NEWS
2025 Summer Commencement Ceremony
Update: July 15, 2025
143 undergraduate students and 43 graduate students graduated from ICU at its summer commencement ceremony held at the University Chapel on Tuesday, July 15.
At the ceremony, each student's name was read out in keeping with tradition that has continued since the first commencement ceremony. Also, students sang hymn together and listened to the scripture reading and President's commencement address.
Graduates reflected on their university days, spending time with friends and family on campus.
Scripture Reading
Matthew 13 : 3-8 by Hiroyuki Kose (Chair, Religious Affairs Committee)
Commencement Address by Shoichiro Iwakiri, President
Congratulations to all who have completed your Bachelor of Arts program in our Division of Arts and Sciences as well as to those who have finished the MA or PhD programs in our Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and who are graduating today. I also offer my sincere congratulations to all family members, relatives and friends of our graduates.
Since it was founded 72 years ago, ICU has sent some 30,000 graduates into the world. As its most recent graduates, each of you will now take a step forward to the next stage of your lives.
Since you started your learning or research at ICU several years ago, you have witnessed many social and political changes in the world. COVID-19 began in 2020--and we were even obliged to hold the 2021 September Matriculation Ceremony, which many of you attended, entirely online. Then, in 2022 we witnessed the Russian invasion ofUkraine that is still going on, and a year later, in 2023, we saw Hamas' attacks, followed by Israeli counter attacks which go too far in their massacre of civilians.
We all know that the international democratic institutions cannot bring a solution to these military problems that continue the destruction and devastation. We also know that, nowadays, the notion of democracy does not always work together, as we believed before, with the notion of liberalism.
Democracy, freedom, diversity, dialogue, and human rights. These are what ICU has valued since its foundation. It has seemed universal to us. But even in a democratic country, there can be a tendency towards illiberalism, where what had looked firm and universal has turned out to be fragile: we are faced with what we cannot figure out using our prior knowledge, and we are forced to think in a whole new way about what we encounter. In trying to think in a new way, we recognize that the substrata we consider as indispensable for our lives and to which we have become accustomed require our will and effort to continue to be everlastingly valid.
In our current, changing world, where reality seems sometimes stronger than the ideal, I hope that all of you who are celebrating your graduation today will hold on to the ideals of freedom, dialogue, democracy and the spirit of charity deeply rooted in Christianity.
I strongly believe that, through your learning of Liberal Arts education at ICU, you have learned that nothing good can be done without patience, that nothing valuable can be created easily and quickly. The Liberal Arts represents an education which provides you, not only with a quantity of knowledge and skills, but especially with quality of knowledge and wisdom. On this point, a professor of the Collège de France says with certain humour: "Culture, and also teaching, operate just as hairdressing: when it is done fast, it is badly done! There is no way to save time while retaining quality." (Antoine Compagnon).
In a slow, prolonged, attentive act of study, we learn that the truth is sometimes bitter. The 19th century French poet, Aloysius Bertrand, says, referring to poetry, "poetry is like an almond tree: its flowers are fragrant, its fruits are bitter." (Gaspard de la nuit, translated by A. S. Kline.). I am tempted to replace the word "poetry" by "life": [Life] is like an almond tree: its flowers are fragrant, its fruits are bitter.
Our social and natural condition, together with the collaboration of AI, will become more and more complicated in the years ahead. Tired of confronting such complications, we may risk asking for simplification in an attempt to reduce the burdens on our existence with a view to reaching a fast solution; this is just what we see in the focus on populist policies in politics. But I'm sure that, faced with a complicated problem where a patient approach is essential, you will think critically in an attempt to find a good solution through dialogue and deliberate reflection.
You possess this ability because you have completed your study at ICU.
When I speak of the Liberal Arts and ways of thinking, I like to use a biological metaphor. I'm convinced that study and research at the university is a transformative experience. It seems to me that our life (and why not our culture?) also represents an evolution whereby something different is incorporated into the self to which we have been accustomed. We know that in their life history, archaea acquired energy conversion functions by incorporating cells that have become mitochondria, and that chloroplasts was created by the symbiosis of cyanobacteria in eukaryotic cells. In the course of our lives, it will happen that we incorporate elements that were previously external to ourselves into our system of thinking and feeling, and generate a new self that is different from the one we had been before.
Metaphorically, this kind of transformative incorporation must have occurred through the experiences you have had at ICU. I hope that this transformative system is now set in your mind under the name of Liberal Arts, and that you will implement a Liberal Arts way of thinking, action and behaviour in the society in which you will live and work.
Recently I published a book and, at this graduation ceremony, I'd like to quote what I wrote there to celebrate your commencement.
When we reach a certain age, we come to have our own unique climate in our life. Sounds that resonate in that climate and feelings that permeate it create the dreams within each of us. Without such dreams, how could we endure the foolish fury of living?
I hope your dreams will create a better world and society.
I wish you a good life !