Commencement Thoughts For the Classes of 2020

ICCE Director Carl Luna shares with students graduating into the most uncertain and trying times in 50 years.

ICCE Director Carl Luna recently shared the commencement address he would give to a class of students graduating into the most uncertain and trying times in 50 years:

Commencement 2020: The Future is Now. The Future is Yours.

According to Luna, the purpose of the address "is to give students graduating in an age of crisis a pessimissm the understanding that there are grounds for profound optimism."   He writes:"Be a long-term optimist. Don’t listen to the naysayers who tell you these are the worst of times and things are destined to decline ever more.  You enter your place as the next generation of America’s leaders on the cusp of a golden age of humanity."

Dr. Luna urges graduates to embrace the "Ethical Life" --" a life recognizing that community must always come before self and that it is our obligation as moral beings to establish affinities to the broadest, most inclusive concepts of community we can achieve."

"As a Catholic-centered institution of higher education," Luna states, "it has been our obligation to impress upon our graduates that the skills and knowledge they have aquired at USD are not for their benefit alone but for the benefit of all members of our community and that the highest calling they can aspire to is serving the higher good of all."

USD's Institute for Civil Civic Engagement serves the Unviversity's mission of inpiring the ethical, community-focused world view central to Catholic life.