Baccalaureate
Join us for the Baccalaureate ceremony on Saturday, May 23rd
President Ian Baucom will address the senior class. All are welcome to attend. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Seating will begin at 1:00 p.m. and conclude at 2:00 p.m. to allow staff to prepare for the ceremony.
A live broadcast will be available in Wilson Hall, located in the McCullough Student Center. The chapel is not air-conditioned; however, Wilson Hall features cushioned seating and air conditioning.
A livestream link to the Baccalaureate service is available below.
2026 Baccalaureate
Good afternoon again. Beloved class of 2026. The first class of seniors I ever get to do this with. You will always be special to me. I am going to miss you.
Ok, so, I know this is one of many talks this weekend. You are about to get a lot of older-generation wisdom thrown at you as your world is about to change. You are likely somewhere between exhilarated, exhausted, stunned, saddened, and joyed. Somewhere between I-can’t-wait-to-go and never-let-this-go, as the most intense experience of your lives is suddenly running to an end. You are not going to remember a whole lot of what we say. Not right now. Probably not for a while. That’s ok. You need some time to graduate, filter, come back to what this place meant to you, what it opened for you, what it shook into possibility for you, what you hold most deep.
As you do, I’m pretty confident that what you will hold most deep are late night conversations with friends, moments of encounter, beauty, sadness, friendship and joy. What you are going to remember is that sudden spark of conversation with a professor in a lab. What you are going to remember is the crunch of snow, a hike by a river, the music of nocturne. What you are going to remember above all is each other and what it was like to be here with each other. What you are going to remember is what it felt like to be here.
As you remember that, you will also remember other things. Not only what it felt like to be here but what it was like to think here and what it was like to find a purpose for your life here. That, above all, is what we’ve been inviting you to do over these past four years: to be here, think here, and, by being here together, and thinking here together, to answer a simple and fundamental question: what are you for?
—-
As you know, we’ve spent the last year asking that question. What are we for? What is Middlebury for? That question has produced a new strategic plan. Don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about it. Because more important than that plan are the commitments beneath it. What are we for?
Above all, we’ve resolved this: We are for our students and for our world. We are for excellence, and purpose, and joy. We are for we, and we are for you.
Now, as you prepare to graduate, I want you to return to that question, and ask it of yourself: What are you for? What is your unique and unrepeatable life for?
I’ve said this before. I’m a president and I’m a parent. Wendy and I have six kids. They are phenomenally different. We love them all. If Wendy and I have one common thing we want to help them discover, it’s this. What do you believe in? What’s worth dedicating your life to? What are you for?
That’s what I want for you too. That’s what I want for Middlebury. In a time when too much of our culture defines itself by what it’s against, I want us to be a place that defines itself by what we are for. We won’t all agree on what that means at every level of practice, but we can share what it means in conviction.
Let me take one example. Middlebury is for the climate future of our planet. Some of us are for that climate future through activism. Some are for the future of our climate through changes in law and policy. Some are for our planet through research, discovery, teaching, the arts. Some are for the future of our climate through market innovations and green technology. We may disagree on which of those approaches matters most, even as we can see and honor and even love one another for having something we hold in common, something that, together, we are for.
So, that’s my first request, as you look back in memory at this place, strike sharply in your mind the thing that Middlebury helped you say you are for. And, as you do so, continue to agree, disagree, engage, debate, learn from, hold, and find common cause with each other. Share a conviction, be for that conviction, be for one another.
—-
Here’s the second request.
Remember that our multiple ways of being for something are far more complex than the political camps we get put into. Put aside—at least for a time—whether you are a republican or a democrat, a liberal or a conservative. Our world and our planet are too beautiful, urgent, and various for those categories to divide us. Imagine a different scenario: not a conservative or a liberal attitude, but a hedgehog and a fox way of approaching the world. Those aren’t my categories. I take them from the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin who over seventy years ago wrote a defining essay delineating those two ways of knowing. The essay begins with these words:
There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’ Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these…words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all [its] cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog’s one defense. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences… [between]… writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general.
For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system…in terms of which they understand, think and feel – a single, universal, organizing principle…
And, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory…. These last lead lives, perform acts and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal; their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects….
The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes…
That needs far more unpacking than a baccalaureate address can manage. Here’s the main point. To repeat that starting fragment of verse: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Or, as Isaiah Berlin unfolds that fragment: the hedgehog thinker has one powerful and organizing idea, brings everything they learn and discover into its orbit; and interprets the world through it. The world needs those thinkers, artists, builders, organizers. We need single-minded thinkers. We need their courage, their obstinance, their insistence that there is one big question we all need to address.
And we need the other kind of thinker too. The person who lives with contradiction, nuance, messiness, all the parts of life that matter because they don’t add up; the boundary thinker, the wait-a-second thinker, the hang-on-here’s-a-new-idea thinker. The fox.
We need both. To be for our world, for each other, for the common good, we need both. Far more than liberals and conservatives, we need hedgehogs and we need foxes.
So, what kind of thinker are you? Are you a hedgehog or a fox?
Whichever kind you are, go find the other one and start building some common projects. We need the lion and the lamb to lay down together, and we need the hedgehog and the fox to start building our future together.
And if you’re not sure which one you are—because none of us are ever entirely one thing or another, we’re all a bit mixed, in virtually every aspect of our lives—I’m willing to tip the scales.
When in doubt, be a fox. Liberal arts thinkers are foxy thinkers—we hold convictions and we know that those convictions live with contradiction, nuance, complexity. Defend what you believe. And roam around a little, follow the scent, taste something new. Live like a fox.
—-
Or, better yet—and here’s my third request—if that paradigm doesn’t work for you, set it aside, and live like a panther.
Seriously.
I’ve been mulling this over. You’re at Middlebury. You’re not a hedgehog. You’re not a fox. You’re a panther. Maybe it’s more than a mascot.
Have you slowed down to think about it? Pantherness?
There are light and serious ways of asking that question. Bear with me for a while.
Let’s take it as a given. We’re panthers. Why panthers? What does that convey? Think the range of pantherness across cultural references: from the pink panther (cool, sly, mischievous, hip) to the black panther (noble, regal, self-sacrificing, undaunted). Think about Mowgli’s Bagheera in the Jungle Book: noble, again; loyal, again; a breaker of chains and a provider of love. Think the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilker’s unforgettable panther: captive but captivating; power-massed; all pacing intensity; burning to break free.
Then think what the biological and environmental sciences tell us about the panther: designed from spine to shoulder for bursts of movement, sharp agility, maximum flexibility, and highly, highly adaptable: a generalist species able to thrive in multiple changing environments; not limited to one unchanging world or defined by one specialist skill, but boundlessly capable of surviving in radically different habitats and life worlds. The panther is open, the panther is adept, the panther is gathered force, heightened awareness, maximum flexibility. Even more than the fox, the panther is a liberal arts thinker, designed to thrive in a constantly changing world. The panther is elegance, fearlessness, intensity, grace.
You know what, when we chose our mascot, we got it right. Don’t be a fox. Be a panther. The world needs more panthers. As you go out into the world ahead of you, go boldly. Go and think like a panther. Be like a panther.
What does that look like?
Let me tell you a story. Late in the regular season, this spring, the undefeated Middlebury women’s lacrosse team is playing Wesleyan. With 1.2 seconds left the game is tied. We’re fouled and we get the ball to a panther. Her name is Caroline Adams—one of your classmates, a fellow senior. In her lifetime at Middlebury her team has only lost once. They’ve won four consecutive national championships. They are away this weekend, playing for Middlebury, missing graduation, to go for their fifth in a row.
But on this late April day, Caroline isn’t looking ahead to that. She’s looking at the clock and the goal. Her team and the crowd are watching intently. She lines up, all coiled intensity and a bounce of joy in her step. She’s a Phi Betta Kappa Neuroscience and Spanish double-major. She’s a first team all-American athlete. But she isn’t lining up for herself. She’s lining up for her teammates, for their friendships, their love for each other, their early morning practices, playlists, and long bus rides— their shared sense of purpose, their experience of joy. She lines up, and before she moves everyone knows what is about to happen. There is no way she isn’t going to score. That’s a panther.
And she’s not alone. This chapel is full of them, because its full of you. And for years you’ve also been lining up for each other and for the world around us.
Look at what you’ve done since you’ve been here.
You’ve majored in economics, environmental studies, computer science, chemistry, psychology, women-gender-and-sexuality studies, English, history, and everything in between. 150 of you presented original research at the 19th annual Spring Student Symposium. Nearly 100 of you worked as summer research assistants during your time at Middlebury.
Six of you are Fulbright Scholars, heading off to Mexico, Morocco, Germany, Spain, and Serbia to continue your studies. You’ve won critical Language Scholarships, a Yenching Fellowship for study in China and a National Science Foundation grant. Many more of you are headed off to medical school, law school, and graduate schools across fields and disciplines.
Those of you who aren’t pursuing graduate studies are taking up jobs in careers in the US and around the globe. You are about to begin working as journalists in the pacific northwest, in finance and consulting from Lazard, to Goldman Sachs, to the Boston Consulting Group. You are beginning arts careers at Sotheby’s and taking up roles in the Peace Corps from Columbia to Indonesia. You are becoming educators for Teach for America and with the Mariposa Foundation in the Dominican Republic.
As you’ve poured yourself into your studies and prepared yourself for your vocations, you’ve done much more besides. You’ve partnered with K through 12 public school teachers in Addison County to support local students. You’ve tutored migrant farm workers and their families; mentored young people through the Community Friends program; volunteered as first-responders with Middlebury’s Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services team.
You’ve dedicated countless hours to the Page One Literacy Project; helped build houses through Habitat for Humanity; added hundreds of new voters to the voting rolls, leading Addison County to be named a state leader in participatory democracy.
You’ve been for our town, for our state, for our world, and for our planet: leading a coding workshop with students in India; raising money for pediatric cancer patients in Bosnia; training volunteers to conduct online tutoring with students in Afghanistan; teaching students in Egypt, drawing attention to the amazing new capacities of solar energy and designing new ideas for Middlebury’s carbon-neutral energy commitments.
You’ve been for each other, intensely: serving as RA’s, Oratory Now coaches, writing tutors, conflict coaches, editorial writers for the Campus, and student organization leaders for scores of student clubs. You’ve led us in joy and you have held us in grief—never more than when you helped us mourn the passing of your beautiful classmate, Lia Smith, and shone the light of your love on her amazing and too-short life.
You’ve been for, lived for, and enlivened the arts: organizing Nocturne, dance performances, and international student cultural events; you’ve acted, directed, curated, DJ’d; founded podcasts, magazines, an art market, and re-opened the M Gallery for student art exhibits.
You’ve competed for each other, for your friends, your families, for all our Middlebury community: on the field, ice, and court; on the river, in the pool, and at Hackathons. You’ve played on 18 NESCAC championship teams, eight NCAA semi-final teams, six NCAA national title teams, and just this past week you won a women’s crew national championship and both the men’s and women’s ultimate frisbee national championships
Across everything you’ve done you’ve show decency, kindness, for-each-otherness. You’ve been flexible, adept, open-to-the-world, open to each other.
Look at what you’ve done. I don’t need to ask you to be panthers. You already are. I don’t need to ask you to be for each other and for our world. You have been, from the day you arrived.
—-
And now you are getting ready to graduate. Less than a day from now. After all these years, in one more day, you’re not going to be students, you’re going to be graduates, and enter even more deeply into that world.
As you do, remember this: you are ready. Through what you’ve learned and demonstrated here, you are ready. You are flexible, curious, open. You’ve learned to thrive in changing environments. You are liberal arts thinkers at a time when the world needs them more than ever. You know how to enter that world with purpose, excellence, and joy. It’s waiting for you. Go boldly.
—-
And go with one final request: that thing my good friend Jim Ryan taught me. When you go out into that world, never forget what it felt like to be here. On your cloudiest nights and your brightest days it will hearten you. The feeling of this place. Don’t forget it.
Don’t forget that first day, move-in day, four years ago, a late summer morning, walking down a hall to your dorm room, just a bit nervous.
Don’t forget your first walk out to the Knoll, the fields spreading around you, rich soil turned, flowers blooming, the scent of basil, thyme, and rosemary in the air.
Don’t forget the moon and the stars silvering the snow the first winter night you walked home late from the library.
Don’t forget the first hand you held here, the first lips you kissed here.
Don’t forget the line of poetry that shook you into awe, the first lecture you disagreed with.
Don’t forget the professor who taught you the complex and slowed the complex down.
Don’t forget the professor who taught you the rare and difficult; the professor who knew your name; the professor who knew you; really knew you; always made time for you. Don’t forget that professor. Stay in touch. Go out of your way to keep them in your lives, and they will keep you.
Don’t forget what it felt like to walk out of that professor’s classroom on an April morning, the first bud leafing on a tree; budding so late in spring you thought the trees had died but then they sprang alive. Green life springing and Robert Frost’s words ringing:
Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf’s a flower
But only so an hour
Don’t forget those same trees, the green of spring behind them, summer over, autumn coming, leafed now in orange and yellow and red and shimmering in fall splendors of light, the Adirondacks faint-blue on the horizon beyond.
Don’t forget walking down the hill, into town, to coffee at Little Seed or a beer at Two Brothers, crossing the bridge, the Otter Creek falls tumbling over those foaming boulders, a church bell ringing in the air, Haymakers to one side and a bookstore to another.
Don’t forget Battell beach and the first daffodils of spring.
Don’t forget what it felt like to be you, uniquely you: 18, 19, 20, 21-years old. Coming uniquely into yourself, meeting yourself, surprising yourself; surrounded by friends. Arguing, thinking, debating, laughing. Never enough sleep, too much sleep; closing your eyes, opening your eyes, waking up, again, and again, and
again.
Here at Middlebury.
The friends you love most in the world, the books you want to read most in the world, the art you want to make most in the world, the science you want to change most in the world, all around you. Being young in the world, bold to the world, open to the world. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. And to be young was very heaven.
Here at Middlebury
Remember what that felt like, and it will never leave you. On your hardest days and your sweetest days it will return. It will never leave you.
—-
And we will never leave you.
Because you may be graduating, but you will always be part of this place.
You are always Middlebury. And as Jim taught me, just keep coming back.
On the snowiest of days; on the greenest of springs; in the leaf-bright of fall: drive down route seven, turn the corner by the bridge, look up the hill, hear the ringing of the Carillon bells.
We will be here, waiting for you to come home.