Graduate Commencement Address by Shirley Ann Jackson
Honorary degree recipient Shirley Ann Jackson gives the Commencement address during the Graduate Commencement ceremony on May 18, 2025.
Transcript
Good afternoon. I was just telling my host, everything's been said, but not everyone has said it. President Levine, members of the Board of Trustees, esteemed faculty, the great enablers, the staff, distinguished guests, proud families and friends and above all, graduates. Thank you.
It is a great honor to stand before you today and accept this distinction from Brandeis University, a place I long have admired for its commitment to truth, justice and the power of education to expand opportunity. I accept this honor with deep gratitude, not only as a scientist, policymaker and educator, but as someone who understands what it means to be given a chance and to use that chance in service of something greater.
My journey began in Washington, D.C. as the daughter of a mother who was a social worker with a deep love for literature, and a father who was not a high school graduate and worked for the US Postal Service, but who had the mind of an inventor. My father, whose own father died when he was three years old during the Spanish flu pandemic, served in a segregated army unit during World War two.
During the Normandy invasion, when the rudders of US landing crafts kept failing, he improvised a repair, a unique splice he invented on the spot, and for that, he received the Bronze Star because his repair ensured that our troops and our allies got the supplies they needed and kept the landing crafts from being literal sitting ducks. He was a very wise man and his words of advice became a guiding light in my life. He used to say, "aim for the stars so that you can reach the treetops and at least you'll get off the ground. If you don't aim high, you won't go far."
That lesson to aim high, even when the odds seem long became my anchor. Now, I grew up in a time of great upheaval, the civil rights movement, school desegregation and the space race. The 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education opened wider the doors of public education to African American children like me. And when the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite, the United States doubled down on science and math, subjects I fell in love with and excelled in.
With the opportunity presented by these two forces, I tested into accelerated academic classes beginning in the seventh grade. My path led me to MIT, where I was just one of two African American women in my freshman class. And when deciding on my major, a professor told me, colored girls should learn a trade. So, I chose physics as my trade. And in doing that, I chose not to be defined by limitation, but by possibility and accomplishment.
In fact, I often have told those whom I have advised or mentored that heritage is by chance, success by choice. The choice to draw strength from one's heritage to pursue excellence.
I'm being a bit autobiographical to make a couple of points. My physics journey took me from MIT to Fermi Lab, and the European Organization for Nuclear Research to Bell Labs and ultimately to leadership in government and higher education. As a researcher, I worked on elementary particles, including neutrino physics and then condensed matter theory, including so called charge density waves in layered materials. But importantly, as a physicist, I was trained to look for order in chaos, not to impose it, but to understand the deeper patterns within it. And I have found that this skill applies not only to neutrinos or charged density waves, but also to institutions, public systems and global crises. But the bigger lesson I learned is that science is never separate from society, it lives and breathes within it.
Now let me tell you why. As chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, now, I work not only on technical safety standards, but on public trust. I visited communities concerned about nuclear power, worked with post Soviet nations to build nuclear regulatory frameworks, worked on licensing fuel for US nuclear power plants made from uranium from Russian nuclear warheads and partnered with South Africa in the early days of its post apartheid democracy to train nuclear inspectors and to help develop a nuclear regulatory framework there as well. Now, that work was not just about policy or reactors. It was about opportunity, safety, stability and peace.
And for all that I was able to do in the public service arena, the opportunity to have served as president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for 23 years and to use all that I had learned over the years to transform the nation's oldest private technological university in academics, research and the student experience was one of the greatest privileges of my life.
So I've been very fortunate to have been able to use my scientific background to contribute in multiple sectors, and each arena in which I have worked and what I've achieved at each has been the foundation for what I did next and created the next opportunity.
But that was then. Today, you are the fortunate ones, fortunate in having the level of education and expertise you have attained. But the world you graduate into today is equally complex and fraught, politically, technologically, ethically.
Climate change, public health, inequality, security and the advent of artificial intelligence are not theoretical challenges. They are human ones. They are interlinked and interdisciplinary, broad and complex and not all of which are codified or even work for every situation in current national and international laws and frameworks. Importantly, they require not only data, but wisdom. Not only strategy, but empathy.
And this is where your Brandeis education matters.
This institution, as you know, was born out of a commitment to challenge exclusion, to build an academic home for those denied that opportunity elsewhere. It required the university itself to be empathetic and inclusive to counter exclusionary policies.
And it has done that very well. And from the beginning, this university asked, "what does it mean to be educated? And "what are you responsible for once you are?" So graduates, with your Brandeis University degrees,
I ask you now, what will you do?
Now, most of you are either excited about starting on your careers or still looking for the right opportunity. Some of you may be worried about what opportunity you may really have. But Brandeis did not just educate you for your next job, but for your full careers, for your lives.
How? By helping you to deal with complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty, how to make ethical choices and make a difference in this world. And making a difference is your right, your opportunity and I would say, your obligation. And you have, or you should have, the right to pursue the careers that you have been educated for, not for guaranteed success, but for the ability to try to have an impact in your chosen profession.
The education that you have received here and what you have already achieved give you the greatest opportunity to undertake that pursuit. And this can be done in ways large and small. Of course, it depends on how you personally define success.
As graduates of this remarkable university, whether in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, arts or business, you now are stewards of its mission. You are charged not only with discovery, but with moral clarity. You're called to ask the hardest questions, and not just about how the world works, but how it should work.
Now, if you decide to stay in your lane, that is your right, whatever your discipline. But if you have the opportunity to have a broader impact, at least consider it. Now, I'm not here to tell you what you must do, but I will say this: to make a broader difference will require you to step out of your comfort zone. Whether that zone is defined by your professional, cultural, ethnic, political or community identity.
That can be very uncomfortable, but it is necessary. It will require you to see the humanity in all of us. It will require empathy and a deeper commitment than just to a profession. It will require risk taking, the ability to deal with complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty. Most importantly, it will require ethical and principled decision making. But do not be afraid of uncertainty. Some of the most meaningful turns in my life came when I walked off the obvious path.
When I left a tenured physics professorship to enter public service; when I chose leadership over comfort; when I said yes to roles I never imagined for myself; these choices taught me that excellence is not always linear. Sometimes it requires risk, sometimes sacrifice, but it always demands purpose.
So Class of 2025, let your purpose guide you. Ask yourself, not only what can I achieve, but what can I contribute? But do not let others write your story. Claim your intellect, own your purpose and if doors do not open, then open or create new doors. Let your degree not just be a credential, but a promise, a promise to think broadly, to serve bravely, to lead with both rigor and heart.
Make room for others at the table. Fight for truth. Use your knowledge to heal, to innovate, to challenge injustice and above all, to uplift others. And when you feel uncertain, as we all do sometimes, when the world seems too complicated, remember that your job is not to simplify the truth, but to illuminate it. Bring light to complexity. That is what this moment, this century, this world demand of you.
And as you here, as you leave here, one thing that is critical for you to do is to support and defend the very institution that has spawned your ability to pursue your own careers and dreams.
That is Brandeis University. That is our system of higher education and especially our research universities, which are the envy of and model for the world. This will require all the attributes I just spoke of. It will require all of you, all of us.
Brandeis University, thank you for welcoming me and to your family with this honor. I accept it with humility and with renewed commitment to live by the values you champion. And to the graduates, I wish for you good health, safety, happiness and much success.
Go forward and change the world. Congratulations.