(This a transcript of the recorded address Dr. Sean Flynn gave at the Dakota Wesleyan University opening convocation on August 28, 2025.)

Administrators, staff, coaches, esteemed faculty members, trustees, and students, it is my honor to offer the address for this academic year's opening convocation. As was evident in our litany for a new academic year, we are here to celebrate the mission of Dakota Wesleyan University and to reaffirm, in a most public fashion, our commitment to learning, leadership, faith, and service.

My contribution to this storied tradition of opening convocation is to, over the next few moments, make the case for the value of a higher education that widens our intellectual horizons, confronts us with the critical role that universities play in the defense of American democracy, and alerts us to our duty to strengthen Dakota Wesleyan University so that so that it will remain what it has been for the past 140 years– an institution unapologetically committed to free thought, free dialogue, freedom of opportunity, and a vision for the prosperity of a free society. While my brief remarks are intended for the widest consumption, my target audience is the Wesleyan student body, and more specifically, those among you who are first year students.

A decade ago, had you told university personnel that their vocations and the institutions they serve would soon be facing unprecedented political pressure, that one day we would need to make the case for the value of higher education and the academic programs we provide for the lasting benefit of American society, we might have chuckled. The value of American universities, we would have said, is self-evident. America's universities are indispensable guardians of Western civilization, indispensable wellsprings of American values, indispensable centers of medical, scientific, and economics research, indispensable communities for the training of professionals in careers as diverse as accounting, graphic designing, nursing, education, and so on.

As the Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff recently noted, “The universities of America are critical to everything that is good about America. Its commitment to freedom, its devotion to excellence, its leadership in science and medicine.” Yet, Ignatieff was quick to add that when a university is attacked, everyone's freedom is attacked.

And yet here we are, at this critical juncture in our history when schools at all levels are under attack for allegedly having failed society. We are witnessing the freezing of federal grants for medical and scientific research, the intimidation and termination of university presidents, and the dismantling of universities’ general education programs. State officials demand that middle schools and high schools do more to indoctrinate rather than educate their students. Books once banned in the Soviet Union are being banned by American school boards. Federal officials who, under the guise of defending the rights of some students, are aggressively restricting the first amendment rights of students and faculty. And we are forced to endure day in and day out tired cliches about DEI and woke ideology uttered by government officials who've never spent a moment in the teaching or the counseling of elementary, secondary, or college students.

Some of the more opportunistic of these officials stoke divisions between those who have earned and have not earned four-year degrees, all the while stereotyping college students as spoiled freeloaders and their professors as unpatriotic brainwashers of American youth.

At Dakota Wesleyan, we will not permit this unfortunate state of affairs to subvert our educational mission, nor diminish your campus experience. We will continue to offer a transformational education that nurtures democratic values in a freethinking intellectual atmosphere wherein your development in the arts, the sciences, the professions, and in athletic competition remains our paramount concern.

Like many of you, I am the product of a small town. I was born in that town. I was raised in that town. I was educated in that town. That town formed who I am. But that town's not the only town. Those good neighbors are not the only good neighbors. Those close friends are not the only close friends. And their perspectives are not the only perspectives.

Students, you are here to broaden your perspectives. You are here to learn how to learn. You are here to learn how to distinguish empirical truth from misinformation, false narratives, irresponsible conspiracy theories, and cheap sloganeering. You are here to learn to avoid self-righteousness because it stifles learning. You were here to learn that the arts, the humanities, the physical sciences, and the social sciences are all essential to your understanding of human freedom. You are here to learn to put yourself in other people's shoes, to respect people who don't share your political or religious viewpoint, to tolerate those who don't embrace your lifestyle.

You are here to learn that, in the words of President Kennedy, “Civility is not a sign of weakness.”

And you are here to learn in the words of St. Paul to “Compete well, to finish the race, and to keep the faith.”

Ultimately however, ultimately, you are here to learn to appreciate that in the words of the political philosopher Benjamin Barber, “The fundamental task of education in a democracy is learning to be free.”

Freedom must never be taken for granted. We must never assume that freedom is a permanent condition, that freedom exists in some prepackaged, insulated state. It does not, and to think such thoughts is the height of foolishness. You must be vigilant, students, if you wish to inherit freedom. American democracy is an ongoing experiment with an uncertain future. The cement of democracy is never set. Its evolution is never complete. Its survival requires constant oversight from a formally educated and politically engaged citizenry who are dedicated to lifelong learning. We must, Benjamin Barber emphasizes, learn to be free.

This past June, Quinnipiac University, the administrator of one of the most trusted public opinion survey instruments in America, conducted a poll in which they asked Americans their thoughts about the future of democracy. Half the respondents answered that American democracy is not working. But even more disturbing was the result which revealed that 73% of respondents did not think American democracy would end in their lifetime. They weren't certain what would occur following their deaths. They were secure only in the belief that democracy would survive their lifetime.

Crises of faith in democracy are not unheard of in our history. Some cases in point being the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II, and the McCarthy era.

And yet, there is something novel and ominous about our current crisis, which is being deliberately manufactured by a few, but sustained by the acquiescence and the apathy of the many.

Students, all of us gathered here this morning bear a burden to assure that American freedom survives your generation. But in the end, this is your fight. Your generation must begin to wrestle with what freedom is. You're going to have to ask yourself how bad you want freedom to endure and to decide if and how you are going to defend it, reinvigorate it, and advance it.

In about 14 weeks, I'm going to announce to my general education students that they are an educated elite and thus a leadership elite. I'm not referring to a snobby form of elitism, some kind of superior attitude that those with college degrees are better than those who lack degrees. Negative. What I do assert is that a degree from Dakota Wesleyan University obligates you to take on the burden of leadership and that part of your charge as leaders is to promote freedom.

The future of American democracy rests with a younger generation of educated leaders. I believe that the chief element that makes DWU different and distinguishes this University from our peers is our purposeful effort to encourage and cultivate leadership. Not a brawling, loudmouth form of leadership, but a more subdued and yet substantive and magnetic leadership that others, once they witness, seek to emulate.

A substantive leader is thoughtful and reflective. He or she practices good judgment and is honest to a fault. She or he is reliable, confident, and capable, yet humble and merciful toward others. He or she protects the values and the reputation of Dakota Wesleyan University. She or he is a model of integrity, a champion of character. Student leaders, on behalf of the administrators, faculty, staff, coaches, and trustees of Dakota Wesleyan University, I appeal to you to defend freedom.

While you are here, learn all that you can about the sources of freedom, the institutions of freedom, the exercise of freedom, the expression of freedom, the tools of freedom. Learn that there are real threats to freedom, but that you can defeat those threats.

Learn that freedom is fragile, but that you have the power to strengthen its resiliency. Learn how your particular field of study, your academic major, promotes freedom, and how you, as an expert in your field, may one day come to embody freedom. Out of respect for the five generations of Wesleyan students who have come before you, some of whom that fought and died in defense of your freedom and for the many alumni who have selflessly advanced the cause of freedom in a myriad of ways, students, tigers, I challenge you to learn how to be free so that you will remain free.

Thank you.