Harris Honors Class of 2020 in Virtual Convocation

With a reminder of the “profound impact that policy decisions have on people’s lives,” particularly amid ongoing civil unrest and a global pandemic, 435 University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy students graduated in a virtual ceremony on June 13.

The Harris graduation ceremony, like the university’s entire 533rd Convocation, was shared virtually with a global audience after the University made the difficult decision not to hold ceremonies on-campus as part of COVID-19 prevention measures.  Graduates will be invited back to campus to fully participate in next year’s Convocation, including a dedicated in-person ceremony to celebrate the accomplishments of Harris’ Class of 2020.

“In many ways,” Harris Dean Katherine Baicker said in a special pre-ceremony message, the world that students are graduating into “has never seemed more troubled.”

The COVID-19 crisis continues as do the protests that have followed the slaying of George Floyd, a Black man who died at the hands of a police officer in Minneapolis in an incident caught on video.

“The brutal killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police is all the more tragic because it is not an isolated event,” Baicker said. “It’s symptomatic of a legacy of racism, discrimination, brutality, and injustice.”

“Black lives matter and public policy can make a difference in dismantling that legacy,” Baicker added. “We all have work to do, starting here at Harris.”

“None of us,” Baicker said in her message, “could have imagined this pandemic that prevents us from celebrating in person together — and poses so many difficulties for each of us individually and for our communities.”

“Though COVID-19 has shut down entire industries, transformed higher education, and upended our lives, it serves as a reminder of the importance of the task to which you have set yourselves,” Baicker said, adding that the pandemic and the ensuing public health and economic crises “demonstrate the profound impact that policy decisions have on people’s lives.”

“These are unprecedented times, but you’re prepared for what lies ahead,” she told the graduates, who are invited to take part in next year’s in-person convocation. “Your class doesn't just represent a landmark in Harris history — as one of the largest and first to join us at the Keller Center —  but you’ve also demonstrated resilience and leadership in blazing trails for those who will come after you.”

The ceremony also included prerecorded remarks from Jeremy Edwards, Senior Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs at Harris; graduating student speaker Luis Recalde Ramirez, MPP’20; and alumni speaker Daniel Ash, AM’94, the associate vice president of community impact at The Chicago Community Trust.

Edwards urged graduates to make an impact and to use what they’ve learned to “do good.”

“We all find ourselves in a bizarre and uncertain world at the moment, and there are certainly needs right now that demand your attention,” he said. “As a recipient of a diploma from the University of Chicago, you now carry an obligation, forever, to be a driver of serious and positive influence in the world. You now possess skills that give you that power. And you can identify problems that many others cannot, and you can also find the answers that many cannot.

“I encourage you to translate your skills and experience here at Harris into something useful and positive for as many people as you possibly can. I encourage you also to be the people now that insist on better — in every way. Be the last people to accept things as they are — and be fearless.”

Recalde — who acknowledged and thanked his family members watching the virtual ceremony from their home in Paraguay — told fellow graduates they “are making history.”

“The fact that we are having a virtual graduation,” said the Fulbright scholar and former Harris Student Government vice president, “makes our Class of 2020 extra special. There is no way we will be forgotten.”

But he also noted the difficulty of the current “challenging times” and saluted his classmates — “all part of the great 2020 Harris community” — for showing strength and resilience.

“Over the past three weeks we have all grieved and protested the unjust deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and many other black Americans. We have expressed our anger against racism and discrimination. We have repeated countless times that no one should ever, ever suffer from hate and violence because of the color of their skin.

“On a personal level, this was a profound learning process, a process in which I was taught to listen when I had to listen and to speak up when I had to speak up.”

Ash, in remarks that recalled his 1992 arrival at Harris and resulting life-altering experiences, also touched on the need to speak up when faced with injustice.

“From the moment I was invited [to speak] by Dean Baicker,” he said, “my thoughts have drifted back to my years [at Harris]. Of course, such reflection at this time of year is common but undoubtedly deepened by the current state of our human existence — a global pandemic, economic uncertainty, a relentless civic discourse that brilliantly mirrors the ‘distance’ that has grown among us for many, many decades.”

To illustrate a “particularly impactful” Harris experience, he described a walking tour he and fellow students took through the near West Side’s Little Italy neighborhood for a class taught by Professor Pastora San Juan Cafferty. Their neighborhood tour guide chattered with pride about history and landmarks and the Chicago skyline but went silent when the group walked through the Jane Addams Homes, a former low-rise public housing development on Taylor Street then filled, Ash said, with mostly black families. There, Ash said, the docent went silent, as did the residents and the students.

“Our guide’s silence that day was as deafening as hate speech,” Ash said he later told the professor, “and I could never again allow such a moment to go unchecked.”

That “painfully silent walk through the Jane Addams Homes nearly three decades ago,” he added, “reflects the same brutal truth revealed today by the COVID-19 pandemic,” which is having a disproportionate impact on minority communities.

“Historic and current patterns of racial and ethnic segregation in Chicago — and many other North American cities — have created enormous canyons of distance among us. And many of us continue to ignore it and remain silent.”

“Your special talent,” he told graduates, “is that each of you has the ability to give voice. You understand statistical and economic data better than most. You’re adept at analysis and communicating what you learn. And, most importantly, you have within you the courage to speak across the canyon.”

“Mr. Harris, our school’s namesake, said it plainly: ‘We must use the tools at our disposal ... to understand the causes of social failure and weed them out.’”

“You,” he told graduates, “now have the tools. You may find, ultimately, that your most important one is your own voice.”

Baicker, while noting “signs of optimism in the progress” made on social issues in the weeks since Floyd’s May 25 slaying, also emphasized the need to confront inequity. “I hear policy-makers talking about options on which they’ve been silent for far too long,” she said.

“There is hope for a better world,” she said, adding: “I hope that you’ll take some time to celebrate the accomplishments of our graduates, but that we’ll all dive back in together to that hard work to make the world a better and more just place.”

Related Content:

The 533^rd Convocation programs can be watched again on YouTube here:

The Harris School of Public Policy

The University of Chicago