Thanks so much Adam. What an honor it is to follow Judge David Tatel. David is a mensch whose name will loom large when historians teach future generations about the history of American civil rights law, administrative law, education law, voting rights, and constitutional law. Families, if you happen to be looking for an apt gift for any newly minted lawyers you might know, I heartily recommend David’s terrific autobiography, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice. Thank you, David, for your love of the Law School, your wisdom, integrity, and vision.

Now I promise we didn’t coordinate thematically in advance. But, like David, I want to tell you the stories of students who came through the Law School before you arrived. He chose to tell you about four such students, Alex, Michael, Kelsi and . . . David Tatel. I had the pleasure of teaching Kelsi, though the other three distinguished alumni he mentioned came through a bit before my time. So I’ll likewise tell you about four other students I have taught, starting with Andre. 

I helped convince Andre to matriculate at Chicago and taught him in a couple of classes. One day, Andre came into my office and told me he had learned that the very first Black federal district court judge in the United States was a graduate of this law school, yet there was nothing at the Law School that commemorated this trailblazing alumnus. Over the next few months, Andre developed an audacious plan to celebrate the late Judge James Parsons’ legacy with a banquet dinner honoring a prominent African American jurist. He led a team of BLSA classmates who raised the money, invited a prominent judge, and secured the enthusiastic participation of Judge Parson’s descendants, faculty and alumni. I was there at the first Parsons Legacy dinner and many that followed. Numerous students in this chapel attended the seventh, eighth, and ninth Parsons dinners. It’s hard to get anyone excited about a February event in Chicago, but during the Parsons Legacy Dinner, Hyde Park might just be the warmest spot on earth. 

There’s an important coda to this story. In recent years several of our other student organizations have seen the success of the Parsons Legacy Dinner and decided that they’d like to come together to a celebrate a prominent member of their own communities. So in the past few years, we are grateful that students in this chapel have helped launch LLSA’s Elisa Fernandez Banquet, APALSA’s Patsy Takemoto Mink Banquet, and JLSA’s annual Shabbat Dinner and Abner Mikva Distinguished Service Award. I was delighted to attend each of those events this year and to see so many of you there. It was lovely to see Muslim students at the Shabbat dinner, and Latino students at the Mink dinner, and white students at the Parsons Dinner; these events were simultaneously affirming and inclusive. Yet we probably wouldn’t have any of these festivities were it not for one student who was floored by a thoughtless oversight and put in the work to build an institution that has not merely endured . . . it has multiplied.

Chicago’s Rubenstein Scholarship program is even older than the Parsons Legacy Dinner. And for the past sixteen years Ann Perry and I have had the privilege of running it. That is a long enough time, so I’ve requested to step down as the program’s director next month. As my swan song I’d like to tell a story about Lisa, a very promising college senior who was admitted to law schools that some people regard as fancier than ours. She chose Chicago in large part because the full-tuition Rubenstein Scholarship came with a twenty-thousand dollar stipend. The extra money would be a difference maker. Not for her life, but for her dad’s. Lisa’s dad became a farmworker starting at age 12 and had bounced around the fringes of the labor market, working at a Lowe’s today or a Verizon store tomorrow. Lisa used the stipend to help keep her dad financially afloat. Lisa’s parents are divorced, and her dad wasn’t always there for her during her childhood, but family is family. 

In the years since matriculating Lisa has gone on to become a wildly successful attorney. She was also ahead of her time. For so many years your parents and older relatives took care of your needs and protected you. Then a time will come when that person who took care of you needs you to be their guardian angel, by bathing them or making decisions for them or supporting them financially. For Lisa that transition came in her twenties, for me it came when I was fifty. I held my father’s hand, forgave him, and watched him drift away. And that day when parents in the audience really need a hand from the energetic folks wearing maroon or black robes today will arrive sooner than any of us would prefer. Parents: Asking your children for help may be one of the most disorienting things you will ever have to do. But as someone who has seen their spirit and determination up close, I can’t imagine these kids are going to let you down. And in the meantime, let us appreciate that for most parents, days like today are part of a precious golden window. You’re still independent and your child is self-sufficient.

Speaking of “precious,” I had the pleasure of teaching Jay as a first-year student. Jay was a Kirkland & Ellis Scholar, a member of the Law Review, and won the Beale Prize as the best writer in his Bigelow section. He had a remarkably quick sense of humor. Now, with Andre and Lisa, I’ve received their permission to talk about them today, and I’ve gladly changed one of their names at their request. I’m a privacy scholar, and these stories belonged to them until they told me otherwise. But I haven’t emailed Jay to ask his permission. You see, by the end of his first year of law school, Jay wasn’t feeling like himself. After a medical workup, Jay had to wrap his head around the worst possible news, delivered by his oncologists: Jay had an incurable form of cancer, and mere months to live. 

As the shocking news of Jay’s illness raced through the Law School, everyone who knew Jay had the immediate impulse to help. What could we do to support someone who had touched so many lives in such a short amount of time? When our Dean of Students posed that question to Jay, he had one answer: He said organize a day of service with charitable organizations in Hyde Park and Woodlawn. If you want to help me deal with my diagnosis, help others in need. One hundred members of our community hastily answered Jay’s call. 

If you were in Jay’s shoes, you’re 25, with no hope of a cure, how would you spend your remaining time on earth? If he’d wanted to go to Paris or Machu Picchu or attend a Super Bowl, everyone would have pitched in to make his wish a reality. But I’ve always been profoundly moved by the choices that Jay made. Jay decided to spend his final days on Earth as a 2L. He went to class; he outlined; he studied for his tests. He even did his Law Review cite checks. Conscientiously, I’m told. Whenever anyone asked why he was still studying hard and attending every class he could, Jay gave the same answer: because he enjoyed learning the law, and he absolutely adored being a law student with his friends. . . . Jay taught us that the learning you’ve done, the work you’ve put in, isn’t just a means to an end. There is an intrinsic value to it, and special meaning in doing that hard thinking alongside the people sitting near you, who so recently were strangers and have quickly become your close friends.

It’s 2026, so I feel compelled to share Hannah’s story. Hannah came to the Law School as a passionate defender of voting rights. She spent three years here learning everything she could about election law, and she landed her dream job: a Department of Justice Honors position in the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section. Then, soon after she started at DOJ, a presidential election produced an outcome she wasn’t expecting. She called me up to ask for advice, and two things stood out to her as she contemplated the possibility that she might have to quit this job she had worked so hard to get. First, she couldn’t stomach the cases she’d now be asked to work on. And second, she’d spend the first four years of her career as a government lawyer not developing the skills she wanted to learn. So she resigned and took a private sector job.

Four years later, a new election produced a new President, and Hannah was able to serve in vital leadership roles in the next administration. Not in the area of voting rights, but in other policy domains that affect the lives of millions of people. She and I even got to work together on important legislation while she was serving in the White House. While being true to herself, she managed the kind of career pivot so many of you will have to make when circumstances outside your control upend your meticulous planning. Hannah underscores that public service is not a “now or never” proposition.

Listen, as someone who has sometimes been unable to purchase stamps from the Hyde Park post office, I understand that incompetent or even misanthropic government workers exist. But in the past year, the US Justice Department and Health and Human Services and the National Science Foundation have lost so many Hannahs. Irreplaceable experience, dedication, and expertise have walked out the door. As I see it, this mass departure is not a purging of the deep state. It’s an exodus of talent bemoaned by some of the most capable alumni I’ve taught in my 24 years here, be they liberal, conservative, or apolitical. The people resigning are, overwhelmingly, folks who made the government work better and upheld the rule of law. We are losing people who woke up every morning eager to put heads of drug cartels and sex traffickers behind bars, now deciding they can no longer work for a Justice Department that initiates pretextual prosecutions against the President’s critics. Lawyers and doctors and scientists with critical portfolios are quitting their career civil service jobs rather than continuing their association with a government whose agents shot and killed an intensive care nurse and a poet in Minneapolis. I have to hope that, like Hannah, some of these liberal and conservative and apolitical people who have left government will have second acts as public servants. And I pray that they’ll be joined by capable, civic-minded lawyers who are sitting under this soaring ceiling today. If we are fortunate enough to see those things happen, then the rest of us will have to be patient with them, recognizing that rebuilding institutions takes so much longer than tearing them down.

In conclusion, I want to talk briefly about what’s going to happen in a few minutes, as one-by-one, you and your classmates will be transformed from students into alumni. If today marks the end of your involvement with the Law School, I wish you well. But whether you are a JD, MLS, JSD, or LLM student, I hope you will instead show up here in five years, and ten, and fifteen. At your reunions, it will be good for your soul to catch up with the friends you’ve made during your Hyde Park days, some of whom you’ll have lost touch with once work and family life got so busy. Over cocktails you should reminisce about this difficult yet still magical time in your lives. But I hope you’ll also take the time to introduce yourself to alumni in the classes ahead of yours and behind yours too. By that point in your lives, you will no longer be awkwardly trying to “network” your way into a job. You’ll just be engaging in curious and friendly behavior. You know, like normal people do. 

I’ve taught more than 3,600 UChicago students and I have only told you about four of them. I’ve purposefully omitted stories about the students graduating today, though as the entire audience knows there are epic tales about how each of them got here. Please cut me some slack on this. If I delivered the unabridged version of this speech you’d all be proud members of the class of 2027 by the time I finished. So instead you’ll have to share the vivid stories about your own lives that regrettably landed on my cutting room floor, plus the much juicier stories that professors aren’t privy to, at your reunions, beginning in 2031. It’s tragic that none of you will ever get to meet Jay, yet reunions are your best shot at meeting Andre, Lisa, Hannah, and so many other inspiring people who have heard the majestic blast of Rockefeller Chapel’s organ and stared up at its gorgeous stained glass windows, wondering when the faculty speaker will finally stop talking so the hooding of graduates can begin.

You needn’t wonder any longer. To our students’ families and loved ones, thank you for being with us for this celebration and supporting our amazing graduates. And to the class of 2026 … Congratulations!