Hello, graduates and all of the family members,
loved ones, and friends who are sharing this moment with you.
It is my absolute honor to be here
and to congratulate you on behalf of the American Medical
Association.
Firstly, by means of honoring history and centering people
who have been historically excluded, marginalized,
and colonized, I want to acknowledge
that we are all living off ancestral lands of Indigenous
peoples.
Specifically, the land that you are all gathered on today
is the original homeland of the Massachusett people.
I want to also acknowledge the extraction of brilliance,
energy, and life for labor forced
upon people of African descent for more than 400 years.
We celebrate the resilience and strength
that all Indigenous people and descendants of Africa
have shown and continue to show in our cities, country,
and world.
So today, you become graduates of a powerful and long-standing
institution, an institution with a history that
stretches back well before the formal creation of this nation,
known for its great accomplishments
and influential national and global leaders
and advocates, especially for health and justice.
This is a legacy absolutely to be proud of.
With this legacy you now carry comes great responsibility,
opportunity, and privilege for the institution and for you
as leaders in the health ecosystem,
the responsibility to listen for and be
accountable to unearthing and knowing
the complete truths of the lives of the people
and communities you will work with
and the institutions you will work for.
This legacy brings the opportunity
to lead courageously, to speak your truth,
and to always be and do better with genuine and loving
humility.
And it also provides you the privilege, earned and unearned,
to use this new power that you will have
to shape a more just society.
You all have persevered through this tough time, some
of the toughest moments in recent history
on our planet, moments that have tested
all of humanity's bodies, hearts, and spirits, literally.
You have experienced the worst pandemic of a lifetime,
a divisive presidential election-- although,
it seems so long ago--
punctuated by its violent aftermath,
sustained protests in response to persistent police
brutality, continued and escalating hate crimes
towards historically harmed communities, Asian, Black,
LatinX, Jewish, and transgender.
You've seen deliberate and ongoing family separation
at the US border, causing irreparable harm
to children and families, persistent gun violence,
and lately, the threat of stripping
women of their God-given right to choice and power
over their bodies.
These all have endless health consequences
and all represent loss of human rights, freedoms,
and overall optimal health for all people
to equally live out a personal and collective vision of joy,
peace, and love.
And these moments serve to elucidate the consequences
of individual and systemic injustice in our country
and reconfirm America's stronghold of false notions
of hierarchy, of human value based on skin color, class,
gender identity, sexual orientation, religion,
physical ability, and country of origin,
as well as other identities.
I recently was afforded the opportunity
to deliver a keynote on the legacies of the Holocaust
and their implications for health equity today.
To support connecting some of the dots,
I drew from Isabel Wilkerson's groundbreaking book, Caste,
The Origins of Our Discontents.
It revealed to many of us the reality
that much of what Nazi Germany developed and implemented
towards its genocide of Jews emulated the tactics
and strategies of terror used to preserve
harmful narratives of false hierarchies, supremacy,
and even replacement, especially related to race, class,
and gender in the United States culture, systems,
and structures.
Basically, the Nazis got their blueprint
from a segment of our own US political,
as well as science and health, leaders,
who were predominantly men, white, and of great wealth
and influence.
Imagine, just imagine, if the world could instead
learn from us, to fully, more honestly, transparently,
and optimally operationalize and live out our written ideals
of equal rights and justice.
And some of you and our colleagues
may still be questioning, why are
human rights and justice my work and my responsibility at all?
Isabel Wilkerson shared in Caste, "Many people may rightly
say, 'I had nothing to do with how this all started.
I have nothing to do with the sins of my past.
My ancestors never attacked Indigenous people,
never owned slaves.'
And, yes, not one of us was here when this house was built.
Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it,
but here we are, the current occupants of a property
with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures
built into the foundation.
We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it.
We did not erect uneven pillars or joists,
but they are ours to deal with now."
And kudos to Harvard for dealing with its own history
and recently launching restorative justice efforts
for your past contributions that upheld
the institution of slavery.
That is to be commended greatly, and it
serves as a call to action for others to follow,
and they will.
You, too, as you move forward in your career,
will need to continue to interrogate and question.
How do you ensure your efforts, programs, policies, tools,
and systems do not discriminate, exclude, harm, deny,
or exacerbate inequities?
How do you disrupt the beliefs and actions
that undermine justice?
What kind of alliances, infrastructure, and systems
changes are necessary?
All of these provide meaningful direction
to learn different truths, expose what has often
been made invisible, and add a sense of humanity
to the existing scientific evidence base
that our profession of health so values.
When I think about these questions and actions,
they're revolutionary.
By that, I don't mean new or innovative,
but rather, quote, "an evolution of our consciousness
and responsibility," end quote, as stated by civil rights
activist Grace Lee Boggs, who passed at the age of 100
in 2015.
In her describing of revolution, she
says, "People must not only struggle
against existing institutions.
They must make a philosophical and spiritual leap
and become more 'human' human beings.
In order to change/transform the world,
they must change and transform themselves."
As health professionals, the idea
of being revolutionary for the sake of society
may sound risky, even contrary to what you've been taught.
However, how we understand what shapes health,
how we talk about it, what we do,
is begging for a revolution for the evolution of our individual
and collective selves and society.
As you step into this next phase of your personal, educational,
and professional journey and a space of power, reward,
and responsibility, I ask you to consider these possibilities.
First, you must remember, we are all born equal,
and health is our human right.
I truly believe you will all need
to embrace joining the health workforce in ways that
facilitate system building rooted in values
of equity and justice.
Getting to equity and justice are not zero sum realities
that continue to create a set of winners and losers in health.
You have the opportunity to reimagine, dismantle,
decolonize, redesign, and reconstruct the health
and public health systems through a vision that
reclaims a much broader understanding of health.
Therefore, we must hold our own selves
accountable to each other and accountable to treating people
equitably with dignity and with a vision that centers health,
racial, and social justice, humanizes yourself, and affirms
human rights and embraces joy.
The second possibility to consider--
Bryan Stevenson, lawyer and head of the Equal Justice
Initiative, says we must get proximate
to people who are suffering.
Which means we must prioritize and integrate the voices
and ideas of people and communities experiencing great
injustice and who have been historically exploited,
excluded, deprived of needed resources that are needed
to thrive, whether they are communities of color, women,
people with disabilities, people with low wealth,
people who identify as LGBTQ+, and those in rural and urban
communities alike.
This is not only for those who serve and who we serve,
but also for those colleagues of ours, practitioners
and scholars, we work with that have
been actively and historically discounted and marginalized.
Another possibility I put forth to you to consider--
to seek the truth and to not be silent when you know the truth.
The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth
upon them, as stated by Ida B. Wells.
And to be silent is deadly, continues James Baldwin.
Develop a critical consciousness that seeks truth
in all of its complexity.
Challenge dominant and malignant narratives
that tend to obscure responsibility.
A critical component of our work in health,
and as conscious human beings in this world today,
is to deepen our understanding of the histories
and the stories and narratives that surround us,
that guide our thoughts and influence our actions, and are
in our institutions of practice in the so-called traditions
of medicine and in our communities of learning
and service.
A fourth possibility to consider is
remember that health is political,
and there is a need for public health and health care
to have an explicit political voice.
Doing so means that we are going to have
to expand our public voice and partner with folks in media,
cultural strategists, federal and state
and local governments, and others across the health
ecosystem.
Many of you are already leading and using your voices
to advocate for change, social justice, a better country,
a better world, better global public
health and health systems.
And I encourage you to continue doing so
and to encourage your fellow students, mentors,
and teachers, graduates, to do the same.
The world, in many ways, is looking
to public health and health care and their communities to lead.
Your advocacy, whether within systems' walls or outside
of them, on behalf of others and yourselves,
is credible and crucial.
And lastly, the sixth possibility
to hold and consider, give yourself
permission to feel and experience joy,
to cry, to laugh, and to love.
Try not to over-intellectualize the realities and expressions
of harm, joy, and love, as we tend
to do in many of the science-based professions.
Empathize and feel.
This is not a weakness.
It is being human and allowing yourself
to show up as a full human being, capable of doing
amazing things.
Ultimately, you are going to have
to choose how you are going to show up in your career,
with the grace and understanding that your choice will evolve
over time.
You are going to have to find out
what gives you purpose beyond a piece of paper
and the additional letters after your name and answer questions,
such as, what is going to give you
hope to persevere and to push through?
I'm evolving as a physician and as a leader
and how I'm choosing to show up.
It is changing.
My advocacy skills have sharpened and quickened
on behalf of patients, physicians,
my teams, my mentors and myself, my family and friends.
My voice is more powerful, clear,
and strategic in finding ways to move souls and hearts
to deeply care and to truly understand
and seek to understand.
Former surgeon general, Dr. David Satcher,
has recently expressed, "We need leaders
who care enough, who know enough, who will do enough,
and who will persist in the effort."
And so our collective and bold revolutionary path
forward must seek to pivot from ambivalence to urgent action,
from euphemisms to explicit conversations about power,
racism, gender, and class oppression,
forms of discrimination and exclusion.
We must move from passive to specific action, supported
by resource redistribution and infrastructure change,
from rationalization and good intentions
to comprehensive analysis of structures, systems, policies,
and practices leading to real change and impact.
And we must move from the lack of accountability
to an active embrace of equity and justice
as a core mission and strategy to all we do.
I'm excited for all of you today,
and I truly look forward to the leadership of your class.
To quote Grace Lee Boggs, again from her written work,
The Seeds of Change, "These are the times to grow our souls.
Each of us is called upon to embrace the conviction
that despite the powers and principalities
bent on commodifying all of our human relationships,
we have the power within us to create the world anew."
So a huge congratulations to all of you.
I wish you the best in life.
Enjoy this moment together.
Stay connected with one another.
And thank you and take care.