Congratulations, you’ve been asked to deliver a college commencement speech. What an opportunity to send hopeful graduates into the world with some well-curated pearls of wisdom.
Oh wait. It’s 2025 – the most volatile moment for higher education since the Vietnam War. University administrators are battling the White House, faculty members are battling each other, and students who aren’t under threat of arrest or deportation will face a job market upended by everything from tariffs to AI.
Good luck with that speech!
Writing and delivering a successful commencement address is always a herculean task. For every Steve Jobs or Robert F. Smith speech that achieved iconic status, hundreds of others fell flat.
Commencement speeches are inherently difficult to pull off successfully. They come with the contradictory expectation of somehow sounding both lofty and authentic, all without trading in the dreaded cliches that instantly cause hungover students baking in the sun to start scrolling TikTok. Even speeches that would have electrified audiences a generation ago risk falling victim to brains that have been rewired for shorter attention spans.
And that’s writing a commencement speech in normal times. Crafting a successful address in 2025 will demand far more from speakers: a willingness to put aside their own interests and fully center the experience of graduating students. The surest way to fail at a commencement speech is to focus on a personal agenda instead of the graduates.
Look no further than Harrison Butker, the Kansas City Chiefs kicker who delivered a 2024 commencement speech that went viral for all the wrong reasons by launching a litany of right-wing political attacks from the podium. Leaving aside the merits of his opinions, Butker’s mistake was delivering a speech that had nothing to do with the graduates. It was clear that his only goal was to make headlines, and that was disrespectful.
There’s no double standard here; progressives can fall into this trap just as easily. Journalist Chris Hedges' 2003 Rockford College commencement address was a disaster because he used the moment to air his personal views about the war in Iraq. Even students who agreed with his views found the speech arrogant and out of touch.
This doesn’t mean politics is off-limits in 2025. On the contrary, politics is perhaps more relevant to graduates than ever before. On campuses that have been especially impacted by the political climate, it might even feel irresponsible to avoid controversial topics altogether. If graduates don’t hear themselves in your words and connect with what you say on an emotional level, your speech will fail in the most fundamental way: They won’t care.
Successfully bringing politics into a commencement speech takes thoughtfulness and nuance. Chadwick Boseman’s highly political 2018 commencement speech at Howard University was a tremendous success because it was all about the student experience. He captured their hopes, dreams, and anxieties, all grounded in an understanding of what it meant to be a Howard graduate in that particular moment. He respected the class enough to center his broader points around their personal and collective experience.
From the darkest days of Covid to campus protests and economic turmoil, arguably no graduating class has ever faced more existential questions about their place in the world than the class of 2025. As a commencement speaker, you need to tap into that sentiment.
Talk to students. Listen to their stories. Respect their anxiety, and help them find reasons to stay hopeful. This year, the best commencement speeches won’t be about the world the speaker sees – they’ll be about the world the graduates are about to build. Honor their moment.
Emma Wozniak is a member of The Ohio State University’s Class of 2025 and editor-in-chief of the OSU Lantern.
David Meadvin, a former political and corporate speechwriter, is CEO of the corporate advisory firm One Strategy Group.
