I love this place. Harvard is where I found my intellectual home. It has nurtured and inspired me since I first set foot in the Yard. I am deeply inv… - Claudine Gay

Having now seen how quickly the truth can become a casualty amid controversy, I’d urge a broader caution: At tense moments, every one of us must be more skeptical than ever of the loudest and most extreme voices in our culture, however well-organized or well-connected they might be. Too often they are pursuing self-serving agendas that should be met with more questions and less credulity.

What we offer to the world will depend on Harvard’s courage—our courage—to ask two questions that propel our work—Why? and Why not? And it will depend on the courage to answer, with confidence, two others: Why here? and Why now?

Courage is hard, and hard to sustain. But we see it everywhere, steady in the face of war and injustice, sickness and loss, in stories of perseverance for a greater purpose.