Members of the Brown community—faculty, staff, alumni, parents, and students—it is my great pleasure, as President of Brown University, to declare the 263^rd academic year open! 

I want to extend a special welcome to the members of the entering classes of the graduate school, medical school, and the college. Among them are:

• 143 dedicated medical students
• 1,303 talented master’s and doctoral students
• 10 brilliant Resumed Undergraduate Education scholars—students who have gained life experience after high school before coming to Brown
• 91 incredibly perceptive transfer students
• And, of course, 1,724 exceptional first year students, the core of the stellar class of 2030!

All of you are spectacular. You were selected to be a part of this academic community because you are unique and you have something special to contribute here. So, welcome to your new home. This is a vibrant, caring and inclusive community, and I know you will come to love it as much as I do. 

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This Convocation is a joyous occasion—an exciting beginning for so many of you. I guarantee you that during your time at Brown you will have professors who challenge your perspectives; you will take classes that make you consider career paths you’ve never thought about; and you will make some of your dearest friends on this campus.

But to me, today is also bittersweet. I am stepping down from the presidency of Brown at the end of this year—my 15^th—and so this will be the last class I welcome to Brown University. Which means that you will always be near and dear to my heart.

Over the past nearly 15 years, I have fallen in love with Brown and all that it stands for: excellent in education and research in the service of society; intellectual curiosity and independence; and the strong sense of community that unites us. 

As I was preparing for today, I went back to reflect on the first time I spoke at Opening Convocation — September 5, 2012. That year Convocation took place, indoors, in the Pizzitola Athletics Center, because of rain and thunderstorms. We are more fortunate today. But even so, it was such an exciting day.

The title of my Convocation talk was “Constructive Irreverence”. When I re-read those remarks, I thought they would feel outdated. So much has happened in the world since then.  But, they didn’t. Instead, I believe that the value of constructive irreverence has become even more important over the past 15 years.

Before our keynote faculty speaker is introduced, I want to tell you what I mean by constructive irreverence, and why I hope you embrace that concept while you are at Brown…and in the years after you graduate.

Let’s start with “irreverence.” 

This means questioning…everything. As a student, your job---actually, your responsibility—is not to simply memorize what your professors say and regurgitate it back on final exams. Your job is to think critically about every piece of information that comes your way. Is it correct? Is the evidence for it sound? Do the actions called for by that evidence make sense? And are they ethical? 

College students have been taught things that are false for decades…even centuries. 

• If you were a student in the early 1800’s—before the discovery that germs cause diseases—you would have been taught that diseases like cholera and the plague were caused by “bad air” or “noxious vapors.” 
• If you were a student in the 1930’s, you might have been told that a society's culture and moral character were determined by physical climate—with colder regions (like, Northern Europe) producing more industrious, intelligent people than tropical regions.
• And up until 10 years ago, you might have been taught that standing in “power poses” for 3 minutes a day changes your body chemistry and increases risk tolerance. It turns out that standing like Wonder Woman may make you feel more confident, but it won’t change your cortisol levels. 

And now, the probability that you will be confronted with false ideas masquerading as “facts” has increased astronomically. Is the person in the video real or an evil digital twin? Is an AI-generated summary giving you truth, or a hallucination? Being irreverent is your best defense in our new era of automated answers.

Across the centuries, it was sceptics—the people who doubted, who asked hard questions, and who looked for new evidence—who moved us forward towards truth. And that’s what we demand of you as Brown students. To be the ones who search for truth, and generate new knowledge and deeper understanding.

But let’s come back to the “constructive” part of constructive irreverence.

I recall a conversation I had with a student, in my early years at Brown, who had gotten on the wrong side of our student conduct policy by participating in a “shout down” of a speaker. 

And this student said to me, quite sincerely, “I don’t understand…I was just being irreverent, like you told me to be!”

And I replied, “I’m so flattered that you actually listened to my Convocation remarks, but you forgot about the `constructive’ part of `constructive irreverence’.”

Learning is as much about humility as it is about skepticism. And “constructive irreverence” is about approaching your learning with open minds and open hearts.

Your professors don’t know everything. You don’t know everything.  I certainly don’t know everything. We are here to learn together—all of us. 

While you’re at Brown, you may well find that things you believe wholeheartedly to be true are not universally agreed on. That’s a good thing, because it will prompt you to question the very foundations of your own beliefs.

The truth is, we all have a lot to learn from other people, especially people who are different than we are. The goal is not just to learn facts, but to understand how other human beings think and feel about how the world works. And, sometimes, when confronted with evidence or logic or new insights, you have to be prepared to discard or modify what you believe to be true. 

Irreverence gives you the courage to question others. Constructiveness gives you the humility to question yourself.