Gender relations are broken (here's how to fix it) — Harvey Mudd College's 2025 Commencement

The Challenge of Disconnection

• 💡 The speaker delivered a "braver speech" to the Harvey Mudd graduating class, focusing on a critical issue beyond typical commencement topics.
• 📌 The most significant problem facing graduates is disconnection across gender, class, race, and reality, hindering their ability to solve other global issues.
• 📉 Initiatives like Girls Who Code successfully addressed the gender gap in tech, but progress is now threatened by the dismantling of DEI and erasure of women from public-facing STEM roles.

The Zero-Sum "Con"

• ⚠️ Society has been sold a "con" that progress is a zero-sum game, implying that one group's gain necessitates another's loss (e.g., women rising means men fall).
• 🧩 This intentional division distracts from the fact that everyone is losing in a system rigged by those who prefer an illusion of meritocracy over real equity.

Harvey Mudd's Model for Progress

• 🚀 Harvey Mudd College serves as a successful model, transforming its computer science department from 70% male to 50% women and non-binary students by redesigning courses and creating opportunities.
• 🚨 This proven model, demonstrating that widening the talent pipeline leads to better outcomes, is now under attack, facing potential lawsuits if replicated today.

Beyond Gender Wars: Universal Struggles

• 🧠 The speaker realized the need to teach boys to be soft, not stoic, and to connect, as boys are increasingly struggling with anxiety, loneliness, and higher rates of suicide and overdose.
• ⚖️ The fight for women's equality is ongoing, with worsening pay gaps, violence, and threats to bodily autonomy, while transgender and non-binary individuals face policies questioning their right to exist.
• 🤝 Disconnection is a deliberate goal of powerful entities, using algorithms and social media to multiply inequality and prevent people from standing up for each other.

Building a Connected Future

• 🛠️ Graduates are urged to apply their skills as designers, builders, and engineers to fix broken gender relations, creating inclusive companies, policies, and platforms.
• ✅ The core message is that opportunity, progress, and empathy are not zero-sum, and true power comes from connection, leading to collective success.
• ✨ The call to action is to build a world like Harvey Mudd, where gender fosters unity and collaboration for better solutions, rather than division.