The Art of the Commencement Speech is a project by The Humanity Initiative to collect the best commencement addresses since 1936. To date there are 29 speeches available, from John F. Kennedy (American University, 1963), Václav Havel (Harvard University, 1995) and The Dalai Lama (Emory University, 1998).
The commencement ceremony affirms each student’s search for knowledge. It often includes a graduation speech which seeks to put their recent hard (or not so hard) work into the context of their future. Many of us hear one or two commencement addresses as graduates or listen to a handful as spectators. Yet — as we graduate from one year to another, one relationship to another, one experience to another — we always are learning.