Former Students

Great graduation speeches of 2021

Every late spring or early summer, I like to look through all the best graduation speeches of the season and share them. I did this teaching high school seniors, and I did it here on this site. But I decided to let that go this year. 2020 was such a rough year, with almost no in-person graduations. A lot of people did their best with online ceremonies or distanced drive-throughs, but they seem more gloomy than inspirational to me. Even with things back in person for most people this spring, it still didn’t seem like the time to share speeches. I let myself get out of that habit.

To be honest, it’s also partly because finding good graduation speeches means wading through tons of very successful people telling you not to be afraid to fail. It’s not bad advice per se, but it gets old. Commencement speeches were losing some of their magic for me. So the speech sharing was over.

But then I got an email from a former student this week. It links to this 2014 graduation speech from Jim Carey, and it says “You introduced me to my love for commencement speeches! Just speeches in general! Thank you Mr. Holloway!” So…habit revived.

Below are some of the best college graduation speeches of this year. I only spent a few hours looking, so I may have missed some really great ones. If so, leave a comment and let me know.

Enjoy!

Attorney, activist, and author Bryan Stevenson speaks to the graduates of the University of Michigan.

Journalist Marty Baron speaks to the graduates of Suffolk University.

Musician John Legend speaks to the graduates of Duke University.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to the graduates of the US Naval Academy

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