Bard College 2025 Commencement Address
Bard College held its one hundred sixty-fifth commencement on Saturday, May 24, 2025. Bard President Leon Botstein conferred 485 undergraduate degrees on the Class of 2025 and 192 graduate degrees, including master of fine arts; doctor and master of philosophy and master of arts in decorative arts, design history, and material culture; master of science and master of arts in economic theory and policy; master of business administration in sustainability; master of arts in teaching; master of arts in curatorial studies; master of science in environmental policy and in climate science and policy; master of music in vocal arts and in conducting; master of music in curatorial, critical, and performance studies; and master of education in environmental education. Bard also conferred 53 associate degrees from its microcolleges. The program took place at 2:30 pm in the commencement tent on the Seth Goldfine Memorial Rugby Field.Text (unedited) of commencement address by former prime minister of Haiti Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, delivered by Patricia Benoit
Mr. President,
Mr. Chairman,
Dear faculty, dear parents, dear graduating students, distinguished guests and honorees,
Last October I received a letter from President Leon Botstein informing me that I was selected to receive an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters at the College 165th Commencement. I was overwhelmed with joy and pride, and my letter of response expressed how honored I was. I began to imagine the event and started to foresee and plan, while at Bard, preliminary arrangements handled by Ms. Stetson.
However, I had not anticipated what happened next in November 2024. Continuing gang violence escalated and forced the closing of Port-au-Prince airport to international flights, isolating the country once again. The situation continues to be volatile. The ongoing violence threatens my home and those of colleagues and loved ones. This is why I am not here with you today. I thank my friend, filmmaker Patricia Benoit.
I live in Haiti; I am Haitian, and I am very proud to be Haitian. Just over two hundred years ago, the Haitian Revolution challenged the superpowers of the time, France, Great Britain, Spain and the United States.
The message from our side was clear: half a million black, previously enslaved people won a war against Napoleon's army and abolished slavery, colonialism and racism, thus declaring to the world that they belonged to a common, human condition.
The world order at the time rejected the claims and sought to undermine this new republic. They considered it a threat to their interests and to the racist ideology of the times. These super powers launched a formidable campaign against Haiti, attempting to delegitimize the country culturally and politically. This translated into a systematic claim of the inferiority of the “Other.” Measures were taken to isolate and economically cripple our fledgling nation. A lasting and pervasive set of conducts that persists today.
Haitian scholar Michel-Rolph Trouillot, professor at Chicago University, studied how the western powers failed to acknowledge the only successful slavery volt of modern times in his anthropological study of the Haitian revolution whose title says it all, Silencing the Past, Power and the Production of History.
Today, Haiti is once again leading a tragedy in the Greek sense of the term. Conflicts, betrayal, cruelty, fear, hate, compromise. Passion. But also compassion, resistance, empathy, solidarity and hope. We are still working on finding the most constructive moral to our current story. A moral that would help us define the fate of our country.
Exactly a month ago, professor of politics, Jonathan Becker, invited me for the fourth time to participate in his class on civic education. It was an honor and I decided to speak about the ethics of care. We discussed its constitutive elements: attention, responsibility, competence and responsiveness, all of which relate to consideration of the other.
It was wonderful to listen to the students' questions and to recognize their understanding based on their own experiences. Across the oceans while historical and cultural environments may be different, students from Myanmar, Afghanistan, Congo, are experiencing similar conditions of violence. How can civic engagement mitigate these effects? I explained how my colleagues and I have helped communities of artists whose workshops were ransacked to relocate safely, smallholder farmers to continue to produce, and displaced families to find solace in my home. I have in mind then what I often tell my own students: dare to learn. Use your own reasoning and always uphold the sense of our common humanity.
And this leads me to you. The graduating students of Bard college who today celebrate a new beginning. I still have fond memories of my own years in college, though a very long time ago. I believe it will be the same for you. As a distinctive liberal arts institution, Bard demonstrates how studies in philosophy, history, languages and the arts are necessary to the study of science and are at the intersection of Bard’s commitment to civic education, civic engagement and an openness to the world.
At the heart of this process is the development of critical thinking, that is the capacity to read and to integrate new ideas, thereby constructing a body of knowledge that challenges the prevailing doxa and creates a new narrative. A new imaginary. The complexity of our time makes this process more urgent as we are confronted with an oversimplified and destructive alternate reality. Alternate truths. And alternate facts.
I wish you to remain lifelong learners.
I also want to thank your parents, your professors, and the entire staff of this very special institution for their patience, their assistance, their attention, their love, and their joy on this day of academic accomplishment.
I would like to conclude this brief comment by a heartfelt homage to President Leon Botstein, music conductor, historian, cultural leader and prominent intellectual figure whose 50 years of extraordinary service to education makes him the longest serving college President in the United States. Thank you, President Botstein. I want to reiterate how honored I am to be recognized here.
Thank you for your attention. I wish you the very best and once again congratulations to the graduating class of 2025.
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ABOUT THE COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER
Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis was the prime minister of Haiti from 2008–09. Upon leaving office, she returned to the foundation she created in 1995, Fondation Connaissance et Liberté (Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty, or FOKAL). She is FOKAL’s president, coordinating special projects in sustainable development and higher education. Pierre-Louis is also a professor at Université Quisqueya in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She holds a master’s degree in economics from Queens College in New York, and honorary doctorates from Saint Michael’s College in Vermont and the University of San Francisco. In 2010, she was a resident fellow at Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Pierre-Louis has contributed to several books and publications about Haiti, and she is a founding member of the Haitian/Caribbean review magazine Chemins Critiques, in which she has published articles on politics, gender, economics, arts, and culture. She is board chair of Haiti’s prominent cultural institution Le Centre d’art, a position she also holds with the Centre de Promotion de la Femme Ouvrière and Caribbean Culture Fund. Among numerous other awards, she is the 2023 recipient of the French Legion of Honor.
Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis was the prime minister of Haiti from 2008–09. Upon leaving office, she returned to the foundation she created in 1995, Fondation Connaissance et Liberté (Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty, or FOKAL). She is FOKAL’s president, coordinating special projects in sustainable development and higher education. Pierre-Louis is also a professor at Université Quisqueya in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She holds a master’s degree in economics from Queens College in New York, and honorary doctorates from Saint Michael’s College in Vermont and the University of San Francisco. In 2010, she was a resident fellow at Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Pierre-Louis has contributed to several books and publications about Haiti, and she is a founding member of the Haitian/Caribbean review magazine Chemins Critiques, in which she has published articles on politics, gender, economics, arts, and culture. She is board chair of Haiti’s prominent cultural institution Le Centre d’art, a position she also holds with the Centre de Promotion de la Femme Ouvrière and Caribbean Culture Fund. Among numerous other awards, she is the 2023 recipient of the French Legion of Honor.
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About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place and Massena properties, Bard’s campus consists of more than 1,200 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; advanced degrees through 13 graduate programs; nine early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 165-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at the main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
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This event was last updated on 05-25-2025
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