Class of 2026, families and friends, if four years seemed to go by fast, just imagine how 13 years feels. I am honored to be sharing this day with my fellow graduates, both of us embarking on new journeys. Though I admit taking more than a decade to make it through dear Wofford is not something I wish for any student, or their families.
Over the years we have invited Wofford alumni to share their stories with seniors on Commencement Day because they all have lessons from their own life experiences. Themes such as relationships, perseverance, overcoming adversity, kindness and compassion, have defined remarkable journeys of Wofford alumni, as it will yours — perhaps as it already has.
Having listened to these wonderful stories of our alumni, I am not sure that mine will stand up to comparison, but I do want to offer some thoughts on what it means to make a difference and the importance of what we do here at Wofford College.
Moving into 148 Wofford Campus Drive touched and transformed the life Prema and I have lived in so many extraordinary ways. It has led us to unimagined experiences and treasured friendships and colleagues for whom we care deeply. And, of course, each and every student over past 13 years has touched our lives, walking past the house we have lived in. You have brought great joy to us.
So, over the past couple of months as Prema and I have been thinking about our path, typically a glass of wine in our hands on porch of the house, we’ve been thinking of you, Class of 2026. My message to you is simple: you never know where you will go, who you will meet and what you will do. You won't always know the difference you've made — in someone's day, life or career — but every day presents that opportunity.
You see, difference making comes in all ways and forms, as many of you have practiced during your time here at Wofford. Working at local schools or community centers, engaged in social entrepreneurship or community-based research, all of which makes a difference in the lives of others. Difference making occurs in the small and modest acts of kindness or sometimes in grand gestures, carried on by people in near infinite ways every day around the world. We all have the opportunity to extend ourselves in helpful and innovative ways in whatever we do. And, as your fellow students Bella Agnello, Carter Catlette, Anna-Kathryn Fleenor and Jenne Taylor demonstrate in their research presented at the Terrier Expo, these acts of gratitude and kindness will not only make others feel better, but they will also make you feel better and more positive.[i] Imagine, the sum of these simple acts can touch us all just as Edward Lorenz suggested in 1961 in his work on chaos theory: the fluttering wings of a butterfly may, in time, start a tornado somewhere in the world. Now, his theory was a little more complex than that, as evidenced in his 1963 paper, “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow,” but you get the point.
In my career I have been privileged to work at small liberal arts colleges, teaching in the classroom and collaborating and administering with friends and colleagues in shaping the student experience. What we do here is important. What you have experienced over the past four years is important, for your life and our world. That is because I believe education is the essential pathway to a good life and a good society. Forgive my triteness, but places like Wofford are the butterfly that can change the world because education is vital to the human experience, and therefore our future.
I have often said that what makes us different as a species is that we live not just to survive, we live to thrive – what other species on earth creates art, music, literature or theater for the sake of expressing ourselves, our experiences and our emotions, or produces innovations of science and technology that have carried us from roaming lands for food and shelter to megacities and modes of transportation and exploration that see the deepest depths and unimaginably distant horizons. We even create artificial thought and being that challenge our own relevance and existence. These achievements are unique to humans; they impart to us enormous power and responsibility.
And in a great nation like ours, the exercise of power resides with us. Our Constitution is very clear on this point: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…” That is an awesome responsibility and people like me and my colleagues here and in colleges and universities around the country are very clear about the power of education to nurture a civic mindedness, the cultivation of a form of citizenship that emphasizes moral and intellectual growth for engagement in communities near and far for the common good. Education helps us develop respect for differences of opinion and world views, differences of faiths and color, of gender, of self and other. These are fundamental to a social fabric whose values are expressed in our own Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”
No other nation has fulfilled those founding principles through the continuous practice of electoral democracy as long as ours. It is that practice and the founding principles of our nation that have given the exercise of citizenship authentic meaning and purpose: to drive real social, political, economic and cultural change, and to fight to expand rights and opportunities for all individuals as equals. That is why our promise is evidenced every day in the desire of people from around the world who literally risk their lives to take part in the American experiment. Make no mistake, we are a nation built of immigrants; my wife is an immigrant, my grandfather and my mom immigrated to the United States. Fareed Zakaria describes the United States as “the first universal nation,” a country where people from all over the world can “share in a common dream and a common destiny.” Zakaria calls immigration America’s “secret weapon,” because it gives us a hunger and energy rare for a mature, wealthy country. Higher education is the nation’s “best industry,” he adds, attracting the brightest minds to our schools and our shores, helping the United States remain “at the forefront of the next revolutions” of human endeavor.[ii] On this very campus we have students from around the globe, and we see and feel how different perspectives and experiences enhance and enrich all our lives.
Phrases that define our nation such as “We the people,” “All men are created equal,” “the first universal nation,” are a profound ideal. Are we perfect? Absolutely not. We have a history characterized by violence, displacement, discrimination and all manner of ills that people have exercised upon one another and that we at times struggle to come to terms with. Progress is not without interruptions and regressions, sometimes of a cruel and meanspirited form. We are human after all. But we must believe there is truth in the well-known words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., spoken in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 25, 1965: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Throughout our history we have seen hope, progress, a recognition to attend to the ills of the marginalized, of those in need … we have self-corrected through the monumental practice of democracy, through the ability to express ourselves on the streets and at the ballot box over and over again. We are, as a nation, who we choose to be.
That is why we must guard against those who desire to impose boundaries or regulate the search for knowledge, freedom of speech and academic freedom that have characterized attacks on higher education in the recent past.
Our institutions, like our nation, are not perfect. We reflect, indeed, often amplify, social, political and cultural upheavals that circulate in our nation as we should. Not so long ago race and identity politics infused our college campuses with policies, programs and protests, impacting dialogue inside and outside the classroom. More recently we’ve seen the drastic reductions of funding for scientific, social science and humanistic research, the demand at the state and federal levels to eliminate academic programs, including race and gender studies, to reshape Middle Eastern and other area studies programs, the arrest and deportation of students, the dismissal of faculty and staff, and the shutting down of campus protests. All of this has instilled a great chill on college campuses across the country. This is not new, of course. In the 20th century, resistance to the First World War and association or accusations of communist sympathies were enough to suspend or terminate students, faculty and staff from colleges and universities.
But then again, it was a generation of students your age on campuses across the country, who led protests and resistance to the Viet Nam War and led social revolutions in support of environmental health, women’s rights and the civil rights movements of the 1960s. And today that need to center the democratic project and the values of our founding in higher education is ever greater. Jonthan R. Cole, observed in his work The Great American University, that “the protection of ideas and expression from political interference or repression became absolutely fundamental to the university,”[iii] a commitment that made American higher education one of the most powerful engines of American success in the past 150 years. Something you, today, are very much a part of.
Our college, your experience, you, are, in fact, a pillar of American democracy, one that reflects our dynamic social and cultural fabric. As former president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, describes, the traditional conception of what happens here is important, but too narrow. Institutions advance civilization, prepare you for citizenship and productive lives, create knowledge that advances national and global interests for the good. Yet, he contends that higher education is a “fifth branch” of our system whose independence and integrity must be defended because college “is built into our foundational ideals,” where free inquiry and expression are essential to a vibrant democracy. I think Professor Laurie Essig at Middlebury College, describes it perfectly: “(It) is extremely dangerous when those in power tell us we cannot analyze how power operates in the world.”[iv] This is a case for higher education as a place where unfettered inquiry and debate can be carried on without fear, where engagement mirrors the evolving contours of the nation. In other words, as Henry Giroux has argued, “higher education … not only offers a space where dialogue and the expansion of the intellect can be encouraged but also prepares students as critical agents capable of intervening in the world to make good on the promise of a substantive and inclusive democracy.”[v] Such a view of our college as a foundational institution of our democracy is the place where diverse peoples and ideas thrive in the doing of disciplines new and old, in pursuit of a greater and common good.
That is why what has been happening on this ground since 1854 is important. That is why Wofford College makes a difference in our world. Now as you leave this campus today, remember that your path will take you places you cannot imagine, you will meet people who will change your life, and you will touch and make a difference in the lives of others. In doing so, you will fulfill the great promise of a Wofford education, and the great promise of our nation. And that is important for us all.
Congratulations to the Class of 2026.
[i] Bella Agnello, Carter Catlette, Anna-Kathryn Fleenor and Jenne Taylor, The Impact of Gratitude and Kindness Interventions on Positive Mindsets and Well-Being, Poster at Terrier Expo, Wofford College, April 17, 2026
[ii] Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World, quoted in Carlos Lozada, “America Has Become a Dangerous Nation,” The New York Times, March 24, 2026.
[iii] Jonathan R. Cole, The Great American University: It Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected (New York: Public Affairs, 2010), p.45. In Geoffrey R. Stone, “A Brief History of Academic Freedom,” in Akeel Bilgrami and Jonathan Cole (eds.), Who’s Afraid of Academic Freedom? (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).
[iv] Alexander C. Kafka, “Academic Freedom Is on the Ropes,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 27, 2021.
[v] Henry Giroux, “The Passion of the Right: Religious Fundamentalism and the Crisis of Democracy,” Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, 5(3) 2005, p. 316.