Year
Class of 2023
Browse commencement speeches from 2023, including addresses by John McEnroe, Tom Hanks, and Elizabeth Alexander. Each record links to the available source material, transcript, video, and archive context.
4 addresses 10 themes 4 highlights
Highlights from 2023
Records with stronger source signals, summaries, transcripts, videos, or visual archive material.
John McEnroe Stanford University John McEnroe addresses Stanford's Class of 2023, using tennis analogies and personal stories from his career and time as a Stanford student to reflect on success, failure, and well-being. He encourages graduates to pursue work/life balance, take care of their mental health, stand up for themselves, and not define themselves solely by professional accomplishments. He emphasizes that handling pressure, learning from failure, and measuring success by personal growth matter more than winning. InfographicSummaryTranscriptVideoOfficial source 
Tom Hanks Harvard University Tom Hanks contrasts his fame as an actor with the graduates' hard-won education, then uses the metaphor of superheroes to argue that no savior is coming and that ordinary people must do the work of protecting truth, justice, and 'the American way.' He describes the American way as everyday acts of decency, respect for law, and voting, and traces the nation's founding ideals alongside their historical contradictions. He warns that truth is being eroded by lies, propaganda, and especially indifference, and calls on graduates to choose to defend liberty and equality for all. InfographicSummaryVideoOfficial source 
Elizabeth Alexander Yale University In her 2023 Class Day address at Yale, poet Elizabeth Alexander returned to her alma mater to celebrate freedom, lifelong education, and homecoming, drawing on her experiences as a Yale undergraduate, faculty member, and parent. She recounted the 1831 proposal to establish the nation's first college for Black students in New Haven, which was overwhelmingly blocked, using it to question what those who ban education today fear. She urged graduates to keep learning, speak truth to power, bring new voices into rooms they enter, and work to make freedom real for everyone. InfographicSummaryOfficial source 
Mark Rober Massachusetts Institute of Technology Engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober urged MIT's Class of 2023 to embrace optimism, collaboration, and a willingness to move forward through uncertainty. He offered three pieces of advice—embracing naive optimism, framing failures as learning opportunities, and fostering relationships—and reflected on his late mother's lasting influence. He concluded by attaching his mortarboard to a drone and flying it over the Great Dome. InfographicSummaryOfficial source Represented themes
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