“Hope is a discipline.”
—Mariame Kaba, organizer and educator
At this year’s Luther Hodges graduation, hope appeared more than once.
Both Associate Dean Shimul Melwani and Dr. Kim Allen called attention to the conditions graduates now face of uncertainty, complexity, and systems in flux. They gestured toward a version of hope that refuses ease or denial.
Dean Melwani, reflecting on the “squiggles” symbolizing students’ journeys, described a hope that persists in ambiguity. “It’s active. It’s courageous,” she said. “It says: ‘Things are hard. Things are uncertain. And I’m going to move forward anyway.’” She called this radical hope—a hope that insists that something better is possible, and that we are accountable to its making.
Dr. Allen offered a similar charge: disruption brings clarity—when values must be chosen, not inherited. For her, hope is not emotional buoyancy, but a mode of direction-setting: a reason to keep showing up, even when the results are not guaranteed.
This reflected in graduating scholar Arnav Gunwani’s address. Arnav captured how scholars internalized this hope: “We didn’t always know what we were doing,” he admitted, “But we learned to ask better questions. And we learned to move forward, even when the outcome wasn’t clear.” His words framed hope as curiosity—sustained action despite uncertainty.
This ethos can be seen in the Luther Hodges Class of 2025. Their projects—across financial inclusion, policy design, and entrepreneurship—often unfolded under constraint. Yet, they met each challenge with rigor. Their work illustrates what it means to act as if change is possible, even when the mechanisms are unclear. To act under those conditions is not only to lead—it is to hope.
The substance of that hope was often built in quieter places. As Arnav reflected, “What stands out most to me is not any one project or internship, but the small things—Slack threads, shared documents, late-night messages—where we made each other better thinkers and more honest people.” They reminded us that hope often looks like choosing to stay engaged—together—even when the work is slow.
This discipline of hope that Mariame Kaba names, I would argue, is a defining trait of the 2025 Luther Hodges Scholars. They have treated hope as an architecture built through research, critique, iteration, and care. They have learned how to stay oriented toward progress—even amid ambiguity.
The graduation ceremony affirmed that leadership begins where certainty ends. That hope is not what you feel—it’s what you choose. As Arnav so aptly put it, “I’m grateful to be leaving this program not with a roadmap, but with a compass—and with people who make the uncertainty feel worthwhile.” The work of transforming systems begins not with the belief that success is assured, but with the decision to begin anyway.
