 Dear students, honoured graduates, when asked to make remarks at commencement before, I made serious efforts to integrate levity. Not an easy task for me. I am neither an entertainer nor a comedian. I'm in no mood to be humorous and promise to make no such effort today. It is a privilege to address you at this time of somber celebration. I acknowledge your family, friends, and loved ones for supporting you. I want to appreciate the communities, the pods, and the health bubbles that supported us, you, this institution, and me, through what has been one of the hardest academic years I have witnessed. I acknowledge my colleagues for adapting to this ever-changing professional reality and seeing the year through. I thank the Ford School staff, without whom the labor, work, and business of learning and teaching cannot happen. My own online learning curve has been steep. I had to learn a new way of being, of teaching, and new ways of knowing almost overnight. The spirit, mental, and physical, tall-exacted in order to achieve this convocation. This moment of your graduation has been high. The loss of the classroom, the loss of our personal, professional, and intrinsic relationships, as learners and teachers, has been painful to say the least. The larger social, political, environmental, and moral meta-context of our lives, both nationally and more globally, has not provided much relief. The constant live-streaming of death, violence, bigotry, lies, and dishonesty have felt relentless. The ongoing lived racist violence and trauma has been terrifying for far too many, to quote James Baldwin. I'm terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart of these times. I'm aware the compound social, political experiences, the stress and strain over the last years have been particularly hard on you, the graduating student body. I want to pause now and take a breath. Since you and I have the privilege of breath, still take a minute to reflect on what you, as graduates, have achieved. Give a thought to the human beings, the impressive, striking, amazing, resilient, and strong people who have walked with and alongside you. Those you have dependent on, and who have depended on you. If you cannot see them, imagine. Remember them. Together you are the wealth of this institution and the future of this world. Graduates, together you have succeeded in the midst of an extreme set of circumstance. Congratulations. Well done. This particular degree is no ordinary piece of paper. It is no ordinary degree. It signifies and symbolizes a very special achievement in adversity. Celebrate this achievement. It is extraordinary, just as you are. See the strength, the resilience that lives in you and those graduating with you. You and I are all part of a small knowledge and power elite. Be both honest and humble about this fact. Remember, arrogance is a choice to often accompanied in practice by the violent ignorance and emotive immaturity of the powerful. Wherever you go next, you are called to be both strength and humility, resilience and tenacity, fortitude and vision, except this challenge of leadership as public and civil leaders, intellectuals and academics, researchers and analysts, policymakers and change agents. You have done the extraordinary. You can do it again and you can do it again. Take what you have learned from the adversity, difficulties and losses of this time while acquiring your degrees. You are the witnesses to this time of loss, grief, mourning, of resolution, strength, of resilience and a refusal to be cowed. Importantly, as survivors, you are also the hope of tomorrow. Live that hope, be that hope, accept this generational challenge with a strength of purpose and willingness of heart make this world better than it is. Graduates, congratulations. Be as beautiful as you are. Go blue.