At Winter Commencement 2025, graduates are urged to advocate for justice and ask world-changing questions

Long before James McCloy walked into a lecture hall at UC Berkeley, he was sweeping floors beside his mother, a janitor, and pulling weeds beside his father, a landscaper. As a first-generation transfer student, he said, “I am here because my parents pushed a dream they themselves were not offered.”

McCloy, who majored in history, represented more than 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students as the student speaker for the Class of 2025 Winter Commencement in Haas Pavilion on Dec. 20. Nearly 5,000 guests cheered as the graduates’ names were called and they walked across the court — often pausing to strike a pose, take a selfie, or wave to the spirited crowd. 

McCloy drew upon his passion for the Civil Rights Movement to embolden the Class of 2025 to become “zealous advocates for justice.” At a time when inequality is rising, he reminded graduates that they are not just the inheritors of history — they are its authors. 

“What will we write?” he asked. “A chapter of comfort or of courage? A chapter of complicit silence or of impassioned solidarity? A chapter of unjust inculpability or of genuine accountability? A chapter that explains the world as it was — or that transforms it into what it must be?” 

Later in the ceremony, Chancellor Rich Lyons presented the Elise and Walter A. Haas International Award to San Ling, who received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Berkeley in 1990. The award annually honors an alum with a distinguished record of service to another country and includes a cash prize of $35,000. Ling joined Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore in 2005 as the founding head of mathematical sciences. He has held several academic leadership positions and played a key role in establishing programs in postgraduate research, environmental studies and chemistry, among other areas. His visionary leadership has helped NTU become one of the world’s fastest-rising top-ranked universities.

In sharing the lessons that he learned at Berkeley, Ling told a story about embracing uncertainty. Just as he was about to start his dissertation research under Ken Ribet, best known for his work in number theory and arithmetic geometry, the professor told him that he was taking a yearlong sabbatical in Paris. Since Ling’s research would have stalled significantly, he asked Ribet if he could join him. “That unplanned semester in Paris turned out to be such an eye-opener, one that eventually led to decades of close relationships with French colleagues and institutions both at the personal and institutional level,” said Ling.  

Aravind Srinivas, who earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Berkeley in 2021, gave the keynote. He is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, an answer engine that combines real-time web search with artificial intelligence to provide direct, sourced answers to user questions. The company’s rapid growth has made Srinivas a leading voice in the future of search and AI and in making powerful technology work for people in meaningful, accessible ways.

Srinivas asked the graduates a series of questions, including why we should ask questions in the first place. Unlike in school, in which the correct answers often yield the best grades, “Your ability to have the best questions will be the single most defining skill of your life,” Srinivas said. “The people who lead, who change, who make a difference in the world? They have one thing in common. … They’re relentlessly curious and ask questions about everything.” He implored graduates to never stop asking.

In his remarks, Chancellor Lyons, who graduated from Berkeley in 1982, recalled a sociology class he took with Arlie Hochschild in which he learned about empathy walls, obstacles to deeply understanding those whose lives or beliefs differ from your own. Lyons encouraged the graduates to break down these walls and be skeptical of those who divide the world into simplistic categories of good and evil or black and white.

“While we may be in the midst of a tumultuous and challenging era, the behavioral and social sciences teach us that unsettled times have the potential to facilitate learning, growth, and transformation, both personally and societally,” said Lyons. “While these times may be perilous, so, too, are they times of creative ferment and possibility, making it a prime time for you, our newest alumni.”