President Sian Leah Beilock, Remarks as Delivered

Live at Radio City Music Hall

Congratulations, Barnard Class of 2022!

How amazing it is to be celebrating a Barnard Commencement together, really together, for the first time in years.

I have to admit — that sea of caps and gowns looks different to me now than it did before. Don’t get me wrong — it looks as cool as ever; the tradition, history, and unity that this sight in front of me represents moves me as much as it ever did. Your caps and gowns signal that you are Barnard graduates — who may have come from different backgrounds and taken different journeys to get here — but who have all arrived at the same endpoint nonetheless, at least for today. What you are wearing is a visual symbolization of a tremendous rite of passage, and that you all came into Radio City Music Hall today as Barnard students, but you will soon be leaving as Barnard alums.

So what’s different about seeing this now? Well, after nearly two and a half years of living through a global pandemic, it’s all the more evident that to make your way to Radio City, “student” was just one of the many roles and identities you successfully took on. 

As if the role of student weren’t complicated and multifaceted enough — you found yourselves becoming, if you weren’t already, caregivers and mutual aid providers, amateur epidemiologists, Zoom stylists, and more. You had to creatively adapt the identities and relationships you already had: friend or partner, athlete or artist, homebody or social butterfly. And many of you, if your circumstances permitted, selectively took on new identities — such as Duolinguist, sourdough baker, TikTok dancer, or my personal favorite — new dog owner (I had to give a shoutout to Rosie).

It's certainly not that every Barnard graduate before you didn’t have many identities and roles too. But in the “before times,” it was easy to deprioritize them on days like today — to say, I am not just about my cap and gown, a graduate above all. 

Now it’s different. Now — more than ever — we want you to celebrate you becoming a graduate and the other selves you’ve honed that have allowed you to get through the last few years.

Because the truth is that you would not be here today if you didn’t have many different selves — not just the labels you take on, but your deeper identities, interests, and characteristics. 

Barnard demands being multiple selves; to be a Barnard graduate is to be so much more than someone who passed all your classes. And to be a Barnard graduate is not just to have multiple selves; it’s knowing how to access your different selves when you need them.

At an intellectual level, that means having the dexterity and range to reach into and pull from a wide range of subjects, modes of thought and varied histories, cultures, and perspectives to answer a question, solve a problem, perform a job, or simply satisfy a curiosity. And to do that effectively, you must be able to access a lot of knowledge. But it’s not enough to have a specialty, to know one thing super well. To hone that specialty to the widest extent, and to retain maximal flexibility of thought and adaptability to circumstance, and to simply not get stuck, you need knowledge and experiences that come from many different disciplines across the arts and sciences. 

That was a principal goal behind making this year the Year of Science at Barnard. Barnard has always and historically been celebrated for its excellence in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, and we decided to highlight the science side of the College’s identity — to tell the lesser-told story of our world-class achievements in science, and to ensure that that legacy continues into the future. The aim has been to strengthen every student’s science muscle — their science self — no matter their specialty, no matter how important a role science plays in their identity — just as we strengthen all our students’, regardless of their majors, academic muscles — for example, with an intense year of writing, no matter one’s major. This full-brain training increases versatility of thought and action, and nourishes resilience.

Resilience? Yes, I mean resilience.

We all have self-doubt about certain aspects of ourselves, whether that doubt is derived internally or from societal messages. And in my research as a cognitive scientist, I’ve discovered that these doubts can be self-sabotaging, especially for women. 

But my research has also shown that when you focus on the parts of your identity that you know are capable of succeeding, and on why you are more apt to succeed than fail, you can keep those doubts in check and perform at your best.

In other words, embracing the multiple aspects of yourselves — “I am a woman and a math major, I am an athlete and an aspiring architect” — can make the difference between failure and success.

And not surprisingly when you think about it, it’s women and underrepresented voices who — by societal pressure and often by choice — take on the most social identities and are most expert at navigating among them in a way that helps them succeed.

My research really struck home to me when I was riding out the pandemic with my now 11-year-old daughter. Boundaries between work and home life had dissolved. No longer did I have the assurance that my work meetings would not come with a childcare subplot. My apartment became home, private office, public workplace, daycare center, school, communication portal, and technology hub all at once. And I had to learn to shift among my multiple selves on a dime.

It wasn’t easy. But once I started reminding myself what my research made clear — that having multiple aspects of your own identity that you can enjoy and focus on is not only good for mental health but also an asset to performance and productivity — I found myself at least appreciating my different roles. It was still hard, but a little more manageable.

When we are more attuned and flexible within our multiple selves, our ability to adapt to change grows. And I think the pandemic made that flexibility more acceptable. I say, run with it. Allow your scientist to match wits with your historian and creative writer — look what that did for our medalist and Commencement speaker Margot Lee Shetterly.

And always make space for more: You don’t need to be locked down at home to build new identities for yourself. 

There’s a common belief that taking on new roles somehow compromises performance in another arena of one’s life. The research shows that’s simply not true. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Creating and maintaining multiple social identities — just like studying a variety of subjects — awakens your neural networks and flexes your abilities. It enables suppleness of mind and flexibility of purpose — all to the advantage of performing well under stress and improving mental and emotional well-being.

Again, the science bears it out. Complexity, research shows, allows us to be resilient in the face of adversity and criticism. When we embrace and develop — in an authentic, “all in” kind of way — various aspects of our identities, we are better able to handle everything life throws at us.

And we’re getting a lot thrown at us these days. Living proudly and adeptly with multiple social identities has never been more fraught, or more important. To respond at the levels we need, to bring others on board, to convince others to change their minds, and sometimes even change our own minds, we will need to recognize and affirm the power of our multiple selves.

This is, above all, what I ask of each and every one of you — to not just nurture multiple selves, but to harness the power you derive from doing so to reshape assumptions, at a societal and even a global level, about who can own what identities. Demolish the stereotypes — not just around gender, but around race, age, religion, political affiliation, and all the other categories we claim for ourselves — and even more so, those categories that are placed onto us by others. Lend power to each other; when you celebrate and lift each other up, you’re opening doors and changing the rules for all of us. 

The more selves of your own you nurture, the better your life will be. The more bold and connected with others your selves are, the better the world will be.

I hope and trust that through your Barnard experience, you have discovered and cultivated many new identities, that you have found value in them and in yourselves, and that, unlike your cap and gown, you’ll bring them everywhere you go, and embody them every day of your lives.

Congratulations.