Summary
Chancellor Mnookin's remarks to graduates at the Spring 2025 Bachelor's, Master's, and Law Degree Commencement Ceremony
University of Wisconsin – Madison
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!