President Acebo's Commencement Address to the NJCU Class of 2026

NJCU Commencement Address — Class of 2026

President Acebo

May 19, 2026  | Prudential Center

WATCH PRESIDENT ACEBO's FULL REMARKS
 

Good morning! Special welcome to our members of the Board of Trustees, the NJCU Foundation, our faculty and staff, distinguished guests, dignitaries, alumni, families, loved ones, and friends.

My dear colleagues and beloved team.

And most importantly, the incomparable Class of 2026.  All 1,547 of you will soon cross this stage and trailing behind each of your names will be 1,547 individual stories of grit, persistence, and promise fulfilled for a class predominantly made of first-generation and working-class scholars.  Nearly a third of you will be graduating with the distinction of honors.

There is something profoundly humbling about standing before you today and getting to bear witness to that.

Because in many ways, our journeys began together and, to my blessing, will forever remain linked.

When I first stepped into this presidency, I arrived young by every conventional measure of leadership. But I arrived as a proud son of Hudson County. A first-generation child of immigrants and exiles. A product of public education who understood intimately what institutions like this mean to families like ours. Families who do not inherit networks or privilege or certainty. Families who inherit sacrifice. Faith. The quiet and audacious belief that education might become the bridge between survival and dignity.

But for me, this institution was never abstract.   It was always personal long before it became professional.

Loved ones of mine and family earned degrees from this institution and its alumni helped shape the trajectory of my own life. The values of this university—service, resilience, access, dignity—were not things I first encountered after becoming president. They were, like for you, already woven into the people who raised me, mentored me, and believed in me long before I ever was allowed to stand at this podium.

And truthfully, I did not arrive here alone. No one ever does.

I arrived carrying my father’s improbable journey to this country with little more than courage and hope. I arrived carrying my mother’s prayers. I arrived carrying the dreams of generations who believed their children might one day stand in rooms they themselves were never permitted to enter.

And at that same moment, many of you were beginning your own journey here.

Some of you arrived uncertain whether you belonged. Carrying responsibilities beyond your years.  Arriving from neighborhoods where our dreams are often taught to whisper instead of roar.

And now, there is something deeply moving about knowing that my own young children stand only one generation removed from survival and opportunity.  This work, this day, has been my heartfelt effort to honor my responsibility to them and you.

I have relished watching them walk this campus beside you.  Watching them see you crossing Kennedy Boulevard with backpacks slung over tired shoulders. Watching them sit in our hallways and classrooms. Watching them exist with you.

And perhaps without even fully understanding it yet, they have learned something powerful:

That greatness does not only live in famous places.  It lives here too.  In public institutions.
In working families.  In communities too often overlooked. In the quiet heroism of ordinary people who refuse to surrender their hope.

And now, here we are.

You and I stand together at the close of one chapter and the edge of another. You as the final graduating class of New Jersey City University. And me as one of its final stewards before our campus enters its second century alongside Kean University.

There is something almost sacred about that symmetry.

We inherited questions about whether this institution would survive. Questions about whether public trust, public service, and public faith could endure in an age increasingly defined by cynicism and fracture.

And yet together, we chose belief anyway.

This milestone was not born of ease. It was forged in faith. Tested, stretched, strained. But this community did not turn away.  It leaned in and drew closer.

You chose to continue through pandemic and hardship and exhaustion. And this university chose to fight for its future with the same determination generations before us once fought to build it.

Which is why today feels larger than ceremony.  It feels like testimony.

Testimony to a community that refused to turn away when the weight of preserving this mission pressed heavily upon it. Testimony to faculty who taught beyond the syllabus. To staff who lifted what could not afford to falter. To students whose aspirations gave this campus its purpose and its power. 

Today, the morning arrives carrying more than sunlight.  It arrives carrying memory.

Memory of a campus launched in 1927 on the then Hudson Boulevard when this nation was racing toward uncertainty and transformation and yet still found the courage to believe that ordinary people deserved extraordinary opportunity. A campus built not for the privileged, but for the children of laborers, educators, immigrants, veterans, caretakers, bus drivers, nurses, police officers, cafeteria workers, and dreamers who carried ambition and aspiration.

Our campus was never built for comfort. It was built for striving.

Built for the west side of the Hudson River, where a skyline stood close enough for us to see but far enough to remind generations of working families that proximity to power is not the same thing as access to it.

And for nearly one hundred years, this university kept widening the gates of possibility anyway. That belief built our community.

And for nearly one hundred years, this campus has been holy ground for strivers.  Not privileged people.  Determined people.

Through the Great Depression and the New Deal.
Through wars that remade nations and the uneasy peace that followed them.
Through civil rights marches that expanded the meaning of democracy itself.
Through towers that rose and fell just across the river from this campus.
Through pandemics, economic distress, and recovery.

This university kept faith with its founding purpose: to open doors wider than circumstance would otherwise allow.

Because this campus has always been inseparable from the story of Jersey City itself.  A city of docks and rail lines and row houses.  A city where dozens of languages drift through schoolyards and storefronts. A city built by immigrants and migrants and working people who crossed oceans, borders, rivers, and neighborhoods carrying little more than faith in tomorrow.  A city that remains one of the most diverse and densely populated communities in the United States.

And right here—on the west side of the Hudson—this university stood as a public anchor to that story.

A declaration that the children of our communities deserved not merely survival, but possibility.  This campus has always been more than a university. It has been a living chronicle of Jersey City itself: Resilient.  Restless.  Diverse. Unfinished.  Forever becoming.

We know that talent is universal even when opportunity is not.  That the daughter of an aide and the son of a laborer possess the same infinite worth as anyone born into wealth or privilege.

That is what higher education at its best represents.  Not merely instruction.  Transformation.

And generation after generation, this university transformed lives.  Faculty who believed in students before students believed in themselves. Staff who held this place together during its hardest days.  Families who sacrificed quietly so their children could sit in classrooms they themselves never had the chance to enter.

And now, nearly a century later, you gather as the final graduating class of New Jersey City University.

The last class to cross this stage beneath these initials.  The last class to receive a degree bearing this name.

And somehow, fittingly, perhaps the most necessary class this institution has ever produced.  Because history has a way of summoning particular people for particular moments. 

And Class of 2026, history has summoned you.

Not because the world is stable.  Not because democracy feels certain.  Not because our institutions are trusted.  But precisely because so much now feels fragile.

And I need you to understand something today:  The world desperately needs people who know how to persist and continue anyway.  Because you graduate into a world suffering from a crisis deeper than politics or economics.

Too many people have forgotten how to see one another. 

We have mastered connection but forgotten communion.  We have access to infinite information and diminishing wisdom.  We can reach people across oceans in seconds and still fail to truly know our neighbors.

You graduate into a world exhausted by division. A world connected by technology but starving for human connection. A world where cynicism is marketed as wisdom and cruelty too often mistaken for strength. A world where loneliness grows in crowded rooms and where too many people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

That is the world waiting for you now.  Not a perfect world.  A wounded one.  And wounded worlds require healing people.  Which is why your degree matters far beyond profession.

And yet— I stand before you more hopeful than ever. Because I know who is graduating from this university. I know the people this campus produces. I know the quiet heroism that walks these halls.

I know the student who took the Light Rail and the NJ Transit bus before dawn after working the overnight shift so she could make it to class by 8 a.m.

I know the mother who wrote Blackboard discussion board posts from a hospital waiting room while caring for a sick loved one.

I know the father who attended class with steel-toed boots still dusted from a construction site.

I know the first-generation student translating FAFSA forms for their family while simultaneously trying to understand a future nobody had ever taught them how to navigate.

I know the student veteran who returned from carrying the weight of war only to discover that building a life sometimes requires the same courage.

I know the aspiring teacher who will walk into a classroom this September and meet a child carrying chaos from home believing they are invisible until your belief changes the trajectory of their life forever. 

I know the nursing student who will, somewhere, someday, in the middle of night, when machines hum softly in a darkened hospital room and fear hangs heavy in the air, find patients and frightened loved ones searching in your face for reassurance and your calm presence will become medicine too. 

I know the future social workers and counselors who will interrupt generations of trauma through one act of patience.

I know the future entrepreneurs and public servants who will reinvest in neighborhoods others abandoned and create beauty where cynicism expected decline.

I know the artists, writers, and creators who in an age drowning in noise and algorithms will remind humanity how to feel again. 

And perhaps most importantly, I know many of you will do these things without applause. Which is precisely why your lives will matter so much.

Class of 2026, New Jersey City University, never mistake visibility for significance. 

Because the truth is: most people will never be handed the authority to change the entire world.  But every single person in this arena possesses the power to bring a world of change to someone else’s life.

Do not underestimate the magnitude of small acts done faithfully over time.  We survive because ordinary people decide to care for one another every day.

That is the great secret history rarely teaches.  History remembers presidents, generals, titans of industry, and masters of spectacle. Our present too often adorns celebrity and influencers with millions of followers, confusing visibility for virtue and attention for significance.

But society has always actually depended upon teachers who stay late.  Nurses who stay calm.  Parents and loved ones who stay present.  Neighbors who stay kind.  Public servants who stay honest. And ordinary people who refused to let the world become colder.

That is leadership too. Perhaps the purest form of it.

And if these final years have taught me anything, it is this:  Leadership is not the privilege of position.  It is the decision to remain responsible for one another. 

The people who change the world are rarely the loudest people in the room. They are usually the people willing to carry responsibility longer than others are willing to carry discomfort.

The ones willing to keep building after disappointment.  Keep serving after indignity.
Keep loving after heartbreak.  Keep believing after cynicism would seem easier.

You have already demonstrated that capacity.

Many of you began your college journey amid a pandemic that altered your adolescence, your families, and your understanding of certainty itself.

You learned what loneliness sounds like.  What anxiety feels like at 2 a.m.
What grief feels like when it settles over entire communities at once.

And yet here you are. Not untouched by hardship. But undefeated by it, Class of 2026.

And that distinction matters.  Because resilience is not pretending pain never happened.  Resilience is refusing to allow pain to have the final word.

I learned that lesson long before I ever became your university president.

I learned it in a home where faith was not theoretical but lived.  Where mami and papi would remind me, again and again: “Lo que está para ti, nadie te lo quita.”  What is meant for you, no one can take away.  Not rejection.  Not disappointment.  Not delay. Not fear.

And my abuela, with the kind of wisdom that only time and hardship can produce, would say: “Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres.”

Tell me who you walk with, and I will tell you who you are.  Growing up, I thought she was speaking only about friendship.  But life teaches you she was really speaking about character.

About who you choose to stand beside.  Who you choose to become responsible for.
Who you refuse to abandon.  Graduates, that lesson matters now more than ever because the world you are entering will constantly tempt you to confuse success with significance.

It will encourage you to accumulate followers instead of community.  Attention instead of wisdom.  Power instead of purpose.

But your life will ultimately be shaped by what—and who—you choose to walk with.  Walk with people who enlarge your humanity.  Walk with people who deepen your conscience.  Walk with people who remind you that ambition without compassion is emptiness dressed in accomplishment.

And above all, walk with those who help you remain tender in a world trying desperately to harden you.

Class of 2026, soon, your campus will enter a new chapter. Names will change. Structures will evolve. Leadership may transition.

But mission endures. That mission endures because of you. Gothic Knights, carry it forward and always come back to lift others behind you who find their first footings on the campus that shaped your story. 

Because the soul of this place was never a logo or a signpost.  It has always been the people who teach, learn, labor, and love here.

The sacred work endures because New Jersey City University has always been more than a name or a place.  It has been a promise.  A promise sustained by generations who believed higher education could alter the direction of a life.  A promise carried by immigrants and laborers and educators and dreamers who insisted their children deserved access to possibility.

What will endure most are the lives you touch. That has always been the real measure of our campus. Human beings. Lives transformed. Doors opened. Communities strengthened. Hope restored.

That is the inheritance you now carry forward with special distinction as the last to have entered to learn and now exit to serve.

And so today, standing at the edge of history, as you leave this arena and step into a complicated and aching world, I must ask something of you: Please do not become numb. The world will tempt you to.  It will tell you compassion is weakness.  That tenderness is naïve.  That empathy is inefficient.  That only the ruthless rise.  Do not believe it.

Do not become smaller in response to small people.  Do not allow algorithms to strip you of empathy.  Do not confuse ambition with worth.  Do not let success cost you your tenderness.  Do not let exhaustion harden your heart.  Do not become so distracted chasing a living that you forget to build a life. 

And when you encounter suffering—and you will—do not look away.  Move toward people.  Move toward pain.  Move toward service.

Because the measure of a life is not how much power we accumulate.  It is how many people breathe easier because we existed.  Some of the strongest people you will ever encounter are gentle.  Some of the most transformative people you will ever encounter are kind. And some of the most important work you will ever do will happen in rooms no camera will ever enter.  One conversation.  One vote. One act of courage.

History changes that way too.  Quietly at first. Then all at once.

And so, graduates build lives that make people feel seen.  Build neighborhoods where children feel safe.  Build institutions worthy of public trust.  Build businesses that remember humanity.  Build families rooted in dignity.  Build communities where nobody must earn the right to belong.

And when your moment comes—and it surely will—when the world asks whether you will contribute to its cruelty or its healing, choose healing. Again and again and again.

Because your degree was never merely preparation for a career. It was preparation for stewardship. Preparation to carry something larger than yourself.  Preparation to become the kind of person this moment in history requires.

And perhaps one day, decades from now, someone will ask what was so special about the final graduating class of New Jersey City University.

And the answer will not simply be that you were the last.  The answer will be this:

That they entered a fractured world and chose to mend it. That they inherited cynicism and answered with compassion. That they walked into cruelty and answered with humanity. That they understood greatness was never about prominence, but about presence. And that when history placed a wounded world into their hands, they did not drop it.  They carried it.

That when others chose performance, you chose substance.  When others chose outrage, you chose community.  When others asked what the world owed them, you asked what you owed the world.

Class of 2026, for nearly one hundred years, your campus has stood on the west side of the Hudson River as a declaration that the children of working people deserved access to possibility.  That declaration now lives inside you.  Yours is the class that carried forward a nearly a century-old legacy and helped secure its future.

Your degrees will bear the name New Jersey City University, but your legacy will live in the history of everything that comes next.  You are the class that rebuilt faith in what this university could become.

And now the responsibility belongs to you to carry forward not merely the knowledge you earned here but the humanity you lived here.  Not merely ambition but moral imagination.  Not merely success but stewardship.  Because the world does not simply need more accomplished people. It needs more decent people. More courageous people.  More people capable of protecting the dignity of others in an age trying desperately to strip it away.

And if I may leave you with one final truth, I hope it is this: the purpose of your life is not merely to become somebody.  It is to leave somebody else less afraid and more hopeful than they were before they encountered you.  To widen possibility for another human being.  To become the kind of presence that reminds people goodness still exists.  That is how our society endures and becomes more just. That is how communities heal.  That is how history bends.  Not only through presidents and movements and monumental events but through ordinary people who decide, every day, to carry light into dark places.

And now we stand at the threshold of our second century.  May we meet it with the same courage that brought us here.  May we honor the generations before us by building a future worthy of their labor.  And may we remember—as this university always has—that education is not merely about advancement.  It is about widening the circle of human dignity.  About insisting another person’s life has value.  About leaving the door open wider than we found it.

Hope is not naïve, Class of 2026.  Hope is discipline. Hope is labor.

As you leave this arena today, carrying your degrees into a wounded and waiting world, remember this: you come from a university born from hope during uncertain times.  You come from families who transformed sacrifice into opportunity.  You come from communities that taught you resilience before the world ever called it leadership.

And now you carry all of that forward.  You are the bridge between your alma mater’s first century and its second.  You are the bridge between memory and possibility. You are the bridge between what this world is and what it still has time to become.

So go.

Go heal what is wounded. Go dignify what has been neglected. Go love what others abandoned.  Go build what cynicism insists cannot be built.

And when the nights grow long… when the burden feels heavy…when the world feels louder than your hope… Remember this: Never “grow weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” 

Faith, Class of 2026, is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And you, time and time again, have ignited my faith. And I thank and love you for that.

Every generation is eventually asked the same question: Will you surrender your hope or become it for another? And I believe with all my heart that you already know the answer.

Class of 2026, go forward. Don’t let anyone tell you to wait your turn to repair what was left broken.  Let your lives become evidence that grace, courage, mercy, and love still possess the power to transform everything.

Congratulations, Class of 2026!