“We don’t get to choose the biggest challenges of our time—we only choose how we respond to them,” Dean Jeremy Weinstein told the 613 master’s students and 19 PhD students from 80 countries and 36 states who graduated from the Kennedy School on Thursday.
The dean’s remarks, part of Thursday afternoon’s HKS Diploma Ceremony in which graduates individually receive diplomas, were the culmination of a joyful and busy week of receptions, awards, and speeches for the Class of 2026 and their friends and family who joined from across the country and around the world.
In his remarks, Weinstein turned to the theme of AI and rapid technological change and, more importantly, how public policy graduates can rise to the challenges these shifts, arguing that “the issue of whether—and how—we take control of our technological future is one that will define your time in public leadership.”
Central to Weinstein’s speech was the idea that democracy is not a constraint on technological advancement but the essential process for governing it to serve people well.
“There’s nothing about innovation that makes it inherently incompatible with democracy,” he said. “What does seem to mix poorly with democracy is an obsession with optimization.”
Like artificial intelligence, he said, democracy is a kind of technology—but it is the antithesis of algorithms designed to optimize. Democracy, instead, is “a tool that facilitates free and equal participation at scale.”
“In a democracy, we are not just allowed but expected to debate the goals that we’re collectively driving at—weighing carefully a set of competing interests and valuing a variety of perspectives,” Weinstein said. “That sort of project does not lend itself to optimization.”
While programmers code for maximum efficiency, he argued, “sometimes, democracy is inefficient. Sometimes, inefficiency is the point.”
“In a democracy, we are not just allowed but expected to debate the goals we’re collectively driving at—weighing carefully a set of competing interests and valuing a variety of perspectives. That sort of project does not lend itself to optimization.”
The role technologists play in society is an important one, but thriving and functioning democracies must incorporate more views and perspectives than an optimization mindset provides. Given the possible risks and harms that come with a powerful tool like AI, Weinstein argued that “questions about how to govern technology cannot be left to the technologists alone.”
“We should applaud technologists who seek to exercise their newfound powers responsibly,” he said. “But their job is to innovate. Determining how their discoveries will impact our society? That’s on us.”
Looking over a tent full of Kennedy School graduates—a cohort of individuals eager to contribute to their communities—Weinstein was confident that they would help ensure that AI is used in ways that were helpful, rather than harmful, for society. “All of us are trying to solve for the public good,” he said.
“I’m fundamentally hopeful, not because I trust technology but because I trust all of you,” Weinstein said. “You will be the shapers of this moment. And you are ready to do so with integrity, wisdom, and humility.”
He then explained why, precisely, the Class of 2026 was well positioned to lead in this moment of upheaval and uncertainty.
First, he explained, the fact that the graduates belong to “the last pre-AI generation” gives them an advantage precisely because they have developed the skills of critical thinking, reasoning, reading, and writing that overreliance on technology could weaken.
“Your ability to digest complex information, to communicate original views and perspectives, to reason transparently with others—and to do it all without relying on these new tools—gives you a certain advantage over future generations,” he argued. “These are skills you honed at HKS, and they give you a perspective that AI natives will not share.”
Second, as Kennedy School students steeped in public policy knowledge, they understand how democratic governance works and why government is important. “There are powerful voices in Silicon Valley that are hostile to this perspective,” he said, “not just to government interference in their business, but to the very idea of democracy governing technology in the first place.”
While these powerful voices have specific interests, other interests and views are just as important. “You understand better than most,” Weinstein said, “that democratic politics is where we solve for society as a whole, both in terms of harnessing technology to improve how we deliver what citizens want and in terms of mitigating the attendant risks.”
Finally, and most important, he argued, “You know how to sit in the muck.” In other words, Kennedy School students learn how to weigh competing values and perspectives in complex and ambiguous conditions.
Weinstein told the graduates that, as public policy students, “you were not trained to be optimizers, thinking that there is one perfectly engineered outcome that we can produce via algorithm. When it comes to so many of the questions about AI, there simply is not a right answer.”
As someone both excited and concerned with what is at stake as AI continues to reshape our world, the dean said, “I will be proud to sit in the muck with you.”
And, looking out at the Class of 2026 and their friends and family on the most joyous day of the academic year, he emphasized the hard work that comes with “sitting in the muck”—and how deeply human it is.
“There’s nothing technological about this. No shortcuts. No query you can send ChatGPT to create that kind of love,” he said. “Just hard-earned human connection, forged through diapers changed and meals served, through laughter and tears, and everything in between. And love like that will always be the best thing in the world.”
It was a beautiful moment among many over the course of a week that featured a rallying call “to look forward with optimism” from Wednesday’s guest speaker and HKS alumnus Zanny Minton Beddoes MPA 1992, the editor-in-chief of the Economist, and a joyful Thursday morning spent in Harvard Yard, where all University graduates heard from President Alan Garber and the Commencement speaker, comedian Conan O’Brien.
As Dean Weinstein concluded his remarks to the Class of 2026, he emphasized his confidence in the graduates’ abilities to take on a world steeped in uncertainty and profound change—to nurture and revitalize the powerful technology that is democracy.
“We face tensions between competing values and perspectives that are not quantifiable,” he said, “profound disagreements that cannot be resolved without resorting to careful, deliberative engagement and good old-fashioned human reasoning.”
“This is a job for the democratic process and the people who populate it,” Weinstein stated. “This is a job for those skilled in communicating across difference, building coalitions that unite diverse stakeholders, and doing the hard work of finding a shared way forward.”
And, ultimately, “This is a job for Kennedy School graduates.”
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Photography by Jessica Scranton
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