{"id":2453,"date":"2019-06-03T08:15:43","date_gmt":"2019-06-03T12:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/?p=2453"},"modified":"2019-05-30T11:56:30","modified_gmt":"2019-05-30T15:56:30","slug":"class-of-2019-a-hope-for-the-future-from-the-kresge-foundations-rip-rapson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/2019\/06\/03\/class-of-2019-a-hope-for-the-future-from-the-kresge-foundations-rip-rapson\/","title":{"rendered":"Class of 2019: A hope for the future from the Kresge Foundation’s Rip Rapson"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rip
Rip Rapson of the Kresge Foundation addresses the crowd at the undergraduate commencement.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We are reprinting portions of the commencement speeches given at Detroit Mercy commencement ceremonies. Today\u2019s speech is by Rip Rapson, who spoke to the undergraduate class at the McNichols Campus.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rapson\u00a0is president and CEO of The Kresge Foundation, a private, national foundation dedicated to expanding opportunities in America\u2019s cities through grantmaking and social investing.<\/em><\/p>\n

You are poised to make a difference at a time when our world desperately needs you to do so.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s consider this world for a moment. One where enduring structural racial inequities and injustice impede full opportunity for too many of our citizens,\u00a0where changes in climate are swamping our coasts, toasting our cities, and flooding our farms,\u00a0where widening political fault-lines breed intolerance, paralysis\u00a0and division,\u00a0where the idea of civil civic discourse has become a quaint, idle fancy …\u00a0where we seem impotent to check the power of technology platforms to broadcast and amplify falsehoods, hatred and distrust …\u00a0where artificial intelligence is walking into every workplace in America, checking out whose job is next to go.<\/p>\n

I know that sounds daunting and too terrible to contemplate on a joyous day like today. But it doesn\u2019t need to be. The only way to enter this world, in my view, is to be armed with clear, unshakeable values that activate in the presence of challenges like these. That sounds a bit generic, I realize. But let’s focus the proposition by viewing it through the lens of teh education you’ve received at University of Detroit Mercy.<\/p>\n

This university is deeply grounded in the meaning of citizenship \u2013 of living in fair and just relationship to others. The institution itself stands as a beacon of that value, reflecting through its administrators, faculty, staff\u00a0and \u2013 most importantly \u2013 its students, a commitment to ethical action that carries well beyond its campus.<\/p>\n

You have given meaning to and valorized the university\u2019s principles of leadership, service, and community. Whether by engaging in deep scholarship with trusted faculty,\u00a0or volunteering at one of the university\u2019s health or counseling clinics …\u00a0or helping high school students prepare for college,\u00a0 or joining hands with city residents to beautify and strengthen the Livernois-McNichols neighborhood.<\/p>\n

You and your classmates have cast in bright relief the power and reward of what the journalist and ethicist David Brooks has termed the \u201cradical mutuality of service\u201d \u2013 to your institution,\u00a0to one another,\u00a0 to the city of which you are a part. And the nature of that value that commitment is such that it will follow you \u2013 no, propel you \u2013 as you build careers, families\u00a0and lives of community engagement.<\/p>\n

I want to underscore just how powerfully the university\u2019s value of citizenship has contributed to the renewal of Detroit \u2013 through the enhancement of neighborhood resilience, the affirmation of community identity,\u00a0and the acceleration of economic opportunity. And this while the city fought through a crisis of political corruption,\u00a0weathered an economic maelstrom and endured a nightmarish bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

That value of citizenship has helped put in place the building blocks of an equitable, broad-based recovery that is spreading from the commercial corridors of downtown to the front porches and storefronts of this neighborhood.<\/p>\n

In a word, the university and every student in it has been part of Detroit\u2019s second chance. You have studied here, you have partied here, you have dedicated tens of thousands of hours in service here, you have chosen to care here.<\/p>\n

Just consider, that\u00a0within a single mile of this campus:<\/p>\n