It was a graduation season like no other. The Trump Administration Survey on elite universities and reduces research funding. Pro-Palestinian activism And anti -Semitism allegations shape the life of the campus. International students are afraid of revoking their visas.
Unlike past generations, what a speaker says on a starting stage now reaches an audience much larger than the crowd that day. Universities regularly display online ceremony images, giving distant parents with graduates a chance to connect and put main speakers a world scene.
The New York Times studied videos of dozens of opening addresses that have been published online – more than 170,000 words delivered this spring in a transversal section of American higher education establishments – in order to analyze the most urgent subjects. Many speakers, including Kermit the frog At the University of Maryland, the gymnast Simone Biles at Washington University in St. Louis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem At the Dakota State University, avoided political melee and focused on timeless lessons.
But many others, including journalists, scientists and politicians from both parties, weighed directly at the news of the moment. Many of them described 2025 in existential terms, warning disastrous threats of freedom of expression and democracy. Others have announced the dawn of a promising new American era. Here is an overview of the key themes that have emerged in these speeches.
A moment of opportunity
Several speakers have taken an optimistic tone on the world that students entered.
