Good morning and welcome parents, friends, class, platform guests, and thank you, President Smith, for offering me this fine degree, touching my heart with such an honor from this long time very fine academic institution and wonderful community of fine faculty, administration, and terrific students.

I have thought long and deeply about what I might say on this day to you, a group of students who, to my mind, have already distinguished yourselves as members of a generation that has experienced Swarthmore as the model approach to liberal arts education and at producing the citizen leaders of an ever more just, generous, and inclusive society and world. So many of you already practice the skills that will be needed to negotiate that world and move it forward. We see the evidence every day through the full range of your intellectual and academic successes and the marriage of your acumen and knowledge to your efforts to bring justice forward in the world at large through your work and care here on campus.

I am always humbled, even bowled over, by the recitation of your accomplishments and the wide range of your endeavors and commitments. The spring semester brings us a wide range of musical performances, theater, and dance productions, outpourings of journals of essays and literary magazines, senior art exhibits, all of which delight the senses and stimulate our minds and hearts. I remember these as features through my long opportunity to be a part of this fine place from both my student days and my return to be a part of the administration. I have spent my career in education at both high schools and this finest of colleges in which we all continued our growth as engaged and creative citizens at large.

What, I have asked myself over and over, can I offer such paragons as these on such an occasion as this?

Historically, this is not a necessarily spiritual occasion but, given the College’s origin as a Quaker institution, I am moved to hold you all at this time and place in the Light of Love.

Your commencement is a fine occasion to recognize and praise you for realizing a wonderful outcome which formalizes honors for your personal accomplishments as not only students but a well-developed community of humane, thoughtful, loving, and generous beings as you live here and practice those beauties going forward to and through the next stages of your life, caring, concerned and effective in those arenas you choose to operate as you live fully your life as Swarthmoreans, and as well no doubt continue to support this school as it continues its good works as a fine model for others.

Congratulations on this wonderful day as you move, as I like to say "Onward and Upward,” as the fine people you are.

Congratulations, too, to your parents and friends who are here, too, to celebrate you and this day.

Love and Light.