Life and leadership are about trade-offs: SOAS VC

The following commencement address was delivered at BRAC University's 17th Convocation, held on November 27, 2025, by Convocation Speaker Prof. Adam Habib, the Vice-Chancellor of SOAS University of London.

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Honourable Advisor Muhammad Fouzul Kabir Khan, Vice-Chancellor Syed Ferhat Anwar, University Grants Commission Member Saidur Rahman, Chairperson of the Board of Trustees Ms Tamara Hasan, University Grants Commission Member Prof. Anwar Hossen, Convocation Chair Dr Sadia Hamid Kazi, Registrar Dave Dowland, and the Class of 2025, your Parents, family, friends, and loved ones, thank you for the honour of delivering this commencement address. It's a real pleasure to do so, and I really want to start by congratulating the Class of 2025 on their incredible achievement.

This is a notable moment in your lives, and it is one to savour and celebrate, but it is also a moment that is possible because of the support of your loved ones. Many of you would not have been here had it not been for the support of many others in your family and extended networks. Remember them in this moment of celebration.

Addresses like these are designed for the speaker to give advice to the graduates for their future. I am reluctant to do so because our world is changing so significantly, and I suspect that your abilities to navigate it have less to do with the lessons from my past and more to do with the resilience that I hope lies in your future. So instead of giving you advice, let me leave you with four thoughts that emanate from conversations between myself and my two sons, who, like you, are young adults.

1. Your future will not be bequeathed to you by others. You have to become the architect of your own future. And if you are to have agency, remember that what you would also require is leverage. There are many in your path who will want to be the architects of alternative futures. And if you want to ensure that your vision predominates in the world, then you must think through what leverage you have that may influence others to accommodate your choices. In the world of international politics, people heed the United States because of its wealth and military capabilities. China has effectively got together countries to accommodate to it because of the size of its market and their desire to sell to it. The same is true of India. If you want to be the architects of your own futures in your society and in each of your individual lives, you will need to think through the leverage you need to have so that others accommodate to your needs.

2. If you are to be the architects of your own future, you require both passion and tolerance. Passion is important because it inspires you to dedicate yourself to an outcome, but tolerance is also important because you must know that others have alternative desires and other fears, and they, too, need to be accommodated in the future you want to build. If the world or any of your futures is designed to be a zero-sum outcome, it will provoke far greater opposition than you require. Far better a future that tries to accommodate all.

3. Life and leadership are about trade-offs. The difficult trade-offs are not between good and evil; this is easy to decide upon, even if it's difficult to implement at moments. But it is far more difficult to make trade-offs between equally competing priorities. This is the singular most difficult issue that leaders of public institutions confront, and they sometimes destroy the institutions and their legacy by their unwillingness to make hard trade-offs between competing priorities. Learn and have the courage to do this if you want to succeed in both your personal and in your professional lives.

4. Finally, your political and social context is as important as is the learning from comparative experience elsewhere in the world. Learning from international experiences is something that we all need to do. But it should never distract us from the importance of adapting those experiences to our local context. How you manage climate change, or economic development, or the building of a business in Dhaka will be distinctive from how you do it in New York City, Rio De Janeiro, or Cape Town. Context matters, and it can be the very source of social and technological innovation. Take your context seriously; it is your unique gift, and it makes you unique in this world.

These are four thoughts for your consideration as you navigate your life. 

A final thought, no apology, for your consideration: my generation has not been able to leave this world in a better place than it currently exists. Our world is polarised. It is highly unequal, and it is divided, and all of our challenges are transnational—climate change, war, food security. If we are to overcome these challenges, we do need to cohere as a human community and build bridges across divides, both within nations and across national boundaries. This is the singular task you confront before any other. I wish my generation could have done better in building a more cohesive world. We failed, and my single prayer is that your generation succeeds in this, for our future as a human species lies in your hands.

Please do have a wonderful celebration on your achievement, and all the best in your future endeavours.

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