As you leave UM to take up your work as nurses, engineers, teachers, scholars, scientific researchers, writers, caregivers, remember that you have le… - Drew Gilpin Faust

Tomorrow, we will continue to be called upon to build trust in our actions, our words, and our purposes, to do good in the world. Tomorrow, we will endeavor to be that reliable compass that steers toward truth, towards Veritas.
We are always learning, not just how to understand the world, but what to do with our understanding... with your help Harvard can keep learning, keep being, keep doing. It can embrace both change and constancy. It can remain Harvard while still becoming Harvard. Smart, but also wise. Restless, as well as proud. Equal parts bold and thoughtful. At once both old and new. Committed to goodness as well as greatness... The tensions between constancy and change are a good thing, a healthy thing. Any institution that has been committed to shaping the future, and future leaders, for as long as Harvard has, and as long as Harvard will, must embrace and master both. This is our inheritance. It must also be our legacy.

The story of Virginia compels us to recognize how important it is that we open our eyes and actively resist the assumptions and traditions that would obscure our vision. To imagine we are or can be color-blind is to render ourselves history-blind—to ignore realities that have defined us for good and for ill. The Founders embraced both slavery and freedom. We have inherited the legacy, and the cost, of both... “The past will remain horrible,” James Baldwin wrote, “for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.” And it will poison the present as well.

I am not the woman president of Harvard. I am the president of Harvard.