Recently, the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy welcomed students, faculty, family, and friends to one of our favorite days of the year: a special ceremony honoring our newest graduates. Dean Amir Pasic offered congratulations, charges, and challenges to these philanthropy and nonprofit professionals.
We have many reasons to celebrate today. We are marking the 37th anniversary of the founding of the school’s predecessor, the Center on Philanthropy. This is our twelfth graduation celebration since becoming a school—and my tenth since becoming dean. We are celebrating the dedication and passion of our graduates, who will soon embark on the next steps in their journeys to make the world a better place.
Graduates, today we will celebrate your many fine and distinguished accomplishments. Congratulations on all that you have accomplished and thank you for all that you have done for our school. You have helped advance this young field of philanthropic studies and you have set the standards for the many graduates who will come after you. I think you appreciate the view that one does not enter a field to have one’s individuality dissolved into a bland commonality of sameness, with so many similar others who share a field. Our field, being a new one, lifts up the expectation that each and every individual is prepared to make the field their own and to carry it forward. We stand ready to support you and to cheer you on.
Today and as you go forth into your lives of consequence, you stand on the shoulders of those who came before you, those who helped create and build the field you adopted and will now advance.
Like our faculty and alumni, our students are pioneers in taking the pathway of philanthropic studies to develop their intellectual and their professional lives. You have set sail on a vessel you will continue to build. Your successors will take the charge from you to continue this mission to understand and to deploy generosity for good.
As you know, giving is fundamental to who and what we are as individuals and as communities — from our closest neighborhoods to the family of humanity. Giving is not only nice to do when we are done with the important business of the world. In fact, much of the important business of the world would be hard to imagine if we took away the giving that occurs in all the places where we take it for granted. When we smile, when we offer up courtesies to form a relationship with another, when we respond instinctively to help someone who is about to stumble, or when we make sacrifices for others, ranging from giving the right of way to giving one’s life.
The stuff of life in a small community, like in the intimate community of a family, does not happen without giving. It is when we get to large societies that giving becomes more complex. Today our communities are buffeted by trends of global scale and yet what we value, and what we find precious in a purposeful life takes place in a context where there can be meaningful giving.
And at the same time, you are prepared not to be fooled by those who falsely proclaim generous motives, even claiming to protect us from imagined dangers, all to buttress their claims to unquestioned power. We have seen this grandiose charade of magnanimity in the ancient Caesars, and today we see its ominous return in too many societies around the world.
You have studied and worked in the institutions that deploy giving but you also draw on a diversity of knowledge needed to address the issues that afflict our neighborhoods, cities and our global condition. You are prepared to analyze problems, craft and assess programs, and propose and implement solutions. But crucially, you are also prepared to place the work that needs to be done in the context of serious perspectives on the human condition. You know the how, and the why, of effective and meaningful action in our communities and societies. And you understand the wisdom and possibilities of bringing the how and the why together.
You understand the importance of purpose in getting things done. And you know the importance of knowing your own purpose. It is in giving and asking that you have found an important part of your purpose. In giving of yourself, you plan to engage the power of philanthropy in society.
This is likely not your first graduation and you know how it is usual for the person standing where I do to exhort the assembled graduates not to forget service or to dedicate some portion of their careers in service to others. In our case, this is not necessary. I can hear you thinking – how could a purposeful life be anything else?
By choosing philanthropic studies, you have placed service in the top of your list because you know that this is how you will make your mark, how you will find fulfillment, and happiness. From a pragmatic perspective, you will also see that philanthropy is an emerging industry. Your job prospects are good. This is of fundamental importance. But you also know that it is not a normal industry. It is one that asks about the purpose of what one does as a matter of course. I hope you are now accustomed to asking the “why” question we are known for – so that you undertake your journey with eyes wide open to the wonder that brought you here.
It is a great gift to have the opportunity and freedom to craft one’s own purpose. It is also a profound responsibility. We look forward to following your journey as you embrace what is both an opportunity and a challenge. Thank you for beginning your journey with us. As you continue forth as alumni, you will take us with you. We are proud that you will be the impact that our school has in the world.
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