I’ve really been looking forward to saying these two words:
Hello, doctors!
[APPLAUSE]
Let’s do it one more time, like bigger and
better, ready?
Hello, doctors!
Congratulations on your hard-earned achievements
and on getting to wear these very funny clothes.
Now I know many of you have worn academic dress before, because as degree-earning goes,
you are a pro—but some of this is probably new to you, as it was to me.
So according to the Intercollegiate Registry of Academic Costume, this is a tam.
It is not simply a hat.
Tams are based on the 16th-century Tudor bonnet.
At Brown the tam is only worn for the highest of degrees.
And although you may have worn a tassel before, the gold tassel is reserved only for those
entitled to wear the doctoral gown.
All of our hoods are blue, because blue is the color traditionally assigned to philosophy—and
you are, after all, becoming a doctor of philosophy.
So I just did what grad students do best: learn something new and then explain it to
someone else.
And this is a theme I’ll return to shortly.
For some of you, this is the first of many times that you’ll wear the quirky costume
of a doctor.
For others, it will be the only time.
Both of these are momentous occasions.
Class of 2019, you’ve done a lot to earn the right to wear these clothes.
So give yourselves a round of applause.
You documented the emerging queer subculture in India; investigated the effects of climate
change in tropical forests; explored the role of performance in learning foreign languages;
and evaluated the hydrology of a young planet Mars.
That is amazing.
And I know there are so many more incredible projects that I don’t yet know about.
But let me ask you this:
on the road to this moment, how many of your friends and family
outside of the Brown bubble have asked you what it is that you’ve been doing these
last 5 or 6 or 7 years?
Today many of them are sharing Brown with you for the very first time, on the very last
day of your time here.
As you celebrate this achievement today with friends and family, have you considered just
how you are going to communicate to them not only the value of what you have accomplished
but also literally, what you did all this time in Rhode Island?
My PhD is in archaeology and I can tell you right now that I have a whole lot of relatives
who think I’ve spent the last 6 years learning how to dig the perfect hole.
If you can’t articulate your PhD project to your grandma, how will you explain its
value to your neighbor?
To your local community?
To persistent strangers on the Internet?
Because you should want to do this—we all should.
In our current moment, the ecosystem of higher education is in crisis.
And I don’t use that word lightly: an increase in skepticism of scholarly expertise; the
spread of misinformation when the science clearly says otherwise; doubts about the value
of academic work in the “real world”; and cutbacks in research funding.
Whether you’ve decided to enter academia or have chosen another path, transparency
and dialogue about what we do as PhD holders is essential to making our work, and the institutions
in which we do it, accessible.
Will all that work you did here at Brown stay in your academic world or the career you’ve
chosen to pursue?
Or will it have legs?
We got all dressed up this morning and processed through a monumental gate, in a group led
by a man in a top hat and a woman in a giant gold chain.
To the outside world, this looks like a place of privilege.
And it is.
We’ve had that privilege.
We know what universities often feel like for the local communities that surround them:
like places apart from their own experience, places where the knowledge comes from.
But not necessarily welcoming places—or places that engage with anyone outside the
system.
How do we change this?
It starts with us not as scholars, but as publicly visible members of our communities.
It’s up to us to demystify higher ed, to redeem it from its crisis and to make it truly
impactful.
In my second year here, I participated in a program called Think Like an Archaeologist.
Students in my department spend part of the semester teaching 6th graders in Providence
public schools.
We’re not trying to turn them all into little archaeologists; we’re just there to teach
them why it’s important to study the past, and also to teach them how to make maps.
I hadn’t been in a middle school since I was in middle school.
But doing this was like my initiation into this city.
That semester I became a citizen of Providence.
It made me realize that these kids are also part of my community.
Just because they aren’t on campus, doesn’t mean that I don’t have a duty to them, in
the same way that we all have a duty to each other.
Many of our fellow PhDs have understood that we have a responsibility to folks outside
of Brown and our disciplines, and they’ve found lots of creative ways to counteract
the crisis.
Do you know about Skype a Scientist?
500 Women Scientists?
Or our very own home-grown career-mentoring network, founded by a team of Brown PhDs,
called Inventing Heron?
One of our fellow PhDs goes on Reddit and serves as a resident expert in his field.
Maybe that doesn’t seem like the right venue for your energy.
Or maybe you don’t know what Reddit is, in which case, consider yourself lucky!
But what about one of our anthropologist colleagues who has lent his expertise in radio interviews
for NPR?
The dozens of graduate students who’ve done public talks for Research Matters!, which
anyone can access on YouTube?
The students who have taught in the prison system.
Or the neuroscientist who leads Nerd Nite Rhode Island and creates cartoons to explain
complex topics in her field?
These efforts are one in the same.
They reach different audiences, but they’re a form of public practice and a means of both
demystifying the PhD and making a tangible impact on those outside of the higher ed system.
I recently faced my toughest audience yet:
fourth graders.
Far scarier than my committee, they were video chatting with me from their classroom in Pierce
City, Missouri, and they had lots of questions that made me think.
It was a chance for me to respond to their interests, and to learn how my field is viewed
and understood by others.
Engaged scholarship is a dialogue, not a one-way street.
Talk to people about what you did here.
It was hard!
You earned it!
Academia produces progress but also struggle and self-doubt.
I challenge you not just to own your topic, but how you got here.
Because we can’t expect others to follow in our footsteps, or to follow our logic,
if we don’t humanize and demystify the PhD.
Let’s start here.
Right now you’re probably sitting next to someone you don’t know.
And you’re going to be sitting next to them for the next hour.
But by the time you leave this tent today I hope you’ll have taken the opportunity
to tell them a bit about your work in a way that someone outside of your field can understand.
Consider this your first round of practice.
As you walk around this afternoon in your tam and your hood and your gown, people are
going to congratulate you.
Random people on the street.
Because you look the part.
So I encourage you not just to say thank you and keep walking, but to stop for a minute
and tell them what you did and how you got here, and why it matters to you, to your field,
and to the rest of us.
Do what grad students do best.
You learned something new.
Now, explain it to someone else.
Congratulations again, class of 2019!