This event took place on September 7, 2023.
Full Transcript:
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SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.
SPEAKER 2: Convocation of Harvard Divinity School Harvard University at the opening of the 208th year September 7th, 2023.
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DAVID HOLLAND: Good afternoon, and welcome to Harvard Divinity School's 208th Convocation. My name is David Holland. I teach American Religious History, and I will be serving as the interim dean of Harvard Divinity School for the fall semester.
This interim moment gives us a bit of space and time to reflect in gratitude on the extraordinarily wise, humane, and tireless service of our outgoing dean, David Hempton, and to anticipate with eagerness the arrival of our incoming dean, Marla Frederick, whose appointment comes with such joy and promise for our community.
David and Marla are both cherished and trusted colleagues for whom I have great admiration and affection. We are truly a blessed and fortunate school to have the opportunity to transition from one exceptional dean to the forthcoming leadership of another. This is surely a gift for us.
And we are indeed indebted to President Gay, who is so graciously here with us this afternoon, and to her team for the care, effort, and insight with which they conducted this process of identifying and securing our next leader. President Gay and those involved in this token search have honored the best things about our past by setting us up for a beautifully bold future. My job is simply to keep the institution standing for one short semester in between.
On that topic, in a transitional meeting I had with David Hempton just before the start of the term, he must have picked up on some trepidation from me since he kindly offered the following consolation. '"David," he said, "this institution has stood for over 200 years. I don't think you can ruin this place in four months."
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At first, I was comforted by the thought but then I realized that with the lilting Hamiltonian inflections of his elocution, it's sometimes difficult to make sure whether I have interpreted those inflections correctly. I began to ruminate as is my want. It might have been, I don't think you can ruin this place in four months or it may have been I don't think you can ruin this place in four months.
After fixating on the interpretive possibilities for a while, I finally just came to the settled conclusion that if David doesn't think I can ruin this place in four months, it may just be another case of him underestimating me. But I don't think he's overestimated the strength of this community. Indeed it does, and it will endure. Not as an expression of stasis, but as a persistent place of change.
It is to such a place this afternoon that I am delighted to welcome all of you, colleagues on the faculty and staff of the Divinity School, our associates from other schools and administration here at Harvard University, all of our incoming and returning students, and our graduates and friends. I make special mention of Ralph James and Tom Stanton, who serve our community so generously through the Dean's Council.
Tom chairs the Dean's Council. And they are both recipients of the HDS Dean's Distinguished Service Award. And it is thanks to the generosity of Ralph and his family that we have this beautiful James room to gather in for events just like this.
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We are indeed grateful for all they have both done and continue to do as part of our community. There are many other distinguished visitors here for whose presence we are also profoundly appreciative. Welcome to all, and thank you for joining us.
And sincere thanks as well to the many at HDS who helped organize and manage today's festivities. Special gratitude to everyone in the Dean's office and the Office of Academic Affairs to our Communications Office, Facilities and Operations, and to our IT staff for tireless tech support and guidance.
Our appreciation also goes to our director of music and ritual, Christopher Hossfeld, and to our musicians and vocalists, including Isaiah Briggs, Dan Hawkins, Eugene Kwong, Nicole Newell, and Stephanie Hollenberg, who adorn and beautify today's celebration with their talents, beginning with that exquisite prelude music that welcomed us into this space.
Thanks also go to those in President Gay's office who have helped facilitate her participation with us today, including especially President Gay's chief of staff, Katie O'Dair, who is also generously joined us today. Thank you, Katie. Finally, I extend gratitude to the many other seen and unseen guardians of this essential and joyous event, which marks the beginning of what promises to be a rewarding academic year.
As our first order, I would like to invite Rebecca Mendoza Nunziato, one of our first year doctoral students in the Committee on the Study of Religion, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and I might add a recent graduate of HDS of whom we are profoundly proud to the lectern. Rebecca will voice our acknowledgment of the land and people.
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REBECCA MENDOZA: Hello. Good afternoon. There's a step here. That makes me really tall. OK. Welcome. Hello. And shortly, I will read the official land acknowledgment which comes from the Harvard University Native American Program or HUNAP.
"It has been adapted and used by schools, such as ours, and I thank them for the concise message. And I also want to name that this practice is not one of pride or celebration that comes from and through this institution, but rather it's a reminder of ruptured relationships and a call to all of us and those in power to prioritize the lands and the people, the stewards and caretakers who have cared for one another for millennia.
As many of us are uninvited guests or settlers in this place, I invite us to hear these words and pursue further action towards decolonization under the guidance of Indigenous leaders and elders whose knowledge and religious and spiritual traditions have been rejected for far too long. And for those of us who are Black, Indigenous, and marginalized peoples of other lands, I invite us to stand in solidarity.
Harvard University is located on the traditional and ancestral lands of the Massachusett, the original inhabitants of what is now known as Boston and Cambridge. We pay respect to the people of the Massachusett tribe, past and present, and we honor this land which remains sacred to the Massachusett people. May this acknowledgment lead to action and change. Adelante."
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DAVID HOLLAND: Thank you very much, Rebecca. In recognition of today's celebration of beginning, we invite readings from valued texts by two of our current students. First, Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, an MTS student in Religion, Ethics, and Politics, and then Ariel O'Donnell, a student in our Master of Divinity program. These readings were selected by our academic dean, Janet Gyatso, and by Professor Charlie Hallisey as their contribution to today's occasions. Elom.
ELOM TETTEY-TAMAKLO: Good afternoon, everyone. What a delight to be here with you all. So I'm going to read two passages from Dogen. The first is a Dharma Hall discourse of Dogen.
"Within this great assembly, there is a person of great enlightenment. Great assembly, do you know the person or not? If you know, meet with a teacher and inquire about the way. If you do not know, you are facing each other without recognizing each other."
The second reading would be a verse of Dongshan remembered by Dogen. "How wondrous. How wondrous. The expounding of the Dharma by insentient beings it's unthinkable. If I tried to hear it with the ears, it would never be possible to understand. Only when I hear the voice with my eyes am I able to know it." Thank you.
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ARIEL O'DONNELL: Greetings. This is a beautiful room. Thank you. I'm going to be reading a story, a Jewish story, retold by Rabbi Michael gold. "There was a Rabbi, a great scholar, and sage who filled his life with acts of piety. He knew he would be justly rewarded in the world to come. So he prayed to God to let him see who would sit next to him in the next world, who would be his study partner. And God granted his wish.
God took him to a little shop where a poor shoemaker slogged away. All day and far into the night, the man made shoes. And yet, he was poor. And yet, he seemed to have little to show for it. The shop was poor. The man never took time to study. He badly needed to bathe and change his clothes.
The Rabbi was outraged. Oh God, after all my acts of piety, this man is to be my neighbor, my study partner. What kind of Justice is this? God answered, "Go talk to the shoemaker."
The Rabbi introduced himself, and the shoemaker answered, "I have heard of your great piety. I wished I had learned-- I wish I had had time to learn with you. But who has the time.
All day I work hard to make shoes for the rich. They pay my living. And then when there is leather left over, all night, I work hard to make shoes for the poor. Nobody should be without shoes because they cannot afford them."
The Rabbi turned to God, "Ribono shel olam, master of the world, I am not worthy to sit with him."
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DAVID HOLLAND: Thank you, Elom and Ariel, for those compelling readings as preparation for the work that lies ahead and invocations of good things to come. A wonderful way to begin.
The rhythms of the academic calendar lead us through a steady cadence of beginnings and conclusions. When we gather to recognize these moments of commencement and completion, we honor our shared voyage on the currents of time and the meaning of community and our collective experience.
Our incoming class and our returning students are now in the generative process of once again reconstituting that community and we as faculty and staff happily welcome their arrival and eagerly anticipate the academic year that lies ahead. Today, we celebrate one more step on our journeys of growth and learning that have brought us to this place in this time. I am personally grateful that this chapter of this school's story includes all of you.
We are inexpressibly pleased and thankful that our featured speaker today is Claudine Gay, 30th president of Harvard University, who honors us with her presence. No one in our school is better suited to introduce President Gay than our friend and colleague dean emeritus, David Hempton, who has a long and productive collaboration with President Gay through the years when she was Dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences and they worked together through the Academic Leadership Council.
Here in a building that stands as a symbol of his lasting contribution to our community, David Hempton doesn't need a lengthy introduction. But we are delighted that he fittingly will introduce President Gay. Following President Gay's remarks, we will be graced with a rendition of "We Shall be Known," performed by Stephanie Hollenberg, Nicole Newell, and Chris Hossfeld. David.
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DAVID HEMPTON: Full house. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to HDS 208th Convocation. I've been to almost every one of them. But never in such a fine Irish day as this one. There was a day like this in Ireland in 1948, I think, it was. Yes. Anyway, it's great to see all of you here, especially you incoming students. A very warm welcome to you.
It's a very special honor and genuine pleasure for me to introduce today's distinguished speaker, Harvard's 30th president, Claudine Gay. I could not be more delighted that Claudine has honored us with her presence so early in her presidency despite a million other competing demands on her time. Thank you for being here and for being such a faithful supporter of our school as dean of Social Science, and dean of FAS, and hopefully as president of Harvard.
In the interest of time and to save her from unnecessary embarrassment, I will spare Claudine the conventional fact about her distinguished academic career as a pioneering social scientist, Harvard professor of Government, and scholar of African-American studies.
Rather, my recollections of her stem from a decade long shared service as deans at Harvard, as close neighbors in Cambridge, as unlikely early morning frequenters to the Hemenway gymnasium-- she was working out, I was in a daze-- and as collaborators in various schemes to make improvements to the intellectual landscape at Harvard.
What I have seen in those manifold encounters is a range of qualities which I know will characterize her presidency. And I'll highlight just four. The first is her deep love for the University and all its schools. Not as a reclusive protector of the privileges of the ivory tower, but as a genuine believer in the wise saying that from those to whom much has been given, much will be expected, especially in terms of service to the wider community in which we are situated. I am very confident that she will never allow Harvard to retreat into a bastion of unaccountable elitism.
The second quality is her very deep commitment to values of fairness, equity, and justice to which everyone in our community regardless of rank and hierarchy must be held accountable. I have seen her in countless meetings of Harvard deans speak on behalf of the least powerful and advocate for a culture of respect and decency in our community.
Third, she is a relentless advocate of pragmatic improvement. Always seeking to make things better, whatever the apparent obstacles or inherited self-imposed limitations might be. Annoyingly, she always shows up at meetings formidably well prepared and always eager to move from talk to action, which is somewhat unusual in universities and a little disconcerting.
Finally, President Gay is just a great person with a winning smile, a welcoming disposition, and an infectious sense of fun and enjoyment. She has already shown that she will engage the Harvard faculty in genuine discussions to improve the intellectual landscape and to address the big issues of our time with interdisciplinary rigor. She will also be a reliable and stout defender of student interests and well-being as she was as fasting during the long and very challenging COVID era.
So thank you, Claudine, for all you have done for the Harvard community already and all that you will achieve in the future. HDS is delighted to partner with you in making this University the absolute best it can be. So please, join me now in extending a very warm welcome to our new president, Claudine Gay.
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CLAUDINE GAY: Thank you. Thank you. That was very nice. Thank you. No pressure. So I was here back in the spring when we had the celebration to recognize David's extraordinary leadership. And I don't remember a lot of specifics about that event, other than the cold, but I do remember leaving feeling lifted.
And when I arrived here this afternoon and up until a few minutes ago, I was thinking about the music that greeted us, the readings, and I'm getting that feeling again. So this is just such a special place. And thank you for allowing me to be here today and celebrate the start of a new year with you.
And let me also thank David and David for that kind introduction and also just for the warm welcome today. Both of you have been so generous to the University and to its new president. So thank you.
And I just want to take a moment to just linger a bit on your outgoing dean who agreed to introduce me today because this gives me one last opportunity to thank you for your service and also just for your example to me. So David and I, as he mentioned, were deans together. And I was struck so many times by just his deep humanity-- and I know this is going to all sound very familiar to you all because you experienced this too-- by his willingness to address aspects of challenges that seemed beyond the reach of an academic leader, at least beyond the reach of all the other deans who were around the table. But he always reached.
And he taught me that reaching is necessary. It's hard, but it's necessary. That connecting is necessary. And those are some of the lessons that I'm going to carry into the future. So thank you for that. I feel very grateful that our paths converged. And I will miss you as a neighbor. So thank you again for that.
And last month, I had the pleasure of announcing Marla Frederick as your next dean, and it'll be fun to welcome her back to Cambridge. When she left in-- I guess-- 2019, I said, we're leaving the porch lights on. So we're hoping you're going to come back at some point. But I could not have anticipated that these would be the circumstances. So it's really exciting. And thank you, David, for agreeing to serve as the interim leader and to continue the generous care and attention that this community really, really deserves.
So over the course of the search process that led to Marla's appointment, I got to know you all and this community in some new ways and ways that have influenced and really enlarged my aspirations for what we can achieve as a University in the years to come. And that has been an instructive experience. You're extraordinarily diverse school demonstrates the possibility of reinvention and renewal and achieving that reinvention and renewal through really deep engagement across difference.
You know, those who founded the nation's first non-sectarian theological school in 1816 would be astounded by this gathering, again, which represents just these ever widening circles of inclusion. I know some students are here to grow in knowledge to serve others. Some are here to engage in academic and scholarly pursuits. And others want to connect their aspirations and various practical ways to ideas that exist throughout the University and beyond the University.
More than 40 faith traditions or no faith tradition at all are represented in this community. And your vision has expanded well beyond the founding from-- to quote early advocates-- "the serious impartial and unbiased investigation of Christian truth to a just world at peace across religious and cultural divides."
Here, you contend seriously with the work of belonging, work that is deeply meaningful to me, building an open and supportive culture that enables every member to thrive, which is what should be our ambition, and to contribute as much as possible to the broader educational and research mission. Your explicit commitments to cooperation, to trust, to understanding reach well beyond what is expected to grasp what's actually desired. A community that not only expresses ideals but also lives up to them. And that is work that we all need to be engaged in across the University.
You speak and act with conviction about the benefits of learning, and living, and working alongside people of different backgrounds and experiences. And in that way, you're a very powerful example for the rest of the University. And because of that, I'm hoping to find more ways of celebrating and acknowledging your commitment to one another as well as to our work together. And for me, these two things go hand in hand, really reinforcing one another and encouraging evolution and growth.
So I think, for example, about your efforts to hold up religious literacy as a prerequisite for thoughtful action and meaningful leadership. Realizing that religion runs in one way or another through much of human effort, you developed and launched the Master of Religion and Public Life Program, which I view as-- yeah.
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Which I view as a really bold statement about the centrality of traditions and values and a recognition of their influence in really nearly every sphere of human achievement. I think the complexity of this effort didn't deter you from the possibility of connecting with communities. It didn't deter you from seizing opportunities to lead and convene in ways that enhance, extend, and really honor the potential of Harvard Divinity School.
And that kind of ambition and frankly, fearlessness really resonates with me. And that, too, sets a powerful example for the rest of the University. So I hope that we can build a University that takes more chances like that, that asks why not as readily as we ask why. And your voice and the voice of the Divinity School will be essential to that effort. So yes, the collaboration and the partnership will continue well into my presidency.
So addressing climate change, understanding and combating inequality, extending and improving human life. These aspirations are deeply human, and we need to explore not only how we fulfill them but also why they are worth fulfilling. What motivates us to change? What traditions and values can and should guide us?
How can we bring these questions and the sensibilities that exist among this community to communities really across the University? How can we instill in all students the habits of mind that clearly abound here? Habits of mind that can enrich the contributions that they will make to their professions. So I look forward to exploring these questions with you all in partnership with you in the years to come.
But for now, I want to join you in celebrating the Divinity School and in welcoming in the most exuberant way possible a new academic year with the hope in the promise and the power of our mission. So may we proceed with bravery and humility and also with grace and strength. Thank you.
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STEPHANIE HOLLENBERG: Dear friends, we are so excited. Nicole, Chris, and I are excited to offer a song from the Muse, the group MaMuse. It's called "We shall be Known." And we want to invite your voices if you would love to sing along with us.
It's repetitive, and so hopefully you'll catch on and sing the melody with Nicole and the harmonies or make up your own harmonies, and you know, stand up and dance. Just whatever moves you, I invite your voices and your bodies into this space as we offer this blessing on this new year.
(SINGING) We shall be known by the company we keep, by the ones who circle round to tend these fires. We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap the seeds of change life from deep within the Earth.
It is time now. It is time now that we thrive. It is time we lead ourselves into the well. It is time now. And what a time to be alive. In this great turning, we shall learn to lead in love. In this great turning, we shall learn to lead in love.
We shall be known by the company we keep, by the ones who circle round to tend these fires. We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap the seeds of change alive from deep within the Earth.
It is time now. It is time now that we thrive. It is time we lead ourselves into the well. It is time now. And what a time to be alive. In this great turning, we shall learn to lead in love. In this great turning, we shall learn to lead in love.
We shall be known by the company we keep, by the ones who circle round to tend these fires. We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap the seeds of change alive from deep within the Earth.
It is time. It is time now. It is time now that we thrive. It is time we lead ourselves in the well. It is time now. And what a time to be alive. In this great turning, we shall learn to be in love. In this great turning, we shall learn to lead in love.
STEPHANIE HOLLENBERG: That is great.
(SINGING) In this great turning, we shall learn to lead in love. In this great turning, we shall learn to lead in love.
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DAVID HOLLAND: I love this place. Thank you for both the spirit and the substance of this gathering and for the wonderful way in which it now launches us toward the promise of the coming year. We express gratitude, especially to President Claudine Gay, to whom we offer the support of this school as she generously shoulders the burdens of leadership and wisely charts this University's course into a critical stage of its history. We are indebted to you President Gay not just for your words today but for all you have already done on behalf of this University and of Harvard Divinity School.
To all here assembled and to the larger community that you represent, I close with my very best wishes for a generative and satisfying year of study, work, engagement, and service in our ongoing pursuit of just and peaceful world. Thank you for your presence as we have renewed that commitment again this evening. To continue this celebration, please join us for a reception now beginning in the Commons directly below us on the ground floor. And thank you very much.
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SPEAKER 2: Musicians. Eugene Kwong, MTS candidate, tenor saxophone, Isaiah Briggs, MDiv candidate, drums, Daniel Hawkins, HDS chief information officer, bass, Chris Hossfeld, director of music and ritual, piano. Vocalists. Stephanie Hollenberg, MDiv candidate, voice, Nicole Newell, MDiv candidate, voice, Chris Hossfeld, director of music and ritual, voice.
SPEAKER 1: Copyright, 2023. The President and Fellows of Harvard College.