the classes of 2018. Go Blue.