He closed with his own heartfelt congratulations. “As you can see from the picture up on the screen,” he said with a wide grin, indicating a comical photo of himself posing with a quartet of furry University “leaders” - the Princeton tiger, Forbes College bear, Mathey College moose and Whitman College whale - “we treat this metaphor very literally.” Every graduating class still paints the cannon to make their mark each year.Įisgruber then announced the handing over of the “metaphorical” keys to the University to the leaders of the senior class, another Class Day tradition.
The giant screens flanking the stage displayed a vintage photo of the crowd at Class Day in 1886, also on Cannon Green, replete with men in shiny black top hats, women holding parasols and “86” painted on the cannon in the middle of the lawn. Eisgruber opened his remarks by noting that Class Day has been celebrated at least since before the Civil War. Preceding Fauci’s speech, Princeton President Christopher L. “Of course, listen to the advice of others who care about you, your mentors, but at the end of the day, go with your own gut,” he said. That decision, he said, transformed his career and life. Against the advice of his peers, he went on to pursue the causes of “this mysterious new disease,” and subsequently become the leading investigative physician in the fight against HIV/AIDS. One month later, the infection had spread across other major cities. The lyrics “ I see skies of blue and clouds of white ” from one of the selections, Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” captured the sunny day perfectly.įauci recalled the most significant pivot of his career, telling the seniors: “Expect the unexpected.” In 1981, having already settled into a “comfortable career” at the National Institutes of Health, he read a CDC report about a handful of cases of an unusual pneumonia among gay men in Los Angeles. They were serenaded by recordings of songs performed by many of Princeton’s 15 a cappella groups.
This year was the first in-person Class Day in three years - and Fauci, a native of Brooklyn, also played to the buoyant mood of his audience, telling them in his unmistakable New York accent: “o not shy away from dreaming impossible dreams and seizing unanticipated opportunities.”įauci’s full remarks, as prepared, are available online.īefore the program began, seniors and family members filled a sun-drenched Cannon Green behind Nassau Hall, snapping selfies and waving to friends and relatives. The annual Class Day event is by tradition a more lighthearted ceremony than Commencement, organized by seniors to recognize the achievements of their class. As future leaders in our society, we are truly counting on you for that.” “But apply your abilities to critically analyze and examine, which you have honed well here at Princeton, to discern and challenge weak assertions built on untruths. “Seek and listen to opinions that are different from your own,” he told his audience. … Yet the outrage and dissent against this alarming trend has been muted and mild.”
Regarding “the normalization of untruths,” Fauci said he felt troubled “that differences of opinion or ideology have in certain situations been reflected by egregious distortions of reality. He categorized healthcare disparities as “failings of our society” and asked the graduating seniors to “find the strength, the wisdom, the ingenuity, and the empathy to address these entrenched elements of injustice, manifested in so many subtle and overt ways, and work with all our might to remedy the cultural disease of racism, just as we fight the viral disease of COVID-19.” Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications