2026 UGIS Commencement Ceremony

[music] >> Mhm. >> [music] [music] >> Ooh. Ooh. >> [music] >> Ooh. Ooh. >> [music] >> Ooh. Ooh. >> [music] >> Ooh. Ooh. >> [music] >> Ooh. Ooh. [music] Ooh. >> [music] >> Ooh. Ooh. >> [music] >> Ooh. Ooh. >> [music] >> Ooh. Ooh. >> [music] >> Ooh. Ooh. >> [music] >> Ooh. Ooh. >> [music] >> Ooh. Ooh. >> [music] >> Ooh. Ooh. >> [music] >> Ooh. Ooh. >> [music] [music] >> Mhm. >> [music] [music] >> Good afternoon. Please be seated everyone. Including those of you in the aisles. I will remind you of this a couple of times, but the fire marshal's actually require us to keep the aisles clear today. I families and friends of the graduates, honored guests, faculty, staff, speakers, and graduating bears, welcome, welcome, welcome to the commencement for the interdisciplinary majors of the College of Letters and Science at Berkeley for 2026. >> [cheering] >> My name is Shannon Steen. I'm the acting Dean of the undergraduate division for the College of Letters and Science and a long time professor in the American Studies program. On behalf of the whole university, it is my enormous honor to celebrate with you today. Before we begin, I'd like to explain a couple of ground rules so that we can all enjoy the program today. And so with this spirit in mind, please silence your cell phones, stay in your seats, and as I mentioned, please keep the aisles clear. For this event specifically, our time, place, and manner policies apply. Berkeley is a free speech university, so please do not engage in any action that disrupts the event or prevents our speakers today from being heard. Yes. >> [laughter] >> Our ceremony today is being live-streamed. There's a link available on the UGIS commencement website, and a recording of the ceremony will be available at the same link two days from the event today. I'd also like to take one moment more seriously to recognize that UC Berkeley sits on the territory of Huichin, the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, the successors of the sovereign Verona band of Alameda County. This land was and continues to be of great importance to the Muwekma Ohlone tribe and other familial descendants of the Verona band. We recognize that every member of the Berkeley community has benefited and continues to benefit from the use and occupation of this land since the institution's founding in 1868. Consistent with our values of community, inclusion, and diversity, we have a responsibility to acknowledge and make visible the university's relationship to native peoples. As members of the Berkeley community, it's vital to recognize the history of the land on which we stand, and also to recognize that the Muwekma Ohlone people are a vibrant, flourishing members of the Berkeley and Bay Area communities today. And now our celebration. Today, we celebrate you, our graduates in American Studies, in the Interdisciplinary Field Studies major, and Media Studies. >> [cheering] >> And we celebrate your families and friends, your parents, partners, spouses, siblings, and other dear ones who have walked the road alongside you to bring you to this moment. To all of your supporting people, I want to say, "Thank you." Thank you for sharing your loved ones with us for this time. Thank you for cheering them on and helping them and inspiring them. Thank you for encouraging them when things were hard. A Berkeley degree is in some ways an individual accomplishment. The people crossing this stage today worked hard to be here, but it's also a community a communal accomplishment. You had their back, and genuinely, that makes all the difference in the world. To our graduates today, earning a Berkeley degree is no small accomplishment. You have worked your way through exams and papers and lab reports and problem sets and studio projects and theses. You navigated horribly impacted classes, and probably the universe's most infamous bureaucracy. You know how to wait in a line, and more importantly, you know how to persist to get what you need and want. And I do not kid you when I tell you you have no idea how well those skills will pay off for the rest of your life. >> [applause] >> But I hope that your path through campus has also seen joys. Walking the campus plazas or Memorial Glade on a Sunday on a sunny day, sitting with the studious hush of the libraries, swimming in one of the outdoor pools, hearing the chimes of the Campanile die on the breeze, hearing the cacophony of the Cal Band leading the crowd at one of the Bears games, or chasing ideas with other people who like to geek out as much as you do into the wee hours of the morning. Whether you've been with us for 2 years or more than four, I hope these years have been rich and transformative for you. Having you with us has certainly been rich and transformational for us, for your faculty and your staff. In this moment, I want also to take stock of the importance of the programs that you have been trained in given the state of the world today. We are truly living in a moment when the capacity of universities to generate new information and new ideas, to insist on facts, to offer these as the foundation for meeting the challenges that we have to face as a society, are under threat in ways that I never would have been able to have imagined as possible within my lifetime. And for that very reason, the work that we have done here together is more important than ever because the challenges we face are greater than ever. And if we are to meet them, we need every person who is willing to join that effort to stand up and do it. As you likely know, our motto at Berkeley And with that said, as you likely know, our motto at Berkeley is Fiat Lux, or let there be light. I think on our campus we sometimes talk about the light as part of our brilliant faculty who garner awards and accolades by the armful. But today, I am telling you, you are the light. You are the next generation that will light and carry the torch of new ideas, new information, new art, new ethics, new discoveries, new questions, without which we cannot move forward as a people. So today, I want to thank you for being the reason that people like me do what we do, for inspiring us with your passion and your commitment and care, for imagining what the next phase of ideas and the world could look like, for never stopping asking questions, for being here with us and entrusting us to this phase of your growth. It has been our honor to work with you, and we look forward to watching you go into the world. Graduations are milestones marking an enormous accomplishment. And we call them a commencement, a beginning. What we begin now is taking what you have learned here about the world and about yourselves and bringing it with you as you go forward. Some of you will take up appointment right away, some will join the Peace Corps or another service, others will go to graduate school. Whatever path you may have ahead of you, I hope you will use what Berkeley has given you to make contributions beyond yourself, to live lives of consequence. We are enormously proud of you. I hope you are equally proud of yourselves. >> [applause] >> And I now have the privilege of introducing our speaker, Professor Ramsey Fawaz. Fawaz is an award-winning queer cultural critic, educator, author, and host of the podcast Nerd from the Future, which I really hope you will check out. He is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he holds a Romnes Faculty Fellowship for Advanced Research in the Humanities. He is the author of two books, The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics in 2016, Queer Forms in 2022, and a third book in progress, Coexisting: Psychedelic Pathways to Embracing a Diverse World, all with New York University Press. And most importantly, Professor Fawaz is one of you. He is a proud graduate of Berkeley's American Studies program and English Department class of 2006. So, please help me welcome your own Professor Fawaz. >> [applause] >> Hello, hello. Look at this beautiful crowd. You're all grown up, baby. All right, it is so good to be here with you. I have so much to share and a little time, so let's get started. To say this is a full circle moment would be an understatement. I graduated from Cal with a degree in American Studies and English 20 years ago this very week. For 4 years, undergraduate and interdisciplinary studies was one of my intellectual homes, the place I made my closest friends and future colleagues, the environment that nurtured my nerdiness until it became a lifelong calling and career. It was in American studies classrooms with professors like Kathleen Moran, Richard Hutson, Christine Palmer, and Mark Brilliant, many of whom are sitting on this stage, that I became convinced I could make a living even craft an entire life out of the study of popular culture. So, to return today is not only an unbelievable honor, not only a homecoming for me personally, but I also hope a confirmation of the choices each of you has made to spend four years at Cal learning in the most innovative and unorthodox fields. For what is UGIS but a collection of the brilliant misfits, the fiercely original thinkers, and iconoclasts who could never be boxed in by the limits of any traditional discipline or single method of study? >> [applause] >> 23 years ago, I stepped into room 160 of the anthropology and art history building where Dr. Kathleen Moran's American studies course on the 1980s was about to start. I nervously took a seat in the back row, unsure if I'd want to stay enrolled, when I saw a striking woman with a shock of curly black hair confidently stride up to the stage and start lecturing. Not about Shakespeare's King Lear, not about John Milton's Paradise Lost, but about Back to the Future. You know, the classic Hollywood science fiction movie about a delinquent teenager Marty McFly who time travels back to the 50s to make sure his parents meet, fall in love, and create the family he will later be born into. Drawing from American political and media history, interpreting short clips from the movie, and bringing her own passionate and often hilarious insights into a sprawling analysis, Kathy presented us with an original argument. She claimed that Back to the Future was the quintessential 1980s movie because it depicts a Reaganite fantasy of returning to the '50s to reconstitute the nuclear family so that the radical '60s might never happen. My mind exploded into a thousand pieces. Movies have politics? Smart, funny academics study those movies? I could be the one doing the studying? As I witnessed this remarkable human being practice her craft, the art of thinking out loud in public with others, I remember thinking, "Whatever she is doing up there, that is for me." Kathy was what my dear friend and Fordham University Professor Anthony Michael D'Agostino would call a nerd from the future. A passionate smarty-pants who comes into your life with bold ideas and new ways of seeing the world that change everything. By the way, she's right there. >> [applause] >> And that is why we uproot our lives, travel to new environments like Cal, and spend years reading, writing, thinking, talking together. We go to school so that we can encounter our own nerds from the future, those mentors, companions, and confidants who open entire realms of possibility. Over the next months and years, the thrill of graduation will inevitably be balanced by humbling existential questions. Was school worth the financial cost and the mental effort? What was the point of getting a degree anyway? We're all trained in some of the stock answers to these questions. We pursue higher education to get a degree, which opens the door to professional opportunities, which leads to us making money, which looks something like what we call success or the illusion of achieving happiness and self-worth through material gain. But there is a much simpler and more profound truth about your education that leads to real joy and real contentment, the kind that sustains over a lifetime. We go to school to learn how to change and be changed in concert with others. And while we are there, we cultivate a deep love of the world. Like that's what you've been doing for the last 4 years, in case you didn't know. A love of the world is a passionate curiosity to understand the universe we share and its countless dimensions. To pay attention to the world, to spend years of your life thinking, reading about, engaging with, and responding to the world beyond your four walls, it's a form of fierce loving. Nothing truly good, valuable, or meaningful exists without those two qualities of transformation and passionate attachment. There are no healthy and sustainable friendships, no democratic life, no social cohesion, no collective action, no original thought without the ability to evolve and grow, and without a love of the world that nurtures the capacity to change in others. So the question for you is not why did I go to school or how will my degree help make me money, but how will I maintain my capacity for change? How will I resist becoming rigid, immobile, or incapable of meaningful growth? And how will I keep my love of the world alive for as long as I share this universe with my fellow earthly inhabitants? Like Kathy was to me, for the next few minutes I'd like to be your nerd from the future and share with you some of the best practices I have developed while trying to answer these questions for myself. So, from 20 years in your future, here's what I know to be true. So, start taking notes. Number one. Every one of us must become a skilled practitioner of judgment. By judgment I mean discernment, the ability to make conscious, informed decisions about what matters to you in life. Judgment allows you to tell the difference between one idea and another, between this course of action and that one, between one type of context and a radically different one. Practicing judgment means taking strong positions but holding them lightly, sharing your opinion with others and risking their disagreement, accounting for other people's perspectives while crafting your own, and changing your mind when new information productively shakes the foundation of your beliefs. To judge is not to be judgmental, superior or a know-it-all. We already have social media for that. Rather, it is to boldly and responsibly act into an unpredictable future knowing you cannot control every outcome of your decisions. It is your job, for instance, to figure out what you believe about the monumental questions of our time. Where do you stand on the problem of racism, sexism, transphobia, wealth inequality, immigration, mental health education, about the best way to parent, about your emotional needs and those around you, about what counts as the good life. Nothing, not a prepackaged social justice discourse, not a rigid rulebook of conservative politics, neither your parents' expectations, nor the demands of our culture can ever adequately tell you what to believe or how to properly respond to the realities you're going to face every day. So, in the process of deciding and clarifying your convictions, you become a true democratic citizen, someone who values choosing over obeying, action over passivity, a shared world over isolation. Two, oh. Pursue friendship as a lifelong practice. You will never know how to love authentically and fiercely, nor will you ever be able to participate in democracy without real, meaningful friendships. Friendship is built on the constant sharing of perception between equals, a willingness to witness another person in all their dimensions and to be seen in return. At every stage in your life, like a magnet, draw towards you genuine companions, people who encourage you to face difficult truths, who are willing to argue with you passionately, who can dance hard, laugh uncontrollably, and run headlong with you into an unpredictable future. If you've never had a meaningful fight with one of your closest friends about your values, emotional needs, styles of communication, or vision for the future, honey, now is the time. Do it today. DO IT AT GRADUATION. Rupture something in your relationship so you can practice repairing it. Make and keep promises, break them occasionally, be accountable for your failures, learn to forgive and be forgiven, and start over again. >> [applause] >> Friendships are what the political philosopher Hannah Arendt would call islands of certainty in an ocean of uncertainty. A social laboratory where we exercise our capacity for showing up when the chips are down. So, the next time a friend betrays your well-crafted self-image by reminding you, "Honey, grow up. Get over yourself. Stop acting a fool. Go to therapy. Get it together." Or perhaps best of all, have some self-compassion. Don't run away. Thank them again and again for the gift of seeing you clearly, authentically, when you could not see yourself. Number three. There's five, just so you know. Uh hold yourself and others accountable without moralizing. The most meaningful way you can positively influence anyone in your life is simply by modeling what you believe in the way you move through the world and how you act towards others. By holding yourself to the highest standards of personal integrity, others will organically be inspired by your example, and they'll want a taste of what you have going on. To be accountable is not only to acknowledge one's faults, limitations, or mistakes, but to actively transform one's behaviors in the direction of healthier, more loving, functional ways of being. It is matching your insight with action. If you believe in free speech, you must be willing to listen to ideas you find noxious. If you believe in freedom from coercion, you must be open to the idea that others will do things with their bodies or identities or politics that you would never consider for yourself. And if you value the fact of human diversity, then just cultivate a diversity approaches for dealing with the world's plurality. This is simply what the Buddhists call practicing right action, which is not the same as being perfect or achieving the status of a saint, but merely aiming daily to act in alignment with one's values, or just living unhypocritically. Crazy idea. Four, perceive the world as abundant and move through it with generosity. The culture of late capitalism, characterized by a mind-numbing greed, optimization, accumulation, and endless striving tells us that the world is fundamentally scarce. That material and emotional resources are rare and must be hoarded by the few. Yet, nothing could be farther from the truth. We are residents of an incredibly abundant planet. We are surrounded by millions of other persons brimming with insight, love, kindness, and generosity to spare. And every one of you is gifted with an unbelievable range of talents made to be shared with a diverse world. When you recognize these facts, you let go of grievance and resentment, you check your ego, you become eager to share the wealth, you give up on the twisted logic of winners and losers, and you endeavor to ensure that we all triumph together. When I was still a graduate student, struggling on the job market, feeling a lot of scarcity mentality, my beloved friend, the Duke University Professor Jennifer Nash, told me, "The moment you have one more iota of power in this career, you must use it to lift other people up." I have never forgotten these potent words. If you are sitting here today, degree in hand, it means you have already benefited from some of the awesome treasures of our society. When you become a news editor at The Guardian, when you become a showrunner at HBO, you media studies people, >> [cheering] >> when investors underwrite your next venture, when you become a tenured professor, when you become the director of a study abroad program, use every ounce of your newfound power to promote visionary, brilliant, capable, original talents who are smarter than you, better than you, and may never have had the opportunities you have. Share your insights, experience, knowledge, kindness, affection, and love freely. And nourish yourself with rest, emotional boundaries, sleep, friendship, and play, so that you can always feel prepared to give without running on empty. The world will have your back. Finally, five. Be guided by curiosity rather than fear, anxiety, scarcity mentality, or denial. We inhabit a totally enchanting universe, endless in its diversity of experiences, life forms, and aspects. It's a true miracle that is worth exploring in all its weirdness and wonder. And yet, our society is a deeply anti-intellectual one that often rejects critical thought, lives in denial about life's complexity, and reduces our existence to a game of winning and losing. If you valued any part of your education at Cal, from today onward, you will have to exercise the full force of your imagination to find others who want to keep having these conversations with you far beyond the classroom. Your generation, I want to remind you, has greater access to the world's natural wonders and creative products than any who have lived on this earth, and I promise you most of it exists outside of YouTube and TikTok. Not that there's anything wrong with those. Take advantage of your birthright. Watch classic Hollywood movies and experimental cinema. Read comic books. Play video games. Visit art galleries and museums. Dance at a rave. Summit a mountain. Go to group therapy. Join a political action committee. Go to a silent meditation retreat. Practice yoga. Whatever. Life is not a test you have to ace, a system you have to game, or a set of rules to be followed. It is an endless experiment whose many dimensions become more alive in direct proportion to your willingness to be of the world, to be an active, curious, creative participant in crafting this life that's going to unfold before you, rather than attempting to be on top of it as a perpetually stressed-out, cranky middle manager of your experiences. So, we have, moving towards a conclusion, judgment, friendship, accountability, abundance, curiosity. Five best practices, not rules, that cost you nothing but can gain you the world. I had just begun to learn these lessons when I sat where you are now two decades ago. But, what prevented me from accessing them fully was anxiety, perfectionism, self-doubt, the need to impress. If you struggle with any of these, as I suspect many of you do, let me end this speech with some reassurances from the future. For those anxious Annies among you, always racked with anticipatory angst, you cannot and will never be able to control the future. So, let go of the struggle. And why would you want to when all of the pleasures in life come from everything you least expect to arrive at your doorstep? For those perfectionists out there, there is literally no such thing as being perfect. So, get over it. If perfection did exist, it would be an unbelievable bore represented by the eye roll emoji. For those of you racked with self-doubt, and who among us is not, you cannot be a full agent of your life without learning to trust yourself. So, get it together. Always have faith that your unique, singular, irreplaceable viewpoint of the world, the perspective you bring to any table you join, is inherently valuable because it cannot be replicated by anyone else on this earth. And to those perpetual overachievers, I see you. I promise, no one needs you to be impressive, just incandescently yourself, your weird, specific, inherently lovable, undeniably distinct self. So, chill out. When you finally drop into these truths, you become capable of the most astonishing transformations, and your love for the world magnifies tenfold. All the fear and anxiety of uncertainty become the thrill of not knowing what comes next. It is so easy to despair in the face of so much global horror, chaos, and violence, but it has never been easy to be human, neither for you nor any generation before. Hope is ultimately found in the world's unpredictability. The simple fact that we have no idea how things will turn out, just our innate capacities to respond to the moment. So, rather than spark fear or anxiety, the future's uncertainty, its groundlessness, means that you can be an agent of your own destiny in concert with others. This is the great lesson that school taught you. And the world will remind you of this over and over again if only you would let it. So, graduating class of 2026, this is your time. Today, look to your friends, hold their hand tightly, and meet the future together. Go Bears! >> [applause] [applause] >> Thank you so much, Professor Fawaz. What a glorious address. I now have the privilege to call to the podium Dr. Christine Palmer of the American Studies program, who will introduce our student speaker, Megan Lee. >> [cheering] [applause] >> Good afternoon, everyone. It's my pleasure to introduce this year's American Studies departmental citation winner and graduating speaker, Megan Lee. I met Megan in fall 2022 when she enrolled in my course about the future. She sat in the front, fully present, alert, already thinking ahead of the conversation. After reading her work and hearing her in class, I recruited her to the major and in some ways to a way of thinking. Across the seven courses she's taken with me and two she's assisted with, because Megan has taken a class with me every semester she's been at Berkeley, I've asked her to read and write a lot. She's written on everything from lemon-flavored Jell-O to Ryan Coogler's Creed from K-pop fandoms to nihilism always with rigor, curiosity, and a sharp capacity for close reading. We've worked through Foucault Marx and Mitski. We've debated Reaganism, totalitarianism, and Michael B. Jordan's dimples. Megan doesn't just engage texts she presses on them asks them asks questions worth asking and finds what others miss. Her honors thesis is a careful exploration of the human in horror science fiction and the practice of resisting coloniality. Megan is an exceptional scholar, writer, and thinker one who embodies the interdisciplinarity that each of the graduates here today carries forward. But more than that, she is an outstanding human. Someone committed not only to understanding the world but to changing it for the better. Megan reads the world the way some people read prophecy carefully, urgently with a sense that what looks like fiction is often preparation. I am both honored and proud to invite Megan Lee to, in the words of the immortal Nina Simone tell the truth now. >> [cheering] [applause] [cheering] [applause] >> Um Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Professor Palmer, for the generous introduction. And thank you to everyone here who made this moment possible from the Zellerbach staff to the families and friends, to to the graduates who are here to be celebrated and celebrate. But before I begin, I would like to offer a few thank yous. So, to the American Studies Department, it was a privilege, sorry. Let me give you a time. It was a privilege to learn with and from you. I found my intellectual home here and I carry that with me proudly, no matter how many times I have to explain to strangers what American Studies is. To the Media Studies Department, >> [cheering] >> your work matters deeply in a world that feels increasingly confusing and mediated. As many would say, we're in a media literacy crisis, but you remind us that critical thought sustains hope. And finally, to the ISF Department, >> [cheering] >> your commitment to interdisciplinary thinking has shown me how deeply interconnected everything is and how miraculous and powerful it is to understand even a small part of that. And to my professors, Professor Goldman McBride, your care and curiosity have shaped the way I move through the world and all those who get to learn from you are the most privileged students here at Berkeley. And to Professor Cohen, who couldn't be here today, you showed me that theory is not separate from life, but a way we can imagine better conditions for us all. Professor Crackhead, thank you for your office therapy sessions and for asking again and again, is this helping? It was. And to Professor Palmer, my saving grace from the English major, you have taught me how to listen, how to think, and how to live with more love and honesty. I cannot thank you enough. And finally, to my parents, I love you and what a miracle it is for the best best parts of both of you to be passed on to me. What a miracle it is to be alive and to have you and to love you. I also want to give a brief thanks in Korean, so please bear with me for a moment. >> [cheering] >> So, now I've spent weeks trying to write the perfect commencement speech. Something profound, something unforgettable, but standing here right now with shaking hands, I'm going to speak from what I know instead. Love. I've always been drawn to the small, fragile things in life. As a child, I would cradle stuffed animals and speak to them in a language only we understood. I would pick up roly-polies from the sidewalk and move them somewhere safe. There was something natural, instinctive about that care. But as we grow older, that instinct can feel harder to access. Vulnerability becomes a risk. We learn to cage and hide the parts of ourselves that feel too soft, too exposed. And in that, something shifts. I'm sure you've felt this, too. This quiet shrinking. As a result we've learned to live as a generation defined by punishment. We ask AI to perfect our words to ensure the best grade possible. We sit in office hours wondering if we're asking the right questions. We hesitate with one another, wanting connection but afraid of getting it wrong. Punishment was then the translation of what we thought to be love. And it was safer to live in punishment than to ask questions if we could have a better world. In an interview, poet Fred Moten says, "We have to recognize that the struggle for our liberation is given in the language of liberalism." And he's right. In a time of increasing uncertainty where we're plagued by the talk of worsening job markets, increasingly extractive and exploitative practices in the global south, and an AI bubble that seems to be poised to envelop us all, the language we've inherited often feels inadequate to the moment we're in. So, what do we do when the tools we have don't feel like enough? How do we imagine something better? This is where love feels almost too simple, too small in the face of everything we're up against, a feeble little thing. But what if it isn't? What if the simplicity of love is exactly what makes it radical? I didn't always recognize the love around me, but it became visible when I made the choice to love, to pay attention to it, to participate in it. At every turn, I was either theorizing about the essentiality of love in class or witnessing my friends falling in love in bold, beautiful ways. And slowly, the softness of that love found its way into every crevice of my life until it crystallized into something hope. As James Baldwin writes, "I can't be a pessimist because I am alive." And yet, love is not uncomplicated. As another poet, Ocean Vuong writes, "Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined." To be open to love, then, is to be risked to by being changed by it, to feel both its comfort and its weight. So, love transforms us not through grand gestures, but through living a person, a moment, a feeling, a thing. Love is in the friends who hold me, in the conversations that ground us, especially the late-night, long-distance calls and Kingman rooftop chats. Love is in the professors who believed me when I could not. Love is in my parents who have loved me into existence and continue to sustain that existence. Love is everywhere and it is everything all at once. bell hooks reminds us that love is as love does. It is care, responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust. So, why do we dream in the language of struggle instead of the language of love? Why must we define our liberation through the language of oppression and not the language of tenderness? What if we developed a language that brings us back to tenderness, to love, to hope? Because even now, even amidst the crises we face, we are still here. We are still choosing every day to continue, and that choice in and of itself is an act of love. Love moves us. It connects us. It makes something visible where there was nothing before. And if that is true, then love is not weak. It is not naive. It is a force that has carried us here and will carry us forward. Which means we also have a choice. At the center of these conflicts, these fears, these anxieties, it's people. It's us. And there's no requirement that we remain complicit. Complicity looks like indifference. Complicity looks like turning away from the moment. So, we can remain indifferent, or we can care. We can retreat, or we can reach towards one another. We can accept the world for as it is, or we can insist on something better. For me, that insistent looks like this. Choosing kindness when it feels easier to withdraw. Choosing connection when it feels safer to be alone. Choosing love even when it feels insufficient. Especially then. And if love and the choice to choose it is simple, then we will remain simple. Because when it comes to love, I still have more questions than answers. Our studies have taught us to revel in the questions, the complexity, the nuance, and to not be afraid of these questions. But what I know is this. Even in moments of despair, we continue to hope. We are facing something infinite in within a finite life, and that is terrifying. It is easy to cower, but that same infinity holds possibility. As much as there's potential for harm, there's just as much potential for hope. And still, we choose hope. And this hope, it also means imagining and working towards a world that reflects these possibilities. A world without systems that rely on harm. A world that privileges the human over the machine, the person over the currency. A world without ice. A world where Palestine is free. A world >> [cheering] >> Okay. And finally, a world where we believe that being together is better than being divided. But why? I'm sure you know what I'm about to say. The answer isn't found in fear. It isn't when we punish ourselves. The answer to why we hope is found in the moments where we find grace, find refuge, find a warm kindness that gently holds us. It is in love, and it has and always will be love. Again, I ask, why? It is because we have all felt love, because we have known what it is to be held, to be seen, to be cared for. And once you know that, you cannot unknow it. So, I'll leave you this from James Baldwin. The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love, whether we call it friendship or family or romance, is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light. Gentle work, steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for one another. Thank you. >> [cheering] [applause] >> Thank you so much, Megan, for that lovely and lyrical and inspiring address. There are two more special groups of people that I know the students would want me to acknowledge today. First, I want to honor the program major advisors who have helped all our students through every stage, from declaring the major to fulfilling the requirements to graduate. Um at this point, I'd like to thank the following student advisors, and maybe they could stand up as I'm calling their names. Please hold your applause until the end when I've called all of these names. So, Laura Spouts, where is Laura? Yay! Michelle Herrera, >> [cheering] >> Laura Demir, and Chelsea Prieto. >> [cheering] >> We are enormously grateful for the generosity that all of our staff have shown to our students. And finally, I'd like to thank all of the U just program staff and our faculty, especially our core teaching faculty, all of you on the stage with me here today, including those who couldn't make it, are extraordinarily dedicated to teaching all of our students in our U just programs. Uh in a moment, we'll begin the awarding of diplomas, but first, I'd like to share a little bit of logistical information. So, again, just rules, please keep your cell phones turned off, and remember that the fire marshal requires us to keep the aisles clear. That's really important. Um we have professional photographers who are taking photos of each student when they receive their diploma and walk across the stage. So, students, the photographers will take your name cards and send you proofs of your photos unless you have opted out. Um I Yeah, and one more time, just make sure your phones are turned off and that the rows and aisles are clear so everyone can enjoy the awarding of the diplomas. So, I'm now going to invite all of the students who are graduating with honors to please stand and be recognized. Uh up, these students are noted in the program. Please give them a round of applause. And I'm going to describe our departmental citations, which are also noted in the program. The departmental citations are given in recognition of distinguished work by an undergraduate in each major, each major program may award a single citation each year. The citation recognizes excellence in the field of study primarily, but not exclusively, for academic excellence. The citation winners will be recognized as the first student to receive the diploma for each major program. So, now we'll begin with the awarding of diplomas. So, students, please wait for me to call your major and for the staff in the aisles to signal you to your They'll signal your row to stand. Um please be sure to bring your name card with you to the stage, and please be sure to return to the same seat that you are in now after you cross the stage. Um it's important to stay in line order as you line up to receive your diploma. Uh so, we will begin with American Studies. So, I'd like to invite the first row of graduating seniors in American Studies to stand and to please walk to the far right aisle. >> [cheering] >> And as they do this, I'm going to ask Dr. Sarah Gold McBride and Dr. Alexander Craighead from American Studies to come forward and to read the names of the graduates and announce the departmental citation winner. Hello. Here we go. I am so pleased to announce >> [laughter] >> the departmental citation winner for American Studies, Megan Lee. >> [applause] >> Sam Hauser. >> [cheering] >> Jules Vester Zamosky >> [screaming] >> Ando Alan Glazer Kayla Lucia Olness Martha R. Tibbles Jack Guan Noah Francisco Adaguin >> [screaming] >> Ryan Genesis Orange Brooke Honore Junior Adrian Linares Taylor Pardee Dory Cielo Miller >> [cheering] >> Charles Yusuke Allison >> [cheering] >> Henry Hammond Donald Jacinto Garcia Congratulations to all the graduates in American Studies. Congratulations American Studies majors. For the Interdisciplinary Studies field major, [music] Dr. Rakesh Bhandari, Dr. Shriharsh Sukharam, and Dr. Am Kum Rajaman will read the names of the graduates and announce the department citation winner. I now invite the first row of ISF graduating seniors to stand and again to walk to the right aisle. I'm very pleased to announce the citation winner for ISF, Nina Shantel Bonet. Revile Sidhu Robert Howard Harden Jr. Janay Keaton David Henry Atherton Mark Segawa Loralie Razon Viernes Emma Claire Nathenson Bianca Weber >> Kai Elijah Birch Riley Brash Maril Jewel Healy Jong Chan Jackie Lee Dong Guy Chu Lilly Beatrix Abbott Julia Beam Fullington Daniel John Bradbury Andrew Dennis Halley Joseph Khalid Mustafa Martina Mutheu Mupatus He Wen Mia Isabella Mitsumi Belovimi. William Carter Wyatt. Griffin Corrado Geary. Kyla Yim Lon Ju. Alexander T. Nevin. Lakey Kurokaki. Tumia Murray Newman. Monica Diaz Martinez. Amelia Grace Zander. Shanice Cole Henry. Saskia Latty Waria. Kate Ying Bishop. Eli Lucky Nujan Gallup Shalini Parekh Santana Xavier Williams Congratulations to all the ISF graduates. >> [cheering and applause] >> Congratulations interdisciplinary studies field majors. For media studies, Dr. Josh Jackson, Dr. Matthew Perry Berry >> [cheering] [screaming] >> and Dr. Meeta Rani Jha will read the names of the graduates and give out the diplomas and announce >> [cheering] >> and announce the department citation winner. So, oh. I now invite the first row in the middle section and only in the middle section, a media studies graduating seniors to [music] stand and please walk to the right aisle in order. Please look for the staff in the aisles to signal your row to stand and walk. I'm thrilled to announce the [music] citation winner, Julia Iwahori. >> [cheering] >> Emily Wang Madeleine Asset Lindsey Rose Ryan >> [cheering] >> Carolyn Madeline Marie Eades Christopher Brent Macquarrie >> [cheering] >> Amwoi Dish Eshete Isabella Sophia Nunes Lucas Chiakang Lu Ella Sophia Carter Clashie Elena Levin Yuan May Mengyoudi Shang >> [cheering] >> Jack Lawrence Curran Spencer Christian Duong Fouchet Stella Sheung Malea Michelle Cortez Kimiya Ashley Torabi >> [cheering] >> Massi Ann Calvert Charlize Chew Christian Song >> [cheering] >> Kira Summer Fukuda Cali Gimbel Carolyn E. Calabrea Ava Rhodes Mary Claire DeLee >> [cheering] [screaming] >> Lauren Kristen Bennett William Wyatt Crotty Guadalupe Vasquez >> [cheering] >> Genevieve Lana Fong Toji Sarah May Howell Samantha Bennadere Berkeley Parker Paisley Pugh Hannah Alyssa Miller Carolina Moran Allison Nicole Berry Ava Cooper Sophia Elizabeth Scott Peyton Desjardin Desjardin Portia Stephanie Sherman >> Abigail Herscue Audrey Austin Post Shaunt Garo Avakian Francesca Donya Nester Varani Flores Tara Alexandra Moradian Isabelle Cynthia Anastas Mia Katherine Newman Dominic Sayha >> [screaming] >> Taylor Bella Crochere >> [cheering] >> Shane Gonor Kiley Block Chambers Madeleine Rose Kirk Jonah Avaram Pernazar >> [screaming] [cheering] >> Michael Joseph Sidlik Matt Hansen >> [cheering] >> Morgan Rosario Dixon Danielle Nicole Frank Iman Trevor Bains Isabella Cushman Cushman Isabella Marie Gerges >> [laughter] >> Sabrina Barbosa Kristen Larson Miranda K Riley Eleanor Melia Booth Isabella Hay >> [screaming] >> Kimberley Kate Pruitt Jasmine Keilani Sanchez Sinclair Margot Westling Rhea Pothalingan Pothalinganica sorry about that Rhea Totally got that wrong. >> [cheering] >> Janelle Ann [music] Quintos >> [screaming] [cheering] >> Angelina Bala Alcala >> Esha Chhabra Nathan Chang-hee Hong Melania Woo Audrey Magdalen Gonzalez Orellana Eliana Paulson Okay. Oh, sorry. I didn't say it right. Blake Blake Plumley Brendan Joshua Gaytan Kylie Cheyenne Wallace Tara Adib Azbe Azpetia Daniela Georgina Alfar Talisa Miley Nguyen Anya Shah Solomon Daniela Veronica Castillo >> [cheering] [screaming] >> Rachel Lynn Holmes Paige Telles >> [screaming] >> Alaina Barris Jillian Hosh >> [screaming] >> Jamie Young Kim Amy Jeong Fion Chang Katie Lin Eva Audrey Nami Sin Paris Rain Usher Charlize Song Zaden Anthony Rojo Tualani Gee Joanna Alexandra Tellis Desi Friedberg >> [cheering] >> Leslie Grace Valenzuela Gabriela Martinez Calderon Roxana Hope Nourishad Emily Yen Dodge >> [cheering] >> Nanor Selby Kekejian >> [cheering] >> Justin Tyler Wong >> [cheering] >> Amy Mandy Julissa Judith Corona Mendoza Colin Chow Evelyn Arroyo Valdez Sankya Suresh Remy Shiria Nagy Dalia Lizette Escobar Irene Chu >> [cheering] >> Vera Huang Kylie Lam Mia Uyen Nguyen Nora Alfonso Christopher Reyes Kelly Eraheta Leon Denise Jessica Sanchez Valdez Beatrice Bautista Pablo Kiana George Evelyn Herday Hassell. Richard Zhang. Nathan James Slajeski. >> [screaming] [cheering] >> Ella Haley Minton. Amanda Viapando. Precious Suarez. Anja Chrissy and Maxine Ball. Isabelle Montenegro Tanesco. Jenny Wai Han. Uh Daniela Marie Tong. Meriam Cecilia Fernandez. Lissette Lupita Ortiz. William Kent Hansen. Monica Golie Hamsey. Siyoung Flora Kam. Kylie Levert Aviles Robles. Natalia Mendez Cardona. Michelle Wong. Sophia Rose Smith. Quinn Rose Hubbard Theodore Zena [music] Melissa Alexandra Rivas Rohan Narendra Gandhi Finny Feeney B Antonia M D'Auria Emily Jordan Hammel Sophia Sarah Wallace Amy Han Taylen Too J D Arellano Bautista Guadalupe Berbec Parker Jayden Clements Michelle Gutierrez >> [screaming] >> Isabella A Merino Parada Anita Almanza Emma Simone Stant Stant Natalie [music] Lore Ryan >> Mikaela Yanez Mikaela Yanez Yanez Leslie Isel Rodriguez Louise Reymar Alicia Mary Williams Slayton Ella Sophia Teke Bella JEWEL HAMILTON NORA CELESTE ALDA Ramadan >> [screaming] >> Leonie Day >> [screaming] >> Itzel Laday Bastidas Aisha Ibrahim Khazi >> [cheering] >> Caitlin V. Bui Paris Bautista Javier >> [cheering] [screaming] >> Crystal Wijaya >> [cheering] >> Jordyn Millian Wagner Edina Kurbanjohn Wicker Rosie Andrea Lee Angelina Josephine Rossetti Avery Bergman Isabella Gonzalez Craig Alan Jones II >> [cheering] >> Jewels Jimenez Leah Daniella Badi Jordan Albaugh Karina Espitia Jason John Maciel Ashley Andrea Puchkova Noel Jolie Tran Joseph Araujo >> [music] >> Emily Dorothy Barrett Miguel Angel Lopez Garcia Zoe Camille Medina Alana Turner Yamna Layli Ahmadi >> [screaming] >> Ana Maria Gonzalez Ahumada >> [cheering] >> Vanessa Anarena Macedo Prado Daniela Lynn Escalante Yaraza Jonah Kligman Jamal Katigbak Canlas Kyle Dylan Noe Dhruv Gupta Colby James Caplan Jocelyn Nicole [music] Orozco Graciela Juliana Basco Priya Angeli Mishra >> [screaming] >> Jenny Yae Luis Felipe Barbosa Alejandra Robles Dylan Christopher Cote >> [screaming] >> Hannah Sophia Eastman Anella Esperanza Siapno Hopkins >> [screaming] >> Morgan Kayla Lee Daniel Shane Shapiro Nirvan Jayamohan Vijayakumar Sophie Wayman >> [cheering] >> Shermar >> [screaming] >> Negash Lita Tran Nguyen Kaylin Nora Son >> [screaming] >> Kennedy Maya Passi Nathalie Garcia Jocelyn Rose Islas Morgan Venable Tayden Ryan Caitlin Olivia Foley Amara MCEVOY >> [screaming] >> CODY Albaniel de los Santos >> [cheering] >> Hello. I got the chi chi di ro o ga go di go di di di o ga o ga o ga I got the o ga chi di >> [cheering] >> Okay, not quite. o ga Okay, okay, sorry. Okay, we try again. Uh I got the chi di o ga FOUR >> [cheering] [music] >> THAT WAS A BIT OF A LAUGH THEN. Kennedy L Taylor >> [screaming] >> Eleanor Jonas Christine Doan >> [cheering] >> Alicia Aracho >> [screaming] >> Sophia Jewel Quan Brandon Ben Baruch Emily Dima Abide Abraham Collins Sebastian Paul Howie Duay Duay Roy Almag Michelle Nada Alharazi Liam Dew Anastasia Jackson >> [screaming] >> Jason Jason Jason Eusebio Valencia Garcia Magali and Heles Torres Diana Carino Lucero Giana Faith Codillo Kai Gabriel Gerbaka Ho Yuan Henry Ha Lilly Claire Kroll Shiyin Kaniza Huang Yifei Li Boyuan Rain Chan Elaine Jang Kailin Tong Ran Xu Shenying Li Evelyn J Kim >> [cheering] >> Ashley Saleem Ruby Elizabeth Ann Coburn Rena Makino Rikako Genchi Natsuki Iwamura Fiza Kayani >> [screaming] >> Kaitly Darlene Fuentes >> [cheering] >> Ashley Rochelle Cruz-Lopez Allison Yonje Wong Yazmin Carmen Mosin >> [cheering] >> Gladys Torres Carmona Giselle Scarlett Mejia Elizabeth Christina Gonzalez Jiayi Zhang >> [screaming] [cheering] >> Kessie Chan Ming Zhu Michelle Jing Lin Alexandra Vanessa Ramos Elizabeth Irene Green Serena McIntosh Sean Michael McCrory Jasmine Mercedes Joya Leonora Navia Don Bagahod Wada Maya Isabella Simon >> [cheering] >> Leonard Dale Magat >> [cheering] >> Wilhelm Gwyn Scholes Kyle Min Madison Paige Stewart >> [cheering] >> Haruka Shiga >> [cheering] >> Eileen Gonsini Park Eileen Eileen Ganzini Park Silawi Gonzales Garcia Sophia Sielak >> [screaming] [cheering] >> And last but not least, Sarah Kim. >> [cheering] >> CONGRATULATIONS, MEDIA STUDIES. >> [cheering] >> CONGRATULATIONS, Media Studies majors. >> [cheering] >> Could all the graduates now please stand? >> [cheering] >> Congratulations to all of you. And now, by virtue of the authority delegated to me by the Regents of the University of California, I hereby confer upon you the degree of Bachelor of Arts and all the rights and privileges pertaining to that degree. We have one more right of passage. In the day when tasseled caps were things that all students wore all the time, if you can imagine this, undergraduates wore their tassels on the right and graduate students wore them on the left. So, graduating seniors, please make sure your caps have the tassels on the right. And please turn around to face your family and friends. >> [cheering] [applause and cheering] >> Take a moment to feel the love in this room from everyone who brought you to this moment. >> [cheering] >> And now, please move your tassels from the right, in true Berkeley fashion, TO THE LEFT. >> [cheering] [cheering] >> AND THAT CONCLUDES our commencement program for 2026. Congratulations, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. There is no formal recession, so please exit the theater safely and meet your loved ones out on the plaza outside. Thank you, everyone. >> [cheering]