Year
Class of 2025
Browse commencement speeches from 2025, including addresses by Katie Ledecky, Hank Green, and Jacinda Ardern. Each record links to the available source material, transcript, video, and archive context.
3 addresses 10 themes 3 highlights
Highlights from 2025
Records with stronger source signals, summaries, transcripts, videos, or visual archive material.
Katie Ledecky Stanford University Olympic swimmer and Stanford alumna Katie Ledecky tells the Class of 2025 how to "go the distance" in life through three elements: pacing, process, and time. She shares stories from her swimming career—winning her first gold at 15, finding joy in goals rather than winning, and drawing strength from her grandparents during the Tokyo Olympics—to encourage graduates to trust themselves, love the process, and lean on the people who support them.
Photo: Mledecky / CC0 / source InfographicSummaryTranscriptVideoOfficial source 
Hank Green Massachusetts Institute of Technology Hank Green, science communicator and online video creator, addresses MIT's Class of 2025 with humor about his unconventional background before turning to serious advice for graduates entering an unstable world. Drawing on survey responses he collected from the graduates themselves, he argues that curiosity is the key to success but warns that social media and capitalist incentives can misdirect attention away from the everyday, solvable problems of ordinary people. He encourages graduates to orient their curiosity toward people rather than just tools, to release their ideas into the world, and to find joy and meaning in human life. InfographicSummaryOfficial source 
Jacinda Ardern Yale University Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the 2025 Class Day speaker at Yale, urged graduating seniors to embrace self-doubt, sensitivity, and humility as sources of strength rather than weakness. She argued that these traits foster curiosity, empathy, and a willingness to seek expertise, and emphasized that the world's interconnected challenges require cooperation, shared values, and a sense of duty to others. InfographicSummaryOfficial source Represented themes
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