2023 OneMIT Commencement Live Webcast

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INTERVIEWER 1: This is the second year we have done commencement this way and we are really thrilled with how this new process is working. It provides intimate and lovely settings for the graduates to receive their diplomas. The big one will be tomorrow morning, where the undergraduates all received their diplomas. But today, we gather for the formal academic processional. We have the members of the corporation, the president, faculty, and of course, our honored guests and speakers. There will be music, the singing of the school song, certain traditions such as turning the Brass Rat. And as you look at the crowd right now, you're seeing-- well, right now you're seeing the stage, and that features the Seal of MIT on the main podium. That seal was created by the founder and the earliest members of MIT'S corporation back in 1864. INTERVIEWER 2: Debbie, it wouldn't be an MIT commencement without some numbers. We will have 1,146 undergraduates commencing over the next couple of days. The formal degree ceremony will be tomorrow morning. And over the three days of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, 2,613 masters, PhDs, and Doctor of Science degrees awarded throughout the five schools and the Schwarzman college of computing. INTERVIEWER 1: Here in Killian Court, there are seats for about 13,000 people and they'll be filled. I know the organizers of today's events are eagerly urging the graduates to take their seats now and we are hopeful that the ceremony will start on time. INTERVIEWER 2: This is an interesting commencement. When most of these students entered, it was the middle of the pandemic. And for many of them, it was remote learning for a year or two. And now they're all here on campus, and Kendall Square has really transformed. INTERVIEWER 1: It certainly has. And one of the biggest changes has been the relocation of the MIT Museum to a brand new building there in Kendall Square right next to the T stop, as well as the relocation of the admissions office and the creation of a brand new Welcome Center. For the first time in 100 plus years, MIT has a proper gateway for its guests. INTERVIEWER 2: We left MIT at the beginning of the pandemic, what, in March of 2020, and there were five holes in the ground where there used to be parking lots. And we came back a couple of years later, and five brand new towers have sprouted. And they're populated by companies, Boeing and Apple and MIT are in one of the-- or rather, IBM are in one of the buildings. We have graduate student housing, we have, as you mentioned, the museum and many other MIT functions. We have general community housing, we have restaurants. It's really blossomed. It's quite beautiful. INTERVIEWER 1: In fact, there's been quite a bit of construction. INTERVIEWER 2: We're going to take just a quick break for an announcement now. Good afternoon. As we await the alumni parade and the procession, please welcome the MIT police honor guard. ["AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL" PLAYING] INTERVIEWER 1: So the MIT police honor guard was created in 2002, so this is their 21st year of participating, not only in commencement, but really all official MIT ceremonies. Most recently they were at the head of the procession for the inauguration of our 18th president, Sally Kornbluth. INTERVIEWER 2: And there's a lot of administration and bureaucracy that goes into creating this program, which when you watch it from the outside, looks so smooth. But the detail that goes into it, we have the faculty gathering in one place, lining up by department, by school. We have the corporation, the Board of Trustees of MIT, lining up in another place. We have the students lining up. And the guests are coming in through the front door, if you will, of Memorial drive, right on the banks of the River Charles. INTERVIEWER 1: As you watch the procession of the honor guard, you're getting a glimpse at the students in their caps and gowns. If they're wearing a black gown, they are undergraduates receiving a bachelor's degree today. But particularly distinctive are the gray and cardinal gowns for the doctoral degree recipients. INTERVIEWER 2: And then we're going to see a sea of red coming up in just a couple of minutes. They are the guests of honor-- the 50th reunion class. INTERVIEWER 1: Indeed. And I'm excited also to share with you a little bit of information about the class of 1973. Smaller than today's class-- excuse me, larger. They were 2,300 degrees awarded in 1970-- 300 degrees awarded in 1973. About 1,038 bachelor's degrees. One of the most distinguished degree recipients that day was Shirley Ann Jackson, who was a member of the class of 1969. Dr. Jackson received her PhD, the first woman and Black woman to receive her PhD in physics at MIT, and she has become one of the Institute's most notable alumni. INTERVIEWER 2: And speaking of which, it's time to welcome them. Please welcome the MIT class of 1973, celebrating their 50th reunion. You hear the applause out in the courtyard. INTERVIEWER 1: They are wearing cardinal jackets. That was a tradition started back in the 1950s when that 50th reunion class in 1957 was back celebrating, and they wanted a way to distinguish themselves. And you can, on the screen, begin to see that they're marching in, not only with those cardinal jackets festooned with special patches, but also custom hats that have become the moniker of that particular class. INTERVIEWER 2: This is coming around full circle for me. I had a friend when I entered as a freshman who had just graduated from this class and was working with me as a volunteer at the MIT student radio station, then WTBS. We have kept in touch for all of these years and it would be a thrill to see him here along with all of his classmates. And they look so happy, just beaming to come into the court. INTERVIEWER 1: So just to put it in perspective, this class, when they arrived for their first year, the tuition for the full year was $2,150. INTERVIEWER 2: That's a deal. INTERVIEWER 1: There was an enormous protest. At that time, the signs went up and said 2150 is just too damn much. Today, if you're curious, that's worth about $17,800. INTERVIEWER 2: But today's tuition is? INTERVIEWER 1: It is $59,750. So it's really grown considerably over the years. INTERVIEWER 2: And that does not include room and board and books and personal expenses, which will add a few more dollars. But I guess the good news is that, of course, MIT has always been need blind admission. And if you are accepted, MIT will find a way for you to afford to be here. INTERVIEWER 1: In fact, that's so true. And a majority of our students today receive need-based scholarships as well as additional opportunities to support their time here. We are grateful for the generosity of alumni and many other donors who have provided scholarship funds and support the idea of bringing the best and the brightest in the world here to campus in Cambridge. INTERVIEWER 2: It's interesting. As I was walking towards the room we're in right now, I obviously passed a lot of graduates and other students, and none of them are talking about social things or political things. They're still talking about science and engineering as they're walking down the hallway on commencement day. INTERVIEWER 1: Yes. I have-- in the last few weeks when all of the capstone projects are being presented, it is a remarkable time to be on campus. You find robots and art works and musical performances just by the dozens. And it is as vibrant a time-- and probably for the students, as stressful a time as they will ever experience in their lives. INTERVIEWER 2: But what opportunities these graduates will have to work, whether it be an industry or academia or go into government or whatever their chosen field may be. In my office, I work closely with large corporations that invest in research at MIT, and there is an amazing demand across all industries, especially the life sciences is particularly in demand right now. INTERVIEWER 1: That's one of the big changes that has occurred over the last quarter century. MITs largest department continues to be electrical engineering and computer science, and they dominate the landscape in one sense. But all of a sudden, the pie, in large, beginning in the mid 2000s-- and perhaps it was no accident that Susan Hockfield, when she became president, was our first life scientist. And now Sally Kornbluth is also a life scientist. INTERVIEWER 2: And even if you're still interested in electrical engineering but as well in the life sciences, there's the opportunity through our incredible multidisciplinary system here at MIT, to combine those interests and have a major that combines both electrical engineering and life sciences. And through the Schwarzman college of Computing, you can practically create your own major in computing and fill in the blank. INTERVIEWER 1: In fact, that's one of the big developments on campus, that new college, the Schwarzman college was inaugurated just as this class of 2023 was receiving their admissions letters. INTERVIEWER 2: We heard from Dan Huttenlocher, who is the Dean of the College at the graduate ceremony yesterday, and they are looking forward to their new building. It's right across the street from the data center. It's finishing up its construction. It is going to house the College of Computing, where almost all the faculty have a joint appointment in another academic department. So they'll have some offices there obviously, but a lot of laboratories and makerspace as well. INTERVIEWER 1: I don't know if there will be any alumni back here on campus this weekend who will remember the spot where that new college building is going up. It was originally the site of the Van der Graaff generators brought up from Round Hill, and then in the 50s, transferred over to the Museum of Science, where you can still go today to see them do demonstrations on the hour and really get a feel for how dramatic those gigantic power generators were in their day. That was, of course, replaced by the cyclotron, which was the beginning of nuclear engineering at MIT. INTERVIEWER 2: And right across the street from the fabled building 20, which was so important during World War II, in developing radar and other technologies. INTERVIEWER 1: They called it the Plywood Palace. It was about 240,000 square feet of space, but it actually was only about a quarter of the space that was occupied on the Institute, which took over multiple buildings that were blocked off from students. MIT developed 150 different radar systems and invented the communication system of LORAN during this time period. And it had a transformative effect on education and, of course, the Institute's relationship with the federal government. It really pioneered a hothouse environment of both theory and practice, reinventing William Barton Rogers motto mind in hand. INTERVIEWER 2: It's just incredible, the kinds of inventions that have come out of MIT over the years-- too many to mention. But here's a plug. If you go to the MIT Museum, you will learn a lot about that and a whole lot more. INTERVIEWER 1: Indeed. We've really relish the opportunity to become a new and bolder stage for the Institute and the public engagement with science. We feel that there's never been a more important time in history to communicate the ideas of the Institute and the world at large, and how important science and technology will be to solving some of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced. INTERVIEWER 2: So it's back when I was an undergraduate and graduated from MIT, we did not have a commencement speaker. As I recall, the first commencement speaker was 1982. Is that correct? INTERVIEWER 1: That is correct. And prior to that, it was in fact always the president who gave a speech, most notably, William Barton Rodgers when he gave a speech actually died, mid-speech, leading to a joke by a subsequent speaker when Vice President Al Gore was here in the mid 1990s. He claimed that he could never top William Barton Rodgers as the stiffest of MIT'S commencement speakers. INTERVIEWER 2: That first commencement speaker in 1982 was Katharine Graham, then chair of the board of directors and CEO of the Washington Post company, followed by so many luminaries such as Shirley Chisholm, Lee Iacocca, from Chrysler Corporation, William Hewitt, from Hewlett-Packard, Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation. On and on it goes. Al Gore, INTERVIEWER 1: President Clinton. INTERVIEWER 2: President Clinton. INTERVIEWER 1: Kofi Annan as the Secretary General of the United Nations was here. We've had the administrators of NASA, presidents of corporations ranging from Hewlett-Packer and on. I think, though, one of my favorites was 1999, and that was when Ray and Tom Magliozzi, the hosts of the National Public Radio series car talk gave their speech, and it was as funny as those men were on the air in their many years. INTERVIEWER 2: And I think the most inspirational for me was during the special ceremony last year to recognize those who could not come to graduation in 20 and 21, and it was Kealoha Wong, who was at MIT alum from the late '90s, I believe, from Hawaii. And he transitioned from being a nuclear engineer to a poet laureate. It is an incredibly inspiring talk. It's on YouTube, I would invite you to go and look at it. INTERVIEWER 1: Indeed. I loved that talk as well. Today, though, our speaker is Mark Rober. He is an internet superstar, but he started his career as a mechanical engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he worked on the Mars Curiosity Rover. INTERVIEWER 2: He's a YouTube star. So our generation may not know him all that well, but the students out there in the courtyard certainly do. Think squirrels. And I invite everybody to keep a keen eye on the talk. I'm not going to be a spoiler, but it's going to be quite interesting. INTERVIEWER 1: I think it will be a memorable one if all goes well. His videos highlight the fun of learning. They encourage curiosity and imagination and have reached in the billions of hits on them. And so it really has a sense of the power that science and technology has to ignite the creative spirit of our youngest people in the world. INTERVIEWER 2: Now in a couple of minutes, Deb, the academic procession will be coming into the court, and there are many symbols that we'll be looking for. INTERVIEWER 1: Yes. So perhaps the most noticeable, of course, is that everybody is dressed up in medieval garb. They're wearing caps and gowns. I mentioned earlier that you'll see, as you do right now, that bachelor's and master's degrees are in the traditional black garb. The master's degrees have kind of a long, moon-shaped crescent swath of fabric that hangs down from their sleeves. The stoles that you see around the necks of many of these graduates identify clubs, organizations, honor societies that the students belong to. And MIT has one important rule regarding the stoles, that everyone in that organization must be eligible to wear them. There is no singling out a top speaker. So MIT has no valedictorians, no salutatorian, no class ranking. INTERVIEWER 2: No honorary degrees. INTERVIEWER 1: In fact, yes, that's correct. Every degree from MIT is an earned degree. INTERVIEWER 2: So one of the symbols that we'll be seeing coming down the center aisle pretty soon is the mace. It was created by Leverett Cullen, the class of 1907, gifted to the Institute by that class as part of their 50th reunion, and contains engraved names of all of the presidents of MIT since William Barton Rogers. It'll be carried by the Chief Marshal during this one MIT ceremony and at the very top of the mace is MITs mascot, the Beaver. INTERVIEWER 1: Yes. So the Beaver was selected in 1913 to be the mascot. It was around the time that many colleges and universities wanted to have some lighthearted symbols to identify their schools and many selected different kinds of animals. Sometimes a trademark, Purdue, became known as the Boilermakers, for example. But MIT putting some thought to it. Lester Gardner, a member of class there said, I think we need to choose the Beaver. He thought about the kangaroo for a while and the turkey, but he said, no, the Beaver is nature's engineer, and he or she does their best work at night. INTERVIEWER 2: And many MIT Alumni, yours truly included, wear the Beaver on the ring finger, the MIT class ring. Each one is a little bit different, created, designed by a ring committee of the undergraduates. And one of the trademarks is that the Beaver, the engineer of the animal kingdom is always sitting on twigs, and embedded in those twigs is your class year. INTERVIEWER 1: The ring was another tradition that was established in the late 1920s. A group in 1929 got together and said, we want a ring, but we don't want it to be like any other college ring, which is traditionally a gold or silver ring with a set with a large stone and perhaps the name of the institution and year. And so they considered many different designs, but settled on one that featured a square bezel. And then the debate was, is it the dome, which is really one of-- become the symbol of MIT or the Beaver. And after much discussion and debate, they put the Beaver on top and the dome on the side. INTERVIEWER 2: Two different views of the dome. One on either side. INTERVIEWER 1: That dome, by the way, was part of the design of William Welles Bosworth. When this campus was opened in 1916, he was an architect from the class of 1896, so therefore trained in Boston. Many of our viewers may not know that MIT spent its first 50 years in Copley Square in Boston, and only in 1916 did they move across the river to the campus that we presently enjoy and take advantage of. INTERVIEWER 2: One of the other symbols that will be coming down the center aisle in a couple of minutes is the Shepherd's Staff. It is carved from black walnut, and it's carried by the outgoing chairperson of the MIT faculty, who this year as Professor Lily Tsai, of political science, and has gifted a new shepherd's staff replacing the one given by outgoing faculty chair, Hartley Rogers Junior, way back in 1973. So as chair of the faculty, she will carry the staff in this one MIT procession, symbolizing her leadership of the faculty. INTERVIEWER 1: The staff was a creation of Professor Brandon Clifford of the Department of Architecture. He is a noted American designer and sculptor, and it's full of symbolism with celestial bodies and the angles of it are too complicated for me to explain. I encourage you to go to the commencement website and read the exact details about how the angle of noon, and the angle of the crook are precisely aligned. INTERVIEWER 2: Its science. INTERVIEWER 1: Yes. INTERVIEWER 2: The Beaver stick will also be carried-- a piece of wood chewed by a Beaver will be carried by the Marshal of the commencement ceremony. And on the screen every now and then, you get to see another-- what has become a symbol of MIT commencement, and that is the MIT Sail at the very front of Killian Court, abutting building 10 where the great dome is located. It was originally designed by the Chair of the Faculty who designed sails for sailing competitions to properly capture the wind on Killian Court. But more importantly, it shades the faculty and the other invited guests up on the stage. It keeps the diplomas dry in case of poor weather, which we're having sunny, but not rainy weather today. And it's made very sturdy with metal cables. We've had many very, very windy days here on the court and it has been rock solid. INTERVIEWER 1: Speaking of sailing, I want to give a shout out to the sailing pavilion and the longtime sail master, Fran Charles, who is retiring this year after 30 years as the head of sailing. There are nearly 80,000 MIT students and alumni and faculty and staff who hold sailing cards. It is the preeminent sport of the Institute. And in fact, MIT pioneered collegiate competitive sailing with the introduction of the tech dinghy, a sailboat designed by Professor George Owen of the then Department of Naval architecture. INTERVIEWER 2: That's just one example of the extracurricular activities here at MIT. We're reputed to have more extracurricular activities and intramural sports than any other University out there, just too many to count. I participated in many, my friends participated many others. And it was such a welcome diversion from the need to study, and sleep, and eat here at MIT, and is really made for lifetime friends. INTERVIEWER 1: If you catch in the screen, just passed out on the right side, you'll see a banner with the numbers two and three on them. That is the classes official banner that will be carried at all reunion events here on out, and they are different colors and stripes and shades. But we look forward to-- we have some of the oldest class banners in our collection at the museum. INTERVIEWER 2: So we mentioned our newly inaugurated president, Sally Kornbluth, who was officially inaugurated about a month ago right here on this court, but has been in office since the first of the year, recently appointed as the 18th president of MIT, our second woman president, a cell biologist, and came to us from Duke University where for a decade, she oversaw the institution's teaching and research missions as the provost, developed its intellectual priorities, and really improved the faculty and student experience was really an overwhelming choice to be our new president. INTERVIEWER 1: In, fact Diane Greene shared this insight with the students of SDS050, the history of MIT class that I teach each spring, she said it was, in fact, a unanimous choice of the committee. She, I like to point out, was not-- didn't start life as a scientist, but actually as a humanities-- or social science major at Williams College, and then discovered biology her senior year. INTERVIEWER 2: So I understand that President Kornbluth over the last couple of months has done a listening tour here on campus to meet the faculty, the staff, the students, and will soon be embarking around the world to meet affiliates and alumni to really become entrenched in MIT knowledge and tradition to help lead her strategy for the years to come. INTERVIEWER 1: In her inaugural address last month, one of the points that she stressed was that for her presidency, she felt the challenge of climate change was the urgent existential challenge of our times, and that she hoped to lead the Institute in what she called a Rad Lab like effort, to address these problems from all perspectives, whether you focused in the humanities and social sciences, the arts, architecture, planning, that you would, in fact, be engaged in helping think about these great challenges before us. INTERVIEWER 2: And it would be remiss of us to not give a tip of the hat to retiring president, Rafael Reif, who served as the 17th president of MIT from July 2012 to December 2022. He came up through the ranks from through electrical engineering and computer science, and he led MITs pioneering efforts in many, many different very important areas, such as redefining the future of higher education through online learning. He led MIT through the pandemic, many other challenges. Really committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. He launched initiatives to foster breakthrough research and pilot high-impact solutions to address the urgent challenges of climate change and of course, as we just said, that mission will be continued and enhanced by President Kornbluth. INTERVIEWER 1: In the procession, one of the first groups that you see and first individuals that you will see accompanying our speaker is the chair of the corporation, Diane Greene. Diane Greene earned her master's degree in 1978, and she specialized in Naval architecture. But the person that perhaps influenced her the most she met on the very first day arriving on campus, and that was Dr. Harold Edgerton, one of MITs original superstars and a man whose high speed photography, those famous bullet through the apple and milk drop photos that still grace the walls of art museums around the world, has transformed so many students' lives here at the Institute with his, well, come on in, let's try it out. INTERVIEWER 2: I remember that as a freshman, walking down the hall, I think it was the fourth floor of building six or eight, maybe. And he'd stand in the door with his post cards and he'd say, come on in. Let me show you how this works. INTERVIEWER 1: So we-- and the Edgerton Center, of course, continues to this day, is one of the preeminent interdisciplinary centers here at the Institute. But the corporation that Greene leads is MITs governing body. We were incorporated by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in April of 1861. It took us a few years to get started because two days after the incorporation was signed by the governor, it became-- the Civil War broke out with the firing on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. And we-- INTERVIEWER 2: We're going to pause now for a quick announcement. Now please rise and welcome the academic procession. There we go, and here we come. The academic procession about to enter Killian Court from Memorial Drive. You can see on the screen, the Charles River separating Cambridge and Boston, and behind, a few of the administrators. You will see that mace that we just spoke of, as well as President Kornbluth on the left and the ranking faculty right behind. INTERVIEWER 1: Yes. Chair Greene is to Kornbluth's right, just behind the mace. MIT adopted a custom robe for its doctoral students in 1995, but more recently, it's also adopted a standard robe for its leadership. And so you'll see not only the president and the chair of the corporation, but also all the corporation members and many of the Marshals wearing variations on this cardinal and gray robe. Most notable about the robe that President Kornbluth wears is the stole which contains 18 infinity symbols, marking-- symbolizing her as the 18th president. INTERVIEWER 2: The faculty who are marching behind represent five schools and the College of computing, the schools of engineering, science, the Sloan School of Management, humanities, arts, social sciences, architecture and planning, and as mentioned, the Schwarzman college of computing that has faculty that cut across all of the five schools in the 30 or so academic departments we have here at MIT. As I like to say, academic departments are where teaching happens and students learn. But the real fun here at MIT are the cross-cutting, research laboratories and centers, that take people from all different disciplines, allow them to work together from the bottoms up to solve the world's most challenging problems. For example, one of the largest is MITEI, the MIT Initiative which has, I believe close to 200 faculty researchers who work in various aspects of energy from all over MIT. Some of our research centers have just two, three, or four faculty, and they tend to come and go as the need arises. And that's really one of the beauties of MIT, is that we have the ability to bring together these people to work on these problems to challenge the students. Because when MIT students come here to enter, they want to solve problems that nobody has solved before. It's not a lot of fun to solve problems that other people have already solved. INTERVIEWER 1: One of the things that young students often-- or new students are often entranced by is the different colors that you're seeing on the robes, and those represent different academic institutions as well as the degrees that are awarded. These gray robes, of course, are MIT. But all of the other colors that you see, the Crimson of Harvard University, for example, is particularly common. Well, here comes the corporation, Megan Smith is right center screen right now. She was an alumna and former chief technology officer under President Barack Obama. INTERVIEWER 2: It's about 75 strong, the Board of Trustees of MIT. It does include a diverse set of individuals from many different disciplines, from academia, from government, from industry, with also student representation. Now you see President Kornbluth on the left side of the screen there, beaming at her first commencement. INTERVIEWER 1: The corporation has a really crucial function. They form the core of advisory boards that oversee-- every two years, they visit every single department at the Institute. And these advisory boards speak with students, with faculty, with staff, with experts around the field, and they really urge and assist the departments in maintaining the highest standards and being as close as possible to the cutting edge of science and technology or architecture, or any of the disciplines that are represented at the Institute. INTERVIEWER 2: They're known as visiting committees, and I've met many people who have served on them. And they're challenging for our departments, the faculty, the staff, and the students. They're also challenging for the visiting committee individuals themselves, because they are faced with what are some of the very top programs in the world, how to make them better, and how to address the needs of the future. INTERVIEWER 1: So we've let you in on some of MITs secret sauce here, but now you're beginning to see members of the faculty coming in. INTERVIEWER 2: I saw Professor Eric Grimson just a moment ago, who was in the department of electrical engineering and computer science, now serves as the chancellor for academic advancement who travels the world. I find myself quite often on airplanes with him, visiting alumni and other donors around the world to talk about MIT, listen to what the needs are in the world and to bring all of that back here to MIT. INTERVIEWER 1: There are a number, of course, academic officers, deans and provosts who are also participating in this ceremony. There's Dr. Professor Paula Hammond, Professor Dan Hastings. Paula Hammond in chemical engineering, Dan Hastings, AeroAstro. And he's just been named the acting head of MITs diversity-- office of diversity, equity, and inclusion. INTERVIEWER 2: He's a real rocket scientist. INTERVIEWER 1: He is, indeed. INTERVIEWER 2: A fabulous guy leading the Aeronautics and Astronautics department for a number of years. And before that, he served, I believe for five years, as the director of SMART, the Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology located in the country of Singapore, where MIT has a robust research collaboration with two of the key universities there and exchange faculty and students for the benefit of all. INTERVIEWER 1: That's a good point, is that MIT has a really extensive international program and has students taking classes and participating in programs, both during the academic term around the world, but also during the summer and during our independent activities period in January. You will find students doing everything in the farthest reaches of the globe. INTERVIEWER 2: One of the great programs is called MISTY, and that's the opportunity for undergraduate students to travel to another country and be embedded in the society, in companies and universities, to learn the languages, to learn the cultures, and to bring their experiences back here. Many, many MIT undergraduates participate in that. And one of the other very, very popular programs is called UROP, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. I believe close to 80% of undergraduates will participate in it at some point in their undergraduate career, which allows them to work with a faculty member and graduate students to do actual research on a project that has meaning. INTERVIEWER 1: And here, I believe, we are about to start. Thank you for-- immigration DIANE GREENE: Operation and the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are declared convened together with this assembly on the occasion of the one MIT commencement ceremony of this institution and in recognition of the degrees being conferred on the class of 2023. [APPLAUSE] If the stage assembly and audience will please remain standing. We'll have the invocation by Reverend Thea Keith Lucas, Chaplain to the Institute, and join the corollaries of MIT in the singing of one verse of the Star-Spangled Banner. THEA KEITH LUCAS: Good afternoon. In middle school science, Mr. Cameron dropped a heavy ball bearing in our hands and said, use this to put out a flame. Now there are few things easier than blowing out a candle. Just to carry a lit birthday cupcake from the kitchen to the table, have to keep her hand cupped around it so you won't make too much of a breeze. We weren't good at much at 13, but we could quickly extinguish a flame. It turns out, efficiency is not the point. You learn how the world works by creating your own crazy path, putting a screw, a lever, a pulley, and an inclined plane in between the release of the ball, and that satisfying moment when you drop the candle into water or seal it tight under a cup. Today, we bless all your mistakes and your restarts. If there is an optimal moment-- if there is an optimal path to this moment, not one of us managed to make it. How many times did we bump the dominoes with our elbows and have to line them all up again? How many times did we tweak the angle before the ball made the big jump, stuck the landing, and kept on rolling? Maybe you took some detours because you had to, through stupid chance, or the cruelties of fate. Maybe you chose a side path, just to try something new and add some style points to your run. We all have days when we stick the pieces back together with a bit of wire and duct tape and wonder whether we will land on our feet this time. On the way, we learn how to roll through the gravity of sorrow, to break the inertia of old assumptions, and ride the surprising momentum of hope. Now you step up to the starting ramp, waiting for the signal. We lean in, eager for you to surprise us all over again. [APPLAUSE] ["STAR-SPANGLED BANNER" PLAYING] (SINGING) Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light. Once so proudly we hailed, at the twilight's last gleaming. Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, o'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming. And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night, that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star spangled banner yet wave? O'er the land of the free. And the home of the brave. [APPLAUSE] DIANE GREENE: Wonderful. Please be seated. Welcome to the start of today's ceremony celebrating MITs awesome class of 2023. [APPLAUSE] And a warm welcome to our graduates families, their friends, our faculty, our MIT alums, president Sally Kornbluth and her administration, and our commencement speaker, Mark Rober. [APPLAUSE] And a special welcome to the alumni, celebrating your 50th reunion. [APPLAUSE] You honor MIT with your distinguished red jackets. Going back in time, I'm sure you remember 50 years ago. It was the end of the Vietnam War, the launch of the United States first Space Station, Skylab. Pink Floyd released The Dark Side of the Moon and the US Congress passed the Endangered Species Act. MIT class of 1973, a special welcome to today's 2023 One MIT commencement ceremony. [APPLAUSE] And now turning to our commencement speaker, Mark Rober. [APPLAUSE] He earned a bachelor's and master's degree in mechanical engineering and then spent nine years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He worked on the Mars Curiosity Rover team, specifically on the jet pack that lowered the Rover to the surface, and other hardware used for collecting dirt samples. After a stint as an Apple engineer, Mark pivoted and became a YouTube star. He has 24 million subscribers for his video series on outlandish engineering experiments and help the world projects. In last year's listening tour for the MIT presidential search, we repeatedly heard about the need to articulate and promote the value of science and engineering to the world. Class of 2023, you have chosen a speaker that is spreading the word to young people as no one has ever done before. If you look at his videos, the below the video comments are full of kids saying he's made them want to be engineers when they grow up. Mark hides the vegetables, the formulas and concepts, in awesome experiments and projects, and brings them to life with his contagious laughter. Mark reframed the classic high school egg drop challenge to be from outer space. It took three years of trials and re-engineering, and the amazing video released four months ago already has 41 million views. Four years ago, Mark posted his, the world's largest Jell-o pool, can you swim in Jell-o, and it now has 127 million views. To do that, he had to somehow boil and then refrigerate an entire swimming pool of Jell-o. But Mark is about even more than egg drops from space and swimming in Jell-o engineering feats. He's issued challenges to plant 20 million trees and clean up 30 pounds million of ocean plastic. He admonishes people to quit texting while driving, and he advocates for the wonders of special needs kids. Mark is modern, fun, and if we're counting YouTube views, the most listened to engineering and science evangelist our world has. A true force for good in the world, please give a warm welcome to Mark Rober. [APPLAUSE] MARK ROBER: All right. Good afternoon, esteemed faculty, distinguished guests, relieved parents, bored siblings, confused pets, and of course, the 2023 graduating class of MIT. [APPLAUSE] It is indeed a warm welcome. It's hot. And you know what I love to do on a beautiful, sunny, 95 degree summer day? Where a big, black blanket. At least I'm up here in the shade. You'd think the best engineering school on the planet could design a bigger awning for everyone. [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] It's for next year. Standing here before you is weird. I feel this pressure to give some timeless advice that will endure, despite our world changing at an unprecedented pace. The world is so different, even from four years ago. For example, for the undergrads, you are the first graduating class to have persevered through a global pandemic, just as this is the first commencement speech written entirely by ChatGPT. The tech is still very new, so if I make a grammatical errors or threaten to end all human life, that did not come for me, that's the robot. At this point, I should probably tell your parents who I am. I'm Mark Rober, a former Apple and NASA mechanical engineer who became a YouTuber. And yes, I know to some of you it sounds like I just said I quit the NBA to work at FootLocker, or I traded a Picasso for an NFT of a stoned monkey, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I sort of feel at home here, because Buzz Aldrin went to MIT, and just like me, Buzz was a NASA engineer, only Buzz stuck with it and became one of the first humans to set foot on the moon, whereas I quit to become the first human to sprinkle porch pirates with glitter and fart spray. It's on YouTube, your kids will explain it at dinner. But whether it's seeking karmic justice for package thieves or building an obstacle course for squirrels in my backyard, I plan my monthly YouTube videos really far out in advance. In fact, I've already decided what my June 2053 video will be, and it's going to be a collab with all of you. It's going to be a retrospective look at all the amazing things this MIT graduating class of 2023 has accomplished. In fact, this right now is the video intro. So if you've ever wanted to be in one of my videos, this is your chance. [CHEERING] Now will YouTube still be around in 30 years? Hopefully. Unless Elon buys it. [LAUGHTER] But here's the thing, the degree to which you positively impact the world is the degree to which you'll be featured in the video. So in order to increase your chances of making the cut, I want to give you three pieces of advice based off my life experience. The first bit of advice is to moisturize when giving a commencement speech-- is to embrace naive optimism. What do I mean by naive optimism? Actually, before I go any further, usually in my YouTube videos when I get to like, the juicy part-- I'm not really used to this public speaking thing, so the music kicks in. So if you'll just give me a moment and hit this button. Trust me, this is going to be better for both of us. Here we go. Right here. Let's see. There we go. [LIGHT MUSIC PLAYING] All right. That's better. OK. What do I mean by naive optimism? Naive optimism means it's easier to be optimistic about your future when you're sort of naive about what lies ahead, when you don't know what you don't know. As an example, think back on the first week at MIT. How naive you were about the number of all-nighters and cans of Red Bull that would be required to be sitting where you are right now. In fact, you guys drank so much caffeine, I'm surprised you're even sitting at all. If you truly understood what would be required, that discouragement might have prevented you from even starting. Sometimes it's an advantage not to be the expert with all the experience. There's no reputational risk, so it's easier to try new things and approach them from a fresh, first principles approach. Naive optimism can also help when faced with a big life decision. When you feel like you want to know the results before you decide but the true outcome is simply unknowable. Naive optimism means you have irrational-- naive optimisim means you have the irrational confidence of a child learning to walk or a mom learning to TikTok. And you pick what you think is the best path and just move forward, knowing there's more than one trail that leads to the top of Mount Fuji. It's OK that you don't know exactly what you want to be doing 20 years from now or what you want to have accomplished. And by the way, even if you do know, it doesn't matter, because you're wrong. Anyone who tells you knew they'd be where they're at 20 years ago is either lying, or delusional, or a time traveler, or Pat Sajak. Life is like trying to cross a big flowing river with lots of rocks and boulders strewn about. If you want to cross the river, you have to start on the bank and look at the first several rocks in front of you. You can wiggle them with your toe and sort of scan a few boulders out, but at some point, you've just got to pick one and jump, because the river is dynamic and always changing. If the first rock in this metaphor is a hobby, let curiosity and passion guide your initial step. If the first rock represents your professional career, take curiosity and passion into account, but you should also weigh what you're good at and what the world needs, even if the world might not know they need it yet. Whichever one you pick, the real secret is to dominate it. Obsessively study it from every angle, master it. Now from your position more secure footing, you can reevaluate the river, and you'll find you've got a few more rocks available that you couldn't even see from where you started, so you can continue on your journey. Instead of putting the pressure on myself to create some master-like plan, this attitude of naive optimism combined with dedication, enthusiasm, and the willingness to jump from my current safe rock to the next is what I feel has led me from college, to NASA, to YouTube, to eventually landing on this rock of giving the commencement speech at M-I frickin' T. [APPLAUSE] There's no way I could have predicted that path when I was exactly in your shoes 20 years ago. So cross your river one rock at a time, but do it with a naive optimism that it's all going to work out. Let that be your North Star. If you actually knew how cold the river can get or how long it takes to recover from a sprained ankle if you slipped, your knowledge might get in the way. So have faith in yourself. You're about to get a degree from MIT, so you've obviously made some pretty great decisions. So embrace your inexperience and keep taking leaps forward. And apologies to all the civil engineering majors who have been grumbling sitting there saying, if he wants to cross this river so bad, why does he just build a suspension bridge, because it's my metaphor, all right? Back off. And now for some real talk. You're going to take that leap of faith, land on a rock, and only then realize it's not as stable as your foot wiggle had predicted, and you're going to fall into the river sometimes. That leads to my second of three pieces of advice to maximize your chance of positively impacting the world and making the video cut, which is to frame your failures. [MUSIC BEGINS PLAYING] You could tell it's the juicy part, because the music's back. To illustrate what I mean by this, I asked 50,000 of my YouTube followers that subscribe to my channel to play a simple computer programming puzzle that I made. But what they didn't know is that I had served up two slightly different versions of the puzzle. In one, if you failed the puzzle, you didn't lose any of your starting 200 points and you were prompted to try again. Whereas in the other, if you didn't succeed, you were also prompted to try again, but I said I was taking away five of those starting 200 points. That was the only difference. And even though they were no value in the real world, no one will ever see these completely fake, meaningless internet points, those who didn't lose those points attempted to solve the puzzle two and a half times more and saw success 16% more of the time. And because 50,000 people took the test, those results are super statistically significant. Basically, those who didn't frame losing in a negative light stuck with it for longer, saw more success, and learned more. And I think a great example of this in real life is video games. When Super Mario Brothers first came out, my friends and I became obsessed with making it to the castle and rescuing Princess Peach from the evil Bowser. Water break. We'd get to school and ask each other, dude, what level did you make it to? Did you pass the game? We never asked each other for details on all the different ways we might have died. This was before Call of Duty. When it comes to video games like this, no one ever picks up the controller for the first time, falls in the pit right away and thinks, I'm so ashamed, that was such a failure. I'm never doing this again. How am I going to break it to Luigi? I murdered his brother. What really happens is I think, OK, I got to remember, there's a pit there. Next time, I'm going to come at it with a bit more speed. The focus and obsession is about beating the game, not how dumb you might look if you get hit by a sliding green shell. And as a direct result of that attitude of learning from but not being focused on the failures, we got really good and learned a ton in a very short amount of time. And in my personal and work life, I've dealt with my share of sliding green shells. I still feel like every video we make each month, there's a moment where it seems everything that can go wrong, has gone wrong and those failures can be gut-wrenching, and they can sting real bad. But they sting like missing that one key Mario long jump right at the end of level A-1, and then right after that really quickly it turns in, OK, what did we just learn from that, what should we try differently from next time. And this concept of life communication is more than just, have a positive attitude or never give up, because those imply you have to fight against your true desire to quit. And I feel like when you frame a challenge or a learning process in this way, you actually want to do it. It feels natural to ignore the failure and try again, in the same way a toddler will want to keep trying to stand up, or in the same way you want to keep playing Super Mario Brothers, or in the same way half the people who attempted my coding puzzle had the desire to stick with it two and a half times longer. The framing of their failures made it so they wanted to keep trying and learning. And that's exactly why the most meaningful high fives of my adolescence were when I said, dude, I finally beat Bowser last night. It probably goes without saying, but girls didn't talk to me until I was much older. And in case you're like, yeah, but my real life would just be so much better if my top five challenges disappear. Would it? I'd like to point out that if Super Mario Brothers was just jumping over one pit and then you rescued Princess Peach, no one would play it. Where's the risk and the reward? Where's the challenge? There's no ultimate feeling of satisfaction. The degree you're getting today means so much to you precisely because of all the struggle and setbacks that you've had to endure. So if you want to cross the river of life, you're going to get wet. You're going to have to backtrack, and that's not a bug, that's a feature. Frame those failures and slips like a video game, and not only will you learn more and do it faster, but it will make all the successful jumps along the way that much sweeter. All right, now I've got some good news, which is that you're not crossing the river alone. For my third and final bit of advice is to foster your relationships. [MUSIC PLAYING] Nice. A sad truth about getting older is life gets busier and busier, and it gets harder and harder to make really close friends like you did here at school. And this isn't great, because we evolved to be social, cooperative creatures, right? Like 50,000 years ago, conditions were much harsher. So those who are more inclined to cooperate with their fellow humans were also much more likely to succeed and pass on those cooperation genes. So we've inherited these brains designed for social interaction, and we are hardwired to cooperate with other people. And look, I don't blame you if you want to cast aside advice from a guy who makes a living trying to outwit squirrels, but I wouldn't recommend doing that to six million years of evolutionary programming. Because in today's society, it's really convenient just to isolate yourself. You could attend the board meeting from your kitchen table, you can order food in the shower, you can bank on the toilet, you can even look for a new apartment without leaving your apartment. It's easier to stay anonymous in our big cities versus the small tribes of our ancestors where everyone knew each other, which means we've got to actively work at fostering meaningful relationships. And because I know this can be harder for some more than others, here's a life hack I've found that really helps. Confirmation bias is when your brain ignores evidence that doesn't support your beliefs, and then it cherry picks the evidence that does. And generally, when people hear this term, they think it's a broken, unscientific way for our brains to approach the world. And this is true, but you could sort of judo flip it to your advantage. The trick is to positively apply confirmation bias to your relationships. If you assume good intentions on the part of your friends and family, and you tell yourself you're lucky to have them, your brain will naturally work to find evidence to support that. That's just how our brains work. If you tell yourself that your fellow humans are inherently good, your brain will find examples of it everywhere, and that will reinforce your outlook. The opposite, unfortunately, is also true. Basically whether you think the world and everyone in it is out to hurt you or help you, you're right. Studies have shown that the best predictor of divorce is if the couple assumes bad intentions in their partner's actions, or if you marry Kanye. [LAUGHTER] But if you get it in your head that your partner is selfish, or inconsiderate, or willfully refusing to take out the garbage, that creates a negative feedback loop of confirmation bias, seeking to find further evidence that your spouse is a jerk, even when good faith efforts are being made. And this hack works not just for spouses, friends and family, but even total strangers who might infuriate you. And look, I agree with you, they're wrong. But don't forget, as George Carlin pointed out, anyone who is driving slower than you is an idiot and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac. Fostering your relationship closes out my list of three bits of advice because that may be where you impact is the greatest. Due to a challenging upbringing, my mom barely graduated high school, but she took being a mom and instilling values in her children really seriously. As such, she's the single biggest influence on my life by far. She passed away over a decade ago from ALS, six months before I ever released my first YouTube video. But I love the idea that the ripples from her influence are still being felt as strongly as they ever have through the work that I try and do today. If anything I've said today has resonated with you in my mind, it's a direct result of her commitment to this third piece of advice. So leverage confirmation bias to enhance your relationships as you cooperate to cross the river. Train your brain to assume good intentions, and try to remember if someone cuts you off on the freeway, maybe they're not out to get you, maybe they just have diarrhea. [LAUGHTER] Now for a piece of advice number four-- [STAR WARS MUSIC PLAYING] Engage in occasional playful anarchy. But Mark, you told us were only going to give us three pieces of advice. Boom. Here's a fourth, because why not? I am playing music in a commencement speech because why not. Is not ending your speech with pump up music just objectively better? Or like, how these graduation robes and hats are just objectively silly? Why shouldn't I take my own fourth piece of advice right now and engage in some playful anarchy. Anybody can toss their hat in the air. We see it at every graduation. But few have dared to make it actually fly. Bet Buzz Aldrin never tried this. You know what? Time out. [MUSIC STOPS] This is actually a great opportunity to review everything we just talked about. To my first point, I will embrace my naive optimism that my hat will actually get airborne. But if not, to my second point, if it goes haywire and I accidentally blow up E53, I can reframe the failure as an opportunity to renovate a very old and sketchy building. Maybe this time we'll even add a few windows. And then to my third point, when I get sued by the faculty, I will foster the relationship I have with my defense lawyers, because settling with MIT over damages will bring us all closer together. And so now [MUSIC BEGINS PLAYING] After turning on my hat, I've done my part and filmed a banger of an intro to our upcoming collab 30 years from now, which means all that's left to do is your part, to go out and change the world for the better. Congratulations MIT class of 2023, you totally got this. [APPLAUSE AND CHEERING] Thank you. DIANE GREENE: You know, Mark, I think you just redefined the commencement speech. That was fantastic. Hey, everybody, keep drinking your water. And now I want to introduce Mr. Adam Joseph Miller, President of the Graduate Student Council. And he'll give a salute from the graduate student body. Following this, Miss Anna Sun, President of the undergraduate class of 2023. We'll offer a salute, after which President Sally Kornbluth will deliver her charge to the graduates. AJ MILLER: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm AJ Miller, President of the Graduate Student Council, and it is my honor to represent our graduate student body and salute the achievements of MITs graduating class of 2023. Today marks a celebration of an accomplishment many years in the making, and appreciation for everyone who made that accomplishment possible along the way. It is a time to think back and a time to dream ahead. This degree carries many things with it. It is the culmination of many years of hard work, resilience in the face of adversity, and high excellence in your field. It also carries with it the legacy and values of the institution that we as alums must now uphold. The hunger for curiosity, the expectation of high standards, the courage to try bold, new ideas and be wrong, and the humility to know that there is always so much more to learn. We go forth into a world facing very real and very big challenges. Artificial intelligence is fuel for rising inequality. Misinformation drives divide in a globally connected society, and climate change threatens the very existence of the world as we know it. We're a generation stepping into the unknown because the world is changing ever faster, and the status quo is no longer good enough. I say that all, not for us to be afraid, but to recognize the imperatives we now face. This degree carries the trust and hope of our friends, our families, the staff, the faculty, the institution, and the world. This degree is a privilege we are fortunate to hold, but also a testament to our skills, our values, and our potential. I came to MIT, because the future is made here, and we are that future. We are the stewards of what is to come and to make the better world. We stand up for what's right and hold close to what we believe in. We expect the very best of ourselves and cherish our differences. We value teamwork and collaboration, because we are always stronger together than apart. And most importantly, we do not give up. Despite all the challenges, the future is bright-- bright because of the brilliance of this class and this generation. In our last days here as students, we should be sure to take the time to appreciate the people around us who have made this day possible. The friends who kept our sanity through late nights, the faculty who guided our growth, the staff who made everything in this place possible, and the family who have always been there and supported our journeys. Thank you to all of you. To the class of 2023, while our time as students is fast coming to a close, our future is just beginning. I look forward to everything you all do and to seeing the future we create together, and once again, congratulations. [APPLAUSE] [CHEERING] ANNA SUN: Good afternoon, family, friends, faculty, esteemed guests, and of course, the graduating class of 2023. [APPLAUSE] I'm so excited and honored to be here with you today. I'd like to start by sharing a story with you. It all began in elementary school when I stumbled over a small rock and I shattered the screen of my iPod touch. Determined to fix it with a $30 replacement screen from eBay and the all knowing Wikihow article titled, How to fix a broken iPod, I embarked on a repair mission. Little did I know back then, if circumstances had been ever so slightly different, I might not be here at MIT today. Unfortunately, my valiant efforts failed to revive my iPod. Sorry mom and dad. But days of tinkering with the inner mechanisms ignited an unexpected passion for technology within me. I think about this a lot, about how a single event can cause a chain reaction. In 1961, MIT Professor Edward Lorenz discovered the butterfly effect, also known as the ripple effect. It's the idea that small things can have nonlinear impacts on a complex system. For example, a pebble dropped into the Charles River could eventually lead to a typhoon in the Philippines. We often think that monumental events like world wars, huge earthquakes, or global pandemics have equally monumental origins. But the smallest occurrences, in fact, can lead to an enormous impact. During our time at MIT, small pebbles skipping across the water traveled further than we expected. We sparked creative project ideas during late night runs at Cafe 472, we found lifelong friendships through striking of conversations with strangers at CPW. We found our homes in the clubs that we randomly applied to on a whim. So start tossing in more pebbles. Drop in a resume for that job you know is a long shot, say hi to the person sitting next to you on your flight back home, volunteer for an event that sparked your curiosity. These seemingly small acts could serve as stepping stones towards your dream job, a broadened perspective, or a new community you can fall back on. To the parents out there, buy your kid that $30 replacement screen, even if you really don't think it's going to work out. It could spark a new passion that they may have never otherwise discovered. Now is our time. We have the opportunity, the privilege, and the responsibility to create ripples that make this world a better place. Be the ripple that creates a wave. Let's see how far our influence can spread. Together, we have the power to change the world. Class of 2023, please join me in an age old tradition, the turning of our Brass Rat. Raise your ring-bearing hands, take off your Brass Rat, and flip it so that the ring-- the Beaver is now facing the world. Let the world know that you are now a graduate of MIT. Thank you class of 2023. [APPLAUSE] SALLY KORNBLUTH: OK. So Anna and AJ, thank you both for your remarks and for your leadership. There's an old piece of wisdom from show business-- never follow an act with kids or animals, or as we've just seen with Mark Rober or drone, nobody told me I could have music in the background. And since Anna and AJ rose to the challenge, I will give it my best shot as well. Technically as president, it's my role to deliver the charge to the graduates, and I will do that in a moment. But I want to begin by offering our new graduates a few words of admiration and thanks. There are quite a few Brass Rats out in the world-- let's say, more than 145,000-- and every one of them represents the remarkable feat of self-discipline and perseverance it takes to earn an MIT degree. But the Brass Rats that were just turned by today's graduates will always have a special luster, because all of you graduating today did more than tame your chosen discipline. You also completed an involuntary double major in applied pandemic studies. You learned, you created, you explored in ways that no one at MIT has ever done, all while caring for your friends, your families and yourselves, through the long struggle that none of us were prepared for. Now I'm sure, sure we're glad to have that years long exam behind us. But I want to acknowledge, on behalf of the faculty, that we honor all that you achieved. Just like an Olympic athlete who wants to get that perfect 10 having taken on this added degree of difficulty. And what I learned from colleagues here is that you did more than hold things together for the people close to you. In an important sense, you also held together MIT. Somehow, across thousands of miles and endless, endless hours of Zoom, you kept the cultures, the traditions, and the values of MIT alive and thriving as if it were that precious jar of sourdough starter passed on to the next generation. Because of you, the Institute that I've inherited is kinder, wiser, nimbler, and more playful. You made sure that the MIT spirit, the spirit that drew you here, would endure, and you found ways to make it even better, and for that, I cannot thank you enough. So since I'm a bit of a newcomer, I can probably deliver the unwelcome news that given those Brass Rats, the world will expect a great deal from you. I don't even have one, yet from the minute I accepted this new position, people have been saying things to me like, so, you folks from MIT are going to save us on climate, right? Right? And with such stellar students and faculty and graduates, if anyone can do it, we can, and we sure are going to try. Of course, the world has always expected a lot from MIT graduates, and I think our friends out there in the red jackets would agree with that. As ever, people will expect you to be analytical, and practical, and fearless, and brilliant. And now, also whatever your field, no matter how you did on the GIRs, people will expect you to understand everything, from nuclear fusion, to cryptocurrency, to synthetic biology, to artificial intelligence, and to be able to explain them like an expert. And by the way, to guard us from all the attendant dangers. To be clear, I hope and I believe that you can do all that and more. But while the world and possibly your parents may be expecting big things from you right away, I want to give you permission for a while to not know, and to try different paths, and to change your mind. Especially in this world with new industries, new disciplines, new jobs emerging on every frontier. Mark Rober just described you crossing the river one wobbly stone at a time. And for me, and probably for many in the audience who are also maybe a couple of decades past graduation, hearing Mark talk about changing course midstream brought a sudden memory of being metaphorically soaking wet. Like that time I lobbied really, really hard to get a vice provost job with big, new administrative duties, which I thought would be a crucial step in my career. And the university made a big announcement, and only then did I realized that I was really wrong for the job, and it was wrong for me. And then I had to tell the president that I couldn't take it after all. And that was a big splash, but not the kind you all want to make. Or even the time I had to explain to my parents that although I had just earned my bachelor's degree in political science, the way we'd always discussed, now I'd received a scholarship to go on a whole new bachelor's degree in biology. They were not unsupportive, but they were really deeply puzzled. There'd never been an academic in my family. Now with both of these midstream course corrections, I definitely got a little wet. It was kind of awkward at the time. But the world did not come to an end. And if I hadn't changed my mind and taken an alternative route, I probably would not have found my way to this audience today. So now it's time for me to deliver your charge. So I always think the word charge sounds like some kind of grand assignment, which sounds suspiciously like some farewell problem set, so that sounds like a good idea, right? OK, I didn't think so either. So I want to give you a different kind of charge. A charge as in a source of energy. We've all seen that little warning box in the corner of the screen, your laptop will sleep soon if it is not plugged into a power source. And I'm sure that every student here has felt that same sensation, deep down and personally, and often without the option to sleep soon. What's more, even without an MIT curriculum to test our limits, we all live surrounded by devices, and media, and societal forces that tend to drain our batteries and dissipate our energy and our attention. Which means that for each one of us, it has never been more important to cultivate our personal sources of renewable energy. You can name your own sources, I'm sure. But in my life, beyond the company of the people I love, and those many hours spent watching British mysteries about small rural towns that have inexplicably high crime rates, I found two infinitely renewable sources of energy-- curiosity and a sense of larger purpose. Frankly, the prominence of these two factors in my life and the life of this community are a key part of what drew me to MIT. This place runs on curiosity and Dunkin, and it never runs dry. There's a moment I will never forget from graduate school that tells the exact same story. Some of you may have heard it, because I've told it in other places, but I believe it bears repeating. So we had this arrangement in graduate school where each one of us had a desk that was face to face with another student's desk, but separated by a high-- sorry, I keep hitting that-- high partition. You could talk, you could hear across it, but you couldn't actually see the student on the other side of that partition. And one day, I'm sitting at my desk and I heard a loud shout and an expletive which I will not repeat, but in a good way, if you know what I mean, which I'm sure was accompanied by a fist pump, though I couldn't see it. Sitting at his computer, my fellow graduate student had been stared at the DNA sequence of the new cancer causing gene that he had discovered. And he suddenly realized that that missing piece of DNA sequence, which he thought was an artifact or an error, was actually an indication that he found a whole new class of cancer causing genes. It opened the way not only to his PhD thesis, but to his entire career. He still works on and is considered a world expert in that class of genes, and I am quite sure he would tell you that it was one of the most exciting moments of his life. And the curiosity that has led him there has renewed itself over and over, powering his own work, and inspiring those around him ever since. So curiosity is endlessly electrifying. And best of all, you can find a way to harness your curiosity to a purpose larger than yourself. One of the greatest joys in life is the feeling of using your skills to the limit, to do something important for others-- your community, your discipline, your institution, your country, or even the whole human family and our fragile planet. If you can do that, you will find a free, wireless charge wherever you go. So I wish you all the warmest congratulations on all that you've achieved, and I cannot wait to see where your curiosity and sense of purpose lead you next. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] DIANE GREENE: Thank you for those inspiring words, President Kornbluth, and also Mr. Miller and Ms. Sun. It's now my pleasure to introduce Stephen Baker, the Chief Marshal and President of the MIT Alumni Association. He will greet the graduates. Mr. Baker is a two-time graduate himself of MIT. [APPLAUSE] STEPHEN BAKER: Good afternoon. It is my honor to recognize the class of 2023 the newest alumni and alumnae of MIT. The entire alumni body, 145,000 strong, joins me in congratulating all of the 2023 graduates and officially welcome you into our alumni family, your infinite connection to MIT. Congratulations, and we look forward to seeing you at future alumni events. Stay connected. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] DIANE GREENE: That was concise. [LAUGHTER] Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Thank you to everybody that made today possible for our remarkable, stunning graduates. The MIT class of 2023, yes, you're entering a world full of problems, but it's also an amazing and beautiful world, and it is one that you can make more beautiful and more amazing. On behalf of the MIT Corporation and all of MIT, congratulations class of 2023. [APPLAUSE] The One MIT commencement ceremony of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is now concluded. At this time, would everyone please rise and join the corollaries of MIT in singing the school song followed by, Take Me Back to Tech. ["ARISE ALL YE OF MIT" PLAYING] (SINGING) Arise all ye of MIT, in loyal fellowship. The future beckons onto ye and life is full and rich. Arise and raise your glass on high, tonight shall ever be a memory that will never die, for ye of MIT. My sons and daughters MIT return from far and wide and gather here once more to be renourished by thy side. And as we raise our glasses high to pledge our love for thee, we join all those of days gone by in praise of MIT. [APPLAUSE] (SINGING) Oh I wish that I were back again at Tech on Boylston street, dressed in my dinky uniform so dapper and so neat. I'm crazy after calculus, I never had enough, it's hard to be dragged away so young. It was horribly, awfully tough. Hurrah for technology, 'ology, 'ology, oh. Glorious old technology, 'ology, 'ology oh. Back in the days that were free from care in the 'ology varsity shop, with nothing to do but analyze air in an anemometrical top. The differentiation of the trigonometrics powers, the constant pi that made me sigh in those happy days of ours. Hoorah for technology, 'ology, 'ology, oh.. Glorious old technology, 'ology, 'ology, oh. Take me back, oh take me back. Take me back to tech. Take me back, to take me back, take, oh take me back to, take me back to tech. [VOCALIZING] (SINGING) Oh M-A-S-S-A-C-H-U-S-E-T-T-S, I-N-S-T-I-T-U-T-E O-F T-E-C-H-N-O-L-O-G and Y comes after G. It's the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hey! [APPLAUSE] [BAND MUSIC PLAYING]
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Channel: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Views: 11,130
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Length: 97min 25sec (5845 seconds)
Published: Fri Jun 02 2023
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