On May 17, President Kumar spoke to the Class of 2025 at the annual Baccalaureate Ceremony in the Academic Quad on the Medford/Somerville campus.
Watch the video of the president’s speech:
President Sunil Kumar
2025 Baccalaureate Service
Saturday, May 17, 2025
Opening
A warm welcome to family, friends, colleagues, guests and most importantly, the Class of 2025!
Most things we celebrate, we achieve with the help of many others. Giving thanks and acknowledging support must go hand-in-hand with celebration.
Therefore, before I speak to the Class of 2025, let me take a moment to ask it, the Class of 2025, to recognize those who have made this day possible for them:
- parents…grandparents…siblings…partners…children…and friends
- your teachers, members of the faculty, deans, coaches, advisors, and staff.
Graduates, please stand and applaud these individuals who have contributed to your many successes.
(Pause for applause)
I would also like to thank the students who will enrich this day with important messages of their faiths, traditions, and philosophical perspectives. Thank you to the string quartet and the jazz quartet for sharing your talents with us. (Pause for applause) Enlightening the ceremony through music.
Special thanks to Reverend Elyse Nelson Winger and her colleagues in the University Chaplaincy for organizing this afternoon’s celebration. (Pause for applause) And thank you to the staff from across our Operations and Commencement planning teams for making it possible to bring this Tufts tradition outside to the Academic Quad for the first time, which the heavens rewarded, unfortunately, with rain. (Pause for applause)
Finally, thank you, Ayo for that incredible Wendell Phillips address. (Pause for applause) You are an outstanding representative of the Class of 2025, and we are all very proud of you. Stanford is lucky to have you, and I have let them know that.
Moment of Silence
Before I share my reflections on your Class and what lies ahead for you, I would like to pause for a moment in the memory of Sam Sommers, psychology department chair and professor, highly regarded teacher, impactful researcher, and beloved colleague, who passed away unexpectedly earlier this spring.
Sam made everyone around him better…and feel better. Last year, a mass email circulated as an April Fool’s joke, one in poor taste I might add. It announced my sudden demise. (Laughter) As an engineer, I feel obliged to add that it was accurate; merely sent prematurely. (Laughter) Sam came to see me a couple of weeks later. He had had a t-shirt printed up with Mark Twain’s famous quote on a premature obituary and gave it to me. (Laughter) He knew it would cheer me up. We both had a good laugh then.
Although no longer with us, Sam leaves behind an enduring legacy in the hearts and minds of his students, colleagues, friends and family, and everyone whose lives he touched. I, for one, will not only treasure that t-shirt but also the funny, kind, and thoughtful person he was.
Let’s pause in a moment of silence in memory of Sam.
[Pause for moment of silence]
Thank you.
University’s mission -- responsible leaders
As you can imagine, I am asked from time to time to define the mission of Tufts University. Without hesitation I reply: “To educate responsible leaders and to do more than our fair share towards addressing the world’s most pressing problems.” To date, no one has quibbled with that definition. It’s a comforting one after all – like mom and apple pie.
But the skeptic in you is probably asking “what does it take to be a responsible leader, and has Tufts done enough to prepare us for this aspiration?” Such skepticism is good for you. I take these questions very seriously.
To me a leader is one whose actions will affect many others, and not necessarily always in a positive way, even when the actions are well-intentioned. I realize that this is a very “operationally biased” definition of leadership. This bias reflects my academic training – as I mentioned just a few moments ago, I am an engineer after all.
[Pause]
Actions and consequence
The relationship between actions and consequences is an incomplete and complicated one.
Sam Sommer’s sudden passing is a stark and stunning reminder of our limited agency in this world. We do not control outcomes. One of the most cited lines from the Bhagavad Gita, the essential part of the Hindu Scripture, reads कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन। It translates to “You have the right to act but never to the fruits of such action.” We have no rights to outcome.
Knowledge and expertise help limit the uncontrolled parts of outcomes, but they remain, persist nonetheless. A responsible leader acts knowing full well this limitation on agency. The leader relies on knowledge and expertise, especially of those who have dedicated themselves to acquiring such expertise.
Bad outcomes cannot be solely attributed to limited agency. We are fallible and we make mistakes. Quite often these errors are caused by hubris. We are sure that we are doing the right thing, only to realize that we were wrong to act the way we did. Moreover, a good outcome does not excuse an erroneous decision.
Responsible leaders have the humility to know they can be wrong, and that the meanest of their detractors may have something they can learn from. They know when they were good and when they were merely lucky. And they learn from these mistakes. I know I certainly have.
Finally, a leader’s decision affects others in many different ways, and often there is no single, “best” decision. To pick among several, less than ideal alternatives, one has to rely on one’s values and principles. Acting on mere expediency never survives the test of time. Almost by definition, what is expedient today ceases to be that tomorrow. So one has to make hard calls.
[Pause]
You are halfway there
My goal in laying out this forbidding list of what it takes to be a responsible leader is not to dissuade you or fill you with doubt and anxiety. Nor, heaven forbid, is it to make excuses for my job and the decisions that I have made. Rather, it is to lay out objectively what it takes:
- Knowledge and expertise and a willingness to rely on knowledge and expertise
- Humility and a willingness to accept and learn from mistakes
- A well-developed set of values and principles, unique to you.
Written this way, the list is not forbidding. If you think, “I got this,” you would be partially right. Your Tufts education, and the very special Tufts community, have given you a great start on each of these dimensions. But none of these are static – they all evolve over time.
As you develop and strengthen these characteristics over the coming years, remember not just what you learned here. Remember also what it means to be a Jumbo:
- You have the depth and expertise in your chosen area.
- You can think for yourself with clarity and candor
- You have the humility to learn from even those you disagree with, and most importantly, from life
- You know that it is not enough to do well for yourself, it is necessary to do good for others and to take care of the Herd
- You have a set of values and principles that you will constantly test, hone, and refine for yourself.
On today
I am almost at the end of my remarks and you may be surprised that I haven’t mentioned anything so far about the attacks on higher education or any of the other dramatic developments of the day. It is not that I am not concerned by these. It is just that the appropriate time frame for this address is the rest of your life. Given that, worrying about what happens today seems rather myopic.
That said, I am relieved that Rümeysa Öztürk has been released to continue her thesis. (Applause) I am glad the university and the Tufts community was able to help her case through sworn declarations and other support. Unfortunately, the future may yet hold curveballs.
One of my favorite movies is Bridge of Spies, a cold war thriller. In it, a Soviet spy, played by Mark Rylance, is caught in the US. His lawyer asks him if he’s worried. Rylance replies in a flat monotone, “Would it help?”
When thrown a curve ball, the key for a responsible leader is not worry, but preparation and considered action. And you are ready now and you will be even more ready in the coming years to prepare yourselves and act in a considered and thoughtful manner when you’re thrown curveballs.
For its part, the university will continue to act in a manner that maximally furthers its mission – of educating responsible leaders and doing more than its share of addressing the world’s greatest challenges, while doing the very best it possibly can for every member of the Herd. And we have you, our responsible future leaders, to count on.
Go Jumbos! Now and forever!
(Applause)