Commencement Archive

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Class of 2015

Browse commencement speeches from 2015, including addresses by Richard Engel, Arianna Huffington, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Each record links to the available source material, transcript, video, and archive context.

18 addresses 10 themes 6 highlights

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Highlights from 2015

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

  01     Richard Engel Stanford University NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel recounts his decision to move to Cairo after graduation with little money and no job, urging graduates to take risks and gamble on the unknown. He describes his career covering wars in the Middle East, explaining that conflict reveals human nature, and offers predictions that urbanization, climate pressures, and communications technology will shape the graduates' era. He encourages students to identify where history is heading and to seek inspiration rather than chase comfort.    InfographicSummaryTranscriptVideoOfficial source   02     Arianna Huffington Vassar College Arianna Huffington urges Vassar's Class of 2015 to cultivate three relationships: with technology, with themselves, and with the world. She warns against addiction to devices and multitasking, advocating digital detoxes and self-reflection rooted in the ideas of 'Know Thyself' and the examined life. She also calls graduates to address growing inequality and to pursue solutions-oriented journalism and meaningful priorities over external markers of success.    InfographicSummaryTranscriptVideo   03     Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Wellesley College 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 recognize their privilege, to try to create the world they want, and to make feminism an inclusive movement. She shares the recent kidnapping of her father to reflect on what truly matters, and closes with advice about authenticity, refusing gendered expectations, and loving by both giving and taking.    InfographicSummaryTranscriptVideo   04     John Seely Brown Arizona State University John Seely Brown tells ASU graduates they are entering an exciting networked, digital age and encourages them to become entrepreneurial learners who learn through interaction with the world. He recounts his own career at Xerox PARC and the inventions developed there, framing the present moment as a new technical and social 'Cambrian Explosion.' He contrasts past career trajectories with the unpredictable 'white water world' graduates now face, urging them to use imagination, skill, and clear seeing to navigate it.    InfographicSummaryTranscriptVideo   05     Joseph Biden Yale University Vice President Joe Biden addresses Yale's class of 2015 on Class Day, opening with humor about his family's Yale connections and his reputation for candor. He speaks about compassion and resilience, attributing his own outlook to his parents' values and the support he received during personal losses. He encourages graduates to find work and pursuits that they believe still matter, drawing on his father's advice about doing something meaningful.    InfographicSummaryVideoOfficial source   06     Bernard Harris Worcester Polytechnic Institute Bernard Harris, a physician-astronaut and WPI trustee, recounts his journey from a poor, broken home in Houston to growing up on the Navajo Nation, discovering his talents in science and space, and eventually becoming a NASA astronaut. He describes the lessons he learned along the way—raising expectations, pursuing personal passion rather than others' expectations, and treating failure as a chance to grow—and vividly narrates what it feels like to launch into space and perform a spacewalk.    InfographicSummaryVideo   

Represented themes

Common ideas classified across this year's speeches.

Purpose & Meaning 5 Identity & Authenticity 5 Courage 4 Technology & Science 4 Social Justice & Equality 4 Resilience 3 Public Service & Civic Life 3 Curiosity & Learning 2 Kindness & Empathy 3 Failure 2

All 2015 addresses

Complete archive records for this year, sorted by institution.

John Seely Brown

Arizona State University

Denzel Washington

Dillard University

Natalie Portman

Harvard University

Lewis & Clark College

Los Angeles Trade Technical College

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Stanford University

Syracuse University

Tulane University

Neil deGrasse Tyson

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Ari Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw

University of Michigan

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

University of Virginia

Arianna Huffington

Stephen Colbert

Wake Forest University

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Wellesley College

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Yale University