Chris Duffey, best-selling author and leader in artificial intelligence, was the undergraduate commencement speaker.
I was having trouble logging into the Scoop Wiki, so will place the transcript of his speech below.
The video of the speech can be found here -
Good afternoon everyone. It is great to be home, it is great to be back. It has been a number of years. We have much to discuss and I acknowledge that. Good afternoon to President Ah Yun, the Board of Trustees, distinguished faculty and most importantly to the class of 2026.
It is an honor to be here with you today. Graduates, when I look across this arena, I see a historic class. I also see the thousands of individuals, each with your own story of purpose and perservance. Each an inspiring example of the Marquette spirit.
So individually and collectively congratulations on this defining moment.
To the families and the loved ones here, the degree each of these students receives today will bear their name, but it will carry your fingerprints. None of this would have been possible without your love and your support. So graduates, please join me in a round of applause for the people who have cheered you on throughout these years.
And to my mother and to my sister and to my friends of the class of 1996, thank you for being here as well. My roomate is here from 96. Thirty years ago, I don't know where the time went, but some things are timeless. The late night Real Chili, the wind off Lake Michigan sweeping across Wisconsin Avenue. The frantic run to class when you should hvae left 5 minutes earlier. And that first load of laundry that came out a color no one saw coming. Only at MU.
So, I'm a proud, very proud Marquette alumni. But that word alum tells only part of the story. For my family, Marquette is a lineage. In 1926, my grandfather William R. Duffy, founded the school of speech here. He co-wrote Hail Alma Mater, an anthem that has echoed through these halls for over 100 years. My father and sister are also alums, for over 50 years, my father held season tickets for Marquette basketball. He truly loved nothing more than watching us play Notre Dame, and of course beating Notre Dame. So, blue and gold truly run deep in our viens.
But the first time I walked on campus was not in an arena like this. I was in a small, quiet classroom, 5 years old, here for speech therapy, in the very school my grandfather had founded. As a child, I had some trouble talking and speaking. I remember what it felt like to have so many thoughts that I couldn't get out. I didn't know if anyone would ever truly hear me. Years later, I returned to Marquette as a student. This university built on the convictions that ever person carries a voice meant to be heard, helped me find mine. And I know it helped many of you as well.
Marquette doesn't just educate students, it forms leaders, this is the enduring promise of the Jesuit education you have received. To form a whole person, for a prupose larger than ones self. It teaches us to be the difference, to lead with conviction that does not merley keep pace in a world in motion, but directs that momemntum to serve the common good. It is is the calling more enduring than any measurable success, because it is rooted in immearuseuable meaning. Class of 2026, Marquette has given this gift to a 144 graduating classes before you. And I believe it will burn brighter in your hands than any other generation before you. For your generation, this gift has never been more essential.
And here is why. Your entering a world at a time of consequential change. In fact the Jesuit tradition itself emerged duinrg another great transformation in human history. A moment shaped by the printing press, scientific discovery, global exploration and profound questions about humanities role in the changing world. And in that era, the Jesuit education took shape not merley to transmit the knowledge, but to form leaders like yourself capable of navigating the human complexities with judgement, integrity and purpose.
Today, once again, humanity stands at such a moment. History used to move forward in cycles that took generations. Now it can shift in the time that it takes to refresh your feed. A period of change moving with such a velocity that out paces the familar rhythmns. So, what does that mean for you? How does one prepare to succeed in a future that never stands still? And here is the answer, you already have, you went to Marquette. And at a time that asks you to navigate complexity, Marquette has already given you something enduring, the foundation of something timeless and that is wisdom.
By some estimates, you will make 35,000 decisions today alone. 12 million this year, 1 billion in a life time. That is the staggering scale of your agency. Ever decision we make, however small, however large, carries within it the full weight of the world we are building together. This is why wisdom is paramount and wisdom lives in this room today.
Today human capabilites expand in an unprecented way, opening new possibilites for how we learn, how we create, how we serve and how we lead. But possibliity, no matter how vast, still requires purpose, so, while much of the conversation focuses on what is possible, I want to focus on something deeper, the deeper responsibliity between us. I want to talk about the voice that gives the power its meaning, the capatblity to not just call out a problem, but to also go forth with the solution. I want to talk about you, because you are the people who will decide, not what we create, but how our creations are meant to serve us in the future.
The world needs leaders like yourselves, ethical, principal, human. Leaders who not only understand the moral gravity of that responsibility, but also the honor of carrying it. There are many ways this wisdom becomes visible as the human difference. Today I would like to focus on three that will shape your generations place in history.
The first is discernment. It is the capacity for moral vision. The ability to look outward with clarity, pause before the first available answer and recognize the complexity that others rush past.
In times of rapid change like this, our greatest challenge is rarley uncertainty, it is the pull toward false clarity. The reflexive impulse, the path is clear, the choice is obvious and the complexistiy is already resovled. But that is not what this moment asks of you. It asks for something harder. The patience to pause and the discipline to decide wisely.
You have been given the enduring tradition of discernment, this capacity to weigh what can't be easily measured and arrive at a judgement worthy of the moment. The decision that shapes lives demands more than quick calculation, they ask us to align and what we can know within what we must consider, consequence, dignity and moral responsibility.
So in the years to come, across every vocation represented here, many of those decisions will be entrusted with you. When they are, do not simply present what is possible, consider what it will set in motion, bring your judgement to bear, your ability to find the path when none seems clear is what the room needs most. Be the wayfinder, show us the way forward, because the future needs your discernment.
And we also need your vigilance. At the heart of this campus, at the St. Joan of Arc chapel, there is a stone behind the altar that legend says Joan of Arc once kissed. It is said to remain colder than all the other stones around it. No one has fully explained why, but it gives us an image worth carrying with us.
Not ever conviction should take its temperature from the room around it, that is why vigilance turns inward, to have the hardest conversation, the one many times with ourselves. It asks us to question our own certainity, before it hardens into an assumption. In a world of relenteless information, the danger is not knowing too little, it is being so certain, that you stop asking.
When the volume of inputs obscure insight, vigilance becomes the strength. To sit with the unkonwn, that is the will to be the depth seeker, to move beyond our own certainty, uncover the deeper truth inside the problem and carry that insight far enough to find the answer. Then, and only then, do you commit, when the answer has earned your resolve.
At Marquette, we again are taught that reflection and intellectual integrity are life long pursuits. They are not destinations we reach, but practices we must sharpen every single day. It is this discipline to beomce the author of your own convictions. And it is this obligation that no one can carry for us.
As you shoulder that duty and responsibility, let compassion be the force that directs your resolve as well. Not for your self, but for the person standing before you.
When I was a student here at Marquette, I was a classmate of Jim Foley. One semester Jim and I volunteered as tutors at a local middle school. During one of our sessions, a student told Jim how much he liked his shoes. Without missing a beat, without a second thought, Jim gave that student his shoes. At Marquette, we are formed by this principal of cura personalis, care for the whole person. Jim just didn't understand it, he lived it. He knew that to teach and to lead you must recognize the diginity in ever person you meet. And you must be willing to sacrafice for it. There is an essential logic in that.
If you never give up your shoes, you never have to feel the ground beneath your feet. The lesson Jim taught me and the lesson Marquette has taught all of us is that the most enduring leadership is not found in what we accumulate, but in what we give unconditionally.
It is this decision to give yourself without expecting return, this is a level beyond empathy. It is the will to be the hope walker, to be the person who doesn't just feel for another, but walks beside them. Like Jim, it is a choice to see someone struggling to find their footing and to lend your strength to lift them up until they can walk on their own. Because compassion just doesn't move us to act, it moves us together. And that, all of that is what you carry out of this room today.
So every age has been defined by what humanity has harnassed. Nature, energy, information and now intelligence itself in many ways. But the wisdom age is different. The frontiers not only outside of us, it is within us and between us. Not more for oneself, more for the world. The deepest form of mutual flourishing is something we create with one another.
Human wisdom does not merley keep pace with the intelligence we create. It leads it. That is why this transtion of fundamental truth emerges. Invocation will reveal what can be done, but only you can decide what should be done. And you through these four years at Marquette are formed for this calling and equal to its demands.
As the landscape evolves, the human difference remains your most enduring advantage, the source that will give you our power, meaning and purpose. You have been given something rare, the wisdom to see the right path and the resovle to walk it with conviction. And that leadership moves us, moves all of us forward.
So class of 2026, the world needs your leadership. When the world is moving too fast to see the path, that is when we need your discernment. When assumption undermines the search for truth, that is when we need your vigilance. And when the weight of it all feels insulation easier than connection, that is when we need your compassion, most of all.
One hundred years ago, my grandfather stood on a campus as the dawn of a new era of human expression. He believed so deeply in the power of the human voice that he helped build an instution around it.
Today, you and your classmates stand at a different dawn. The world has never needed your voice more. It begins here in this room on this day with this class and here you are. Your voice carries meaning and you now hold the wisdom to decide what kind of world we create.
One of Marquette's most beloved tradition after every stunning victory and every stinging defeat, we Ring Out Ahoya. To ring out is to make your conviction heard. Only you have the ability to feel the ground beneath your feet, only you can decide what should be done, only you can ring out. So go forth, ring out, be the difference, give wisdom to voice.
Thank you everyone.
Don't have time to read it now, so if someone wants to highlight the cliff notes for me, that'd be awesome.
Only saw that he was an ai guy. Is this as bad as the google ceo who told all the graduates their degrees were worthless now?
I was at the UCF graduation where the idiot speaker touting AI to the Arts and Humanities college went viral.
She graduated from Arizona. What a difference a Marquette education makes! (Excluding dental school of course)
Man that would suck to find out your 4 year college education was obsolete before you even started your career.
I thought that was a 4 year vacation.