Columbia Mailman Celebrates the Class of 2025

The 168th Street Armory swelled with Columbia blue as graduates gathered with family, friends, faculty, and staff to mark their commencement. The May 20 Class Day ceremony celebrated more than 800 master’s and doctoral graduates in the Class of 2025 and affirmed their readiness to tackle complex health challenges and drive measurable progress in communities worldwide.

In her Class Day address, Dean Linda P. Fried highlighted public health’s historic role in extending life expectancy while charging graduates to continue this legacy. “You are graduating in a time of tremendous and unprecedented challenges,” she said. “We know that you have the resilience, the dedication to learn and lead in challenging circumstances, and that you are needed like no other time in our collective memories.”

Dean Fried placed collective problem-solving at the heart of future progress, urging public health practitioners to “connect across differences with aligned goals and shared stewardship.” With conviction, she told the graduating class they would “not back down from the problems that confront us,” and praised their readiness to “bring the knowledge our world needs”—translating insight into action to advance public health goals and secure a healthier future for all.

Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who shepherded the nation through the height of the COVID-19 pandemic while expanding his office’s focus to include youth mental health and the loneliness epidemic, received the Dean’s Visionary Leadership Award. In his Class Day speech, Murthy addressed the systemic challenges facing public health professionals. Acknowledging the recent “seismic shift” in federal public health policy undermining critical services, he echoed Dean Fried’s message, assuring graduates, “You made the right choice, and your work matters more than ever.”

The former Surgeon General spoke to public health’s legacy of progress, often against strong headwinds, noting, “Millions of people today drink clean water, get life-saving vaccines, receive treatment for HIV, and understand the harms of tobacco because public health workers persevered in the days of extraordinary obstacles.” He stressed the importance of community support, saying, “In moments of hardship and despair, community is everything. It diminishes our pain and reminds us that we are not alone.”

Murthy—whose 2020 book Together explores the profound link between human connection and health—outlined the pillars of meaningful relationships: presence, honest communication, and mutual support. “Your ability to give and to receive love,” he told graduates, “is your greatest gift and your greatest power.”

Student speaker Kamiah Brown delivered a powerful call to action, expressing her conviction that public health must challenge systemic injustices. “I came to investigate not just who is sick, but why. I came to name the systems beneath the symptoms—to call out the power structures that allow illness to flourish, unchecked and uneven,” she declared. As a student, she gained the knowledge to pursue these goals. “At Columbia, I found the language for what I had always felt,” Brown explained.

In a speech that highlighted urgent inequities from Black maternal mortality to barriers in transgender healthcare, Brown asserted, “We are not entering a workforce. We are stepping onto a battlefield.” Drawing strength from history—and noting that her great-grandmother, who was born under segregation, sat in the audience—Brown reminded attendees, “We come from a lineage of struggle. We come from ancestors who bled, who marched, who loved and resisted.” She concluded with a rallying cry: “We are here to challenge, to reimagine, and to rebuild.”

Vice Dean of Education Michael Joseph recognized outstanding faculty with teaching awards, including Helen de Pinho, recipient of the Columbia University Award for Outstanding Teaching. Earlier in the day, an awards ceremony honored student achievements. Alumni Board President Kyle MacDonald welcomed graduates into Columbia's network of nearly 20,000 public health alumni, encouraging them to “Lean on your Columbia network. Reach out to fellow alumni and support one another.”

As the ceremony concluded, graduates joined in reciting the Public Health Oath, affirming their commitment to the principle that “Health is a human right.”