September 2, 2025

Thank you, Provost Zumbrunnen, and hello, new Badgers!  I am delighted to welcome you to one of greatest universities in the world — the University of Wisconsin–Madison!

Students, you are a very accomplished group!  Among you are:

• National Merit Scholars and high school valedictorians
• Eagle Scouts
• Debate champions
• And winners of major national research competitions.

And so much more.  You’re:

• Standout athletes
• Talented musicians
• Community volunteers

And I’m just scratching the surface. Every one of you deserves to be here and belongs here.

Over the next weeks and months, you will get to know so many new people, so here’s my advice:

Go beyond a smile, a nod, or a “hey.”  Ask questions.  See if you can find the classmate who started a successful business in high school … or the classmate who organizes registration drives for organ donors … or the classmate who rehabilitates injured animals … or classmates who serve in the U.S. military.

All are here with you today.  So dig a little bit beneath the surface and find out something that matters.

New students by the numbers

Let me tell you a little more about yourselves:

• There are nearly 10,000 of you joining our university this year — and 1,200 transfer students (let’s hear from you!). We also have about 8,500 freshmen (freshmen, make some noise!).
• We selected each of you from a record 74,000 applicants. You can be really proud that you were admitted in one the most competitive years in our history.
• We’re still finalizing numbers, but it looks like this year’s freshman class (for the first time since I became chancellor) represents all 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C.!
• I want to hear from you if you’re from one of the biggest states outside of Wisconsin represented in this class:
  • #5 and #4 go together — the tri-state area — New Jersey & New York (and let’s not leave out Connecticut), where are you?
  • #3 — Minnesota — let’s hear it!
  • #2 — California — make some noise!
  • #1 — you know who you are — Illinois, where are you? Congrats!
• We also have international students from around 50 different nations all around the globe — students, let’s hear it for our international Badgers!
• OK, Wisconsin — are you ready? If you’re from the great state of Wisconsin, make some noise!
• Welcome, all!
• And here’s something I’m really proud of: This freshman class includes more students who are in the first generation in their family to go to college than we’ve ever seen.  If you are a member of the first generation of your family to attend college, please rise as you’re able — let’s hear it for them!

Pin & Selfie

Do you all have a pin that says “Badger 2025”?  This is a brand-new tradition, and it’s special for Convocation — being right here, right now, is the only way you can get one, so I’d like to ask you to take a moment to put it on and then I want a selfie with all of you.  Ready?  (takes selfie with students)

Your first official UW portrait!  I’ll post it on Instagram if you want to follow me there @UWChancellor.

Value and values

Tomorrow you will begin your first classes.  As you do that, I want you to keep one important thing in mind:

Your education is in your hands.

For most of you, graduation day is about four years away.  That’s 1,461 days.  That’s quite a few days, but it will also go by in a flash.  And what you do with those days will help chart a course for your life.

We’ll be here to help and support you, but it’s up to you to decide what you’ll do with this amazing opportunity.  The ways you choose get involved.  The deep friendships that you’ll make.  The academic risks you take, the challenges you rise to, and the acts of kindness that you choose.

The math is pretty simple: The more you invest in your learning, and in your overall experience here at UW–Madison, the more value your education will have.

Pluralism

We want you to ask bold questions. We want you think deeply about ideas. And we want you to feel empowered to both agree and disagree with one another, and with your professors and with me.

And when you have strong views, we want you to disagree with respect for our common humanity.  I would ask you to start out with curiosity and generosity rather than condemnation and judgment.

That’s true for the small stuff — like when you’re debating the relative importance of the engagement news about your favorite English teacher and your favorite gym teacher.

But it’s equally true for the bigger, harder conversations. There will likely even be days when the discussions you’ll have won’t feel super comfortable.  But by engaging with a great diversity of ideas, you will learn something about yourself, and you’ll emerge with a stronger, deeper sense of what drives you, and what you believe and why.

This is part of the process you heard the provost call “sifting and winnowing” — it’s how new insights and discoveries come to life.

One essential ingredient in this process is pluralism — that’s a word you’ll probably hear a lot this year.  It means we bring together people with many different backgrounds and points of view and identities (in other words, all of you) to discuss and debate ideas. You will learn from each other, from those similar to you and equally, you will learn from your differences.

Learning from one another will enrich you, and it will also connect you — to one another, and to the broader world.  It will ground you in our community, and it will also let you soar. When you step into the unknown, when you take a chance on a hard conversation with empathy and civility, when you open yourself up to others, and when you embrace the unexpected, you just might find that you discover a new intellectual passion or make a lifelong friend.

Outstanding faculty

And, in your time here, you will have an opportunity to work with some of the top scholars in the world.

Slide:  Prof. Oyola-Merced with students

People like Professor Mayra Oyola-Merced, who came to us from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and who is a much-beloved mentor to our undergraduates.  She’s working on ways to improve how we predict severe weather — building on our long tradition of excellence as the birthplace of weather satellite technology.

Slide: Prof. Chevrette with headphones

People like Professor Marc Chevrette, who started here just this month with all of you.  The undergraduates in his lab listen in on the chemical conversations between bacteria to help search for new antibiotics in some really unlikely places like the microbiomes (i.e., guts) of frogs, snakes, insects, and even freshwater sponges.

Slide:  Bad Bunny & Prof. Melendez-Badillo

Or if you’re interested in history, you could take a class with Professor Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a Latin American and Caribbean history scholar who collaborated with Bad Bunny on his latest album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” [translation: I should have taken more photos] to create a narrative to accompany songs that celebrate Puerto Rican history and culture.

These are just three of the more than 2,000 renowned scholars on our faculty.  All of them are eager to welcome you here!

Go Big Read

I got to talk to a few of your parents last week at move-in and several of them who were, themselves, students here back in … the late 1900s … said this place feels even bigger than it did then, and they’re right: We’ve grown!

You’ve heard about the ways we make the campus feel smaller and help you find your place here — but there’s one campuswide event that we make as big as possible. It’s a university-wide book club called Go Big Read.

This year it’ll bring all of us together to read and talk about an incredible new book called James: A Novel by Percival Everett that reimagines Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, who was the enslaved man who escaped and accompanied Huck down the Mississippi River on a raft.

It’s a bestseller and winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it invites us to think about how the assumptions people make about us (and our assumptions about others) affect our lives. And how there are many ways of seeing, and being in, the world. You’ll receive a free copy on your way out today.

Many of our professors will incorporate the book into their classes, and the author will come and visit us and spend a day on campus engaging in conversations and giving a talk.  I hope you’ll join us for that.

Conclusion

You are joining a university that produces Nobel laureates and Pulitzer prizewinners. Best-selling authors, star athletes, leaders of non-profits, and people who create meaningful and beautiful works of art, and so much more.

And this is also a place that’s pretty proud of its inspired goofiness.  We plant pink flamingoes all over Bascom Hill and Jump Around and put a giant Statue of Liberty head on ice-covered Lake Mendota in the middle of winter.

You, today, are joining this wonderful community, and we are all stronger for your presence here.

From this moment on, you share a common identity as Badgers that I hope you’ll proudly claim for the rest of your lives.

And so a very, very warm welcome to every one of you!  We are so happy that you are here.

Babcock & Bucky

To conclude our time together, we’re going to celebrate with one time-honored Badger tradition, and then invite you to join us for a second.  The first is (of course) singing Varsity together and the second is (of course) Babcock ice cream.

We can’t do both at once, it doesn’t work so well, so we’ll sing here and then eat ice cream — courtesy of the Wisconsin Alumni Association — right next to Memorial Union at Alumni Park.

So thank you all for being here. Now please join me in welcoming one very special Badger … and On, Wisconsin!

(Bucky enters)

I still remember my first day at college — the hush after my parents departed, getting to know my roommates, and that doubt that could sometimes creep in: Do I really belong here?

I’m riding around this week in one of those boxy white trucks we affectionately call “toaster cars,” popping into different residence halls to meet parents and families, helping haul an impressive amount of stuff upstairs (with great assistance from our upperclassmen), and assuring the new students who have come to UW–Madison from around the state, the nation, and the world that they absolutely do belong here.

I’m talking with new students from places near (all over Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois) and not-so-near (California and New York) and quite far (one of our freshmen from Dubai was seeing our state for the very first time; we talked about how to survive and thrive through a long Wisconsin winter).

I see proud parents and families (some already in “Wisconsin Dad” and “Wisconsin Mom” T-shirts) smoothing fresh sheets onto beds, assembling furniture, and rushing out on last-minute errands that take on special meaning as they delay that inevitable (and oh-so-hard!) last good-bye.

I vividly remember the day I moved my daughter into her freshman dorm. We’d forgotten a few things, so I ran over to CVS to pick them up for her. It was a simple errand, mundane, but also freighted, as I marked the moment because who knew when I might have another chance to do this for her?

To get to watch our students learn about each other and our traditions and this beautiful campus, and to see them grow into thoughtful and accomplished leaders and scholars, is truly one of the great privileges of being chancellor.

Game Changer

As we gear up for fall, college athletics is facing a seismic shift that could transform scholarships, team structures, and department and university strategy.

We remain committed to supporting all 23 Badger sport programs. That means making some thoughtful changes — like expanding sponsorships (look for the Culver’s logo on center court at the Kohl Center) and bringing concerts back to Camp Randall Stadium — to help meet the financial realities ahead and ensure our Badger athletes continue to thrive, whether in competition or the classroom.

On, Wisconsin!

Jennifer L. Mnookin
Chancellor

* * * *

Chancellor’s Choice

Feeling nostalgic after reading about move-in? You’re in luck! The UW Archives has digitized every issue of the Badger yearbook back to 1884. It’s a rich, quirky chronicle of campus life through 2014 — the year publication of Badger yearbooks ceased. (Why? Read more here).

If you’re a foodie like me, you might enjoy Lab Culture Recipes — an online cookbook cocreated by UW genetics professor Ahna Skop PhD’00 pairing scientists’ favorite recipes with personal stories. It’s a delicious way to explore the diverse backgrounds that fuel scientific discovery.

And if you’re in search of a great fall read, pick up James by Percival Everett — a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It’s this year’s Go Big Read book, and I’m so excited that we’ll welcome the author to campus this fall.

The capitol-to-campus view wasn’t an accident. Wisconsin’s first governor, Nelson Dewey, and the state’s early leaders wanted a clear and close connection, and the first regents called UW–Madison “a blessing and an ornament to the state” — big words for a campus that at the time had more horses than students and one lonely building sitting atop a grand hill.

From the start, this university has been a partnership with the state, created to solve problems in ways that can fundamentally change lives. (More on that below!) But over the years, as many of you may be aware, funding for public universities in Wisconsin slipped to 44th in the nation.

A public university by — and for — Wisconsin

Thanks in meaningful part to so many of you who have made your voices heard, that’s starting to change. There are several things to cheer about in the state’s new budget, such as the legislature’s investment in renovating our historic Science Hall, but there are also concerning new requirements around faculty teaching loads that will weaken our ability to compete for top talent. I’ll be working with the regents and legislature to find a path forward that recognizes the vital contributions of our faculty and instructional staff in education, research, and outreach, and the critical importance of being able to hire and retain the very strongest and most talented scholars and teachers.

Regardless of state or federal pressures, our aims remain the same. We are still driving research, preparing educators, launching start-ups, and expanding opportunity because we believe deeply in our founding mission and the good this university does for the people of Wisconsin — and beyond.

Public science, personal impact

To share just one example: you might know that the UW Health Transplant Center is one of the premier centers of its kind in the world — but I’m guessing you might not have heard about the center’s most recent extraordinary innovation (now in clinical trials), which may allow some kidney transplant recipients to live without antirejection medications.

At the same time, the UW is doing fascinating work on xenotransplantation — genetically engineering pigs for organ donation (with three clinical trials now in development), helping to bring new hope to patients urgently awaiting life-saving transplants.

These discoveries matter deeply to me — both professionally and personally. In the depths of the pandemic, I donated a kidney to my father. Since I couldn’t be there in person, the UW Solution preserved it safely on a red-eye from LA to Boston.

We’re celebrating this lifesaving work in organ transplantation with a special project this month — I hope you’ll take a peek.

A final bit of good news

UW–Madison was just named a Princeton Review Best Value College for 2025, a Money magazine Best College, and number 14 in the country for Best Alumni Network — not to mention number 30 out of more than 21,000 universities in the latest world rankings, confirming what we’ve long known: we’re delivering an outstanding, life-changing, and affordable education. (Two-thirds of UW–Madison undergrads now graduate with no student loan debt.) We couldn’t do it without each of you!

On, Wisconsin!

Jennifer L. Mnookin
Chancellor

* * * *

Chancellor’s Choice

I often highlight successes, but Sean Jacobsohn ’94’s online Failure Museum — a collection of things that didn’t go as planned — offers valuable lessons in resilience, risk, and innovation.

Taylan Stulting PhDx’26 and two teammates rowed 2,800 grueling miles from California to Hawaii, setting a new world record in the World’s Toughest Row.

The Wisconsin Idea just went intergalactic! UW–Madison physicists helped bring a new observatory in Chile to life, and that observatory has the world’s largest digital camera. Travel to places several thousand light years away from Earth on a Skyviewer tour or browse the stars on your own.

Our remarkable new alumni have stepped off campus and into the world, carrying the Wisconsin Idea with them — from Wisconsin towns like Berlin, Florence, and Stockholm, to their namesakes abroad and everywhere in between.

They’re leaving with an abundance of memories and experiences, with new knowledge gained and lasting friendships formed. But like Badgers before them, as they go, they leave things behind, too: ideas … projects … traditions. A campus shaped in so many ways by their time here.

Most who have spent a summer in Madison probably remember “Hippie Christmas,” that stretch of late summer when leases turn over and treasure hunters scour curbs for secondhand finds. (It even made the New York Times this month!) Our Sustainable Move-Out program builds on that same spirit with a little more structure and purpose. Last year, we kept 80 tons of usable items out of the landfill when students left the dorms.

It’s just one small piece of a larger effort to tackle challenges like sustainability across campus.

Good Chemistry

Here’s one more piece: biochemist Brian Fox and his team have engineered poplar trees that produce a high-demand chemical — used in everything from preservatives to sports performance materials to the production of pharmaceuticals — right inside the tree. Seriously: these trees have been engineered to produce a nearly pure version of a much-needed chemical. No fossil fuels. No harm to the tree. Just a breakthrough made possible by years of foundational research and sustained public investment.

This project is just one of many amazing examples of the far-reaching impact of innovation and discovery taking place at UW–Madison.

A Closing Note

Given the substantial proposed changes in federal funding and resulting risk and uncertainty, we are taking necessary steps to help protect our long-term financial viability. We will be implementing budget reductions of 5 to 7 percent in certain core funding areas for fiscal year 2026, as well as additional steps in central administration to improve efficiency and redirect savings toward mission-centric activities. Like our peers, we are not insulated from the impacts brought on by the upheaval in higher education. But even in these complex and uncertain times, the UW–Madison community comes together to pursue the extraordinary and advance the Wisconsin Idea.

To our alumni, thank you for what you have left behind — the research you contributed to, the traditions you started, the fresh ideas that moved us in a new direction. The journeys you began here and the ties to campus you’ve maintained are such an important part of what makes UW–Madison the world-class university it is today.

Wishing you all a summer full of connection, reflection, and Terrace-yellow sunshine.

On, Wisconsin!

Jennifer L. Mnookin
Chancellor

* * * *

Chancellor’s Choice

Perhaps inspired by an incredible NFL Draft performance, prospective UW Marching Band members are on campus this summer, hoping to master the iconic “stop at the top” step and prepare for those legendary auditions (fond memories, band alumni?) in order to join the ranks of one of the best college marching bands in the country.

At the same time, in a workshop tucked away in the Humanities Building, one expert technician and two student helpers are bringing 270 hardworking band instruments back to life — a summertime tradition to make sure we’re ready for Fifth Quarters come fall.

And speaking of bands, we’re bringing concerts back to Camp Randall this summer! It’s been nearly 30 years since U2 and the Rolling Stones were here, and this summer we’re welcoming Morgan Wallen in June and Coldplay in July!

When I last wrote to all of you, I shared some of the challenges the university is facing, and I want to thank so many of you who have asked how you can help. Those challenges are still alive and very much with us, but on this warm spring day, with our beautiful campus gardens in full bloom, I want to share just a few of the wonderful things that are happening here.

Some of you were with us in Madison just weeks ago for a truly magical commencement weekend (the largest commencement in our history, with more than 10,000 graduates taking part). We had picture-perfect weather, and tens of thousands of joyful family and friends gathered to watch us confer UW–Madison degrees in ceremonies at the Kohl Center and Camp Randall Stadium.

On commencement eve, I put together my own list of a dozen of the great many wonderful things about this past year. I thought I’d share them with you here, in no particular order:

1. Taking a selfie with around 7,000 new students at convocation in September.
2. Going (back) to LA for the Badgers’ first-ever Big Ten football game against USC — the loss was disappointing, but the pregame tailgate (1,000 strong) was pretty awesome.
3. Touring a nearly complete Morgridge Hall, our fantastic new home for the School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences, set to open for the fall semester.
4. Seeing the aurora borealis for the first time, with my husband, in the backyard of Olin House.
5. Celebrating 100 years of the University of Wisconsin Hillel Foundation — mazel tov to Greg and Andrea Steinberger for their 25 years of leadership. (I think this makes them the longest-serving couple in Hillel history anywhere!)
6. Attending winter commencement, where keynote speaker and Top Chef finalist Dan Jacobs shared advice and spatchcocked a chicken on stage.
7. Visiting a great many counties across the state and learning what a hodag is in Rhinelander, wading into cranberry bogs, touching the ice-cold water of Lake Superior, and sampling cheese. (So. Much. Cheese.) Not to mention meeting with outstanding industry and agricultural partners along the way.
8. Witnessing our amazing programs to promote civil discourse and discussion across difference, like our Deliberation Dinners, The Discussion Project, BridgeMadison, the Main Street Project, and Bridging the Divide.
9. Seeing the building blocks for the next generation of IceCube — the first neutrino detector of its kind — led by UW–Madison scientists, set to be installed at the South Pole, and a potential key to understanding the creation of our universe. (Really!)
10. Breaking ground on the new Phillip A. Levy Engineering Center for our top-ranked College of Engineering.
11. Seeing so many tremendous UW–Madison faculty recognized for their excellence, including four new members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
12. Cheering for Badger women’s hockey and getting to join this amazing team on the ice after they won their eighth — yes, eighth — national title. They are officially the winningest women’s hockey team in NCAA Division I history!

What a privilege it is to lead this incredible university. Until next time, I hope this season brings you all of the hope and joy that the blossoms of late spring can inspire.

On, Wisconsin!

Jennifer L. Mnookin
Chancellor

* * * *

Chancellor’s Choice

• Check out our new 360-degree virtual campus tour. See old familiar spots and places that are new (or just new to you) and give the prospective future Badgers in your life a look at the campus that could someday be their alma mater, too.
• Now that it’s spring, I’m excited to hit the trails at my favorite hiking spots. Did you know that more than 255 species of birds have been spotted in the Lakeshore Nature Preserve over the past 25 years? If you’re in Madison or nearby, learn about the preserve’s birds, animals, insects, and human history on a field trip, or take part in Bioblitz.
• Finally, a special note of gratitude to the record 400 alumni and current students who came out in person to advocate for research funding and financial aid (among other things) at UW–Madison Day at the Capitol and UW–Madison Day in DC. Telling your stories about the university’s impact can make a real difference. Thank you! Visit our new research impact website to learn more about how UW–Madison’s federally funded research changes the world.

May 10, 2025

Good afternoon, everyone! I am so happy to welcome you to the 172nd spring commencement of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

For family and friends who have never been inside our historic Camp Randall Stadium: This is the only place in the country where football has five quarters and everyone gets to jump around.

Parents, family, and friends, please join me in recognizing the amazing Class of 2025.

Graduates, you walked through those gates as students. In just an hour or so you’ll walk through them again as alumni — part of our big, worldwide Badger family, nearly half a million strong!

To earn a degree from one of the greatest universities in the world is an enormous accomplishment, and you haven’t done it alone. Let’s have a big Badger “thank you” for the family and friends who have helped you reach this day. Please make some noise!

For a number of you, there are also friends, colleagues, and family members you are missing today, whose love and support helped bring you to this place. We remember them as well.

Class of 2025

As you have learned in your time here, we don’t do things in a small way at UW–Madison. 8,679 of you are graduating today — making this year’s commencement the largest in our 176-year history!

• 186 of you will be awarded law degrees today. Where are our Law School graduates? Congratulations!
• 1,511 of you are master’s degree candidates. Make some noise! Congratulations!
• Bachelor’s candidates … are you ready? Today we confer bachelor’s degrees on 6,982 of you. Let’s hear it! Congratulations!

And let’s give an especially warm welcome to a person who has figured out how to make a living doing what many of you do for free: explaining why Badger athletes, and Badgers in general, are the best in the Big Ten.

Wall Street Journal columnist and member of the Class of 1992: Jason Gay, thank you for giving today’s keynote address and welcome home to Madison!

I suspect Jason may have something to say about our Badger women’s hockey team, which has won not one … not two … not five … but a record-breaking eight national championships, so I will say only this: To the graduating seniors who are members of that storied team, thank you for giving us all a whole lot to cheer about!

Members of this class also have had lots of the kind of wins that don’t come with a trophy. I want to recognize two groups in particular:

If you are part of the first generation in your family to earn a college degree, please stand as you’re able and make some noise!

If you are a veteran of the United States armed services, or serving on active duty or in the Reserves — whether you’re down here or up in the stands — please stand as you’re able so we may thank you for your service!

Now there’s one more group I want to recognize. We are very proud to be a public university. That means that if you are a Wisconsinite, you have helped contribute to our state having one of the world’s greatest universities. If you are a taxpayer here in our great state of Wisconsin, will you stand as you’re able, so we can recognize and appreciate that you have helped to build this wonderful university? Thank you!

Now, Class of 2025, I want you to think all the way back to your arrival at college. Remember stepping off that plane, or watching your family drive away, and feeling that mixture of excitement and anxiety, wondering if you’d ever feel at home here? You came from all over Wisconsin, across the U.S., and all around the world, with a huge range of backgrounds, beliefs, and life experiences. And this place is big. On those first days, it was exciting, but also daunting.

But pretty quickly, you started to find your place here. Doing a class project or on a team or at the Union or out with the Hoofers or at the Red Gym or in one of our thousand student organizations, or maybe over an Ian’s Pizza late at night with your roommates. One way or another, you found your people and your places, and pretty soon you did feel at home!

Which isn’t to say you found people who always agreed with you.

Connection, not agreement

In fact, an essential part of your UW–Madison education has been learning to find ways to connect, not disconnect … and to engage, not disengage — and to do that even when you disagreed. To move beyond bubbles and echo chambers.

And that’s important. Because you are stepping into a world that is both deeply complex and distressingly polarized, and you have the power to do something good in that world. Especially if you can find ways to work with people you might not always agree with.

Some of you might know the story of Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter, Jamie, was killed at Parkland High School, and former Congressman Joe Walsh, a Republican from Illinois who is a strong gun rights advocate.

The two spent years sparring on social media, but that changed when the Congressman posted a message that said, in essence:

I disagree with Mr. Guttenberg, but I respect him.

That led to a phone call, which led to dinner, and, eventually, a friendship. And then, the two of them spent months touring the country, including college campuses, as Two Dads Defending Democracy, to model civil conversations on difficult topics, something they believe is critical for our democracy.

And I am inspired by how many of you believe that too.

I have seen the way that so many in this class have been deeply involved in similar work: reaching across your differences to have civil conversations about difficult topics. This happened in a great many of your classrooms, in your research projects, in your experiential learning, as well as in so many other spaces.

• Some of you were part of our very first Deliberation Dinners, where you discussed controversial topics with classmates whose ideas and perspectives were very different from your own.
• Some of you jumped on board with a new student organization called BridgeMadison, where you got to practice listening, debating, and compromising.
• And still others of you were part of the Bridging the Divide initiative, whose slogan is “Replacing snark with conversation, tweets with talk, and scrolls and likes with face-to-face dialogue.”

Zack Dulian spent this year helping to lead that initiative at the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership. Zack said, “I decided to be the change I want to see.”

Zack — where are you?  Thank you!

Members of this class have been dedicated to forging connections in so many different ways.

Shiann Her brought her unique perspective as a Hmong woman to her work as president of the Financial Occupations Club for University Students. She became a role model for women and people of color, who have traditionally been significantly underrepresented in the world of finance.

And today, she’s proud to serve as the flag bearer for the School of Human Ecology!

Shiann, where are you? Thank you!

And Micky Singh brought different perspectives and life experiences to the Law School as a member of the Wisconsin Army Reserves and son of Punjabi Sikh immigrants. Micky was usually the only member of the military in his classes, and his classmates got to know him as someone who would raise questions and share ideas few others had considered, greatly enriching their discussions.

Micky, where are you? Thank you and congratulations!

Conclusion

Graduates, as you head off into your next chapter, it may feel far easier and more comfortable to retreat into your bubble, especially given the polarization — and sometimes vitriol — so often present around you.  I urge you to resist that.

Whatever issue you care about, whatever your perspective, speak up. Fight fiercely for what you believe in! But don’t shut people out who may see the world differently — instead, embrace the pluralism around you, and see what happens when you welcome others in with curiosity before judgment.

Part of what I hope you’ve learned here is that you can work together to do something meaningful in the world even when you disagree. Put differently, you don’t have to agree on everything in order to get something important done together.

Because we will not reach a place where we can make things better without a genuine effort to recognize our shared humanity. That is the best, and indeed the only, way to build lasting change.

And you, graduates, you are our future. Class of 2025, you have shown us that you are brilliant. You have shown us that you care about the world. You have shown us that you are resilient and resourceful. You have shown us that you care about each other. So now, I am thrilled to see you take all of those experiences with you, as you go forth as proud Badgers!

Class of 2025: We are so very proud of you. Congratulations, and On, Wisconsin!

May 9, 2025

Thank you, Provost Isbell and good evening, everyone. Welcome to the 172nd spring commencement of the University of Wisconsin–Madison!

Congratulations, graduates!

And let me add my personal welcome and thank you to the proud families and friends joining us from across the country and around the world — whether in person or virtually.

Graduates, let’s give them a round of applause!

For a number of you, there are also friends, colleagues, and family members you are missing today, whose love and support helped bring you to this place. We remember them as well. 

Acknowledgments

If friends and family helped make this long journey possible, there is another group that made it incredibly worthwhile. The members of our faculty and staff whose support (and occasional, or even rather frequent, critique) helped you to meet the level of excellence required for a UW–Madison graduate degree.

Faculty and staff, will you please stand as you are able? Let’s give them a round of applause!

I want to call upon two groups of people for special recognition.

If you are receiving a graduate degree today as a member of the first generation in your family to go to college or earn an advanced degree, please stand as you are able and make some noise. Congratulations!

If you are a veteran or serving on active duty or in the Reserves — family and friends, I’m talking to you, too — please stand as you are able so that we may thank you for service.

Thank you all.

Some of you know that the Air Force ROTC just celebrated 75 years on our campus, and I want to make special note of one outstanding graduate from that program:

Lt. Col. Daniel Jackson is an Air Force pilot and historian who’s deployed nine times and has flown more than 1,000 combat hours. His research has helped to locate two U.S. aircraft missing in action since 1944, and his team is now in the process of recovering and returning remains to families that have waited 80 years for answers.

Today Lt. Col. Jackson earns a PhD in history, but Air Force duty called so he could not be here — let’s give him a long-distance round of applause. Dan, thank you for your service and congratulations!

Excellence and goodness

Graduates, you are here because you have completed an advanced degree. And every one of you has, I suspect, teachers who have deeply influenced you along the way. You will remember some of these teachers for many years. Sometimes you will realize only far into the future precisely how, and how much, they’ve touched or influenced you.

For me, one of those teachers is a man named Guido Calabresi. A law professor and eminent scholar, and then a dean, and later a distinguished judge.

He taught me in a required course in my first year of law school, and he was my own law school dean. I enjoyed his class, and learned a lot, but it was only many years later, when I became a law school dean myself, that I fully appreciated his leadership in that role.

Recently, Judge Calabresi, now in his 90s, made this observation about universities:

“A great place that trains leaders must train people who are not just excellent, but loving, kind, humane, and good.”

Now, this may not be an entirely new take on the role of universities. After all, Plato spoke about the character-building role of education more than 2,000 years ago. And Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in 1947:

“We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.”

But still, I think it’s an especially relevant observation in this moment. So, I want to speak to you today about not just excellence, but the extraordinarily powerful combination of excellence AND goodness.

You are stepping forward into a world marked by complexity and change, which are as old as civilization itself. But the pace of change continues to accelerate.

Within this acceleration there are immense challenges. Challenges to how we work … how we govern … how we educate … even how we relate to one another.

Yet, alongside change — and the stress and uncertainty it generates — there are equally extraordinary opportunities for innovation … for contribution … and — perhaps most importantly — for connection.

A generosity of presence

The poet David Whyte has written about what he calls a generosity of presence.  This phrase has been on my mind this spring, because it speaks both to what universities like this one are uniquely able to cultivate and to what I believe our nation and the world very much need in this moment.

To build authentic connection to others requires a generosity of presence. A willingness to listen with the generosity and authenticity that creates the possibility of adjusting your own view, or someone else’s view, of an issue … but even more importantly, it creates the possibility of changing our views of each other.

That is the best way — indeed, perhaps the only way — to move forward at a time when building walls can feel a whole lot easier than building bridges.

I know many of you have felt that over the last few months.

On a campus that has welcomed students from around the world since our very first class in 1848 — and that takes great pride in the number of global leaders with UW–Madison degrees — we have had international students and new alumni, including some of you here today, living with concerns about the stability of their lives here.

And simultaneously, the future of the compact between universities like ours and the federal government to conduct scientific research is now in more doubt than it has ever been since its creation after WWII.

This too has, or threatens to have, an impact on a great many of you, especially those of you who may be looking to continue teaching or conducting research within universities.

It may mean fewer graduate students trained, or fewer postdoc or faculty positions. Fewer discoveries made. Fewer clinical trials leading to treatments and cures for diseases. And fewer university innovations spinning off into companies that create jobs and drive the economy.

To be sure, cuts to funding for research are not new — they’ve happened under Democrats, and they’ve happened under Republicans.

And a questioning of faith in democracy, something that we are certainly seeing now, is not particularly new either. That’s been building since you were children.

Seventy percent of the generation born before WWII considered it essential to live in a democracy. Fewer than thirty percent of Millennials and Gen Z-ers do today.

In short, this is a world that badly needs your intelligence, expertise, skills and talents, AND your generosity of presence. Because no matter what your background or beliefs, or political persuasion, you are graduating into a world that urgently needs not just your excellence, but also your goodness.

Character and pluralism

One of the things I admire about Judge Calabresi, my former teacher, is his equally deep commitment to ideas and to people. We need people equally committed to both, and as advanced degree graduates of UW–Madison, you have the training and experiences for precisely that.

We need people who can juggle opposing ideas, and people willing to challenge their own strongly held beliefs and assumptions, and to do it in a way that connects with others.

We need people who can discuss a polarizing issue with someone on the opposite side without needing to prove the other person entirely wrong.  And people who understand that you can work together productively on something important without having to agree on everything important.

And let me be clear: This is not to say that all beliefs are equally valid. Truth, and rigorous engagement with evidence, matters, and matters greatly. (For me that’s foundational — after all, I’m a law professor and an evidence scholar!)

But we will not reach a place where we can engage with those different from us without a genuine, and generous, effort to understand their worldview. For a diverse democracy to flourish, and for the best new ideas, innovations, and inventions to emerge, we need to be able to work together, even when we don’t entirely agree.

You are ready for that. You have worked hard. You have debated. You have collaborated. You have had classmates from all over the globe, with a plethora of backgrounds, identities, and beliefs. You have learned from one another with generosity of presence, and you have shown us both your excellence and your goodness.

I’m pleased to say that the individuals we’ve selected to receive honorary doctoral degrees today — one a Democrat and one a Republican — are also living exemplars of this creed.

Donna Shalala and Jim Sensenbrenner credit some of their most important accomplishments to their ability to reach across the political aisle, or to connect with those different from themselves.

That is worth celebrating. And it’s also worth celebrating that universities like ours are one of the few places on earth where people of such different disciplines and different perspectives — people from small rural towns and major cities, of different races and genders and beliefs, come together in an intentional way.

To paraphrase Walt Whitman: We contain multitudes.

People like Shane Hoffman, who grew up in rural Wisconsin, a hunter and snowmobiler … and now a doctor.

Today Shane becomes the first person to graduate from the new accelerated program at our School of Medicine & Public Health aimed at addressing the dire need for physicians in rural areas. The new curriculum is condensed, streamlined, and focused on training physicians to work in rural areas of Wisconsin that are underserved.

Shane, where are you? Thank you and congratulations!

And Chris Caldwell, who today receives a PhD from the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. As a proud member of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and president of the College of Menominee Nation, Chris added an important perspective to our work on climate change and sustainability.

President Caldwell, where are you? Congratulations!

As you head off into your next chapter, it may sometimes feel far easier and more comfortable to retreat into your bubble. I urge you not to do that. And I urge you to be wary of the easy acceptance of indifference and even cruelty toward people who are different from you.

Conclusion

The sociologist Eboo Patel, the founder of Interfaith America, who visited our campus earlier this spring, wrote this:

“Let’s think of America not as a battlefield where we defeat our fellow citizens, but instead as a potluck supper where we invite everyone’s contribution.”

That can be cacophonous at times, but it’s also necessary for the kind of sifting and winnowing that sparks new ways of thinking about problems.

And it works best when we cultivate a generosity of presence so we can live together with mutual respect even when we disagree.

So: Let us be united in holding fast to our dual commitments to excellence and goodness, just as my old teacher, Guido Calabresi, recommended.

Let us be generous about ideas, and generous with each other. And if you do that — and you are so very well prepared to do exactly that — I know that you will be entirely capable of navigating whatever challenges lie ahead. Go forth and build on all you have already achieved, and know that we, here at UW–Madison, will continue to cheer you on at every step.

Congratulations, graduates … and On, Wisconsin!

It has been an eventful couple of months since I last wrote to you. As you have likely read in the media and elsewhere, several of President Donald Trump’s executive orders and early directives are aimed partly or wholly at research and at higher education, and I thought I would use this space to write briefly about a few of them.

Needless to say, every new administration arrives with its own priorities, and change is to be expected. It’s also critical that we at universities listen carefully to those who may have significant concerns about our activities and operations. At the same time, some of these directives would have a major and very concerning impact on UW–Madison, our operations, and our fiscal circumstances.

One directive issued last week asks the heads of each federal agency to — in the next 30 days — review and possibly terminate existing contracts and grants that do not further the president’s priorities, with a focus on those that involve educational institutions. Another aims to slash the “indirect expense” reimbursement rate from federal grants from the National Institutes of Health, which funds life-saving research here at UW–Madison on devastating diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s.

While I recognize that current indirect rates may sound high, they are rigorously audited: these expenses are a huge part of the real cost of doing science, and they fund everything from laboratory renovations to significant high-tech equipment purchases to safety and compliance costs.

If this cut is enacted, it will hurt everything from our clinical trials — in which 20,000 patients are currently accessing novel and potentially life-saving treatments — to critically important public health research to develop new tools to use against antibiotic-resistant pathogens. A third directive would cut research funding related to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and environmental justice, though we don’t yet have a clear sense for how the administration is defining these terms.

As I write this, some of these directives have been stayed by the courts, but we anticipate facing funding reductions. Among the programs that already have lost their funding or are at imminent risk are a partnership to train urgently needed special education teachers; a program that worked with Wisconsin farmers to make dairy farming more sustainable; and a program in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey to track and address wildlife diseases and invasive species that threaten not only our rivers and lakes but also human health.

Certainly, there is ample room for potential reform of the federal research system to make it more transparent, accountable, and sustainable. The same is true for working to improve how the university operates. Giving the public assurance that their tax dollars are funding research that is important and relevant, and that our systems are as efficient as possible, is not a partisan issue; it’s simply good public policy. At the same time, broad reductions in research funding will surely stall or prevent critical discoveries and impede students’ opportunities for training; still more broadly, they will damage our nation’s innovation economy and global competitiveness.

As I told campus leaders recently, we cannot let the challenges of this moment fully define us. We will continue to focus on our core commitments to significant research, transformative teaching, and an ethos of service. We will remain focused on preserving and building our excellence and helping all of our students — whatever their background, whatever their beliefs — succeed and reach their potential. We will continue to find opportunities to magnify our already tremendous economic impact on Wisconsin and move life-changing innovations out into the world, and we’ll continue to celebrate great news. Here are just a few accomplishments that are top-of-mind for me right now:

• the record we just set for undergraduate applications (a double-digit percentage increase over last year’s record 70,000 applicants!)
• our outstanding new deans for the School of Medicine and Public Health and the College of Engineering
• the campuswide initiative we’ve launched to make UW–Madison a premier institution for people who want to pursue entrepreneurship
• Wisconsin RISE, which is bringing faculty together in exciting new ways to advance our excellence in key areas

We will keep looking ahead to places where we can build on our strength and excellence, because UW–Madison has always been a place where big, bold ideas can take root and grow.

Until next time, know that the Wisconsin Idea remains our North Star, and — with your support — we’ll continue to bring UW–Madison knowledge, discovery, and inspiration to Wisconsin and the world.

On, Wisconsin!

Jennifer L. Mnookin
Chancellor

* * * *

Chancellor’s Choice

• Badgers know that winter can be a lot of fun in spite of the cold. Check out this video recap of this year’s Winter Carnival! More than 50,000 people turned out — a record number — for ice skating, sledding, broomball, and much more against the backdrop of the iconic Statue of Liberty (now in inflatable form). It takes the Wisconsin Union team about seven minutes to transform her from a pile of polyester into a monumental reminder that even though we do serious things here, we don’t always have to take ourselves seriously.
• Happy 100th birthday to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, our partner in getting discoveries out into the world and investing in UW–Madison’s future. I’m tremendously grateful for WARF’s century of support! Here’s a look back at some key moments in WARF history.
• Finally, a request for your help. The state legislature is now beginning deliberations on the 2025–27 state budget. It will have a profound impact on UW–Madison, and we have a limited window of opportunity to make a difference. You are among our most powerful advocates, so if you live in Wisconsin, I hope you’ll join fellow Badgers in asking your legislators to support UW–Madison’s budget priorities in 2025–27.