Remarks delivered by Smith College President Sarah Willie-LeBreton during the college’s annual Ivy Day Celebration.
Good morning, students, faculty, staff, alums, and new graduates!
Happy Ivy Day! What a joyful, moving, beautiful day this is. To all of you who are receiving prizes and honors — congratulations (but you all know that in my book, you are all winners!). And to the brilliant, bold, and ever-curious class of 2025: we are so proud of you. Tomorrow, you cross a threshold. But today—today, we gather in celebration, in reflection, and in community.
There’s something in the air, isn’t there? A hum of excitement, of pride, of collective possibility. Two weeks ago, walking from College Hall to my house, the bees had joined us in a full throated hum as they gathered around flowering trees. I feel it standing here with you. I hope you feel it, too.
Today we come together as one Smith. Across generations. Across disciplines. Across decades of lived experience and shared purpose. We come together to honor your achievements and to affirm the values that define this place: intellectual rigor, radical imagination, ongoing curiosity and deep care—for each other and for the world.
Take a moment. Look around. In a world that frequently feels fractured—chaotic, uncertain, divided—we are here. Together. Not always in agreement, but in community. In solidarity. As Smithies, you are part of something enduring and powerful. You have a place, a campus, that claims you. A people, a community, on whom you can depend will always strive to see you. And a legacy from which to draw tremendous strength. It is no small thing to commit to the relationships that make a community enduring. It requires persistence and open-heartedness. Embrace the connections you have made and encourage yourself to make new ones when you move to a new city and join the local Smith club or when you return to campus for reunions.
We know that women have always been strong, smart and determined. But when we opened our doors in 1875, few women were encouraged to become formally educated or to imagine careers for themselves. And at Smith, leadership and career have never been separated from service, meaning and purpose. We offer an education for minds, and we nourish hearts and spirits, too. And when the world threatens to silence, to diminish, or to cleave, we stand taller. We link arms. We strategize. We protect each other. We speak our truths. And we work together to accomplish the change we want to see in the world.
Alums, we are so glad that you are here, and let me say formally, publicly, heartily, welcome home. And to the class of 2025—we hope you will always consider this your home. No matter where you go next, you will always have this place, this community, to which to return.
The past few months have been challenging in so many ways, but especially for those of us who care deeply about higher education, about democracy, and about justice. We’ve seen disturbing efforts at the highest levels of government to erase basic rights, to curtail academic freedom, to limit honest conversation, and to undermine the very principles that make education transformative: fairness, equity, diversity (yes, I said it), inclusion, compassion, the pursuit of truth, and the creation of knowledge.
These values are not abstractions. They are the lifeblood of our mission. And they are not up for debate. So in this moment of turmoil and unpredictability, let me be absolutely clear: Smith College is not going anywhere. The world needs Smith now, and we will be here in the future. Even as we may have different ideas about how to navigate this moment, our commitment to our values is not up for negotiation. And our graduates—you, class of 2025—are not stepping into this world unprepared. You are entering it with clarity, courage, and community. And you will help shape the future with 54,000 fierce alums by your side across the globe.
Smith has always been about transformation—of the self, of society, of systems that no longer serve us. And transformation is not easy work. Change, real change, is uncomfortable. It is hard and messy and often painful because it always, always, always requires self-reflection, accountability, and our own willingness to consider alternatives.
Our history is filled with those struggles—and with the quiet, steady courage it took to push forward. After the Civil War and during Reconstruction, hard-won amendments, including the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, cracked open the door to new definitions of citizenship, even if they did not lead to full equality. Later, World War II forced the nation to reckon—truly reckon—with the fact that women were not incidental to the economy; they were essential. The repressive climate of McCarthyism and the cultural conservatism of the 1950s gave rise to movements that reimagined the very meaning of rights and liberation—the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement, the New Left Student Movement, the Women’s Movement, and what was then called the Gay Liberation Movement.
And through it all, Smith was here. Our very founding was an act of resistance to exclusion and an attempt to “right a societal wrong.” Sophia Smith believed that the world needed the minds of educated women to flourish and prosper. She was right—and here we are, 150 years later, celebrating a vision even more capacious than she imagined.
It is a balance both to celebrate and to avoid romanticizing the arc of justice and its progress. In fact, most of you are now able to appreciate that the very concept of “progress” is “problematic.” Even justice is contested in its definition – contested because it is a human concept, and because it is shaped by perspective and context and is negotiated. And neither justice nor history, perspective nor context is linear. Our progress, and here I will claim this word, our progress toward treating people with dignity and including their voices and perspectives has never been smooth. It has always come at the costs of the voluntary and involuntary participants of each situation. And the pain of that progress has been borne disproportionately by those who at any moment in time and in any place are the different, the dispossessed, the despised, the disinherited and the vulnerable. These are not theoretical struggles. They are real. They are lived. And those who have suffered deserve our remembrance, our honor, and our continued resolve to build a different world.
Because of you, I have hope in the building of that different world. Because graduates of this remarkable college are not, and have never been, afraid to ask hard questions or afraid to disrupt taken for granted norms. You have shown your willingness to learn how to reach out, to learn how to link arms, and to learn how to call in. You often recognize when harm has been done. You respond with care and conviction. You carry with you both a liberal arts education, and the ethos of Smith. As a community, we are not perfect; indeed the very definition of community requires imperfection. But we are growing. We are willing to hold up a mirror to ourselves; we are learning to recognize our faults. Indeed, we are constantly engaged in the act of becoming.
This state of becoming will serve us well as we wrestle with the ideological forces that seek to halt progress and send us back in time. What we cannot do, friends, is sleep through this moment. In a sermon he gave both at the 1965 Oberlin College Commencement and again just one month before he was assassinated, at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC., Martin Luther King spoke, using Washington Irving’s allegorical tale of Rip Van Winkle to call his audience awake. “One of the great liabilities of life,” he said, “is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses that the new situation demands and they end up sleeping through a revolution….. Never allow it to be said,” he continued, “That you are silent onlookers, detached spectators, but that you are involved participants in the struggle… Let us remain awake through a great revolution.”
We must pay attention. We must learn to read between the lines. We must read and listen to sources of news and information that are not spoon-fed to us. We must take the tools of analysis that have been honed in Smith’s classrooms and apply them. And we must insist on optimism. Not because we are foolhardy, but because history has shown us again and again that human beings seek their liberation. We seek our liberation.
Our common humanity calls on us to seek the essential goodness in one another. We must continue to have meals together, to spend time in nature, to nurture the arts and our relationships with each other. The next social movement is upon us, and the person sitting next to you may offer you fortitude; the person sitting behind you may give you resolve, and the person in front of you may help you grow your resilience.
Class of 2025, we have so much faith in you to lead us there. As you go forth, lean on your Smith siblings, and call on the alums here today to offer their guidance and mentorship. They have been through difficult social movements and moments and have advice to share, strategies for coping, and support to give. And alums, all of you are part of a long line of thinkers, doers, makers, organizers, artists, educators, policy makers, and bridge builders. Share your knowledge and wisdom. History has called on Smithies before, and it’s calling on you again. There is much work to be done, and Smithies are up for the challenge. And to all of you, new graduates and alums, we’ll be right here—rooting for you and cheering you on.
Congratulations, class of 2025.
Happy Ivy Day, everyone!