unleash the underdog
What a beautiful, moving day.
To our generous trustees and alumni, path-breaking liberal arts faculty, tireless staff, loving family, close friends, and exemplary leaders of the next great generation:
CMC’s graduates of the Class of 2026, many congratulations to you all on this divine occasion.
Through the fumes of LA traffic, the frantic search for parking, the rush to save seats.
Can we settle into the moment?
Can we hear it this afternoon?
The cheers for our CMS national championship men’s golf team, shooting 15 under yesterday?
Can we hear?
Ava’s voice of an angel, a siren’s call to renew our national vows, fulfill our covenant with the future, reissue the 250-year-old promissory note of our Declaration of Independence.
Can we hear?
Ellen’s chorus in the CMC thesis:
The exchange—(the commercio)—through which we build our community, our civilization (our civitas).
Can we hear?
The invocation of Tanzila’s beautiful patience in the reunion of our many families.
Rachel’s questions that integrate our individual and collective growth and purpose to take on the future.
The example of their strong friendship and love for one another.
Can we hear?
The abrupt syncopation of Tendai’s journey from Harare, Zimbabwe to South Quad.
The exclamation points in Chloe’s call to active purpose.
The barrier-breaking harmony of Akshata and Rishi’s exemplary leadership, a fusion of parallel brilliance, love, and service to lift our civilization.
Can we hear?
The hop in our steps, the sobs in our chest, the swish of Theo’s loving, wagging tail.
The stories we center and spin from the wet clay of human experience.
The lessons we learn to frame and answer the most open, wicked, promising questions.
—
Graduates, can you see the moment?
Look around.
Look to your amazing parents and families.
You are the product of their unconditional love and highest expectations.
The rides. The comfort food. The constant worries and nagging questions.
It’s time to get up! How did you do on that test? Clean your room. Text me when you get there.
The pride.
I love the hustle. I love your friends. I love you.
Look to your phenomenal faculty.
The big questions that changed your life, the domination and love of the problem, the ability to see, challenge, and grow the best in you.
Look to your selfless staff and mentors.
You have leaned on them for counseling, networking, cleaning, feeding.
They have unleashed in you the capabilities and confidence you thought you lacked.
Look to your Board of Trustees, a college best-run to help you race ahead.
Mission laser-focused, capital raised, dynamic programs launched, iconic facilities built, courageous zigs when the world zags, all-in support, proof of the possible, top of our game.
Look to the special spaces and programs you call home.
The Ath, the Hub, Collins, CARE, Green Beach, the Soll Center for Student Opportunity, Roberts Pavilion, now the Robert Day Sciences Center. The social stairs may be named for us, but they are there for you to ascend.
Look to our founders.
A Claremont College built nearly 80 years ago from an Oxford-inspired plan, stalled by depression and war, on a plowed, rocky grove, with $80k and the wave of the GI Bill.
86 students, 83 of them vets from WWII.
After a life on pause to face down evil, they seized a dream deferred to become someone, somebody, something.
Look to each other.
In mutual support, you have torqued back, gathered the inner strength to pole-vault over the bar of the world’s constrained expectations.
The imposter syndromes, the internalized educational prejudices, the emotional challenges, the barriers of limited resources, experience, and social capital.
You’ve crushed them into dust, new fuel for your self-discovered superpowers.
Look within.
Close your eyes.
Let the memories flash beneath the blanket of your eyelids.
Why you came here, the special moments in your life.
The poignant disappointment—the ball clanging off the post, the jubilant win, when it’s in the back of the net.
The heavy heartbreak, the friendship and pure fun, the quiet, touching times, the big moving moments, the pivots to turn your own victories into support for others.
This is not only about how you got into CMC.
This is not only about the required work you did to now pass out of it.
This is about how CMC got into you.
The drive in your step across this stage into the arenas that now call for you.
Graduates, when we all wake up from this dreamy day, look beyond the obvious.
Skate, not just to where the puck is headed, skate to where you want the game to go.
Look North to the mountains.
Confront the cold face.
See the high summits.
Put your eye on your chosen star.
Above the bald horizon.
Look up to the sky above.
No cloud can make it fall.
See through to the sun.
Build the rockets you want to ride.
The life and world you wish to create.
—
Friends, when we watch our graduates cross the stage today, can we see what they each teach us?
Not just the majors and thesis and honors, the objective accomplishments, bullets on the CV, the resume moments, not just what we can list and easily count?
Can we also celebrate what really counts?
What David Brooks calls the eulogy moments.
The stories that shape our graduates and through which they shape us.
When students write to me or come over to my office or our house, they hardly ever share the resume moments.
They don’t brag about the national and world championships, the awards, the great jobs, the top college rankings.
Sure, they often seek help about the best way to pursue their dreams.
But more often, students share the moments that mean the most to them.
That mean the most to me.
The stories that explain and teach what really drives meaningful success.
They tell me about ...
leadership, not just a title
It’s the little things, we learn from Kylee Tevis and Desiree Galamgam.
Open ear, generous heart, warm shoulder, spontaneous hug.
Small acts of kindness that create the banality of good.
the power of small gifts
Freshman year, Lavi Raju, homesick, missed her mom and the Chicago fall. A knock on the door. Her first-year guide with a gift from her mom in New Hampshire.
The antidote. A small bag of red, brown, and yellow fall leaves. One is still pinned to Lavi’s wall.
A leaf that inspires her to serve and fix broken lives
moments of integrity
Fourth-string quarterback, Peter Boehm, worked so hard to earn a starting position in his sophomore year.
The offer came. A dream. His dad would be so proud.
Peter declined. He wasn’t ready, needed more time to learn the plays before taking on that responsibility.
Pure courage. A story of responsible leadership told and retold to imprint the lesson on others.
unquenchable thirst for tough questions
Sophomore year. First philosophy class. Brianna Toole, the professor, asks: What constitutes a just political system?
A thought so big it nearly paralyzed Elizabeth Barry.
But the next class, she strived to answer.
And every class after that, she wants to ask the big questions.
A key driver in her personal, professional success.
discipline
Riley Capuano didn’t even run competitively in high school.
Now here with a coach who believed in her.
Cross-Country three-time All-American. CMS record holder in the 1500 meters.
4 minutes, 23 seconds of pure grit.
In her NCAA leadership immersion program, she seeks to impart that grit to those who run in her tracks.
the gift of gifts
This is not just the accomplishment of finding the gifts within.
Our graduates give them to others.
Louis Layman, stricken with addiction.
Turns his life around.
Then circles to others to create a powerful Claremont peer-group support program.
—
In these moments, big and small, our graduates unleash the underdog.
In themselves.
In others, in all of us.
These innumerable stories move me.
They tell me why I am here, why we are here.
They remind me of my own journey.
My struggles with learning.
How I grew to focus on helping others tear down their own barriers.
Growing up, at first, I was really bad at learning what I wanted to do.
I forgot my lines in the 3rd grade play.
I only managed to hit one foul ball in my first nine at-bats in Little League.
I was really bored from 4th -11th grade and fell objectively way behind, especially in reading and writing.
My brother Jim woke me up at 16.
As my own Wizard of Oz, he saw in me the learning capabilities I thought I lacked.
I went on a wild tear.
At the time, I never thought about putting that to use for others.
But then, at 18, I got a call, the summer before college, from my public high school principal.
“Hiram,” he explained, “the remedial math teacher is sick. We need someone to pick up her class for the freshmen who failed.”
He was desperate. I agreed.
I read the grade sheets: Ds and Fs.
The lesson plan—dividing fractions.
Why were they failing? I wanted to know.
I watched one student work a problem. He got stuck.
“What is 4 times 6,” I asked. He stared back.
I soon realized he and most of his classmates could not multiply.
So, I taught them how to multiply, how to divide, about fractions, and only then how to divide them.
—
The inspiring inflection points, from Riley’s winning race to Louis’s group therapy help reteach me why I’ve been in classrooms for 45 years.
You see, these many stories are really one.
It’s not just our love of the underdog.
It’s not Rocky or Rudy or Hoosiers and then, end of the movie.
Yes, it’s the story of outsiders, believers, firsts in their families, personal challenges, self-doubts, failures, moments of crisis, illness, tragedy.
AND it’s the story of how our students draw on their own lessons to change the world around them.
It’s Lincoln and Mandela.
It’s Einstein and Hawking.
It’s Ghandi and Malala.
Here at CMC, it’s Johnson-Saeger and Eisenman.
It’s Fernandez and Thuresson.
It’s Zhang and McElroy.
It’s Jamal and Supnick.
It’s Inouye and Mohamed.
It’s not just Churchill’s famous commencement speech in wartime.
Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing . . .
Never yield to the apparent overwhelming might of the enemy.
Our graduates teach us more.
No matter what the world throws at them:
A polarizing polity, protracted wars, a hotter planet, a K-shaped economy, a tough, AI-confused job market.
Our graduates never give up on themselves, on each other, on us, on our shared future.
They build on their own version of David’s victory over Goliath, and then teach us how to follow their example.
The beautiful patience and perseverance through persistent challenges, the hard questions and creative responses to improbable aspirations.
Our graduates model and move others to do the same.
Not an end point of celebratory victory over an enemy.
But a humble superpower of helping others in distress.
Our graduates give David’s slingshot to those around them to help them slay their own challenges.
Our graduates unleash the underdog in all of us.
This is the CMC that got into them.
The CMC they take across the stage today.
***
I’d now like to ask the Class of 2026 to stand for my charge.
These directives tell you what you already know.
A mirror that reflects back what we have all learned from you.
Final light on the path you’ve already carved.
Find the quiet courage
Hug the struggles in others
Pull back to catapult forward
Liberate the leadership around you
Listen to what no one can hear
Feel what no one can sense
Answer the clank of the post
With the swish of the net
Gather the gift of fall leaves
Ask Rachel’s fifth question
Practice Tanzila’s beautiful patience
Bring our families home to one another
Love the problem
Find its weakest heel
Gather your tools
Slay the challenge
Do not declare victory
Goliaths always await us
Run not to where they are headed
Run to where you want them to go
Do not beat your chest
Turn to those around you
Give them your slingshot
Teach them how to aim
Thank those who coached you to race
Honor those who taught you to learn
Share the lessons that guide your next strides
Take CMC wherever you go
Create Green Beach in your nearby park
(without violating the law!)
Spin the Hub into your local café
Realize the professor in your new boss
Find CARE and the Ath in every ear and mouth
Craft your unwritten play.
Trust your intuition.
Polish your wisdom.
Sharpen your judgment.
Unleash the underdog
in you
in everyone you meet
in all of us, too
Never give up on your leadership.
Never give up on one another.
Never give up on our world.
Never give up on our future.
We love you for who you are.
We are moved by who you have become.
Never give up on us.
We will never give up on you.
Congratulations to the Class of 2026!
Cheers to you all.