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№ 2022.004 — Yale University — Yale College Class Day address
Reshma Saujani
Advocate for women and girls
Reshma Saujani, a Yale Law graduate and founder of Girls Who Code, delivered Yale's 2022 Class Day address, urging graduates to value advocacy and the American tradition of agitating for change. She reframed President Kennedy's famous call to service, arguing that in an era of declining trust in government and rising inequality, graduates should first ask what they can do for themselves and prioritize self-healing. She concluded that the country needs them to take care of one another and reimagine a world that better supports everyone.
Key moments
- 01 Praise for advocacy and fighting for women and girls
- 02 Reinterpreting JFK's 'ask not' quote for a low-trust era
- 03 Contrasting mid-century American achievements with present inequality and crises
- 04 Warning against 'hustle culture' and urging self-healing before serving others
Visual speech map
Reshma Saujani at Yale, 2022
A Class Day address about post-pandemic redesign, advocacy, women and girls, courage, and pushing institutions toward a more perfect union.
- 01 Return to campus
- 02 Resilience
- 03 Advocacy
- 04 Girls Who Code
- 05 Pay Up
- 06 Women
- 07 Agitation
- 08 Redesign
Return
The ceremony resumes in person
Saujani speaks at Yale's first fully in-person Class Day in three years, making resilience and institutional redesign part of the moment.
The Old Campus gathering marks a visible return after disrupted pandemic ceremonies.
Graduates are recognized for resilience, bravery, and determination across unstable years.
The day carries celebration and a demand to rethink what comes next.
Advocacy
Change starts with agitation
The address casts fighting for people, especially women and girls, as patriotic work aimed at making systems more just.
Advocacy is framed as love in public: persistent, specific, and willing to push.
The promise of a more perfect union requires people who insist things can be different.
Graduates are invited to use their standing to name structural failures clearly.
Systems
Redesign work after crisis
Saujani connects her Girls Who Code and Pay Up work to a larger post-pandemic chance to rebuild business, culture, and care.
Girls Who Code stands for opening technical opportunity where it has been restricted.
Pay Up widens the frame from individual ambition to economic structures around women.
Crisis creates a rare chance to question defaults that once seemed fixed.
Charge
Demand better futures
The closing charge asks graduates to step into movements, challenge inherited designs, and build institutions that match their stated values.
Bravery means asking for more than personal advancement from powerful systems.
Individual talent gains force when joined to organized demands and shared care.
A better future is treated as designed, fought for, and collectively maintained.
Transcript
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Read the full transcript at source →Provenance
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Category: Service/Activism