 Each year, the Ford School graduating students are asked to elect people to play key roles in commencement. One faculty member is chosen to speak to the class, and both sets of graduating classes choose a representative student speaker. As the faculty speaker, the classes of 2016 elected Yazir Henry. Yazir was born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa. He first came to the Ford School in 2007 as our Towsley Foundation policymaker in residence. Yazir's intellectual work focuses on the relationship of political structure and violence to civic, indigenous, and human rights. Since 2008, he has taught courses at the Ford School on professional and political ethics, on social movements and democratic processes in the global south, and on transitional justice following political conflict. Yazir has written and lectured widely on issues related to peacemaking, political memory and trauma, and post-conflict reintegration. Many of our graduates have already spent long hours with Yazir during his office hours, and despite, or more likely because of that, they chose him to deliver the faculty address. And I'm delighted to welcome him to the podium now to speak on behalf of the faculty. Yazir? Good afternoon all. Bonjour. Graduates, no. Policy graduates, honored family, friends, loved ones, colleagues, and guests. I've chosen not to change my speech after the last two, so I'm going to power through it and trust myself. Public policy graduates, today you lose the right to ask the question. What is the meaning of public policy? If you have not used several years that you've been here to make sense of its complex meaning, then I'm going to help you, and I'm going to be very clear, something I don't often do in my office hours. It means all and everything. Look at that, that was when you were supposed to have. Come on. There is not a single thread of cotton here in this auditorium today untouched by policy. There is not a grain of sand here at the University of Michigan untouched by it. There is not a single brick here that is not imbued with our meaning. Today I chose to greet you in English and in Anishinaabe Mohan, if I pronounce that correctly, a language without which an arbor could not be the University of Michigan, or the slogan glow blue could not have been. From a time when Washington was translated into the English Great River or the distant waters to when it became just the county, a street that I travel home to in English. I greet you in English and in Anishinaabe Mohan because for me it is important to know where it is I live, where it is I have chosen to make my home, to spend my time and appreciate the care with which I have been appreciated and welcomed by my colleagues and by you, the student body, Michigan has been incredibly good to me. It is a special privilege to live and work here with so many people that care about the world, such a diverse political environment. It has been a privilege and an honor to walk alongside you. For these reasons I accepted the responsibility you gave me to mark this day in your lives on behalf of the Ford School staff and faculty. Those here and those who clean the building at night and may not be here. There are days when I wonder whether what I do professionally is enough given the turmoil in the world, but today is not one of those. I have marked this moment before and it is by far the happiest moment in the academic and the institutional calendar for me. To see you all collectively smiling with your family and your loved ones, those who have stood beside you and those who walk alongside you peaceably, I think days like these should be up there with the seven wonders of the world and I know my face is serious so you don't have to smile, but it was meant to be funny. I have learned to derive and to develop faith in you so that my life develops meaning intellectually. It is up to you to remind yourselves, it is up to you to remember that you are part of a greater world, a greater community, a greater institution, but never forget that you are always and also required to walk alone and in order to do so effectively you will be required to manage the social, the political, the emotional dissonance that is also a part of our world, that is also a part of me, that is also a part of you. Today we the dissonant part of this institutional fabric can be as one without the immediate pains of office hours, the tensions and the minor traumas associated with the individual sacrifices that go into our intellectual labour and application during our time year, during your time year, without the rigours, the complex regimes of training and preparation without the force of having to submit to the multiple hours of reading, thinking and writing of having to meet and engage each other and other intellects, other hearts, other souls, other spirits, in dialogue, dialogue is an act, not just words. Your convocation today further marks your professional entry into the intellectual and the institutional, political and societal elite of this world. Do not fear the notion, it is fitting to celebrate you today. Congratulations, well done. This is not my conclusion. You are the intellectual resources of our world, I repeat and I wish to reiterate. You are qualified to read, to think, to write and to engage the world. Meet it where it is at, not where it may be tomorrow or where it was yesterday. Every day, yes, every day, this is not the only, this is not only the nature of our mortality as human beings, it is the time of life and of living and of being in the world. We have a short time here, 100 years if you are lucky. Now this figure is both statistically and factually wrong. But today I'm going to remain with a metaphor of spending only a short time in this world. If you are as blessed as I am to breathe every day without the concern, without the worry of having to care about where my next meal is going to come from. Literally, figuratively, metaphorically, how will you be remembered? Graduates, nay, policy, graduates. The last time I studied, I was funny. I chose not to be so funny today. Present is precious. After celebrating the splendor of this day, do the work so that when you go home every day you can look at that mirror at midnight and smile with yourself and say, I have done enough today. I have had to learn to become humble. It was a very, very arrogant young man. It takes practice. A mentor of mine said to me, Yazir, put this note on your mirror until you understand its meaning. A year later I looked at this note and it read, thank you very much Yazir. I don't need your help today, God. If only I had realized that I was not Luke Skywalker and he was not Yoda sooner. But I continue to learn to be humble. And I wish the same for you. I have seen many things. I saw apartheid defeated in South Africa. I saw Southern Africa free itself from colonization. I saw the Berlin Wall fall. I saw America elect its first African American president. And when I was growing up, I knew the society that I lived in was unequal, theoretically. I also knew that it was not lawful nor was it moral. But I had no choice but to understand that it was reality. It was actuality. In practice, it is in part responsibility. Yours, mine, has leaders, as thinkers, as policy professionals trained to influence and to make policy in this world, in our world, in this world and the places that you will find yourselves in over the next period. It is how collective and democratic ideal that the dialogue that needs to be heard should not be silenced or shut up. Now after you have taken pause to celebrate, to laugh, to cry even with your loved ones. As you have joined your year, it is my opinion that is your responsibility as global citizens who care about the world, the one we share collectively to build the systems, the structures that make life prosper, that make life more peaceable, not just for a few, but for us all. All lives matter. All lives matter equally. It is the law. It is constitutional. It is one of humanity's most recent values and ideals written into the very definition of what it means to be human. Equally, all our lives matter equally. Black lives, white lives, brown lives, red lives, pink lives, women's lives, male lives, children's lives, they matter equally. It is an ideal. It is your responsibility to hold that value and make it practicable. That is your responsibility. That is my responsibility. That is the responsibility of us all who consider ourselves democratic citizens. In conclusion, our education comes with this responsibility to a larger social reckoning beyond and not opposed to our personal happiness and well-being. Carry the happiness you feel today as a blessing and not as a burden just as I carry my skin as privileged, as blessing and not as burden. Celebrate the excitement you feel today fully and do not fear tomorrow until tomorrow. Derive from your degrees the freedom to contribute to our greater well-being. Do not be paralysed by fear. Do not be paralysed by the difficulties that weigh. Learn from your mistakes and remember as it has been said before, affirmation comes after success. Do it with practice. Claim no easy victories. And do not easily be discouraged. Believe, have faith in the human beings that sit beside you, that walk with you today through the streets of Ann Arbor, and be beautiful. And I have come to learn, and I know my colleagues feel the same way, that that is what you are. And you can be that if you so choose. Love, love, be proud, and hold each other's relationship with joy. Thank you. Miigwech.