Undergraduate Student Address by Hana Klempnauer Miller ’25
Transcript
Good morning, family and friends, faculty and staff. Class of 2025, we made it!
This is a day of tremendous achievement, and I'm so glad I get to celebrate it with all of you. Through the lows and highs, we persevered, and now we get to reap our much deserved rewards.
Like many of you, I started this journey wholly uncertain about who I could become and terrified about whether I was good enough. Four years later, I am the, about to be, proud recipient of a degree in HSSP, anthropology and legal studies, graduating with high honors. That would never have been possible without the support, encouragement and, yes, challenge that this community has provided me.
Brandeis is truly a place unlike any other. Over the past few years, I've spent a great deal of time reflecting on why. I mean, where else will you find a pre law student running the campus EMS, a computer science major studying police reform and a chemistry theater double major revolutionizing science education.
What I found is this: Brandeis is a place for everyone. Brandeis is a place that allows us to follow our passions, not in addition to our coursework, but through it. See, that computer science student is writing code to identify police misconduct before it escalates, and that Bemco EMT is pursuing health law to better advocate for indigent patients. We've been molded, not in the image of someone who came before, but in who we can become once we leave.
Brandesians are driven by the desire to apply our education to the world, to know the truth within, not for the sake of knowledge alone, but to strengthen the very fabric of our existence. In my very first college class, I remember reading an essay by the transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thorau. Written in 1848, only 11 miles from where we gather today, Thorau offered a simple yet profound challenge: Be not simply good, be good for something.
I feel these words capture the heart of what I have learned here and who I have learned it from. Be not simply good. It is a reminder to aim above morality and pursue goodness for the sake of improving the world.
Now, no one cares more about improving the world than a Brandeis student. I mean, I've seen my peers turn a "Love Island" watch party into a voter registration drive when they realized their friends weren't signed up, and that's a pretty hard pivot to pull off successfully. But that's because the ardor that we hold for the passions that define us radiate out of this place like light.
Brandeis is constructed not by the buildings or grounds that outline the borders of our campus, but the lifeblood of the people who make it up, the clubs and communities which made us realize we were more than just students, the professors who drew us here and captivated us with their lessons.
It is all an essential component of why Brandeis is Brandeis. Simply put, I believe the spirit of good lives in this place. It lives in the student who spends nights volunteering for a crisis hotline. It lives in the friend who rescues worms from the drying concrete because she cares about all creatures, no matter how small. It lives in the stranger who will help you with your biology homework because someone did the same for them. It lives in the clubs who spend months working tirelessly to share their culture in events like AYALA, MELA and Incendio.
The importance of a social conscience was instilled into me by my mothers, Jane and Amy, from a young age. And I want to thank them for teaching me, loving me and holding my hand as I figured out who I was.
I've changed in many ways over the last four years because of the courses I've taken at Brandeis. One of the first was Elanah Uretsky's anthropology course on global pandemics. I know what you may be thinking, "How could four months of talking about Ebola be a wonderful experience for anyone?" But the best classes make anything possible. Every single reading felt like a revelation, and it was in Professor Uretsky's syllabus that I first discovered doctor Paul Farmer and Partners in Health, where I was inspired by his writing on human rights and the connection between structural violence and health inequity. Because of what I learned in Professor Uretsky's class, I pursued grassroots advocacy work with Partners in Health, obtained a research fellowship studying reproductive violence and I'm now pursuing a career in public health and human rights.
Ours is a community that turns lessons into change, thought into action. Brandesians don't wait for the world to change, they make the change themselves. And whether rooted in the spirit of sedaka, tikkun olam, liberation theology, seva or another ideal of healing and restoration, we push forward, to act, to mend, to make our world whole.
Brandesians embrace discord, not with malice, but, as I have learned, a fundamental conviction to the repair of things broken. And in a world rife with conflict and uncertainty, this is why I do not fear our future. I don't mean to say that our journeys will or have been a walk in the park. The work of repair is not easy. It requires resilience, courage, the audacity to dream big, and the willingness to fail. But I know that we are relentless. Four years of climbing the Rabb steps has taught us persistence, if nothing else.
So, class of 2025, I offer you this challenge: Persist. Don't stop climbing. Lean into fear and uncertainty when you know deep in your heart that you're moving in the right direction. It's not a future that waits for us. It's something we choose to walk toward every day. The choices we make and the actions we take reveal who we are.
So, be unshakable. Carve a path forward not just for yourself, but for others to follow. Be defiant in the face of disappointment and resilient in the wake of tragedy. Be truthful. Be joyful. Find what sparks your soul and refuse to let it go.
It is no secret that we face a growing cloud of despotism that threatens our collective freedoms and safety, at a time when the world already feels so heavy to bear. But that is all the more reason why you must remember the brightness of this moment and let it lead you forward.
The scholar Raymond Williams once said that to be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing. I think it is only right that you, friends, family, peers, make hope possible every day. Create light in spaces where others see only shadow. Feel where your main routes run and pursue the work of repair. Because if we keep on that path, aiming high and lifting others with the same strength we lift ourselves, we will find the ground rising steadily beneath us.
The world we're stepping into is far from perfect. It is fractured, messy and uncertain. But the beauty of imperfection is that it leaves room for us to create, to heal, to grow. Every step that we take is an opportunity to contribute to something greater than ourselves.
So, as we move forward from here, remember this: Be not simply good, be good for something, and let the next chapter of your story be written with the same passion, perseverance and hope that brought us all to this moment today.
Congratulations to the Class of 2025, and thank you. Thank you.