President Michael S. Roth ’78: ’Expanding Your Circles of Curiosity and Wonder Enhances Your Lives’
In his Commencement Address to the Class of 2026, President Michael S. Roth ’78 reflected on the broad benefits of students’ liberal education, including building resilience, enhancing curiosity, and fostering political engagement.
“…By expanding your capacities for wonder and for finding people with whom you can flourish, you have learned to think for yourself while working with others,” said Roth, Wesleyan’s 16th president and a professor in history and the humanities. “This enables you to pursue meaningful action in good company; this enables you to practice freedom.”
Roth made the following remarks at Wesleyan’s 194th Commencement on May 24:
Members of the Board of Trustees, members of the faculty and staff, distinguished guests, new recipients of graduate degrees, and our wonderful Class of 2026, I’m going to make some brief remarks on the occasion of this Commencement.
Each year I have the honor of standing in this spot among a group of distinguished educators. They know that questions about education have only become more urgent these days, especially in the face of attacks on expertise and even on the values of freedom of inquiry and expression—values essential to our mission.
As you stand on the threshold of graduation, you recognize this because you have already discovered many of the things you love to do and the people you love to be with. For some of you this took some searching, some experimentation. You may have arrived here thinking you were going to study music and math, but biology turned you toward the life sciences and history led you to explore science and technology across different times and places. Or perhaps you came here as a recruited athlete and your horizons shifted when a friend asked you to try out for a musical, and you discovered you could do both.
Whatever trajectories you have found at Wesleyan, I trust you have learned that paths through uncertainty can be thrilling and rewarding. Whether it’s waiting for the response of a potential investor at our “Shark Tank” competition or tutoring a young person in Traverse Square, you’ve recognized that learning is a lifelong pursuit and that expanding your circles of curiosity and wonder enhances your lives.
The same is true about expanding the range of people you care about, work with, come to respect, or even love. In a time of division and scapegoating in our country, I trust you have found opportunities at Wesleyan to realize that expanding the possibilities for partnership, friendship, and love is a life-enhancing endeavor. Having worked with students and alumni here for two decades, I have faith that many of the diverse friend groups you’re sharing this moment with today will also be with you at milestones in the future.
In other words, I have faith that liberal education will take you after today to more opportunities to increase your capacities for work and for love. And I am hopeful it will continue to do so because this will increase your resilience in challenging times and add to your joy when times are good.
Some of you may have noticed that I’ve fallen back on the old psychoanalytic ingredients for thriving: love and work. I admit it, and I also want to stress that by expanding your capacities for wonder and for finding people with whom you can flourish, you have learned to think for yourself while working with others. This enables you to pursue meaningful action in good company; this enables you to practice freedom.
As we approach the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I trust you will continue to learn how to protect your freedoms, and ours, by continuing to experiment with what it means to be free. What better way to acknowledge this anniversary while keeping your education alive than by participating in communities in which people can pursue happiness, without prejudice, without bigotry, without hatred—communities in which they can together thrive.
Practicing education, I believe, is like practicing democracy: Both are collaborative, experimental paths of improvement. Both depend on inclusion rather segregation. Both are very much now endangered. If we don’t defend education and protect democracy, we will lose them. Beware of those who are afraid of those experiments. Stand up against those who fear fluidity, who ban books, who are frightened by diversity, free expression, and creative transformation. Pay attention, please—that’s my family in the back. Pay attention, please, pay attention to and learn from those who views are different from your own, especially when they are suffering. Paying attention is the foundation for education as it is the practice of freedom.
Some of you who graduate today will have felt the power of this practice already; some will feel it years from now. This graduate from the Class of 1978 feels it still.
Over these past four years, I have learned from many of you in my classes, in your roles in student government, on the dance floor, and even in demonstrations. In your courageous company I am encouraged to believe that we may yet be able to build a politics and a culture characterized by compassionate solidarity rather than fear and resentment. I know that you will find new ways to make connections across cultural borders—new ways to build community. When this happens, you will feel the power and promise of your education. And we, your Wesleyan family, we will be proud of how you keep your education alive by making it effective in the world.
It’s been four years since I helped you all, or some of you—all right, a few of you—unload your cars here on Andrus Field. It seems like a very short time ago to me. As you prepare to depart, please remember that no matter how far you travel, you will always have a home here at Wesleyan. Wherever your exciting pursuits lead you, please come back often to alma mater to share your news, your memories, and your dreams. Thank you and good luck!
