Dr. Anthony Fauci and bioethicist Christine Grady have been selected to give the keynote speech at the Macalester Class of 2026 Commencement.
Fauci, an influential American physician and scientist, received his medical training in immunology before joining the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1968, where he would later serve as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Grady, a scholar and practitioner in bioethics, has worked extensively to integrate ethical standards into biomedical science and research practices across the globe. Her scholarship focuses on informed consent, vulnerability, coercion and justice in research participation. Grady has served as the chief of the department of bioethics at the NIH Clinical Center since 2012.
“Drs. Fauci and Grady were chosen [as keynote speakers] because they have made extraordinary contributions to advancing science and improving human health,” Macalester President Suzanne Rivera wrote in an email to The Mac Weekly.
The two met caring for a Brazilian patient at the NIH Clinical Center, where Grady was called in as a translator for Fauci. In the early 1980s, Grady spent two years at a hospital in Brazil working for Project Hope, an international health organization. The two have been married since 1985 and have three daughters.
Both public health leaders vitally contributed to combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States.
In his 38-year tenure as NIAID Director, Fauci advised seven presidents, beginning with former President Ronald Reagan, on infectious disease threats such as West Nile, Ebola and Zika viruses. Some of Fauci’s most influential work was overseeing federal research on HIV/AIDS that laid the foundation of effective antiretroviral therapies, which would transform the disease from a fatal diagnosis into a manageable chronic illness. He received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from former President George W. Bush in 2008 for his scientific leadership during the epidemic.
Grady, who received a Master of Science in community health nursing, was inspired by the desires of her first AIDS patients “to be recognized as individuals whose thoughts, feelings, and life experiences influenced how they coped with their disease,” according to an oral history interview.
Grady cared for AIDS patients throughout her three pregnancies, and her experiences with these patients led her to complete a Ph.D. in bioethics. Her dissertation, “The Search for an AIDS Vaccine: Ethical Issues in the Development and Testing of a Preventive AIDS Vaccine,” was published as a book.
In March, it was announced that Grady will be joining the faculty at Georgetown as senior advisor to the executive vice president for health sciences on bioethics and neuroethics, and as a professor of neuroscience in the school of medicine. She has published more than 200 papers and written or edited multiple books, including “The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics.”
In 2020, Fauci stepped into an even more prominent public spotlight as the nation’s leading infectious disease expert during the COVID-19 pandemic, where he served as chief medical advisor to former President Joe Biden, and a member of President Donald Trump’s pandemic task force. Fauci oversaw the research behind lifesaving vaccines and treatments for the virus during a national lockdown.
Despite his bipartisan scientific leadership, Fauci would make national headlines for his clashes with the Trump administration in the summer of 2020 after the president attempted to undermine his and other experts’ public health guidance. Trump frequently threatened to fire Fauci, labeling the doctor’s guidance during the pandemic as a “disaster,” and in his second term in office, revoked Fauci’s federal security detail meant to protect him from ongoing threats to his and his family’s life.
“Their lifetimes of public service are powerful examples of putting values into action,” Rivera wrote about Fauci and Grady. “We hope that their remarks at the commencement ceremony will inspire our graduating seniors to seek truth and advocate for the wellbeing of others.”
Commencement will occur on Saturday, May 16, at 10:30 a.m. in the Leonard Center Fieldhouse.
