Wellesley College Commencement Speeches

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie addresses Wellesley's class of 2015, drawing on personal anecdotes about makeup, her mother's career, and her own decision to leave medical school to pursue writing. She urges graduates to rec...

Melissa Harris-Perry tells Wellesley graduates that she cannot give conventional advice because she doesn't know which of many divergent life paths each will follow. She instead offers three counterintuitive pieces of...

Madeleine Albright addresses the Wellesley College class of 2007, reflecting on her own years at the college and the changed pace of the modern world. She warns of the dark side of globalization, including inequality...

Toni Morrison reflects on her ambivalence about giving the address, working through conventional graduation topics—the future, past, present responsibility, and happiness—and finding each inadequate or troubling. She...

Journalist and Wellesley alumna Lynn Sherr reflects on how opportunities for women have changed since her 1963 graduation, drawing on her career in network television news and her role covering and participating in th...