My graduation speech at Hofstra

Talking to all masters and doctoral graduates

I had the honor of speaking to the masters and doctoral graduates at Hofstra University. President Susan Poser was an amazing host, and it was a perfect day and great occasion for the graduates. Hit some of the same points as Penn State but a little more serious for the graduate students.

Congratulations, graduates!

You’re all living proof that it’s possible to survive being forced to do part of your education on a computer in your parents’ basement.

You’ve endured a lot to get here in a very troubled world.  Pandemic, international conflict, divisive politics, and not one but two of the hottest years on record.

Not to mention commenting on your classmates’ assignments on endless discussion boards.

“I agree with your statement!  Have you ever thought about this?!”

Such a great learning experience.

And everywhere you looked:  tulips.  Acres and acres of tulips.

You had so many ideas about other ways to spend that money.

Like just flying everyone to Holland.

Thank you for including me today.  It is such an honor to be your speaker and to have a Hofstra degree just like you.

I will certainly wear it with pride and will try to wear it with purpose.

Graduation speeches usually have three points.  So here goes.

Nobody’s normal

I don’t think I can stand in front of this many students and not mention the fact that we are in a mental health crisis among young people.  As many as 50% of college and graduate school age students have sought mental health services.  That’s a lot of people here today who are hurting.  I can understand why anyone would be struggling given all that’s going on in the world – and especially with the stress of graduate school.  I think the biggest reason for the crisis is that we’re all trying to live in a society that has clung to an outdated and biased idea of what it means to be ‘normal’ that most of us can’t conform to.

You may notice that my hand movements and the lack of modulation in my vocal tone are a little unusual.  That’s because I have a form of autism that we used to call Asperger’s Syndrome.  Experts are still debating what we should call it now, and lots of famous and successful people had this diagnosis.  But far more autistic people with this diagnosis -- and who had autism but were never diagnosed, and therefore never given the supports they needed -- were much less fortunate, sometimes requiring constant care and exhibiting much higher rates of anxiety and depression than the general population.  And that’s partly because, particularly in some sectors of society, our awkward traits come with significant stigma. 

As an autistic person, I have the greatest admiration for the MBAs who had to do so many excruciating group projects. 

For me, that would be all nine circles of hell.

Now one reason I’m telling you this is so you know that if you have mental health struggles of your own, you can still be the speaker at the Hofstra graduate commencement one day.  In fact, all of us up here in our robes with our fancy degrees may look completely together, but every one of us has had challenges just like you may be having. 

My colleague at George Washington University, Roy Richard Grinker, has made the case that we all have some degree of many conditions. The title of his book is Nobody’s Normal.  It's fun to think of a day when we could accept that nobody’s normal and stop messing around with these labels. After all, we will all face hardships in life, physical and mental. So even if you think you are normal, please remember that nobody’s normal forever.

And if you’re not struggling right now, hug someone who is.

It matters who does research

For too long, academia has failed to achieve a workforce that represents the people it serves.  Many of you probably never had a professor who looked like you.  That must be very lonely.  It’s an unacceptable, systemic failure of the academy. 

I’m sorry.

And not only does it let you down, but it also lets the world down.  Discovery is a messy human process that converges on the truth.  And these messy humans are all subject to motivated reasoning that causes us to sometimes find things we are looking for that aren’t there.  If everyone has the same background, those biases are amplified.  But if teams bring different backgrounds to their work, they’ll have different biases and will converge on the truth faster. 

It matters who creates knowledge.  We are facing perhaps the greatest test now with artificial intelligence.  Because AI produces outcomes that are a function of how it is programmed and what data are used to train it.  If the programmers and the data don’t represent all people,

instead of building machines that level the playing field and make life better for all, we’re going to end up building machines that maintain the status quo and only make life better for the folks who are already doing well.

Correction is courageous

Not all of you will be doing research when you leave here, but many of you will.  And those of you who aren’t are going to professions where you will be producing knowledge of some kind.  And guess what?  You’re going to make mistakes.  Not because of incompetence or malice, but because you’re human.  You’ll be working on things that are really hard.  And you may be on teams that don’t have enough different perspectives.

It should be OK to make mistakes and correct them.  But we live in a ‘gotcha’ culture that makes that harder than it needs to be.  Right now in scientific research, there is a parade of news stories in the national media about mistakes in research.  These stories are full of drama and finger-pointing.  It doesn’t need to be like that.  Science is a work in progress.  It is updated all the time.  But investigators, institutions, funders, and – yes, journals – drag their feet and worse, which makes it easy for the newspapers to play up the dramatic.

There’s an easy solution to this.  Quickly admit when we’re wrong. Correction is courageous. That goes for everyone, not just the folks who have less power.  Blaming the graduate student or postdoc for the research misconduct just makes all this worse. Instead, everyone involved should take responsibility, especially the powerful investigators, institutions, and journals.  When that happens, there is very little drama.

You’re right on schedule

Fortunately, we’re going a long way toward all these goals today because all of you are graduating! 

Look at all of these scholars!!

You may be saying to yourself – well, I didn’t do original research – am I a scholar? 

Hell yes, you’re a scholar!

Because you studied original ideas and thought about how they apply to the world.  And you’re about to get a piece of paper with a bunch of academically pretentious signatures on it that makes it official.  Whatever you decide to do next, it doesn’t take away the fact that you are now and officially a scholar for life.

Walter Massey was a theoretical physicist who went on to be the first Black director of the National Science Foundation, the President of Morehouse College, and much more.  He could have had a great career sticking to theoretical physics, but when he saw Martin Luther King, Jr. murdered, he knew he needed to do more for the country.  He stopped doing physics and started leading important institutions.  But he never stopped being a scientist.

He told the New York Times that if you ask him who he is now at age 85, he’ll say, “I’m a physicist.  And I don’t say, ‘I used to be.’”

Same goes for all of you.  You represent your fields from here on.

Now some of the talk about changing the world that always shows up at graduations might make you uneasy.  Some of you might not have your grand plan worked out.  If that’s the case, you’re right on schedule.  Most of you who do have a plan are going to change it multiple times. 

So don’t worry if you don’t have it all figured out yet.  And remember that whatever you do next, it’s the right thing if it’s what you want.  Try to tune out what your parents and your advisers think you want.  They don’t know everything that you know about what’s right.

So that’s my talk.

Nobody is normal.

Representation is required.

Correction is courageous.

And only you can decide what to do now.

With these ideas, you’re ready for anything.

And remember, no matter what life throws at you, there’s one thing you can always cling to:  you will never have to find parking for a 4:30 class again.

Congratulations to the class of 2024!