Commencement 2025  

Dan Renzetti

At commencement on Monday, May 19, President Maurie McInnis ’96PhD and the deans of Yale College and the graduate and professional schools tipped their hats to one another as McInnis conferred degrees on the approved candidates. View full image

On May 19, nearly 4,400 Yale students took their places on Old Campus under bright blue skies for the university’s 324th commencement. Family and friends filled the rows of white chairs stretching back to Vanderbilt Hall as the procession of faculty, administration, and graduating students came through the gates in full regalia.

Yale president Maurie McInnis ’96PhD then conferred degrees on representatives from the undergraduate colleges and graduate schools, followed by the honorary degrees to luminaries from the humanities, the sciences, and the performing arts. 

One day earlier, President McInnis delivered her first baccalaureate address to graduating Yale College seniors (published below), applauding their achievements before going on to exhort them to take the lessons learned at Yale into the wider world. Drawing on her background as a Yale-trained art historian, McInnis went on to speak of a John Trumbull painting in the Yale University Art Gallery, The Battle of Bunker’s Hill, in which a British major shows his humanity to a mortally wounded American general, choosing “to see the man who was his friend, instead of the general of an opposing force.”

That afternoon, former prime minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern spoke to the Class of 2025’s Class Day gathering, telling the students to draw on their doubts and their “impostor syndrome” as they move on in their lives. “We need your sensitivity because it’s also your kindness and your empathy.”

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Overcoming divides and embracing our shared humanity

The Baccalaureate address

by Maurie McInnis ’96PHD

Good morning, everyone! graduates of the class of 2025, faculty and family members, colleagues, and friends.

Today, we continue a tradition that is centuries old. On the Sunday before commencement, Yale presidents have stood behind this rostrum to impart a few words about the world that awaits our graduates beyond Phelps Gate. It gives me great pleasure to continue the tradition today in my first baccalaureate address as Yale’s 24th president.

But before I share a few reflections, I want to commence by recognizing this class. Friends and families, will you please rise and give a loud cheer to members of the Class of 2025?

Now, graduates, it’s your turn.

Members of the Class of 2025, will you please rise and return the favor by recognizing all those who have supported you every step of the way?

Parents and loved ones of today’s graduates, i know how this moment feels. 
Just a few springs ago, I was beaming with pride—and yes, a bit teary-eyed—during my own son’s commencement weekend. As a parent to both a current college student and a recent graduate, I understand the swirl of emotions that come with watching your children navigate their college years. The quiet worry about how they will adjust, mingled with the confidence that they would. And as you sit here today, I know it is hard not to simultaneously float back to those moments when they took their very first steps—and wonder now what the next steps will bring.

We’re so grateful that you entrusted Yale with a critical chapter in between.

To everyone in the audience, let me remind you about a few of the accomplishments of the Class of 2025.

Graduates, you started out as the Covid pandemic was just beginning to wane. You helped Yale to revitalize campus life. You have been pioneers in navigating the new frontier of generative AI in the classroom. You count among your ranks Rhodes, Marshall, Goldwater, and Schwarzman Scholars—and even an Olympic medalist. And you have distinguished yourselves not only in size, but in spirit, as Yale’s largest class since the Second World War.[1]

Along the way, you’ve challenged grandmasters in chess; cheered on the Bulldogs to several Ivy League championships; and dazzled audiences with your performances in solos, ensembles, and groups in nearly every genre and on stages across the country and around the world. You’ve marked personal milestones and developed friendships that will shape a lifetime.

But of course, among all there is to celebrate, your time on campus also coincides with another consequential period that continues to shape our lives: a time of rising partisan antipathy. When you entered Yale, partisan rancor had reached historic levels.[2]  And now, as you depart, polls suggest that many think of the opposing party as not just misguided, but “downright evil.”[3]

All of us can sense that conversations have become more brittle. Trust in institutions—and one another—is fraying. Common ground feels hard to find, and still harder to sustain.

I don’t think we’ve lost the ability to talk with each other so much as the will to.
Instead, it’s easy to retreat into echo chambers shaped by algorithms. To subscribe to content that validates our viewpoints—and to scroll past perspectives that challenge them.

So as an educator and a parent, I often wrestle with a question I know many of you do too: In a world so fragmented, how do we find our way back to one another? How can we shape our shared future when the ties that bind us feel so tenuous, if not already broken?

Some of you have gotten to know me this year, and so it may not come as a surprise that I seek inspiration in history and in art. It also seems fitting, on the 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolutionary War, to turn to the paintings hanging only steps away in the Yale University Art Gallery. There, John Trumbull’s painting, The Battle of Bunker’s Hill, is one of the most iconic, and it marks that moment, 250 years ago in June, when a band of soldiers stood their ground on a hillside near Boston.[4]

The scene, as you can see beside me, unfolds beneath swirling plumes of thick smoke, the air acrid with cannon fire and laced with sacrifice.

British forces have breached American lines.

The fate of a young nation hangs in the balance.

And Joseph Warren, the American major general, has fallen in what would become one of the first major battles in the war for independence.

In death, as in life, General Warren roused the revolutionary cause.

But in Trumbull’s masterpiece, he distills the importance and drama of that day to a moment of humanity amidst the awful brutality of war.

In Trumbull’s composition, the slashing diagonal, animated by the billowing flags and the chaos of red-coated men and revolutionaries in battle, stands in tension with the moment of stillness at the center of the canvas. There, British major John Small steps in to stop a fellow redcoat from bayoneting the fallen body of the heroic Joseph Warren.

In that moment, one man preserves the dignity of a dying foe with an unexpected gesture of compassion amid chaos.

One man, taming the passions of war, chooses mercy. Chooses to see the man who was his friend, instead of the general of an opposing force.
Ours is an institution that predates the Revolution, and many Yalies played pivotal roles in the nation’s founding. This history matters not only because of Yale’s age, but also because of the leadership we’ve shown in pursuit of the ideals that shaped this country—chief among them the pursuit of liberty. But let us also remember that those founding ideals were aspirational from the start—and we have fallen short in our history, including toward the people of this land and those who contributed to this country even as they were denied its freedoms. But we have always been a people striving to live up to our ideals. That is why the journey remains unfinished—and why we must continue it with humility.

Fellow art historians have noted how astonishing it is that Trumbull does not focus on the outcome of the battle so much as the nobility of its participants.

By spotlighting Major Small’s intervention, Trumbull honored an officer “equally distinguished by acts of humanity and kindness to his enemies, as by bravery and fidelity to the cause he served.”[5]

The kind of courage that Trumbull invites us to see is the kind we too often overlook.

The courage to practice restraint over retribution. The courage to see a fellow human being, even when every voice around you insists they are the enemy.
The courage, in short, to show compassion.

Compassion, as I suspect Major Small understood, is not the absence of conviction. It is not weakness. And it is certainly not retreat.

It is, in fact, an act of radical strength in its rarest form.

It is the idea that even in our most consequential disagreements—that even when the stakes are as significant as life and liberty—we must find ways to recognize our common humanity.

Now, I am not necessarily advocating for the avoidance of conflict or the denial of our differences.

In a vibrant, pluralistic society, disagreement is inevitable, indeed welcomed.
But what I would like to impress on you today is that compassion can coexist with our most deeply held beliefs.

We can, at once, have a resolute mind and an open heart—one that holds hope for peace, and for a day when our common humanity triumphs over our deepest divisions.

It is reasonable to think of trumbull’s scene, though nearby to those of us at Yale, as some distant, romanticized moment on canvas. Yet Trumbull captured for a nation not only the events but also the values that stood at the heart of our new country. In his series of paintings and prints that celebrated the creation of the United States, Trumbull helped shape the collective memory of the sacrifice, the bravery, and the spirit of generosity at the heart of our origin story. Incidentally, Trumbull is interred beneath the Yale University Art Gallery itself—his legacy, and the ideals of America he documented, quite literally, part of our foundation.[6]

While you will likely never face circumstances similar to those of Major Small on Bunker’s Hill, you will, without question, encounter division. You may be tempted to turn away from those who do not agree with you.

It is precisely in those moments that you must lean in on what you have learned at Yale.

To listen—especially when it would be easier to dismiss. To extend grace—even when grievance feels warranted. To defend your ideals without demeaning those who disagree with them.

In my first year as president, I have been moved by our community’s spirit to exemplify these principles.

I’ve watched as veterans who have served in combat zones now show valor in the classroom by engaging openly and respectfully with fellow students about the complexities of war.

I’ve seen faculty members, like those involved in the Law School’s Crossing Divides program, convene leaders from opposing sides of contentious debates to explore how they bridge differences and find new ways forward.

And I’ve had the privilege of meeting eminent alumni like Henry Louis Gates Jr. [’73], who turned a personal injustice into a public display of generosity.

After a painful incident in which he was wrongly arrested on his own front porch—on the suspicion of breaking into his own home—Professor Gates chose not to retreat into resentment but to instead sit down with the arresting officer.

Some of your family members may well remember that the two men met at the White House for what became known as the “beer summit.”

Of course, the summit was not some grand solution to the broader issue it concerned. No single conversation could be. But it was a small gesture of hope. A hope that when we sit together, speak openly, and acknowledge our shared humanity, we can create space for understanding—and even unexpected connections—to take root.

As a remarkable postscript, Professor Gates found not only common ground with the arresting officer, but a distant relative.

The two discovered that they descend from the same ancestor, reminding us of how interwoven our lives often are—if only we summon the courage to look more closely and to listen more carefully.[7]

As Yale graduates, you are uniquely equipped to do so.

You have spent four years in an environment that celebrates the balance of excellence and empathy, rigorous thought and human connection.

So, yours is now the rare privilege, and the solemn responsibility, to live what you have learned. To mend what has been broken. To lift up where others have torn down.

In the coming days and years, you will assume leadership roles across every sector of society. Some of you will pursue scientific breakthroughs, others artistic endeavors. Some will build businesses, others will shape policies.

Whatever path you choose, I urge you to heed the humanity on view just a few steps away on Trumbull’s canvas. To remember that even in those moments of profound conflict, we can choose instead to be guided by a spirit of compassion.

That we can choose to act with dignity toward those with whom we disagree. And that in a world divided, civility may be our most revolutionary act.

So, as you prepare to pass through phelps gate one last time as students, know that you leave this place with both our congratulations and our confidence. A deep and abiding confidence that you will, indeed, be the bearers of our banner—one of knowledge and understanding, leadership and service, light and truth.

So, when future historians look back at this fractured moment, let them record that you carried this banner not just from Yale to the world, but from the world as it is to the world as it might be.

Let them note that you helped us find our way back to one another.

Let them say you were not only brilliant scholars, but courageous citizens.

Let them say that in a time that called for both conviction and compassion, the Yale College Class of 2025 answered with both in full measure.

Thank you, and congratulations.  
  

Footnotes
[1] Davidson, Amelia. “Class of 2025 Arrives on Campus as Yale’s Largest Incoming Class, Sets Records for Diversity.” Yale Daily News, September 1, 2021.

[2] Enten, Harry. “Statistically, Democrats and Republicans Hate Each Other More Than Ever.” CNN.com, November 20, 2021.

[3] Robbins, Hannah. “Poll: Nearly Half of Americans Think Members of the Opposing Political Party Are ‘Evil.’” Johns Hopkins Hub, October 27, 2024 .

[4] John Trumbull, The Battle of Bunker’s Hill, 1786, oil on canvas, 25 5/8 × 37 5/8 in., Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.

[5] Holmes, Nathaniel B. 1831. Catalogue of Paintings by Colonel Trumbull. Yale University Art and Architecture Library.

[6] Kaskel, Jacqueline. “The Dead Shall Be Raised … or Buried under the YUAG.” Yale Daily News, April 29, 2022.

[7] “Harvard Professor Gates Is Half-Irish, Related to Cop Who Arrested Him,” ABC News, July 28, 2009.