Professor Sabine von Mering's Address to 2025 Graduates
Thank you for honoring me with the chance to say a few words. Let me begin by congratulating our wonderful seniors on reaching this important milestone. You may well feel a little giddy today, and probably also tired - with final exams still ahead and papers still to be written, but try to set all that aside for a moment, because you have earned yourself this moment to celebrate and be celebrated. You have worked hard for this, and these celebrations are an important part of marking time, of pausing to look around and see who am I, who are the people I’ve been with these past four years, most of whom I may not be able to see regularly going forward. What am I taking with me, what will be my favorite memories, my most memorable experiences, what do I cherish most about this time at Brandeis. It may be the fabulous mural you all painted with Claudia Bernardi, or the work you did with Daria Pugachova, or one of your classes in provocative art or Dance and Migration, Eco-Writing, Story-Telling and so many more. Give yourself the right to breathe, to pause, to look around, to celebrate and be celebrated.You are taking this step forward at a time that could not be more desperately in need of creativity for the social transformation we need. As some of you know I have been looking at this through the eyes of a polar bear for many years, and of course in many ways it is not a pretty picture. But since I’m not a real but a paper polar bear my vision is not quite as bleak, and especially in recent days and weeks I’ve actually seen lots of encouraging developments: I’ve seen big and large crowds of people coming out with wonderfully creative hand-drawn signs to protest - for peace and justice, the right to due process, for federal workers, social security, trans acceptance, against billionaire F-Elons, and yes, for climate action and against fascism in this country and far beyond. At yesterday’s May Day protest in Framingham, a woman held a great sign that said “They want to take us to Germany 1939, let’s take them to France 1789 instead!”
So the good news is, you are not alone. Last Saturday, there was a gathering at Old North Church in the North End - that Church from where the lanterns gave Paul Revere the signal to ride out to Concord and start the American revolution on April 18, 1775, 250 years ago. A group of interfaith leaders and climate action advocates, including Mayor Michelle Wu, Massachusetts Climate chief Melissa Hoffer, activist and author Bill McKibben, and many others, gathered to launch what they are calling SunDay. You can look it up at SunDay.Earth. The idea is that over the next few months and culminating on September 21 we will do a mass mobilization for “Energy from Heaven, not from Hell” as Bill McKibben called it. Reverend Lennox Yearwood Junior spoke of a Solutions Revolution or a Solvolution for which we need to mobilize all our creative energy. And afterwards I thought of another way of framing this, given the political polarization we are experiencing and given that Massachusetts is celebrated by everyone on both sides of that polarization as the cradle of freedom and liberty - as you know, Massachusetts has been a launchpad for many freedom movements in our history. And clean energy could also be called “freedom energy” given that people won’t be fighting wars over the sun. So I’ve been suggesting that what we need is to extend the Freedom Trail from Boston outward across the country and beyond.
And I’d love your creative input to figure out what that could look like. I brought some color - feel free to draw or write ideas on the piece of paper to help inspire the solution revolution and what a freedom trail that crosses the whole country and literally liberates people in the months ahead could look like!
Because if we want to protect our democracy and a livable planet and help secure peace – in Ukraine and in Palestine and Israel and Lebanon and Syria and Sudan and the many other places that are suffering from war and destruction right now, we definitely need to invest a LOT of creative energy. As our dear colleague Tom King knows, who is also celebrating a milestone today, and who wrote a fabulous chapter about it for our Handbook of Grassroots Climate Activism, creative people make things happen literally out of thin air. You can reverse time, make people fly and polarbears speak. And you all now have the training in creative thinking that is most desperately needed for us to articulate freedom from fear, from war, from climate disruption, freedom from hate. All we need is love - yes, and imagination, and a bit of courage. A little money probably doesn’t hurt either.
And even if courage is initially lacking and you’re anxious and afraid and upset about what’s going on– as Robin Wall Kimmerer reminded us last year - that’s a sign that you are alive. Life is no picnic, and we don’t somehow deserve smooth sailing. As Antonia Carcelen, an Indigenous activist from Ecuador said at a Feminist Climate Leadership Summit at Mount Holyoke last week: most of you can choose to be activists. Most of us have no choice. And so if we do have a choice, we must choose action.
And follow the lead of people, like Antonia, who have all the reason to be hopeless. At our big Climate Strategy Session last Fall here on campus when we asked people if they feel hopeful that we will achieve climate justice, the majority of us chose to stand fairly close to the “no” side and it was John Beard Junior from Port Arthur Texas, who has been fighting with his community against toxic industries for decades and who has lost many of those fights who chose to go to the yes side. And when asked why, he said “Because we have to win! That’s why.” That’s why The Pacific Warriors say “We’re not Drowning. We’re Fighting”
Thanks to your decision to add CAST to your transcript you all are now equipped with the vocabulary to inspire, to open up minds, to think the impossible, to use humor and laughter to mobilize and activate people for the transformation we urgently need. So I want to encourage you to not file that vocabulary away together with the papers you have completed over the last four years and instead get involved, help the many movements that are activated now to counter racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, fascism, war, and climate disruption and help them find ways to lead, love and laugh all of that out of existence. We know you can do this. And you won’t be doing it alone. We will all be here - even Tom, I know, will be with you in the trenches - to provide you with connections and up-to-date research, and yes, letters of recommendation, and we will help pick you up again when you fall down - because yes, falling down, failing is a big part of progress. That’s why I also brought my juggling balls. Because juggling is the perfect reminder that dropping a ball is perfectly normal. So don’t be afraid, keep juggling, and we will cheer you on from afar! You can be certain of that. Because you make us proud and we know the sky is the limit for what you can achieve! Congratulations! And don’t be strangers!