Keep Politics Out of Commencement Speeches
Universities should protect graduation ceremonies from partisan division.
Editor’s note: Below is a preview of an opinion piece authored by Jeffrey S. Flier and John Tomasi published Thursday, May 14, 2026 in The Boston Globe. To read the full article, click here.
University commencement ceremonies occupy a distinctive place in academic life. At once celebratory, ceremonial, aspirational, and institutional, they mark the culmination of years of study and the transition of students to the next stage of citizenship and professional life. At institutional events — organized, sponsored, and symbolically endorsed by schools and universities — speakers chosen to address graduates at commencements should respect the purpose of these events by not politicizing them.
Honoring this principle is increasingly important at a time when commencement speeches have often become platforms for commentary on divisive issues, partisan advocacy, or ideological signaling. Universities should resist this not because complex or controversial ideas are unwelcome in academic life — far from it.
They should insist on a depoliticized approach because commencement is a unique moment in university life. It is a time to honor the graduates while also celebrating the university as a special type of community, one in which people with diverse perspectives have come together for a period of years, to listen and to learn from their differences in the communal search for knowledge.
At commencement ceremonies, the institution is the host, and invited speakers communicate with the symbolic imprimatur of the institution. When speakers use this platform to advocate their own political preferences — whether on immigration, foreign policy, social justice, or politics — they are not simply expressing their personal views. Intentionally or not, they are attaching their views to the institution and, by extension, to the graduates. Disclaimers that the speaker’s views are solely their own don’t prevent the audience from perceiving the invitation itself as a form of endorsement.
That perception matters…
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My question is, what counts as "politics"? Universities do plenty of signalling and routinely issue statements that are (depending on who you ask) inherently political - this happens long before we ever get to graduation ceremonies. Take the Australian context: is flying three flags on campus (the Australian, the Aboriginal, and the Torres Strait Islander flags) a political statement? Is just flying one flag (the Australian national flag) equally political? Are compulsory land acknowledgements political? Is refusing to comply with this expectation political? For academics who support institutional neutrality, it is very difficult to know how to navigate this charged terrain.
All due respect, while nothing wrong per se with what you wrote, it would be far more beneficial to remove the near total leftist political ideologization of the 4 years of college than removing it from graduation day…