Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on the College Fix on May 14, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission.
Democrats will outnumber Republicans as commencement speakers at the nation’s top 100 universities, according to a College Fix analysis.
The College Fix looked for the main undergraduate ceremony speaker for the top 100 schools as determined by U.S. News & World Report.
In total, there were only nine Republican or Republican-leaning commencement speakers. There were, however, 47 Democrat or Democrat-leaning speakers. The other announced speakers have not publicly indicated a political leaning. Other universities have not announced their keynote speakers as of May 13.
The Fix found similar results for both 2023 and 2024, after reviewing public statements, news articles, and political donations to determine party affiliation for a smaller set of colleges.
Princeton University is hosting Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who is a registered Republican. Meanwhile, conservative actor Gary Sinise will speak at Vanderbilt University.
Former New York Yankees’ star Derek Jeter will be speaking at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor’s ceremony. Although he doesn’t have a public political affiliation, there was talk about him being Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick.
Republican Governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin will be the speaker at the University of Virginia’s graduation ceremony.
Michigan State University has a speaker that appears to lean right. Mat Ishbia donates to both Republican and Democrat politicians but more to Democrats, according to data from Open Secrets. He does, however, speak well of Donald Trump.
Southern Methodist University’s president R. Gerald Turner will speak at its graduation ceremony. He advocated for opening the George W. Bush presidential center on campus.
Other Republican speakers at commencement ceremonies include former Senator Kevin O’Toole at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Diane Foley at Marquette University, and Mitchell Morgan at Temple University.
Notable Democratic speakers include actress Sandra Oh at Dartmouth College, who campaigned for Kamala Harris on Instagram; singer and actress Sara Bareilles at the University of California at Los Angeles, who has been vocal about her liberal views, and Olympic gymnast Simone Biles (pictured) at the Washington University in St. Louis, who openly supported Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
The Georgia Institute of Technology is hosting two commencement speakers: Christopher Klaus and Carol Tomé, neither of whom are Republican. Klaus signed a letter to urge Harris to push for a recount. Tomé, however, is independent – she gives donations rather equally between Republicans and Democrats.
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Both of Brandeis University’s speakers are Democrats. Jonathan Sarna believes January 6 is an act of white supremacy, and Shirley Ann Jackson is committed to DEI.
The speakers for Rutgers University at Newark and the Rochester Institute of Technology have both spoken badly about Trump. They are comedian Ramy Youssef and computer scientist Astro Teller, respectively. Youssef even joked he’d rather have a transgender woman, meaning a man, as president.
Carmelo Anthony is set to speak at Syracuse University. The basketball player has been outspoken about his support for racial politics and Colin Kaepernick, who kneeled during the National Anthem at his games as a form of protest.
The Fix contacted universities that did not have a publicly listed speaker on May 1, inquiring about whom the speaker will be.
Cornell University told the Fix by email that its commencement speaker is always the school president. This year, it is President Michael Kotlikoff, who has donated to Democratic candidates in the past, though he downplayed those donations in an interview with the student newspaper.
The University of Illinois at Chicago said it has 16 different ceremonies, each with different speakers.
Texas A&M University said it does not feature commencement speakers other than its president or provost—nor does the University of South Florida.
Trends show that commencement speakers are often left-leaning, as found by the College Fix’s 2023 and 2024 analyses and the Washington Examiner’s 2022 review.
There will, however, be conservative speakers at universities not in the top 100.
For example, at the University of Alabama, President Donald Trump delivered a commencement address.
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Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, will be one of two commencement speakers for Thomas Aquinas College, a small conservative Catholic college.
Chance Layton from the National Association of Scholars says this trend of left-leaning commencement speakers reflects a broader “lack of intellectual diversity,” especially among school administrations.
“My hope would be that over time, universities, particularly as they’re facing frontal assaults from the Trump administration and lack of confidence from the public, have the opportunity for hard reflection on the way they operate and make some strong changes to the intellectual makeup of institutions,” Layton said in a phone interview with the Fix.
He believes schools should focus more on “merit and competencies” than “some proxy for race or other ideological measure.” The hope is that over time, universities become more intellectually diverse, he said.
Image: “Then-Vice President Joe Biden delivering a commencement speech to the graduating class of 2015 at Yale University” by David Lienemann on Wikipedia
I oppose using party registration like this for two reasons.
First, Zell Miller and John Silbur were both Democrats while Bill Weld, Charlie Baker, and Susan Collins are Republicans — the D/R line isn’t quite as clear as some would think.
But more importantly, much of academia is so far to the Left that they make (and consider) Democrats to be right wing zealots. (Remember that Bernie Sanders is a socialist who merely caucuses with the Democrats.)
So it isn’t 47-9 as much as, say, a 27-20-7-2 ratio. Biden was a different story, but how many commencement speeches did Obama give? And Trump?
Charlie Baker wouldn’t have gotten the nomination had he run for a third term as MA governor, as the head of the NCAA, he’d make a good speaker, but I would NEVER confuse him with a conservative!