Bard College Acting President Jonathan Becker Addresses KSE’s 2026 Graduates

Jonathan Becker, Acting President of Bard College, delivered the commencement address at the Kyiv School of Economics 2026 graduation ceremony at KSE Obolon in Kyiv on August 1, 2026. 249 students received diplomas across four departments: Economics, School of Engineering, Social Sciences, Computer Science; and the KSE Graduate Business School. The ceremony took place in the year KSE marks its 30th anniversary.

Becker also spoke about the engineering education KSE is building. He noted that the university is expanding into engineering at a moment when Ukraine needs manufacturing capacity as much as design: KSE is launching Engineering of Innovative Manufacturing, a new program developed with Fire Point, and has built its first engineering program with Olin College of Engineering, a longtime partner of Bard College.

That program is Delta Engineering, named after the call sign of Daria Lopatina, an undergraduate computer science student who volunteered for military service and was killed in action. "We recognize that today is a day of joy for those graduating, but of sadness as we think of those lost, like Daria, over the recent years," Becker said.

"It was a great honor to welcome Bard College Acting President Jonathan Becker as our commencement speaker — the first foreign commencement speaker in KSE's history to address our undergraduate students. Marking our 30th anniversary, he was an ideal choice, sharing five lessons on leadership, responsibility, and civic agency drawn from his own experience. Bard College is renowned for its pedagogy, global impact, and leadership in civic engagement — qualities central to KSE's own mission. Bard and KSE are connected through both direct collaborations, including a summer school on reading and learning in Kyiv, and shared partnerships, such as with Olin College of Engineering. That President Becker traveled to Kyiv in person to deliver this address, despite the ongoing threat of Russian missile strikes, stands as a powerful testament to his commitment to education and to democracy," Tymofii Brik, Rector of KSE University said during ceremony.

"During the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, international partnerships matter more than ever. Since 2022, the partnership between KSE and Bard College has proven to be strong and strategic. KSE has been an active member of GHEA21, the Global Higher Education Alliance for the 21st Century, previously known as the Open Society University Network, led by Bard College.
That makes having Dr. Becker as our first commencement speaker ever even more special. Our mission at KSE is to preserve and foster young talents for future rebuilding and development of Ukraine. Thus, it has been a great pleasure to work with Dr. Becker and the Bard team on the summer school "Language & Thinking Kyiv" for 35 Ukrainian high schoolers from all over Ukraine, including frontline and rural communities. Both KSE and Bard recognize that higher education starts long before applying to universities, and it is important for both of our institutions to support local talent and invest in the young people even before welcoming them on our campuses," added Kostyantyn Kyrychenko, Vice-Rector for International Cooperation.

A ceremony held between attacks

The graduation took place at the end of a week of large-scale Russian strikes on the capital. Overnight on July 30, explosions hit Kyiv's districts as part of an attack in which Ukraine's air force reported 74 missiles and 284 drones launched across the country. Graduates, families, and faculty gathered the following morning.

A return after 34 years

Becker first came to Ukraine in 1992, at 27, as part of the first cohort of lecturers sent by the Civic Education Project. He taught politics — rights, rule of law, democracy — at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, four years before KSE was founded there, and later became the project's Ukraine country director, overseeing ten lecturers who taught students from Lviv to Donetsk. He built his address around what has changed in the 34 years since.

He structured the speech as five lessons. The first came from a detail: in 1992, the person who controlled the keys to every classroom effectively decided who taught, when, and whether at all. His proposal for reforming Ukrainian higher education that year was not about curriculum but about opening classrooms in the morning and closing them at night. "Pay attention to details because it is often the little things that determine if the big things work," he said.

The second concerned authority. Good leadership, Becker argued, is a considered exercise of power rather than deference to conventional wisdom or to the most experienced person in the room.

Democracy as a verb

The core of the address was agency. Becker used a phrase coined by former US Congressman Abner Mikva — "democracy is a verb" — to describe how people contribute to their community whatever political environment they find themselves in. He noted that civic engagement is the enemy of authoritarians who seek to isolate and atomize, and cited political scientist Robert Putnam on how it transforms the "I" into the "We."

"You are not simply passive objects shaped by history and outside forces," Becker told the graduates. "You and your generation are authors of your own history, you are authors of the future of Ukraine, and that future is not written."

He pointed to Yana Lahoda, a Bard student from Ukraine who spent the past academic year building Language & Thinking Kyiv from 7,500 kilometers away and who plans to establish a version of Bard Early College in Ukraine.

His final lesson addressed what a degree is worth. "The diplomas do not make you, the education does," Becker said. "A good education, like the one you have received at KSE, teaches you how to think — not simply what to think."

He argued that KSE graduates have also absorbed what his colleague Jelani Favors calls a "second curriculum" — in Ukraine's case, a cultural and national consciousness with antecedents from Mykhailo Hrushevsky to the Shistdesiatnyky. "The real measure of an academic institution is not who the teachers are, but rather what their pupils do," he said.

Becker closed with a case for idealism, quoting Cody Keenan, a former speechwriter to US President Barack Obama: "Idealism is not the simplistic belief that things will get better. It's the belief that, with effort, things can get better." He ended the address with "Slava Ukraini."

Expanding cooperation between KSE and Bard College

Becker's visit took place as KSE and Bard College expand their academic cooperation in Ukraine. Earlier that week, he joined the opening of Language & Thinking Kyiv, a three-week tuition-free summer program launched by Bard College in partnership with KSE and the Ukrainian Leadership Academy.

The program runs from July 27 to August 15 at the KSE Dragon Capital Building. Its inaugural cohort includes 35 students from Kyiv, frontline regions, and rural communities across Ukraine.

Through seminar-based learning, participants develop skills in analytical reading, writing, and critical thinking. The curriculum draws on Bard College's Language & Thinking methodology and includes texts by Lesia Ukrainka, Václav Havel, Martin Luther King Jr., and other authors.

Language & Thinking Kyiv is supported by Ukraine Global Scholars, Nova Ukraine, and international donors. The program is one of the first concrete initiatives developed through the growing cooperation between KSE and Bard College.