2026 Commencement ceremony
Remarks as prepared for delivery by Johns Hopkins University President Ron Daniels at the universitywide Commencement ceremony.
Good morning to our alumni, trustees, faculty, staff, parents, family, friends, and of course, our graduates—and welcome to the Commencement of the great, great Class of 2026.
Now, before I commence my formal remarks, I just want to take a moment to recognize a particularly important group of graduates who are here with us today. Some of you will have noticed that a number of our students as they filed in today are wearing stoles that say FLI. These are our first-gen students. And we know how meaningful this is to be the first in your families to be graduating from university. And so I would ask you to stand so we can all acknowledge you and your families. Wow, wow, wow. What a terrific achievement.
Class of 2026, it really does feel just like yesterday when you first set foot onto Homewood, in that strange aftermath of the pandemic when the world was grasping for how to begin again.
Few were entirely sure how to come back to a life more fully in person again. But whatever this “new normal” was, you threw yourselves into it.
You flooded Keyser Quad as the DART mission met its gloriously destructive conclusion.
You crowded your professors’ office hours so thoroughly that the hall outside looked like the line for Ekiben at Spring Fair.
And you made the Rec Center look like Coachella for Gunna’s Spring Fair concert!
You seemed to have no problem, no problem at all, in coming back in droves.
You made it look so fun, so fun, that Hopkins Fox showed up again and again. And brought friends.
But there’s something else I’ve noticed about this class. Whenever the clock is winding down, and the path ahead seems daunting, you rise to the challenge. I’ve seen it time and time and time again.
Just this past semester, I saw it in February when our men’s lacrosse team was down 11-4 midway through the third quarter. Only once before in the program’s storied history—1,435 games—had the team managed to rally from a seven-goal deficit. It was amazing!
[Video footage of JHU men’s lacrosse comeback victory]
And remarkably, they stormed back to defeat Virginia that day, 14-13.
And I saw the same spirit again in April, when Blue Jay Bhangra went to the national finals for the first time in 26 years.
[Video footage of President Daniels dancing in 2014]
No. Wait. Wrong clip! Wrong clip! That was my audition tape!
Roll clip of Blue Jay Bhangra!
[Video footage of the Blue Jay Bhangra dance team performing]
That’s it!
Now, Blue Jay Bhangra, I still haven’t heard back from you about that tape. But if you need me, I continue to practice and wait for the call.
And I saw that same determination just last week in the NCAA playoffs when, not having once held the lead in the first 58 minutes of the game, our women’s lacrosse team was down a goal with a minute and a half to go. Their season was truly on the line—and they scored a most breathtaking finish—a perfectly executed play that gave us a winning goal with less than a second on the clock.
You gotta watch this.
[Video footage of the Blue Jays women’s lacrosse victory]
And we’ll be thinking of our women’s Blue Jays on Friday when they’re in the final four in Chicago.
I’ve watched that clip over and over. And every single time, I think of that moment of exquisite team play… it feels almost impossible.
And yet, it isn’t.
It’s actually perfectly emblematic of this great class. Because you wouldn’t be here today if not for your own moments of pure determination, persistence, zeal for excellence, and raw grit.
The moments, the moments when simply “coming back” transforms into making a “comeback.”
Now, I know some very thoughtful Writing Sems students might ask: Aren’t these two terms just the same idea except one’s the verb form and the other’s the noun? And while you would be right about the grammar, I believe there is a meaningful difference.
Coming back means returning, soldiering on, continuing to play even when you’re down. And that in itself is admirable. But making a comeback goes even further.
A comeback means not just hanging in there. It means persevering through adversity to achieve even greater success.
To put it another way: Coming back means arriving at Homewood after COVID. Staging a comeback means bringing the Stuce to life.
Coming back means meal plans at FFC. A comeback is smuggling full sit-down dinners into MSE.
You get the picture.
And although I was never a varsity athlete and quite clearly, as my wife regularly tells me, am not a gifted dancer, I am fascinated by what makes a true comeback possible.
What does it take to go from coming back to making a comeback, from being present to leaving everything you’ve got on the proverbial field, whether that’s in a lab, at the 50-yard line, or in four years of college?
Now being a professor and searching for truth, I of course turned to the experts for answers—Pete Milliman and Tim McCormack, the coaches of our men’s and women’s lacrosse teams.
I asked them: How exactly do you engineer a comeback?
And both coaches offered a variation on the same answer. On the one hand, it’s clearly individual. Each member of the team has to summon their own strengths, recalling the skills you’ve practiced day in and day out—whether it’s winning a ground ball or cross-sectioning a tissue sample.
And it also takes confidence. You have to believe you have trained for this moment and you have what it takes not necessarily to make up a 10-point deficit or suddenly win the Nobel Prize, but to take the next, critical step to move your game, your project, your art forward.
But, according to the coaches, individual readiness and self-confidence are still only part of the story.
And I’ll never forget this image that Coach Milliman shared with me. When the men’s lacrosse team filed into the locker room during halftime, trailing UVA very badly, it wasn’t hard to see how distraught each member of the team was.
As he stood there before them, they were all looking down, avoiding eye contact. They were, in Pete’s words, somewhere else.
So, he opened his halftime speech that late February day with just a very simple injunction: Look at each other.
Just “look at each other.”
Because it turns out that in the clutch moments, you have to remember not only what you are there to do, but also with whom you are there to do it.
And when the team looked at each other, the magic happened: A disheartened group of individuals reassembled itself into a winning team. They pulled out of their own heads and were inspired by who they were with. The team itself made all the difference.
And I thought: This is what I have seen the Class of 2026 do time and time again.
In moments of setback, of failure, of uncertainty, against the odds, you tap into that seemingly elusive and perhaps surprising reservoir of optimism and determination each of you possesses.
And then together, you take the first step towards resetting the experiment with your lab mates, reimagining the design day, or staying up all night with your fellow editors to get The News-Letter published on time.
I don’t need to tell this class that life will at times put you on your back foot. Of course it will. You know that.
You’ll encounter many setbacks, many frustrations, many failures that seem like final chapters.
And in the moments that follow, you will have to be ready, and confident, and then you will have to decide: Will you concede the loss, or will you look at each other, remember who you are with, and go for the win?
Class of 2026, you have shown Hopkins, shown me, what a comeback looks like. Win or lose.
And I, for one, will never forget it, or indeed all of you.
Congratulations, Class of 2026, and Godspeed.
