Hello everyone! And thank you, President Garber, for your words of inspiration and wisdom. My name is David Deming, and I have the honor of serving as the Danoff Dean of Harvard College. On behalf of the faculty and staff, it is my pleasure to welcome you back to Cambridge.

Let me begin by saying thank you. You have entrusted us with the education and care of your extraordinary children, and I take that responsibility very seriously. I have spent many hours with the class of 2027 and 2029 already this year, and I am happy to report that they are off to a fantastic start. I’ve had many meals with them over there in Annenberg, I’ve seen them here on stage or in the audience at the Class of 2029 talent show and other fun events, I’ve cheered with them at our football games and other sporting events, and I’ve had dozens of private and small group conversations with them about all manner of fascinating topics. They are deeply engaged in the intellectual and social life of Harvard College. The vibes on campus are excellent.  

As a matter of fact, I often tell my dean and administrator colleagues – and my friends and relatives – and really whoever will listen— that if you are ever feeling down about the challenges facing the wider world, you need to spend more time with our students. They are the future, and the future is very bright.  

When you said goodbye to your children in August, your family was leaping into an exciting, uncertain, maybe even a little scary new life journey. I imagine that this has been a challenging couple of months for some of you in the audience. Please raise your hand if this August you dropped your first kid off at college……. that’s a lot of feelings out there! As the father of two teenagers myself, including an 11th grader, I’m acutely aware that all the feels are right around the corner for me too. I’ll be glad to take any advice you have for me at the end of today’s program.

My two daughters go to camp for a month up in Maine each summer. For the first few days they’re gone, things are great. We have so much time! My wife Janine and I go out to dinner, catch up on work (and sleep), maybe go on a little weekend trip….and then, pretty soon, the boredom sets in. I start looking wistfully at old pictures on my phone from when they were young. I pace around the house looking for projects.  By the end I am marking time on the wall and compulsively checking the Airtags that we surreptitiously planted in their backpacks. So I don’t know exactly how you feel just yet, but I think I’m getting there.  

As I walk through the Yard, I often overhear students talking on the phone or see them texting furiously on their way to class. I imagine some of those interactions – hopefully many of them! – are with you. If your kids are like mine, the digital umbilical cord gives you a brief, often interrupted window into their life. You savor every morsel of communication.  Well, over the next few days, I hope you have ample time to reconnect in with your children in person. Meet their friends, walk with them around campus to see their favorite places. Enjoy the time together.

After you get past asking them about laundry or their last haircut, I hope you’ll find time to talk about what academic life is like on campus.  You may hear the term “recentering academics”, which is an effort we are undertaking this year to make intellectual engagement, especially in the classroom, a central feature of your students’ educational experience here at Harvard. Students today have more demands than ever on their time and attention. This includes social media and digital technologies of course, but also extracurricular activities and lots of other things. We want to make the case that the classroom is a “sacred” space where you can engage deeply and have rich conversations that are simply not possible once you leave Harvard. Among other things, this requires us to step up our games in the classroom. I want students to have to count on two hands – maybe even three – the number of classes at Harvard that changed their lives and the way they think about the world.

Recentering academics also requires us to tackle grade inflation, a problem that has gotten worse in high schools and colleges all around the country. Our goal is not to punish students or stress them out, but rather to align grading standards with subject mastery so that students who engage deeply with the material are rewarded for their efforts. We are also trying to limit the use of screens and other devices in the classroom and to develop better norms around dialogue such as non-attribution (e.g. Chatham House) rules, and other changes. Broadly, we seek to win the battle for students’ time and attention by making the classroom a place where they want to be fully engaged and where they feel their intellectual efforts are richly rewarded.

You may also hear about the challenges and opportunities presented by the very rapid rise in the use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools. The immediate issue for us in this quickly changing landscape is how AI changes what is possible in the classroom and how it requires us as faculty to do things differently. To take just one example, I used to teach a big class about economic inequality, and I would write what I thought were very clever take-home essay prompts that made students integrate their learning across course topics. For example, I might ask them whether increasing the top income tax bracket in the US to 90% as it was in 1950 or so would also give us 1950 levels of inequality, or whether other things have changed in ways that make tax policy an inadequate lever. AI has made it impossible for me or anyone else to fairly assess student work on take-home essays like that. So we have to adapt.

The longer-term challenge of AI is how it may change the job market that your students are graduating into, and whether that means we should educate them differently. I spoke to the Class of 2029 about this at length during my convocation address. Hopefully they were paying attention…(there may be a quiz later…)

My argument was that even though AI makes formerly safe career ladders seem wobbly, this is actually a great time for talented and ambitious young people to join or start something new, to help shape a new AI-infused world. Over the last century, disruptive innovation has generally favored the young and well-educated because they can adapt to new ways of doing things.  

AI could be different, but I doubt it, because young people are already the heaviest users of AI, and they are creative and open-minded enough to figure out the best uses of it too.  

All of this may leave you nervous about your child’s future, but in my opinion as an economist, a rapidly changing world makes the type of broad liberal arts and sciences education we deliver here at Harvard College more valuable, not less. Skills like critical thinking and understanding across difference are “future proof”. They will always matter. Career education is important, but it has a shelf life – think of the rise and fall of coding bootcamps over the last decade, for example. Now people are using AI to “vibe code” in conversation English.  

Let me conclude by highlighting three broad themes that guide how we at Harvard College engage with students.

First is a commitment to excellence. Harvard students are among the most talented young people in the world, and more importantly, they are more talented than ever. And they put their talents to great use here.

Some people might disagree with this statement, especially if they only read about Harvard in the news. Well, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. So here are some facts to take home with you.  

Harvard students won 8 Rhodes scholarships last year, twice as many as the next highest colleges. Our students have finished in the top 3 in the Putnam international math competition 10 years in a row. We had 13 Olympic medalists at the Paris games. As I said, Harvard College is not only excellent, it is more excellent than ever. Your students wanted to be here in this important moment in Harvard’s history, and I see it on their faces and in their demeanor when they engage in the classroom, the dining hall, and every other space in between.

The second theme is our responsibility to serve the public interest. Too few people in this country and around the world see themselves in what Harvard provides. Being seen as an elite institution that serves only itself and a narrow slice of society is an existential threat to our mission.  I believe that education is among the most powerful forces for societal good in the world. We need to make a Harvard education more accessible, and to make the case that our graduates serve the common good.  

Harvard’s promise is that we admit the most talented students without regard to their ability to pay. We hope that the recent expansion of our financial aid policy ensures that family finances are never a barrier to attending Harvard College.  I’m proud to say that Harvard College is tuition free for households making up to $200,000 per year, which is more than 9 in 10 American families.  And in the Class of 2029, one in five of our students are the first in their families to go to college.

An equally important part of our promise is that when our talented students graduate, they serve their country and society. This could be direct public service, but it’s also producing great science, starting companies and creating jobs, and curing diseases. To be worth public support, Harvard graduates must serve the public interest.  

In 2024, seven Harvard College graduates – and 41 alumni across all parts of the University – were elected to the United States Congress, more than any other university. 67 graduates last year received the new Harvard College Certificate for Civic Engagement, which awards distinction in academic and community impact. We enrolled 78 military veterans at Harvard College last year, up from just 8 in 2018, and 19 of our students commissioned into U.S. military service upon graduation, more than any other Ivy league university. We can surely do more, but I’m proud to say that our graduates have always been public-spirited, and I know that the Class of 2029 will be no exception.

Third, and this is especially important for Family Weekend, is that we be a supportive and nurturing community where students feel they belong and where they can grow and fulfill their potential. There is a wonderful book about parenting by the psychologist Alison Gopnik called The Gardener and the Carpenter. The “carpenter” parent views raising a child as an act of construction, like chiseling a block of wood into a precisely shaped sculpture.

But good parenting, Gopnik argues, is more like gardening than it is like carpentry. The gardener tends the soil, waters the plants, ensures good sunlight, and more generally sets the conditions for flourishing. Gardener parents – and good deans – don’t try to control, but rather they create a rich, stable, and safe environment where young people can learn, explore, and grow into the people they were always meant to be.

I view myself as the tender – the steward - of the world’s greatest garden, and I am so delighted and honored to be given the responsibility of nurturing your children, who are becoming such promising and beautiful flowers. Thank you for entrusting their care to us, and I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible in the days to come.