Answering Thoreau’s call: Hana Klempnauer Miller ’25 on advocacy and action
Photo Credit: Gaelen Morse
By Julian Cardillo
May 1, 2025
When Hana Klempnauer Miller ’25 steps onto the stage in Gosman Sports and Convocation Center to deliver the undergraduate address at Brandeis University’s 74th Commencement exercises on May 18, it will mark a profound personal milestone.
A Health: Science, Society, and Policy (HSSP) and anthropology double major with a minor in legal studies, Miller’s path at Brandeis has been unconventional and transformative.
Though the Minnesota native arrived on campus as a first year bearing the weight of a difficult senior year in high school, she will graduate magna cum laude, a turnaround she describes with pride and amazement.
“I actually started Brandeis on academic probation,” Miller said. “I burned out my senior year of high school. I was just not in a good place personally. But in only a single semester here, I found my love of learning again.”
Her Commencement speech is inspired by a Henry David Thoreau quote that has sustained her at Brandeis: “Be not simply good; be good for something.”
It’s a phrase she even had tattooed on herself.
“It was very impulsive,” she admitted, laughing. “But it was something to ground me and remind me that we should think about the people at the other end of the table.”
Miller is passionate about public health and human rights. Earlier this spring, she helped organize the largest Capitol Hill Lobby Day in Washington, D.C. focused on tuberculosis policy.
“We advocated for increased funding for TB research and programming,” she explained. “It was a really empowering experience of realizing how much advocacy can do for people — but also seeing some of the more frustrating parts of the system.”
Miller is currently an intern with Physicians for Human Rights, a human-rights NGO focusing on reproductive violence and health in conflict zones. Her dream job is to become an advocate and policymaker with Partners in Health, the nonprofit she’s worked with extensively during her time at Brandeis.
“I want to embody the justice I believe in,” Miller said. “It’s not enough to study human rights. You have to act it out, pursue it in your own life.”
The stakes are high, especially since she’s part of a graduating class that began college amid the COVID-19 pandemic — causing significant upheaval both in her personal life and across society.
“This speech isn’t just about me,” she said. “It’s about marking how far we’ve all come — and reminding us to keep being good for something.”
