LEXINGTON, Va. — Gov. Glenn Youngkin hailed graduates of the Virginia Military Institute in a commencement speech Tuesday that avoided any mention of the battle over diversity, equity and inclusion that has polarized VMI’s alumni for the past 18 months.

Instead Youngkin (R), an outspoken opponent of equity in Virginia’s public schools, focused on how VMI had prepared its Class of 2023 to answer the question: “Who am I?”

The governor invoked two of VMI’s greatest alums, Gen. George Marshall, one of World War II’s most renowned military leaders, and Jonathan Daniels, who gave his life during the civil rights movement to protect a Black teenager in Alabama.

Youngkin’s remarks at VMI, the nation’s oldest state-supported military college, came one day after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a law defunding DEI programs at Florida’s public colleges. And it came on the heels of a controversial training session at VMI by Youngkin’s chief diversity officer, Martin D. Brown, who told faculty and staff last month that “DEI is dead” — a statement that prompted calls by Black lawmakers for his resignation.

But Youngkin, who was endorsed by conservative alumni opposed to VMI’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, did not address the topic at all.

At the beginning of the ceremony, held inside the school’s basketball arena, Cameron Hall, Youngkin and the college’s first Black superintendent, retired Army Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins, walked out together, side by side. The audience stood and cheered. About 40 minutes into the ceremony, after speeches by Wins, the elected valedictorian and the senior class president, Youngkin took the lectern.

He began by thanking those in the class who helped lead the parade at his gubernatorial inauguration in Richmond in January 2022.

He also reminisced about his trip this month to VMI’s barracks, where, in his capacity as the commander in chief of the corps, he granted “amnesty” to students with unserved penalty marching tours and campus confinement.

“I loved meeting with all the students. But I have not had a more memorable experience than touring, seeing the barracks, talking with many cadets, hearing your experiences that have shaped your lives over the last four years. In fact, when I walked into the old barracks, it was overwhelming to be greeted with so much cheering. I like to think it had something to do with me being your most favorite governor,” Youngkin said, with the crowd’s laughs turning into applause. “But yes, I’ll have to admit it probably had more to do with me granting you amnesty and wiping your demerit boards clean.”

He reminded the senior class that they launched their VMI careers in the same building as freshman “rats” four years ago, sitting with their families “with trepidation” before they began the college’s “rat line,” a months-long boot-camp-style initiation of intense workouts.

“Your journey began here in Cameron Hall almost four years ago,” Youngkin said. “You made your way down to the start of the rat line and committed your lives to something greater than yourselves, and it’s a testament to your strength and perseverance that you have made it to the finish line. Congratulations to the Class of 2023.”

When the class began at VMI in August 2019, it had 515 students. At graduation, it had a little more than 300 cadets.

Youngkin paid homage to the class’s hardships.

During Thanksgiving break in their first semester of freshman year, their classmate Jamison Clark was killed in a car accident. Then, the next semester, they endured the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Youngkin also made an oblique reference to the independent investigation into the college’s racial climate ordered in late 2020 by his predecessor, Gov. Ralph Northam (D), a VMI alum.

“This class is unlike any other,” he said. “You have endured the pandemic, and you have dealt with distractions that were not of your own making.”

In fact, the last time VMI hosted a governor’s speech, it was Northam. He spoke to cadets in November 2021 and said that for VMI to succeed, it needed to stay committed to diversity and making sure “all cadets, faculty and staff, feel safe and welcome.”

Other Virginia governors who have delivered the commencement address at VMI include John Pollard in 1931, Linwood Holton in 1972, Mills Godwin in 1977, Mark R. Warner in 2005 and Tim Kaine in 2007, according to the college’s spokesman, Bill Wyatt.

Youngkin spent a portion of his speech extolling Jonathan Daniels, a 1961 VMI graduate who was slain while protesting segregation in the South during the civil rights movement.

Daniels, a White seminarian, was fatally shot in 1965 when he and a Black teenager approached a convenience store in central Alabama. They tried to enter the building, but a White man — a state highway employee and volunteer sheriff’s deputy — threatened them with a shotgun. As gunfire rang out, Daniels pushed the Black girl, Ruby Sales, out of the way, taking the blast and dying instantly.

“When Jonathan received his diploma, he, too, was asking the question, ‘Who am I?’” Youngkin said, adding that Daniels had given the valedictorian speech at VMI more than six decades earlier. “He was in Alabama doing his duty as he believed God called him to do. He was selflessly looking out for others, and there is nothing more honorable than giving one’s life for another.”

Youngkin ended the speech by praising the large number of cadets entering the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, Navy, Space Force and Coast Guard.

“You will be whatever you resolve to be,” the governor told the cadets, invoking a version of a maxim engraved on VMI’s barracks. “Through all walks of life you will forge a better, more perfect union because you are from VMI. So, in the next chapter, be confident in your answer to the question, ‘Who am I?’ Be witnesses to what you have learned here. You have worked hard, probably harder than any students anywhere in the nation.”