President Jonathan Levin's remarks at Opening Convocation

In welcoming the Class of 2030, Levin celebrated Stanford's culture of exploration, expertise, and optimism."The future is something you build rather than something that happens to you." The remarks that follow were delivered at the 136th Convocation Ceremony on Sept. 15, 2026.

First-years, transfer students, and families: Welcome to Stanford! We're glad you're here. We enjoyed watching you move in this morning. That moment is one of my favorites of the year. Parents and families, we especially noticed the look of pride on your faces.

Let me begin with a prediction, based on evidence, albeit from a small sample: you are unlikely to remember much of this talk. Yet you will remember the feeling of arriving at Stanford.

That has certainly been true for me. In the fall of 1990, I flew across the country, and a blue Super Shuttle bus dropped me and my two duffel bags in front of Wilbur Hall. I recall the sense of possibility as if it were yesterday—walking around campus in the sun, meeting a few people in my dorm who I still talk with today, and seeing my room for the first time. Some of you may wonder whether the rooms have changed much. The answer is no. We call it eclectic.

I chose Stanford for its openness and possibility, for its spirit of exploration. It did not disappoint, and that is one of the many reasons I'm still here today, and I'm excited to see you embark on your own voyages.

This weekend I was scheduled to be in Florida to watch the launch of another Stanford explorer. Jessica Watkins arrived at Stanford in the fall of 2006. She wanted to become an astronaut. I, too, once hoped to play center field for the New York Yankees, so such outcomes don't always align with our dreams, but in Jessica's case, they did.

At Stanford, Jessica studied geological and environmental sciences. She was a star on the women's rugby team—winning a national championship as a sophomore. She did a summer internship at the NASA Ames Research Center and studied how to grow plants in Martian soil. Those experiences prepared her for a PhD and, ultimately, selection into NASA's astronaut program. Today, she is the commander of the Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station—her second voyage there. By the way, Stanford has graduated 27 astronauts, and it has more female astronauts than any civilian university.

I hoped to point to Jessica in orbit, but as often happens with space missions, the Saturday launch was postponed. I can't wait to be there when it happens, and perhaps one day to see Jessica apply her geology training while walking on the Moon, or even Mars.

One reason I love Jessica's trajectory is that it connects with something I've been thinking about all summer.

This fall, I'm teaching a section of COLLEGE 101, a course many of you will take. It will be a new class for me and a different experience. My field is economics, so I have often taught courses on game theory, innovation, or how to design markets. COLLEGE 101 focuses on the role of education in helping you live a good life.

A hallmark of our freshman curriculum is the collaboration with faculty from across the campus, so some of you will study with literary scholars while others will learn from a physicist, a physician, or an economist who has become a university president.

This summer I read broadly: Plato, Du Bois, Tagore, Dangarembga, Epicurus, Seneca. Tara Westover's memoir. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Many of these works contemplate what education should look like, or offer personal accounts of education in different times and places. You'll have the chance to discuss them all through the quarter.

The readings raised a question: what is it about a Stanford education that sets it apart from the many and varied forms of education across time and place? How will it prepare you for a good life?

I see three answers.

First, the freedom to explore. Many educational traditions are narrow by design: a fixed curriculum, depth in a single area. Stanford is different. You are about to embark on a true journey of discovery. You will have the opportunity to take classes and encounter new ideas across many fields, and to change your mind. Changing your mind is a central part of education.

My own freshman year at Stanford began with little idea of what I wanted to study. I took a class on Eastern philosophy, a seminar on Dostoyevsky, and what for me was an incredibly challenging mathematics course. I ended up majoring in English and math. Jessica Watkins began as an engineer and switched into Earth science.

Isaiah Berlin famously described two types of thinkers—the fox who knows many things and the hedgehog who knows one big thing. A liberal education aims to give you some of both, with the idea that sound judgment and citizenship require both mastery and exposure to different modes of thinking.

Second, the premise of a research university is that expertise matters, and that by bringing scholars together with undergraduates, everyone benefits. You will learn from faculty who have devoted their entire lives to a field. In turn, you'll ask questions and urge the faculty to explain their work and why it matters. The exchange flows in both directions.

All of us on the faculty have experienced this. One of my favorite research projects began when one of my advisees spent his junior summer working for a used-car dealership in Tucson, Arizona. The business was fascinating, and we ended up writing a paper about it. A few years later, he and his classmates started what is by far the most successful used-car company in the United States.

Third, there is the experience of the campus. As Dean Shaw described, you are a remarkable and wide-ranging class, but that is not why you are here. You are here for who you are going to become, and much of that will be shaped by each other—in dorms, in dining halls, in rehearsal rooms, cheering on Stanford teams, or perhaps occasionally swimming in the fountains.

What I hope you will share and embrace is the distinctive culture of Stanford's campus—the pursuit of excellence, the openness to ideas, and the sense of optimism. At the heart of Stanford's culture is a belief in our ability to work together and solve problems, a belief that the future is something you build rather than something that happens to you.

You, the class of 2030, are arriving at a particularly momentous time, when rapid technological change promises to transform discovery, education, and many aspects of our lives. Even here, in a place that launched the semiconductor industry, modern computer architecture, and the internet age, no one can forecast exactly how it will unfold.

But consider the following. Suppose you were starting with a blank sheet of paper, and you were asked to design a place for the present moment. What attributes would you choose? A place with the freedom to explore and adapt. A place with expertise across many disciplines—science, technology, humanities, arts, and the social sciences. A place that is forward-looking and problem-solving. So what I can say with confidence is that you are in the right place.