Home / Massachusetts Institute of Technology / 2012
№ 2012.013 — Massachusetts Institute of Technology — Commencement address
Salman Khan
Founder and Executive Director, Khan Academy
Khan Academy founder and MIT alumnus Salman Khan praises MIT for prioritizing principle over profit through initiatives like OpenCourseWare and edX, crediting the Institute as an inspiration for his own work. He celebrates the intensity and bonds of the MIT experience with humor, comparing the school to Hogwarts. He then offers graduates personal advice on happiness, relationships, empathy, and pursuing passions, urging them to use their gifts to better the world.
Key moments
- 01 Praise for MIT OpenCourseWare and edX as putting principle over profit
- 02 Humorous comparison of MIT to Hogwarts and its intense, bonding experience
- 03 Practical tips for happiness, empathy, and listening
- 04 Advice to pursue passions, not waste inspiration, and value relationships over status
- 05 A 'genie' thought experiment about regrets and a second chance
Visual speech map
Salman Khan at MIT, 2012
A commencement address about open education, MIT intensity, happiness, empathy, relationships, and using inspiration to serve the world.
- 01 OpenCourseWare
- 02 edX
- 03 MIT as Hogwarts
- 04 Shared intensity
- 05 Happiness habits
- 06 Empathy
- 07 Passion
- 08 Second chance
Institution
MIT makes access part of its identity
Khan praises the Institute for choosing principle over profit through OpenCourseWare and edX, framing MIT as a model for making knowledge more widely usable.
Open courses turn elite teaching into a public resource.
The Institute's example validates education work aimed beyond campus walls.
Khan Academy's mission is placed in conversation with MIT's own public-minded experiments.
Community
The pressure becomes a shared language
Humor about MIT as Hogwarts and the intensity of student life turns difficulty into a bond that graduates carry forward.
The campus is treated as a place where demanding work feels almost magical.
The workload is remembered as proof of capacity, not merely stress.
Shared strain creates durable trust among classmates.
Practice
Happiness depends on attention to people
The advice narrows from global education to daily conduct: listen well, choose empathy, and treat relationships as central rather than incidental.
Attention to another person becomes a practical form of respect.
Understanding other lives is part of intelligent action.
External markers matter less than the quality of human connection.
Charge
Treat inspiration as a second chance
The closing thought experiment asks graduates to imagine returning with the chance to avoid regret, then spend their gifts on passionate and useful work.
Do not postpone the work that feels alive and consequential.
Talent is most meaningful when it improves lives beyond the self.
A simulated second chance makes today's choices feel urgent.
Transcript
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Verified from official archive; cross-referenced with NPR commencement archive; cross-referenced with Open Commencement DB
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