John Legend to the LMU Undergraduate Class of 2024:
“With love, we can see ourselves in each other. We can discover our abiding mutuality.
With love, we can serve. With love, we can heal. We can build. We can do – and undo.”
Editor’s Note: John Legend is an EGOT-winning singer-songwriter, actor, producer, activist, and philanthropist. The following text is his address to the Class of 2024 at LMU’s 112 Undergraduate Commencement Exercises.
Address to the Class of 2024
Loyola Marymount University
Sunken Garden, Westchester Campus, Los Angeles
INTRODUCTION
To President Snyder, Provost Poon, Executive Vice President Rae, and Chair Viviano (who, by the way, was far too generous): Thank you. Thank you, all, for the invitation, the introduction, and the warm welcome. Hello, Loyola Marymount University!
To the faculty, staff, and alumni; family and friends of the graduates: I’m so happy to see you. I can feel your joy and your pride. Thank you for letting me share in it.
And, of course, to the stars of the show, the brilliant, radiant LMU Class of 2024: Y’all did it! Congratulations! I am honored, grateful, and humbled that I will forever be a member of the LMU Class of 2024.
I remember preparing for my own graduation, way, way back in the 20th century. 1999! And I must admit, I was a little cynical about the whole thing. The pomp and circumstance felt unnecessary.
But, as I experienced my commencement—in that stadium with all my friends and classmates, sharing in this big rite of passage—the ceremony made me feel something. I was inspired. I was proud. I felt connected to my thousands of fellow graduates.
Since then, through all these years—from all that life gives, and all that life takes—I have come to realize that we should savor these moments. We should take the time to pause and reflect, revel in our accomplishments, and with our communities—to celebrate with the people we love.
So, do me a favor, Class of 2024: Can we just take a breath and let this soak in?
Look at the people around you—your people. Take a mental snapshot. Savor it. Relish it. Remember it. Because that joy you feel right now? That’s what a commencement is really about. And, man, do you all deserve this ceremony today. You have earned it.
FROM YOUR JOURNEY, HOPE
Class of 2024: You have traveled a remarkable journey to this time, to this place. I mean, rewind the clock four years: The spring of 2020. Sometimes you just want to block it out, right?
We were in a global pandemic. You were robbed of all the traditional milestones. You didn’t have a senior prom. You didn’t walk across the graduation stage. You finished your senior year trapped in a Zoom screen.
There’s no point in sugarcoating it: That sucked.
Then, in the fall of 2020, you began your journey, masked and socially distanced. Somehow, you juggled your first-year seminars with study sessions at the Lion’s Den as you figured out how to adult.
You participated in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime—in which democracy was on the ballot. And as you prepared for your second semester, we all watched an attempt to overturn that election—and an insurrection at our nation’s capital.
That was all during your first year of college, long before you could partake in a well-deserved drink.
And yet, Class of 2024: Your resilience and resolve; the way you powered through with grit, and determination, and a little bit of fun; the way you looked out for one another, forged connection with one another, amidst an epidemic of isolation and loneliness; the way you advocated for the causes in which you believe; the way you immersed yourselves in the work and play that brings meaning and life—it fills me with so much hope. And hope? Hope. Hope is something we all could use a little more of these days. Yes, let’s talk about hope: About the faith that you give me for the future. About the optimism I feel when I look into all of your faces.
THE POWER OF YOUR LMU DEGREE
Why do I have so much hope, Class of 2024? It starts with your unique education.
President Snyder rightfully deemed this class the “solidarity generation”: A class that recognizes, thanks to the challenges you’ve overcome, that the most effective way to drive change, to find joy, to survive, is by doing it together.
From a once-in-a-century pandemic, you learned the importance of caring for one another—of putting the needs of a community above your own self-interest.
From converging national and global crises, you’ve learned to march together for accountability and action and justice—to get in “good trouble,” as the late John Lewis would say.
Just as important, from your time here, you learned that the power of an education lies not in acing some test (or landing a fancy management-consulting job like I did). The power of education is that it empowers you to serve. It empowers you to build. It empowers you to give.
I see your commitment to service reflected in the host of organizations at the heart of campus life here—from the Pam Rector Center for Service and Action to the coaches and volunteers that put on Special Games every year.
I see it in the next chapters many of you will write. I see it in the scholars, doctors, lawyers, founders, artists, producers, and—yes—musicians you are becoming.
I see it in the causes this class has championed—on this garden, at Alumni Mall, across Los Angeles, and far beyond.
I see it in your advocacy for your fellow student-athletes—in your work to address the climate crisis, and to advance racial justice.
And I see it in your schoolwork, too—in the effort you’ve taken, across academic disciplines, to better understand our world.
All of this education, this service, all of it is a remarkable gift. It will be part of you forever.
I can say that with confidence because I know how my college experience shaped my beliefs, my relationships, my career. The music I write. The work I do.
I know how it helped me understand my purpose. I know your experiences at LMU will give you purpose too. And we need purpose, especially in those moments of profound challenge.
LEAN INTO THE COMPLEXITY
Of course, this is one of those moments—a heated time on college campuses because of roiling crises all around the world.
Everything seems to be on fire—in places like Israel and Palestine, Ukraine, Iran, even here at home, where the threat of autocracy continues to gather. But also in the places that probably deserve more of our attention: Haiti, Myanmar, Sudan, other areas of conflict around the world.
In so many of these painful instances, the patterns are similar. So-called leaders act with malice and apparent impunity—exploiting peoples’ very-real anxieties, inflaming ethnic conflicts, pitting people and communities against one another. They deploy misinformation and disinformation. They exploit inequalities. They peddle grievance and resentment. And they thrive on dehumanization.
Our problems are not neat. The solutions are not easy—and I’m not going to suggest that they are. But I believe (and I’m certain your professors do, too) that a great education teaches you that your job is to think critically, to challenge assumptions, to question the status quo.
When you dehumanize someone, when you call them vermin or animals—when you say, an immigrant community will “poison our blood”—you create a permission structure that allows people to harm them, one by one, or family by family, or community by community. This sort of attitude is a dangerous thing. All of history’s worst moral catastrophes, from slavery to genocide, are fueled by this sort of dehumanization.
The autocrat’s playbook usually involves identifying someone as an “other” or enemy, dehumanizing them, and then saying “I alone can fix it.” Or, “I alone can impose law and order.” Or, “Dispense with democracy. Dispense with checks and balances and the rule of law. You need a strongman. You need to concentrate power with me and take it away from the people.”
Our history books are replete with these types of leaders—replete with the havoc they’ve wreaked, the injustice they’ve wrought, the lives they’ve destroyed. And those of us who believe in our shared humanity—in democracy—should be worried that these forces of dehumanization might have their way again in 2024.
Our problems are not neat. The solutions are not easy—and I’m not going to suggest that they are. But I believe (and I’m certain your professors do, too) that a great education teaches you that your job is to think critically, to challenge assumptions, to question the status quo.
Moral clarity is certainly comfortable. We prefer for everything to be black and white. Social media pushes everyone to pick a side. And yet, most things happen in those shades of grey. Humanity, life, is filled with nuance and complexity. And I say, lean into that nuance. Engage with the complexity.
So, how do we do this, Class of 2024? How do we engage with complexity? We do it by listening with more humility. Listening with more curiosity. Listening with more intentionality. Listening with more empathy. After all, with the freedom of speech comes the responsibility to give a full and fair hearing.
We engage with complexity by recognizing that in a multiracial, multiethnic, pluralist democracy, we are going to disagree. That’s inevitable. The noise and the mess are features, not bugs.
At the same time, though, diversity and difference need not be synonymous with intractable division. Even when we disagree, we have no choice but to find ways to tolerate each other, to respect each other, to live with each other.
We might start with the assumption that, for the most part, most of the time, most people are operating in good faith. So we can extend grace to them—and the benefit of the doubt.
We might acknowledge that we each are bringing our own histories and experiences and biases to our perceptions—our own legitimate fears and anxieties.
And then we might—each of us—try to see the world through one another’s eyes: To do the really hard thing—to genuinely honor one another’s humanity, even when we disagree—because we all are someone’s child, or sibling, or friend.
And, Class of 2024, we may as well talk about the elephant in the garden. Let’s talk about Israel and Palestine.
No doubt, there is staggering, stupefying complexity swirling all around and through this multi-dimensional, multi-generational crisis. The vexing, bedeviling questions have stymied world leaders and ordinary citizens for decades.
Moral clarity is certainly comfortable. We prefer for everything to be black and white. Social media pushes everyone to pick a side. And yet, most things happen in those shades of grey. Humanity, life, is filled with nuance and complexity. And I say, lean into that nuance. Engage with the complexity.
But one thing is clear: The profound human suffering.
Millions of innocents—Israeli and Palestinian; Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and secular—yearn only for a just and lasting peace. They yearn to live with dignity—like all human beings—with equal rights and equal opportunity. And yet, they remain trapped in what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called “a descending spiral.”
As you’ve learned here, there are profound limits to what war can accomplish. War may win territory, but it cannot win hearts and minds. War can subjugate, but it cannot unify. War can destroy, but it cannot build.
And “the ultimate weakness of violence,” teaches Dr. King, is that it only begets more violence. Violence leads only to vengeance and reprisal—fire, to more fire.
We know this. All of human history affirms it. As Dr. King said repeatedly during another period of national upheaval and campus unrest: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
The same is true of the here and now.
Violence will never be a lasting solution to violence. Hate will never be the solution to hate. Instead, we must be the light. We must be the love.
THE ANSWER IS LOVE
Now, I can imagine what at least a few of you are thinking: All this kumbaya talk is nice, but thousands of people are dying!
How could it be that in the face of racism, autocracy, war—after all of the compounding trauma of our recent past—we should just “love” more?
I can understand the skepticism. But hear me out.
I come from a family of preachers. I’m the grandson of a preacher, the great grandson of a preacher, the nephew of several preachers. I grew up in the church.
And what many of us learned during Sunday sermons—and I’m sure some of you learned at this fine Jesuit university—is that there isn’t just one kind of love. There are at least three.
There’s eros—romantic love. The intoxicating love. The love that burns hottest. You know, the type of love that makes you want to sing. I’ve made a career of it.
Then there’s philia—brotherly and sisterly love; love for family and friends; love for teammates; love for the places that shape us. It’s the love that has you picking up a Mendocino Farms sandwich for your buddy. Or throwing them in Foley Pond on their birthday.
But the third kind of love, Class of 2024? The type of love that Dr. King called the most powerful, transcendent kind of love? It’s called agape.
Agape is the universal love intrinsic to the human heart. The love that burns the longest. It’s bigger than any of us because it resides in all of us.
Now, this is not the love of rom-coms or pop songs. Nothing against pop songs. Agape is a righteous, rebellious tool—and through our histories, the most powerful tool at our disposal to build social change and social justice.
You see, it’s easy to love a friend. Agape emboldens us to love our enemies.
It’s easy to love the people who share our sense of what’s right—the people with whom we agree. Agape emboldens us to love the people who, at least in our eyes, could not be more wrong.
It’s easy to love the people who are marching with us. Agape emboldens us to love the people who are marching against us—even the people who deploy force to silence or suppress us.
Agape is the love that dares us to believe deeply in our shared humanity—and that we can find a way through, together.
Growing up, I spent a lot of time at the library reading about Dr. King and other civil rights icons—Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells, James Baldwin and Fannie Lou Hamer. I wasn’t into comic books. These were my superheroes. And together they summoned the power of agape during other periods of turbulence and transformation: To challenge America to live up to its founding aspirations. To challenge all of us to make the American project our own. Step by step. Ballot by ballot. Law by law.
Why am I sharing this with you, despite the vitriol all around us? Despite the crackdowns? Despite the insanity of our politics at this fraught, perilous moment? Because I believe, with every fiber of my being, that love is the true path toward the world we want: Radical love. Audacious love. Defiant love.
Love is how we turn that “descending spiral” of violence into a virtuous cycle.
Love is how we reject antisemitism. How we reject Islamophobia. How we reject bigotry and homophobia. How we repudiate the forces of autocracy and avarice.
Love is how we learn from the fullness of our histories—from the pride and the pain of our past—to prevent ourselves from being trapped by history.
Love is how we dismantle the pernicious systems of caste, of racial inequality, that trick us into denying that your liberation is bound up with mine—and mine with yours.
THE LOVE IN MY LIFE
Love allows us to forgive. And I believe in love—because of my own life, because of my own story. Allow me to get personal for a moment.
I grew up in Springfield, Ohio—a small, blue-collar city—and my idol was my grandmother, Elmira Lloyd. She was the daughter of a preacher who later became the wife of a preacher. Like I said, it’s something of a family business.
In our church, my mother directed the choir. My father played the drums. But my grandmother was at the center of it all, in her seat behind the organ.
I remember, vividly, how, after church we would gather in her house every Sunday. She would cook collard greens, cornbread, chicken. Week after week, month after month, year after year, she sat with me at the piano and taught me to play gospel music.
I wouldn’t be the musician I am today without my grandmother.
And then, we lost her when I was just 10 years old.
I was heartbroken. But nobody was more lost than my mother. They were very close; they led the choir together. And, after her mother died, my mother spiraled into depression and addiction.
For a decade, she was out of our lives. I felt cheated—and angry.
During this time, we were raised by our single father. My three siblings and I took care of each other, picking up whatever chores were necessary to keep the house going. I would cook dinner from the time I was 12 years old.
I went to high school, applied to colleges, graduated from both high school and college—all without her. And frankly, I didn’t want anything to do with her for a time.
I blamed her for failing us, for deserting us. And I had proven I could succeed without her.
And then, one day, it hit me like a ton of bricks: My mom was in pain. And she was alone. She didn’t need punishment. She needed love. She needed people to see her humanity. To help her and give her a second chance.
One day, I looked into the eyes of the person who abandoned her family, my family—who, for a decade, left me deeply confused, deeply wounded—and I forgave.
We had some difficult conversations. I listened. She listened. And together, with love as our north star, we healed.
Today, my relationship with my mother is strong as ever. We just celebrated her 70th birthday back in Ohio a few months ago. She’s a wonderful grandmother. She’s living her best life.
And it was this experience with my mom—and because of her, my first encounters with the criminal-justice system—that inspired me to create my own organization, freeamerica.
I learned about our country’s mass-incarceration complex: How the United States has just 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its incarcerated people. How one in three Black men will serve prison time. How more Black men are under corrective control today than were enslaved on the eve of the Civil War.
I listened: I met with people currently incarcerated. I met with their families. I met with survivors of crime. I met with district attorneys, correction officers, state legislators, and civil rights activists.
And what then followed was the most challenging, humbling, gratifying work of my life. I saw families forgive people who hurt their loved ones. I saw some of the very people that perpetuated mass incarceration take steps to reform the system. I saw the people who put up the walls begin to tear them down.
This is what love can do.
CODA AND CALL TO ACTION
Class of 2024: These are no ordinary times. No question about it. But the history through which you’ve lived? The history you’ve witnessed? The history you’re making? All of this has made you extraordinary. And we need extraordinary—now more than ever.
The crucible of these last few years has forged in you—the “solidarity generation”—that resilience and resolve. It’s forged strength of mind and character, with deeper empathy, perhaps, than any generation before. It’s forged a conviction that you can change the world—and that you must. Too much is at stake for you to fall prey to indifference or to fear or division.
You are prepared to be thinkers and creators, dreamers and doers, leaders for others, for our shared humanity, for justice.
And I like to think that these last few years have instilled in you the recognition that love matters most of all—the kind of love that has defined my life’s journey. That radical, audacious, defiant love.
You see, if love could bring healing and forgiveness to my broken family—if the crime victims I met with can extend love, and empathy, and grace to the perpetrators who hurt their families—then we all can.
In this hour of division, Class of 2024, this is what we all need. As scripture says: Faith, and hope, and love—but the greatest of these is love.
With love, we can listen. With love, we can understand. With love, we can see ourselves in each other. We can discover our abiding mutuality. With love, we can serve. With love, we can heal. We can build. We can do—and undo. With love, we can sing. With love.
Class of 2024: I cannot wait to see how you will harness the power of love. I cannot wait to see what you do for this world—for each other.
From the bottom of my heart, I thank you. I congratulate you. I love you all. And we all are counting on you.
Read: John Legend to LMU Grads: “I Cannot Wait to See How You Will Harness the Power of Love”
