Fall 2022 College Convocation Address

As delivered

Members of the class of 2026, incoming transfer students, friends, and family out on the Harper Quad, welcome, all of you, to the University of Chicago. This is a very special place. And we are truly thrilled to have you here today and to become your partners—your partners during your time here in the college and for a lifetime beyond.

More than four decades ago, I sat here in a row pretty far back. And I was very nervous. As a first-year student, I would have laughed out loud, in fact, if somebody had suggested the possibility that I might be standing one day here talking to you as the president of this great university. 

In fact, I handed in my first paper in my third week. It was in one of the Humanities core classes, and it was about a Plato dialogue. I worked on it pretty hard. And then it came back four or five days later. It was just completely marked in red. You could not see the type underneath, it had been so completely taken apart by the professor. And at the very bottom he had a little note saying, "don't be discouraged."

There are some things to build on here. And indeed, over the course of the next few years, we did build together, the university and I. And I found it to be joyful, inspiring, and truly transformative. And it is an experience that completely changed my life. And I feel very much confident that your experience here will also transform you and will give you a whole way of thinking and being in the world that will stay with you for your whole life.

You will learn, as I did, that this university really fosters a very distinctive culture. It is one defined by a true love of ideas, a fascination with understanding things in the deepest way possible, a desire to be really rigorous in our thinking. And it is a culture that's built from the very bottom up with a fierce commitment to free expression and different perspectives coming into play.

We are a community of individuals who really do question what others merely accept, who care about the power of ideas, who actively seek new discoveries that will change the way we think of things in the world around us and that will also benefit humanity in the broadest way.

In classrooms and labs and studios, each of you will encounter very unexpected ideas. And in fact, you, too, will contribute your own ideas and will change how we think here as well.

I'd like to take a few minutes and just talk about how you will influence and interact with each other and share with you some of my experiences that may be of help to you. Years ago, as a young scientist, I encountered a presentation. It was given by a Professor Jeffrey Kovac at the University of Tennessee. And it was entitled, How to Be an Ethical Scientist, which I very much wanted to do. And it was presented in a very University of Chicago style.

Instead of having a list of do's and don'ts, share your data this way, or make sure you keep this kind of information available, and so on, it actually started from the point of view of what should be the philosophy by which you engage with the other people in the science community that you're a part of. 

And it's also, I think, very much the same kind of suggestion that I would make to you about how you can interact with each other. He talked about a learning community like this one as being a gift economy. A gift economy is different than a commodity economy, where we exchange goods and receive something of tangible value. In a gift economy, we seek to share gifts of knowledge and to receive gifts of knowledge. 

And this was a really striking idea to me when I had first thought about this idea that there could be such a thing as a gift economy and that might be how knowledge is really elevated. In fact, when you receive knowledge, you are greatly enriched. But also, when you give knowledge, you are also personally greatly enriched. And so, in the gift economy, both the receipt and the gift of knowledge make us all wealthier.

This process of sharing and exchanging ideas gave me a sense of purpose. I realized that I was not on my own individual journey, but that I was also part of a broader community. In trying to understand how I might share my own ideas, I came to understand that the act of being a scholar, the act of being involved as a builder of a community, that those two are one and the same.

I experience that every day here at this university. And you now belong to this university community. You are a part of it. And you will enrich us with the diversity that you bring to it. And I truly mean diversity in the broadest sense of the word. You bring an astonishing array of backgrounds, fresh perspectives, and different ways of seeing things to us here at this university. And my message to you is that each of you belongs here in the deepest and most essential way possible.

You have the most to learn by truly listening with curiosity to others who have a very different point of view than your own. You have the most to give by sharing your views openly.

Fostering diversity, inclusion, and belonging plays an important role in shaping the intellectual fabric and the culture of the university. In this environment, which is built from the ground up by a commitment to the free expression of ideas, these are the raw materials that make possible the types of learning, creativity, and discovery that underpin what make this university so distinctive. 

These are the ingredients that will help you the most on your journey. In the coming years, I encourage you to take advantage of everything that this university community has to offer. Some of it will be here on the university campus, but some in the city of Chicago. Some of you may travel to our global campuses or beyond.

The whole time, at every moment, I want to encourage you to be alert to a possibility because you never know when it might happen. There is a possibility of something very special occurring. It could be on the quads. It could be in the dormitories. It could be at Hutch Commons. It could be at a doc film screening or a Smart Museum exhibit or a Chicago Symphony performance that you may go to. At any one of those moments, that may be the one moment when a point of view, that at first seems utterly contrary to your way of thinking, suddenly reaches you, and it teaches you something of great value that surprises you—but that you will take with you for the rest of your life.

I encourage you so much to explore new and challenging ideas in the classroom, the lab, the studio, the community around us beyond the campus and to be willing to engage in debate with one another.

There will be countless opportunities to learn and to contribute if you engage deeply. You never know what possibilities may be opened for you or what possibilities you may open for another person. I look forward to the many ways you will shape our community and, yes, the world in the decades ahead.

I wish you truly great joy and every success in your endeavors.

Welcome, welcome to the University of Chicago.