Welcome. It is an honor to address you on this memorable occasion.
Let me begin by thanking our outstanding faculty, staff, donors, and alumni for their dedication to our program.
I would especially like to express our gratitude to Frank and Carol Morsani, who are in attendance today, for their invaluable support of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine and its students.
Let me also recognize the parents, family members, friends, and loved ones of this remarkable class. You have been our students’ chief advocates and principal supporters. So, thank you for making all this possible.
But most importantly, please join me in welcoming the 50th graduating class of the Morsani College of Medicine, our class of 2024. Congratulations, doctors!!
As your dean, it has been my unique privilege to watch your progress over these four, often challenging, years and each of you should take great pride in reaching this milestone.
Today marks both an end and a beginning -- a time to recall what first motivated you to become a physician, and what now inspires you to pursue your chosen career path.
You have arrived here today because of your sustained commitment to the noble goal of becoming a physician and your stoicism and resilience has paid off.
I speak for all USF Health when I say that we could not be prouder of you. Your class set new standards of success in research productivity, national board scores and residency matches.
But we are especially proud because you are a class that has already proven its grit.
I fervently hope that one day, soon, we will be able to stop defining moments in health care by the pandemic clock – but you all did something truly remarkable.
I’d like everyone to recall that the students you see here today chose to enter medical school shortly after the pandemic began, a time when healthcare providers were suddenly faced with the greatest medical crisis in a century.
Our USF Health physicians worked around the clock, quarantined themselves away from their families, and literally lived in the hospital for weeks to care for critically ill patients.
And these students stared into the face of the pandemic and said, “I’m all in! Sign me up!”
These are doctors who looked upon a global conflagration and ran into the burning building.
These are doctors who entered this noble profession because they were firmly committed to helping to heal the world.
Now, as you go forward into your medical careers, I hope you will remember the lessons we tried to impart here.
First, you’ve all heard me say that medical knowledge doubles rapidly – at least every 73 days.
That means that remembering every fact you learned in medical school is not enough. What you have discovered here is that you must be a lifelong learner.
Second, 83% of what you read in the medical literature will never enter practice, so you must also be a critical thinker and able to curate the literature to discern what is important and what is not.
Physicians ahead of you have already had to adapt to change. Think about just a few of the things we can do right here at Tampa General Hospital, our wonderful teaching partner:
- Pioneering new organ transplant methods.
- Fixing leaky heart valves without surgery.
- Performing in utero laser therapy to correct twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome and save the lives of two fetuses.
- Treating certain cancers with immunotherapy instead of traditional radiation and chemotherapy.
- Applying ultrasound waves to the brains of patients to correct tremors that are so disabling they often can’t sign their own names.
All these things were unknown a generation ago and may well be out of date a generation hence.
That is why you must be open to new ideas but never stop questioning their validity and continued relevance.
To be a critical thinker you must avoid cognitive shortcuts.
In his classic book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, the late Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, described how our brains have two systems of thinking – one superficial, emotionally charged, fast and prone to ascertainment, anchoring and confirmatory biases.
And the other, deep, dispassionate, slow, and evidence based. In other words, critical thinking.
Thinking a bit more slowly would benefit people in all walks of life. The difference for physicians is that when we use mental shortcuts, when we fail to think deeply, we are prone to these heuristic biases that can harm our patients.
- Like performing wrong-site surgery.
- Or mistaking a patient’s fever for the flu, rather than potentially lethal sepsis.
- Or dismissing the possibility that a woman reporting back pain might be having a heart attack.
Critical thinking was a child of the Enlightenment and fueled the scientific revolution, but it is as important today as it was in the 17th and 18th centuries. Critical reasoning is vital in caring for our patients, in teaching our students, and in conducting scientifically valid research.
But it is also vital to our conduct as citizens.
Greg Lukianoff, who you will hear more from in just a few minutes, has committed his career to the preservation of critical thinking and free expression in academia, including academic medicine.
In his newest book, The Canceling of the American Mind, Greg and his co-author, Rikki Schlott, provide a frightening number of examples of how many institutions of higher education have failed in their duties of preserving 350 years of critical thinking and Enlightenment rationality and of “teaching us how to argue productively.” Of course, social media has only made the problem worse.
Ironically, Lukianoff’s work shows that a large majority of Americans think that Cancel Culture – on the left and right – is a bad thing. And that Americans value free speech as a vital part of a healthy democracy.
And yet today instead of discussing the substance of our disagreements, we too often launch personal attacks or retreat to what the authors describe as “rhetorical fortresses” to dismiss arguments without debate.
The walls of these fortresses allow us to stop listening to those who don’t share our ideological outlook, or who belong to the wrong political party, race, gender, or sexual orientation.
So, I ask you never to be afraid to challenge dogma in ways that elevate discussion, knowledge and learning; to always be open to new or challenging ideas; to never retreat to a rhetorical fortress; and to always engage in critical thinking.
And as physicians, be relentless in seeking the correct diagnosis and optimal treatment for your patients; be fully honest with your trainees when you don’t know the answer to their questions; and be fearless in your pursuit of novel research concepts.
Shakespeare wrote that love is "an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark."
As physicians, our guiding star, our “ever-fixèd mark” – must be the pursuit of truth with scientific rigor and dispassionate reason.
Follow that light, as you go forward in your medical careers, and in your everyday lives, and you will truly help heal the world.
Dean’s Award Remarks
I have the great privilege of announcing the recipients of this year’s Dean’s Awards, presented for outstanding contributions to the public’s health.
First, on this golden anniversary of the medical school, I would like to recognize a very special group of true pioneers: the members of the charter class of 1974!
With us here today are representatives of this inaugural class.
I would like to introduce them and have them join us on stage to receive a commemorative 50th anniversary medal made in honor of today’s event. Each of our students graduating today will also receive this special medal.
- Douglas Barrett
- Thomas Bell
- Lindsay Bell
- Sheila Farmer
- John Hellrung
- Stephen Vernon
Doctors, each of you has represented our medical school with great distinction throughout your careers. It is your hard work and pioneering spirit that built the foundation of excellence that our college has become today. Please join me in recognizing the charter class of 1974!
It is now my privilege to introduce today’s commencement speaker and dean’s award recipient. Greg Lukianoff is an attorney, New York Times best-selling author, and president and CEO of the non-partisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE.
Greg is a graduate of American University and Stanford Law School. He has published
articles in The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and The Atlantic and has testified before Congress. 
Greg’s work first came to my attention when he co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. More recently, he co-authored the book I just referenced, The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All—But There Is a Solution.
I had no idea when I first decided to recognize Greg’s work for its impact on academic medicine how relevant it would be for our society writ large, given the wave of campus protests across the nation over the past few weeks.
Greg and his colleagues have fiercely advocated for free speech, while reminding everyone that violence, threats, and discriminatory harassment are not protected speech. They ask us to think critically and reason calmly about the complex issues at play in today’s society.
I can only say that we need more voices like his in academia – and especially academic medicine. Let us always be open to other points of view, and unyielding only in our continued pursuit of truth.
Please join me in welcoming Greg Lukianoff, 2024 recipient of the Dean’s Award.