Wise words for the 2025 graduates

Radical empathy, leading with love, and finding God in all things: Commencement speakers share wisdom with Santa Clara University graduates.

Santa Clara University’s 2025 commencement season marked the end of one journey and the beginning of many others. Graduates were sent out into the world with pomp and circumstance and, of course, a few departing wise words from their alma mater. Here are some sentiments that moved our hearts and minds:

“We have tremendous confidence in you. In a world filled with miraculous technology, you have shown us that real progress needs people. People like you, who are committed to using it and shaping it for the common good.

You taught me that our students are leaders, leaders who are passionate, high-energy, incredibly bright, and ambitious—and kind and caring.  You lead with heart. And you often have led the way at Santa Clara University. You’ve led with your voices, with your intellect, with your activism, with your strength and discipline, and with your radical empathy.”

– Julie Sullivan, Santa Clara University President, at 2025 undergraduate commencement

“Ready-made ideas are of no help, and official information may not be balanced or truthful. Only personal encounter and immersion make wise governance possible. This way of proceeding is called discernment, which consists of acting in accordance with an understanding of God’s will in history. Its raw material is always the echo that reality generates within one’s inner life. It compels one to seek God wherever He may be found—not only within predetermined, well-defined, fenced-off, or “geo-localized” boundaries.

I learned from (Pope) Francis that discernment obliges us to go beyond the boundaries, the fences we see in front of our eyes that prevent us from seeing clearly as God works in our lives and in the life of the world. Discernment is never merely about ideas (even reformist ones) but about concrete history because reality is always greater than ideas. Actions and decisions, therefore, must be rooted in a careful reading of lived experience.”

– Rev. Antonio Spadaro, S.J., guest speaker of the Jesuit School of Theology 2025 commencement

“We are not just a great law school. We are a tender and transformative learning community built on an ethic of loving kindness. You graduates know that kindness is not weakness. It is fortitude. Acts of loving kindness in the form of generous listening, perspective taking, paying attention, empathy, humility, and respecting the equal dignity and infinite worth of every human being are indispensable to your professional success and your well-being. And acts of loving kindness are the foundation on which you will build a more hopeful, just, humane, and sustainable world.”

– Michael J. Kaufman, dean and professor, Santa Clara University School of Law, speaking to the 2025 School of Law graduates