Miranda has just spent several minutes celebrating the power of expertise — cataloguing how scientists, engineers, computer scientists, social scientists, historians, philosophers, theologians, poets, and musicians all contributed to navigating the polyvalent crisis of the pandemic. She affirms the graduates' hard-won expertise as genuinely powerful and world-changing. Then she pivots: there will be situations where you have no relevant expertise, no evidence base to rely on, where your intellect cannot supply a needed answer. In those moments, she suggests, respond with love. The line 'expertise is powerful, but love always wins' is the thesis of the entire speech — a scientist-provost telling newly minted PhDs that the heart will carry them further than the mind alone.