As delivered on Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in New York, NY.
Thank you, Dean Yarhi-Milo. Thank you for your leadership, for the courage with which you approach your work, and for representing the best of public service.
If you’ll excuse me one second I just want to make sure. This is a little — hi, can you raise the text a little bit? Thank you.
All right, well, I’ll go back to my prepared remarks, which were to thank Keren for your academic excellence, inspiring leadership, and dedication to public service.
SIPA class of 2025 — you made it! I am honored to be with you today — to say congratulations, and to say thank you.
Congratulations on this incredible accomplishment.
And thank you.
Thank you for deciding to study international affairs and to engage with the world.
Thank you for seeking out a global community like SIPA’s.
Thank you for choosing to dedicate your careers to making a better future for all of us.
Now, I know you’ve been through a lot these past two years. So I want to have an honest conversation about this moment — and how to fight the temptation to retreat into cynicism, or shrink the size of your ambition.
Because believe it or not, I am certain that this is the moment to resist the comfort of fighting for the past or even the present — and instead fight for a better, brighter future.
I’m certain you can do that because I’ve met so many of you. We’ve connected on campus, I’ve worked with a few of you at The Rockefeller Foundation, and we’ve talked in the lead-up to this ceremony about your time at SIPA and plans for what comes next.
Each and every student I’ve met has left me in awe.
You’ve interviewed experts in the Gambia about how to improve school feeding.
You’ve engaged with policy experts in Greece working to craft legal, humane migration pathways.
You’ve had deep technical discussions with New York State energy authorities about decarbonizing buildings.
You did so much work for your capstone projects and clients that I found myself wondering how you made any time for your actual coursework.
You also took on challenges that were less global in nature, like beating out some vicious competition during class registration and jostling for those last few drink tickets at Amity Hall.
And, of course, you’ve made it to graduation. I, and all of us here, are so proud of you.
Now, to the SIPA families: whether you’re here from just a few blocks away, or you’re streaming this program from half a world away, you’re about to watch a loved one get a graduate degree from Columbia University.
This is your day, too, a product of your support and your sacrifice.
Graduates, let’s hear it for your friends and family!
You know, in 1967, my grandfather, an accountant in India, hoped his son would one day receive a graduate degree from an American school. But when my father got accepted to study engineering in Arizona, even with a scholarship, the plane ticket was too expensive. To get my dad on that plane, my dada liquidated his retirement savings.
That was not just a big bet on education — that was a big bet on America.
For my grandfather, America represented the idea that every person has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Though he may not have been familiar with those exact words, he was inspired by the dignity and hope they embody. By the notion that human dignity is universal. That everyone, regardless of where they were born, has value. And that each of us can make a difference.
That idea animated the founding of America. It motivated the creation of Columbia University.
It catalyzed movements in this city and this country to extend human dignity to communities long denied their basic freedoms.
It inspired young servicemembers to battle fascism on the Western Front, at Omaha Beach, and on Iwo Jima. And it drove leaders from across the world to build institutions that could sustain a lasting peace.
And that idea inspired Columbia to create a school to train experts to lead those institutions.
For close to 80 years, more than 27,000 SIPA graduates have done this work, from leading entire nations to running aid clinics in disaster zones. They’ve helped to usher in history’s greatest increase in human prosperity, largest reduction in extreme poverty, and longest era without large-scale global conflict.
And yet today, the order they helped build is under pressure and under attack due to technological advances, geopolitical changes, climate disruptions, distrust and division, and resurgent power politics.
We see that in state and non-state actors alike violating international law and the rules of war, and neglecting the responsibility to protect the most vulnerable.
We see it in the abandonment of efforts to feed the hungry and [care] for the sick.
We see it in America’s communities, where achieving a life better than the one our parents led is now the exception rather than the expectation. In so many places, it’s harder to dream about the future and easier to aspire to return to the past.
We see it in our politics and on college campuses, where too many cannot accept or even listen to the opinions of those with whom they disagree.
And we do see a reminder right here at this ceremony. As the Dean just noted, Mahmoud Khalil was supposed to walk with you all today. Detaining students without due process undermines the very idea that inspired my grandfather to send his son to study in the United States.
As a result of all of this, we now face a future where the pursuit of power for the few could well replace the pursuit of dignity for the many.
So we are living through a crisis.
Now, in my career, I have been in plenty of crises, as Keren noted in her introduction. Some were caused by natural disasters, pandemics, and wars, and more than a few were of my own making.
In each of them, I have learned it’s very easy — frankly, it’s logical — to feel angry and uncertain.
To become cynical. To reflexively defend what you know instead of boldly defining what could come next.
And yet.
And yet I’m about to tell you something that feels very counterintuitive.
It’s precisely in these moments that we can seek to solve some of our toughest problems. Rather than lament the very real setbacks, there’s actually an opportunity to do something big.
That may surprise you, but a crisis further concentrates the mind. It opens partners — however unlikely — to new ways of thinking. It exposes where the status quo is not working. It hastens the search for new ideas and novel solutions. And it necessitates that we admit when progress is off track.
Even when so much seems lost, your commitment to pursue bold, transformational change can empower you to fight for the future when so many others are attempting to reclaim the past or revive the present.
So I want to tell you two stories about the power of seeing the horizon, and not just the hurdles.
One you know the ending to, and one you don’t.
The first story takes place in August 1941, off the coast of Newfoundland. A secret meeting on the USS Augusta between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.
Hitler had blitzed through most of Europe, Japan was on the march in the Pacific, and Russia was in trouble. Britain was on the verge of starvation and invasion — relying on what aid the United States provided and hoping for more.
The United States did not yet have much more to provide. A year earlier, Roosevelt had called on the country to build 50,000 airplanes, but it had managed less than a tenth of that total. At the time, the U.S. Army had more horses than tanks.
The meeting on the Augusta could have been a discussion between two scared, angry, and cynical men, focusing on that day’s hurdles, on plans to build industrial capacity, and claw and scratch a path to survival through 1941, never mind 1942.
But Roosevelt and Churchill saw the horizon, and searched for how to fundamentally solve the problems that had led to the war — brainstorming and scribbling on bits of paper about how to make a better 1945 and beyond.
Eventually, those scraps of paper added up to a joint declaration — typed up by Churchill’s somewhat confused stenographer — that became the foundation for a historic alliance and a better world.
It came to be known as the Atlantic Charter. It was an explicit — and painful for Churchill, who sought to defend Britain’s empire — abandonment of the past. And it was an admission that the present order had failed to prevent the war.
That meeting inspired Churchill to say one evening on the Augusta, “Something really big may be happening, something really big.”
We know now that it was.
The Charter galvanized an alliance that won the war. It set the stage for the world’s colonies to become free. It gave rise to institutions like the UN and Bretton Woods, and affirmed the basic idea that it’s in everyone’s self-interest — everyone’s — for all people to live with hope and dignity.
The second story takes place in one of the countries that would eventually gain its freedom in the postwar era the Atlantic Charter helped create.
In January of this year, I joined 27 African heads of state in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to commit to the steps that will finally, once and for all, bring electricity to 300 million people in Africa by 2030.
Let me set the stage.
Despite extraordinary progress in recent decades, we continue to live in a world where nearly three [quarters] of a billion of us live in the dark, without access to electricity, including 600 million in Africa alone. In the 21st century’s digital economy, prosperity, security, and dignity all come through an electrical outlet. That’s why insufficient access to power is a primary driver of poverty.
Universal energy abundance isn’t just another goal alongside feeding and educating children, improving health care, and creating jobs.
It’s the key that unlocks all of those other aspirations.
Improving connections to electricity will determine Africa’s future and everyone else’s, too. After all, by 2050, one of every three young people on this planet will be African.
Yeah, you can cheer for that!
Connecting communities in Africa to electricity will determine whether those young people can work, study, pursue their dreams, start businesses, and build prosperity. Failure will leave not just them, but all of us, worse off.
In Dar that day, I saw a new model of development — a way of advancing human dignity on energy and far more.
It was led by leaders of developing nations.
It was inspired by technological frontiers that include renewable electrification and artificial intelligence.
It was fundamentally about empowering entrepreneurs and the private sector, and young people in particular.
And it was driven primarily by local currency investment, in cooperation with development banks.
And it includes philanthropies. The Rockefeller Foundation made the single largest investment we have made in our 112-year history towards this purpose.
The result, including more than $50 billion in financial commitments, gives us a chance to achieve what we call Mission 300, the single largest public-private partnership to fight extreme poverty on earth today.
As I boarded my plane back to Washington, I was as optimistic as I have ever been. We were on the cusp of something big.
But when I landed, my phone was flooded with calls, texts, and emails from friends and colleagues. USAID, the agency that I had led, and that has, since the 1960s, organized America’s efforts to reduce poverty and promote dignity around the world, was being dismantled.
Former colleagues who had given their lives to the agency were given just 15 minutes to clear out their desks.
Those public servants had, in recent years — had helped save 25 million people from HIV/AIDS.
They helped 5 million families in vulnerable places sustainably escape hunger.
They risked, and in some cases lost, their lives to fight deadly diseases in hot zones and to build schools for girls in war zones.
I was angry as I watched those professionals depart with boxes in hand, rather than doing what they should have been doing — continuing their vital work on behalf of humanity.
And I am furious at the toll these changes will take.
Millions of vulnerable children will suffer, and many will die as a result.
And I was dismayed at a different level by the binary debate that followed: either a cynical disengagement from the world or a fixation on the nobility of an imperfect status quo.
But I knew that there was another way because of what I had seen in Dar.
There, I witnessed hundreds of people — heads of state, entrepreneurs, scientists, and development leaders — join together to boldly make a major advance for human dignity.
Their work makes clear that advancing this cause in the 21st century does not depend on the 20th century order or on the United States alone.
Today, if inspired by ambitious, bold ideas for the future, coalitions of the willing — including public, private, and philanthropic partners — can solve problems like never before.
Solving extreme poverty through universal energy abundance is what gets me out of bed every day.
It’s our big bet.
What’s yours?
You probably have an idea already, from a class or a capstone project.
Maybe you’ll rework the Atlantic Charter for today, or redesign decades-old institutions like the World Bank or NATO to meet future challenges. Maybe you’ll use new advances in biotechnology to end hunger and unnecessary child death. Maybe you’ll harness the power of artificial intelligence to fight pandemics or climate change.
Whatever it is, use this crisis to think and bet big.
Lean into fresh, innovative solutions.
Find partners, however unlikely, who share your optimism.
Measure your results, learn from your setbacks, and never stop experimenting.
Above all, look beyond the hurdles and keep your eye on the horizon.
You’ve done just that to get to this day.
Now, you have the training and education.
You have the dedication and the drive.
You have — all around you here today — colleagues, community, and loved ones.
This is a moment to fight for your future — and ours.
We’re all counting on you.
Thank you. And congratulations to the Class of 2025!
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Dr. Rajiv J. Shah
President, The Rockefeller Foundation, President's Office, The Rockefeller Foundation