It’s 2026, and no one seems to know what the point of commencement ceremonies are.
Are they advertisements for the institution? An opportunity to gift a shiny honorary degree to a prominent public figure? Are they platforms for politicians and business leaders to discuss controversial current events, or air out complaints about the upcoming generation of workers? Or maybe, is there the chance that they are supposed to be celebrations of the graduates’ accomplishments?
It’s in vogue for college campuses to be treated as ideological battlegrounds. That’s no secret. Students have been grappling directly with questions about political interference in their education for at least the past five years, all while a global pandemic tanked enrollment numbers and masked officers kidnapped them off the streets.
So is it really so surprising that students would prefer a commencement speaker who is going to meet them where they’re at, extend sympathies and practical advice for how to navigate the tumultuous environment they’re inheriting?
Apparently it is surprising for some. Social psychologist Jonathan Hadit, who has previously referred to Generation Z as “coddled” and mentally fragile, was reportedly “deeply humbled” to learn that graduating students at New York University (NYU) did not want to hear more of this rhetoric at what is supposed to be a celebration of their hard work. Or there was the speaker at the University of Central Florida (UCF), who was baffled when she was met with boos for praising AI in her remarks to a cohort of Arts and Humanities graduates who are about to enter an astonishingly competitive job market, due in no small measure to the emergence of AI.
Even so, there are those who denounce student commencement protests and the heckler’s veto—a negative audience reaction that stops a speaker from delivering remarks as intended— even claiming that student protestors “silence” commencement speakers’ free speech when they do this. That’s right: students should not utilize their own free speech, at their own commencement ceremonies, in order to spare these dignified speakers from being booed.
In reality, the very essence of free speech is meeting adverse speech with further speech. What proponents of this argument really want is for students to be silent and complacent. This is demonstrated nowhere better than by NYU’s decision to only allow pre-recorded student commencement addresses for this year’s graduating cohort. Wouldn’t anyone be upset if their chosen student representative could only speak to them through pre-recorded remarks, their speech preemptively tailored, only for the adults in the room to turn around and call them coddled?
The discourse surrounding this decision continues to paint students as angry, irrational and disruptive, ruining the ceremony for everyone else. Daniel Diermeier, Chancellor of Vanderbilt, who has stated that commencements should be about honoring the work of graduates, has disavowed student advocates in the same breath for being too political. What Diermeier and those who share this viewpoint miss is that administrators and politicians brought the politics to the students first. When universities ushered in anti-protest policies, brought ICE officers to campus and censored their art, research and performances, they made these students’ very existence on campus political. Students are simply responding to their environment, and not for the first time, either.
Protests arise when people have exhausted all other options, when they believe it is the only way they will be heard. To decry the protestors themselves without questioning why they felt the need to protest their own commencement ceremonies is a disappointing failure to address the root of this tension.
So in reflecting on this graduation season, remember who these ceremonies are for. Remember that it is a virtue for the upcoming generation to speak their minds, unafraid. To champion democracy and be willing to challenge the status quo. Anyone who thinks these aren’t good traits for young people to have is not likely to get commencement right, either.
