Class of 2005

Browse commencement speeches from 2005, including addresses by Steve Jobs, David Foster Wallace, and George W. Bush. Each record links to the available source material, transcript, video, and archive context.

11 addresses 10 themes 6 highlights

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Highlights from 2005

Records with stronger source signals, summaries, transcripts, videos, or visual archive material.

  01     Steve Jobs Stanford University In coverage of his 2005 Stanford Commencement address, Steve Jobs is described telling three stories from his life to urge graduates to pursue their dreams and find meaning in setbacks. He recounts dropping out of Reed College and later applying lessons from a calligraphy course, being fired from Apple and the creative period that followed, and his recent cancer diagnosis and what it taught him about mortality. He encourages graduates to trust that life's experiences will connect, to do work they love, and not to waste time living someone else's life. 
Photo: Matthew Yohe  /  CC BY-SA 3.0  /  source    InfographicSummaryTranscriptVideoOfficial source   02     David Foster Wallace Kenyon College Wallace argues that the most obvious realities are the hardest to perceive, and that humans operate from a hard-wired, self-centered default-setting that makes each person experience themselves as the center of the universe. He reframes the liberal-arts cliché of 'learning how to think' as gaining conscious control over what one pays attention to and how one constructs meaning from experience. He warns that failing to exercise this choice leaves people unconscious and trapped in their own minds amid the boredom and routine of adult life.    InfographicSummaryTranscriptVideo   03     George W. Bush Calvin College President George W. Bush addresses Calvin College's Class of 2005, urging graduates to contribute to American freedom by serving their communities. Drawing on Alexis de Tocqueville and Dutch figure Abraham Kuyper, he argues that individual freedom is anchored in community institutions like family, faith, and civic organizations. He calls on graduates to choose citizenship over spectatorship and to embrace service through faith-based and community efforts.    InfographicSummaryTranscript   04     Irwin Jacobs Massachusetts Institute of Technology At MIT's 2005 Commencement, Qualcomm co-founder and CEO Irwin Jacobs drew on his own career to encourage graduates to prepare for change, recounting how he switched from hotel management to engineering and later co-founded Linkabit and Qualcomm. He urged graduates to consider teaching, to not be swayed by conventional wisdom, to view their work in a global context, and to pursue philanthropy.    InfographicSummaryOfficial source   05     Kofi Annan Penn State Kofi Annan congratulates Penn State's class of 2005 and urges graduates to put their ideas into practice, framing both the United States and the United Nations as ideas grounded in human equality and freedom. He explains his concept of 'larger freedom'—the interdependence of human rights, security, and development—and describes the UN's work in conflict zones and humanitarian crises worldwide. He calls for reform of the UN and encourages graduates to make the cause of larger freedom their own.    InfographicSummaryVideo   06     Estelle Parsons Connecticut College     InfographicTranscriptOfficial source   