“The Case for Empathy Optimism (Amid All)”

My Commencement Address to American University's School of International Service Class of 2026

Thank you, President Alger, Provost Wilkins, and Dean Robinson, for your leadership and for convening us to mark this amazing day. I am immensely grateful and honored to receive an honorary degree from American University’s School of International Service, one of the nation’s premier institutions for the study – and the practice – of working to improve the world around us.

Graduates, given what drew you to this program and what clearly drives you, I would feel privileged to share this special day with you any year. But I feel especially fortunate to be joining you today, because two of the core ideas at the heart of AU School of International Service are under significant pressure at the moment. What are those ideas?

• The belief in our interconnectedness, the idea that each of our fates is linked to the fates of others,

• And the calling to serve others.

I am here to tell you, graduates, that, if you stay true to these core ideas, you will find great meaning in both your careers and your lives.

And I am here to tell you, anxious parents, that – even if your kids’ career pathways now seem less stable and their journeys more jagged than a few years ago – your graduates most definitely chose the right university and learned the right things to position themselves to meet this moment.

As you heard, my most recent stint in international service came at USAID, then the world’s leading bilateral development and humanitarian agency, which I ran from 2021 until January 20, 2025.

When I lived in Washington, DC, as USAID Administrator, this was my neighborhood. My kids played Little League a few blocks away at Friendship Field off Mass. Ave and Van Ness. I paid far too much for coffee Sunday mornings at nearby Wagshal’s. And I took our two yellow labradors Snowy and Finley on long walks on the trails in Glover Archibold and Battery Kemble Park.

In living a stone’s throw from American University, I encountered you, students, constantly. Indeed, sometimes I had to think twice before leaving home because you stopped me on the street so often, providing suggestions on what more we could do to support Ukraine, inquiring what we were doing to help African countries address their debt distress, or asking why we weren’t getting more food and medicine to Palestinians in Gaza.

When I went into the office, I also regularly encountered young development professionals who had graduated from AU. For decades, the agency tapped the talent nurtured on this campus, through internships, and by recruiting AU grads as USAID contractors, civil servants, and foreign service officers. One of the things that always struck me about the USAID staff who had attended AU is that the workplace and the world remained their classrooms.

The AU School of International Service was founded in 1957, and USAID was born just four years later in 1961. We believed many of the same things, and we worked in parallel, and often together, to promote peace, justice, dignity, and security around the world.

***

Almost fourteen months ago, I walked out of the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington, D.C. for the last time. Because of the powerful bipartisan support the agency enjoyed, and the growing centrality of development and economic stability to U.S. national security – I left office fairly upbeat about the agency’s future.

As I departed, I took in the photos on the walls, photos that captured a range of USAID programs – health workers giving kids their measles vaccines, farmers planting seeds more resistant to drought, solar panels bringing electricity to remote villages, and girls raising their hands to get their teachers’ attention in USAID funded classrooms. I felt a profound gratitude to have had the chance to work among 15,000 American and international staff who never seemed to feel even a little self-conscious or corny in admitting on a given day that they hoped to change the world.

Tragically, within a few short weeks of the handoff from President Biden to President Trump, however, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, decided to abruptly terminate the work of an agency serving the world’s poorest. He did so defaming individuals who had dedicated their lives to what you graduates aim to do: serve others.

Musk and his followers didn’t just dismantle the largest foreign assistance agency in the world; they also began chipping away at its moral foundations. The destructionof USAID – which the Lancet predicts will kill 14 million people, including 4.5 million kids under 5, by 2030 –occurred against the backdrop of broader attacks onempathy – claims that empathy is emotionally manipulative, something that can cause us to put regard for the welfare of strangers above our own self-interest. Less than a month after bragging that he had spent one of his weekends “feeding USAID to the wood-chipper,” Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan, “The fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy.”

As if a volatile job market wasn’t worrying enough for you, graduates, some of you might be wondering what will become of empathy itself?

***

I am an empathy optimist.

I am an empathy optimist because of the power of the arts to pull us – sometimes kicking and screaming – into the shoes of others. I have two teenage children. My son Declan is 6’1” tall and seventeen years old. His main preoccupations are girls and the Boston Celtics. But I have seen William Shakespeare, Mary Shelly, Edith Wharton, and the misfits and joy-riders created by Bob Dylan songs expand his world. Indeed, when his first crush went unrequited earlier this year, and I inquired about how he was feeling, instead of teenage mumblings or deflection, he was able to find the just-right words, borrowed from Dylan, “I offered up my innocence, and got repaid with scorn.”

My 13-year-old daughter Rian keeps up with the latest fashion trends, and is part of a Tik Tok generation that takes meticulous care of their skin. She is too cool for school. But I have seen the tears stream down her face when Alexander Hamilton’s son Philip is killed in theduel reenacted in the Broadway show, and nothing on social media can influence her like the character of 14-year-old Ponyboy Curtis, a Greaser navigating class conflict – and the risk of growing up too fast – in the S.E. Hinton novel The Outsiders.

My favorite encapsulation of the ways in which the arts expand us comes from George Eliot, who said they allow us “to imagine and to feel the pains and the joys of those who differ from [us] in everything but the broad fact of being struggling, erring human creatures.”

It is no accident that books are being banned from libraries in America at the same time empathy is under pressure. But for as long as words and songs and art surround us, humans will find ways to transcend their own experiences and identify with others.

***

I am an empathy optimist because over the last fifteen months, I have seen the stubbornness and resilience of those driven by the call to serve. I mentioned earlier the incomparable USAID workforce. They didn’t join the U.S. government for the money. And they most certainly didn’t go into development or humanitarian work for the lifestyle – more than two-thirds of the countries where USAID worked were in crisis, whether from conflict, natural disasters, or political unrest.

Decades after President Kennedy issued his famous call to serve, the people who joined USAID answered that call out of a simple, old-fashioned desire to improve the lives of others. Remarkably – even though most USAID public servants were given only fifteen minutes to clean out their desks before being escorted out by security guards, even though they were defamed and threatened – they have remained clear in their minds about the meaning of their work. As one said to me, as they passed through the USAID turnstile for the last time, “it was never a job.”

Here’s the thing, graduates: when something is more than a job to you –when it is a vocation, a calling, a place where you find meaning – you will find a way to rise again, you will find a way to contribute. If you have experienced the feeling of being useful in this world, even fleetingly, I promise: you are going to find a way to be useful again.

Already, hundreds of USAID workers have gone to work at the State Department. Why do this, when the leadership of the Department had been so quick to lie about the workand workers of USAID? Because these individuals care about the people in the world who benefited from American programs. Offered a chance to do such work again, they seized it.

Countless others have returned to the places they grew up and decided to run for office or join local government.

Many have landed in the private sector, where they are bringing decades of technical expertise in global health, education, energy transition, economic development, and much more into new arenas for innovation and growth. As they move into philanthropy, social enterprise, technology, and other sectors, they are helping scale transformative, human-centered solutions across the globe. They have found new ways to be useful.

***

And finally, I am an empathy optimist because people care about other people. A new GoFundMe study released last week found that 71 percent of Gen Z (ages 18 to 29) had given to charities in some form. They also appear to be volunteering at a higher rate than older generations.

According to Newsmax, a conservative outlet known for its strong support of the Trump administration, 77% of Americans “support international assistance that saves lives, improves global health, strengthens alliances, and bolsters national security and the economy.” Even in a deeply polarized moment, why has support for international engagement, development, and humanitarianism endured?

Each of us has different scaffolding that holds up our moral architecture. For some of us, it is the words of Jesus that guide our intuitions. “Whatever you wish others would do to you, do also to them.” Even before Christ, the Jewish sage Rabbi Hillel summarized the essence of God’s command: “what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor; that is the whole Torah, while the rest is commentary; go and learn it.” The prophet Muhammad said, “One who spends the night with a full stomach while his neighbor is hungry, has not believed in me.” Every religious tradition enshrines a different version of this point, but they all come back to a single idea: the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.

I have always been partial to John Rawls’ construct calledthe “Veil of Ignorance.” If we are wearing this veil of ignorance, and we don’t know whether we are rich or poor, gay or straight, a man or a woman, a Muslim or a Christian, what would we want the rules and values in our societies to be. If we didn’t know anything about who we were, how would we wish to see society structured? Surely, we would place empathy at the heart of our worldview.

***

Now this may all sound slightly starry-eyed to some of you. International assistance was slashed by 23% globally last year. More conflict is happening now than at any time since the Second World War. Inequality and political polarization are rising, while trust in institutions is falling. We are in the twentieth straight year of freedom in decline globally. You know the facts as well as I do.

But you don’t have to be super cheerful – or optimistic – about the state of the world to be an empathy optimist. Embracing empathy optimism doesn’t require blowing past these grim realities and trends. It only requires recognizing that we have a foundation on which to build, a foundation because:

• Every day people who are skeptical of politics are reading novels or binging TV series, stepping into the shoes of people with whom they have little in common.

• Every day countless individuals are getting back up after being knocked down because they can’t help but try again.

• And every day, whether owing to our faith or our powers of reason, most of us believe – and pass along to our children – the idea that we should do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves.

Empathy optimism is not a playbook for success; it might best be viewed as fuel for the wending journey ahead.

American University School of International Service graduates, you have worked so hard to get to this day.

Have faith – you are ready to embark on that journey. And have confidence -- your imaginations, your resilience, and your foundational regard for others puts you in the strongest possible position to obtain the ultimate prize: that of being useful.

Thank you, and congratulations!