"I am not the woman president of Harvard. I am the president of Harvard."

“The story of Virginia compels us to recognize how important it is that we open our eyes and actively resist the assumptions and traditions that would obscure our vision. To imagine we are or can be color-blind is to render ourselves history-blind—to ignore realities that have defined us for good and for ill. The Founders embraced both slavery and freedom. We have inherited the legacy, and the cost, of both... “The past will remain horrible,” James Baldwin wrote, “for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.” And it will poison the present as well.”

“Technology has the potential to positively transform access to education, and to shape how teachers teach and students learn, but there is still much we don’t know about how that transformation will take shape... Distance education can never fully replace the types of interactions that occur when teachers and learners are together in one physical location. Place-based and residential education will always have an irreplaceable role. But even on our campus, learning in classrooms is being transformed by digital tools. For instance, many Harvard faculty are “flipping” their classrooms by having students watch their lectures online and using traditional lecture time for more interactive learning. That is increasingly the case not just at Harvard, but in classrooms across America.”

“On banning Harvard’s single-gender clubs..: Starting with the class of 2021, any student who belongs to one of these clubs cannot hold leadership positions in student groups or varsity sports nor receive university endorsement for fellowships. “When you have powerful organizations that line women up on the streets and decide whether they’re attractive enough to be admitted … that doesn’t seem to me an equitable treatment of women in the Harvard community,” Faust says drily. Plus, the clubs charge thousands of dollars for membership. These organizations, Faust notes in her careful, academic way, “detract from the general intermingling of students across lines of identity, origin, wealth, class, race, gender.” But some Harvard men, like their kindred-spirit Yalie Brett Kavanaugh, “will not be intimidated into withdrawing” and have spent $180,000 in the first half of this year lobbying Congress for a bill that would cut Harvard’s federal funding if sanctions continue. Faust doesn’t mince words: “It seems to me to invite an extraordinary intrusion of the federal government into what is the business of the university.”

“As you leave UM to take up your work as nurses, engineers, teachers, scholars, scientific researchers, writers, caregivers, remember that you have learned much more here than what was required to qualify for your degrees. Remember the broader responsibilities that the learning and education you have received entail and share that commitment with the world. Remember that facts and truth matter, and must undergird any just and enduring society. Remember the human connections and contrasts that created the context in which learning thrived. And remember the combination of respect and resilience that the natural environment has required of you and let those qualities serve as touchstones in all you do in life. Remember to be Canes even as you leave this place to serve and uplift a wider world. Congratulations and godspeed.”