Marie-Laure Salle’s 2026 Graduation Speech 

Dear Parents, dear Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, and first and foremost, dear Students and soon-to-be Graduates, 

Good Afternoon and a very warm welcome. Whether you are here in person at the Maison de la Paix or joining us online. Bienvenue à toutes et à tous. C’est un grand plaisir pour moi, pour nous toutes et tous à l'Institut, de vous accueillir aujourd’hui. 

Dear Students — today you have every reason to feel proud. You have fulfilled the requirements of a demanding programme and will soon hold your diploma in your hands. This diploma is only the sign of a deeper achievement. Over the past years, you have had to learn to question what you thought you knew, you have expanded your horizons, you have faced moments of joy and periods of tension, you have forged relationships of trust and built friendships that will endure. Be proud of this journey and give yourselves a well-deserved round of applause. 

While pride is the colour of the day, life shows us again and again that achievement has another side : gratitude. None of our accomplishments are possible without the generosity, the care, and the support of others. Bette Midler captures this beautifully in one of her songs when she says, “I could fly higher than an eagle for you are the wind beneath my wings.” 

So, dear graduates, join me in expressing your appreciation to all those who have been the wind beneath your wings over those years : wherever they are, they are with you today, and they should be your heroes. 

Education is not about providing certainty, and the world we live in makes that very plain. Education is about developing the capacity and the skills needed to accept and embrace complexity and uncertainty. In Jean de la Fontaine's fable “The Oak and the Reed”, the oak, confident and full of certainty, is ultimately uprooted by the violence of the storm. As to the reed, it bends but it does not break. Our contemporary storms are particularly violent and unpredictable. And this should make us pose and think with humility. 

In his 1971 book, Memoir of Hungary, the poet and writer Sandor Marai reminds us that human and social temporality is limited, and brief. With strikingly beautiful words he tells us that, “The blooming season of great empires is shorter than that of tropical forests.” 

We would do well to remember this…. Waters ahead are likely to remain rough and turbulent for many years to come, but I am convinced that your time at the Institute has nurtured and developed in you the critical thinking, adaptability, creativity, the courage, and the humility that will allow you not only to make sense of what lies ahead, but also to act with discernment and purpose.  

We have a reasonably clear understanding of the defining challenges of our time — climate and biodiversity, geopolitical tensions and fragmentation, rising and extreme inequalities, and a Janus-faced technological revolution, one that carries many promises but also serious threats. We also recognise that many of these challenges are existential in nature, either because they threaten the conditions upon which human flourishing or even survival depends, or because they may fundamentally reshape what it means to be human. 

So what is to be done? There is, of course, no definitive answer to that question. What is clear is that many of our existing assumptions, institutions, modes of action, and solutions are proving increasingly inadequate if not counterproductive. We will need not only to repair but also to reinvent, not only to manage but to imagine, not only to solve problems but to reenchant our collective future. For that, we will need a generation of leaders with a distinctive constellation of competencies, dispositions and values.  

So perhaps the real question before us is not “What is to be done?” but rather “What qualities must we cultivate to navigate such a world?” I would suggest four : courage, curiosity, authenticity, and hope. Each is indispensable; together they provide an ethical and existential compass for our time. I have often talked before about courage and curiosity. So for the sake of time, I will focus today on authenticity and hope.  

What does it mean to be Authentic?  

In existentialist philosophy, authenticity begins with embracing our radical freedom and accepting full responsibility for the choices that shape our lives. This demands more than self-knowledge and awareness. To be authentic is to connect with our deepest humanity, and that means recognizing that our individual existence is inextricably linked to the humanity of others and to the living planet that sustains us all. Freedom, in this sense, is not isolation but a conscious acknowledgment of our interconnectedness and shared responsibility. 

Authenticity is not easily attained. Indeed, the conditions of contemporary life often work against it. First, because we live in a culture of performance, we are cast into roles which come with curated scripts — we spend most of our lives performing, wearing different masks and losing ourselves in the process and in those roles. At the same time, we are subject to an unrelenting imperative to perform in a second sense of the term: to optimise, compete, and excel. The result is a profound paradox : we become increasingly accomplished performers in the two senses of the world, yet progressively also more estranged from ourselves. 

This hall of mirrors has only grown more overwhelming in the digital age. Surrounded by curated identities, algorithmic filters, and fragmented realities, we find it ever more difficult to distinguish between what is authentically ours and what has been projected onto us. The digital environments we inhabit do not merely reflect reality. They frame, shape, and sometimes confine it. The result is a subtle but powerful pressure toward standardisation, imitation, and conformity. 

Authenticity therefore requires vigilance. It requires the capacity to step back from the frames imposed upon us, to question constantly the narratives, incentives, and categories through which reality is presented, and to preserve a space for independent judgment. Authenticity is the ability to remain the author of one's own life rather than becoming the passive product of forces one no longer sees. Let us be clear that authenticity is not the refusal to grow, to change, or to accept criticism. Quite the opposite! Authenticity is inseparable from constant questioning, self-examination, and openness to becoming. As Frantz Fanon wrote in 1952, in the concluding pages of Black Skin, White Masks, “O my body, make of me always a man who questions !”. To be authentic is not to cling rigidly to a fixed identity. It is to remain engaged in the lifelong work of Challenging oneself And becoming in the process more fully human. 

Let me now turn to hope — why do we need to nurture it ?  

Since Aristotle, hope has generally been understood as a passion. The word passion derives from the latin pati: to suffer, endure, submit, or undergo. For Aristotle, and for many philosophers after him, passion denotes a condition of being acted upon, of being moved by forces beyond one's will.  

If hope is a passion, then it is a form of passive expectation. It sustains us through the anticipation of a future good that appears on the horizon like a mirage in the desert. Taken to its extreme, hope can even provide such a sense of reassurance that action begins to seem unnecessary. To hope for the future may become a way of avoiding the task of building it, leaving us inevitably vulnerable to disappointment. Popular wisdom has long understood this ambiguity. We say that "hope keeps us alive", but we also speak of "false hopes", "deceived hopes", and "crushed hopes.".  

But there is another possibility, another way to understand hope. 

Whereas English has only one word, French distinguishes between espoir and espérance, terms that are often treated as synonymous but need not be. In his 1972 essay, L'espérance oubliée, the philosopher Jacques Ellul draws a profound distinction between those two terms. Offering a critical view of a technological society that increasingly reshapes human beings and places them at its service, Ellul calls for movement, resistance, and liberating action. In doing so, he warns against espoir, which he describes as "the maintenance of illusions": 

"Espoir (hope 1.0 we could call it) is the curse of mankind. For man does nothing so long as he believes that a way out will be given to him. As long as, in a terrible situation, he imagines there is an escape door somewhere, he does nothing to change the situation." 

Espérance (hope 2.0), by contrast, is for Ellul the foundation of all serious resistance, especially when the worst appears inevitable. It is not passive waiting but a genuine movement toward the unknown, a willingness to act even when success seems unlikely.  

We need to nurture hope 2.0, espérance, an active and courageous form of hope. This kind of hope is not naïve optimism. It is the conviction that our actions matter, even when outcomes remain uncertain. This kind of hope makes it possible to plant trees— the shade of which we will never enjoy. It allows us to work for peace when cries for war appear overwhelming, to defend dignity and justice when cynicism is so much easier, and to imagine alternatives when many insist there are none. Every significant human achievement began as an act of hope 2.0 – which implies a degree of utopian conviction. Every scientific discovery. Every expansion of rights. Every breakthrough in cooperation. Every effort to create a more just and peaceful world. None began with certainty. None began with naive expectation but with individuals and collectives willing to believe that change was possible and ready to act towards it. 

Both authenticity and espérance are not given. They require work, constant work. And that is probably what I want to leave you with today — never forget this. Authenticity and espérance are, in a deep sense, defining our humanity.  

As I close, let me express my heartfelt thanks to the professors and teams at the Institute who have supported you throughout your journey — and especially to the teams who made today possible: the Student Services, Facility Management, Events, and Communications teams of the Institute. Please join me in thanking them. 

I would also like to take the opportunity to pay a tribute to our dear colleague and friend Professor Mahmoud Mohamedou, who left us exactly two years ago. Professor Mohamedou was a brilliant mind, a great scholar, an engaging and inspiring mentor for his students, and above all an exceptional human being. We are missing him everyday and his memory remains intensely alive. We will not let it fade. 
 

I would also like us to pay homage to a student who was in this room only one year ago  —  a young alumnus of our Institute, Claude-Emmanuel Hiol, who died last June, way too early. Our thoughts are with Claude-Emmanuel’s parents and family, his friends, his close ones. May he rest in peace.  

That’s it, you are now graduates! To all of you, I wish a journey filled with meaning, joy, and impact. May you find success, yes, but also fulfillment, connection, purpose, joy, and love — don’t forget joy and love ! May you carry throughout your life this unique energy that comes with new beginnings.