Dr. Fauci Addresses Graduates of Jesuit High Schools

In a pre-recorded video message (see below) Anthony Fauci, MD, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health and a leading figure in the struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic, addressed the graduating classes of 2020 at Jesuit high schools around the country.

Speaking to the graduates, Dr. Fauci said “Currently our lives have been upended by a truly historic global pandemic. I am profoundly aware that graduating during this time—and virtually, without your friends, classmates and teachers close by—is extremely difficult.  However, please hang in there. We need you to be smart, strong and resilient. With discipline and empathy, we will all get through this together.”

Dr. Fauci is a graduate of Regis High School, an all-scholarship Jesuit school in New York City.  He has his undergraduate degree from Holy Cross College, another Jesuit institution. 

“I often say it was the best educational experience I could have imagined,” Dr. Fauci noted in his speech. “I became immersed in the intellectual rigor of a Jesuit education.”

Dr. Fauci credited his education at Regis with teaching him both “precision of thought and economy of expression,” commenting that those two habits “inform how I think, how I write and how I communicate with the public every day, especially during the present unsettling times. Just as important, however, is the Jesuit emphasis on social justice and service to others. And now is the time, if ever there was one, for us to care selflessly about one another.”

Here is the video: