Commencement Speakers
Commencement Speakers (PDF)
| Year | Speaker | Honorary Degree Recipient? | Graduate School Speaker |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1916 | Hamilton Holt | No | |
| 1917 | Payson Smith | No | |
| 1918 | S.K. Ratcliffe | No | |
| 1919 | (Student speaker) | No | |
| 1920 | (Student speaker) | No | |
| 1921 | (Student speaker) | No | |
| 1922 | William Wallace McClench | Yes | |
| 1923 | Channing H. Cox | Yes | |
| 1924 | James Harvey Robinson | Yes | |
| 1925 | John Garibaldi Sargent | Yes | |
| 1926 | Alvin Tufts Fuller | Yes | |
| 1927 | Edith Nourse Rogers | Yes | |
| 1928 | Eva Le Gallienne | Yes | |
| 1929 | Frank Gilman Allen | Yes | |
| 1930 | (Student speaker) | No | |
| 1931 | Stanley Calef Wilson | Yes | |
| 1932 | Vivian Towse Pomeroy | Yes | |
| 1933 | A. Lawrence Lowell | Yes | |
| 1934 | Harold L. Ickes | Yes | |
| 1935 | Carter Glass | Yes | |
| 1936 | Robert Ernest Doherty | Yes | |
| 1937 | Van Wyck Brooks | Yes | |
| 1938 | Henry Merritt Wriston | Yes | |
| 1939 | George Horace Gallup | Yes | |
| 1940 | Alexander Loudon | Yes | |
| 1941 | Jay Pierrepont Moffat | Yes | |
| 1942 | Walter Nash | Yes | |
| 1943 | Claude Moore Fuess | Yes | |
| 1944 | Beardsley Ruml | Yes | |
| 1945 | Edward Lester Marshall | Yes | |
| 1946 | Luis de Florez | Yes | |
| 1947 | Kenneth Charles Morton Sills | Yes | |
| 1948 | John Nichols Brown | Yes | |
| 1949 | Wilhelm Munthe Morgenstierne | Yes | |
| 1950 | Samuel Tomlinson Arnold | Yes | |
| 1951 | Thomas Dudley Cabot | Yes | |
| 1952 | Henry Chauncey | Yes | |
| 1953 | William Clyde DeVane | Yes | |
| 1954 | Samuel Miller Brownell | Yes | |
| 1955 | Margaret Chase Smith | Yes | |
| 1956 | John Moors Cabot | Yes | |
| 1957 | Henry Bradford Washburn, Jr. | Yes | |
| 1958 | Erwin Dain Canham | Yes | |
| 1959 | Robert Chapman Sprague | Yes | |
| 1960 | Hiram L. Fong | Yes | |
| 1961 | Henri Peyre | Yes | |
| 1962 | Adlai E. Stevenson | Yes | |
| 1963 | Lyndon Baines Johnson | Yes | |
| 1964 | Jerrold Reinach Zacharias | Yes | |
| 1965 | Nicholas deBelleville Katzenbach | Yes | |
| 1966 | William Warren Scranton | Yes | |
| 1967 | Howard Wesley Johnson | Yes | |
| 1968 | John Kenneth Galbraith | Yes | |
| 1969 | Paul A. Freund | Yes | |
| 1970 | Patricia Roberts Harris and Harris Llewellyn Wofford, Jr. |
Yes Yes |
|
| 1971 | Burton Crosby Hallowell, President | No | |
| 1972 | Burton Crosby Hallowell, President | No | |
| 1973 | Barbara Jordan | in 1974 | |
| 1974 | Theodore M. Hesburgh | Yes | |
| 1975 | Frances Keppel | No | |
| 1976 | Philip Hauge Abelson | Yes | |
| 1977 | B.F. Skinner | Yes | Malcolm Toon (Fletcher) Howard Spiro (Medical) |
| 1978 | Percy Qoboza | Yes | Edmund Gullion (Fletcher) H. Richard Hornberger |
| 1979 | Francis Bellotti | Yes | Paul Tsongas (Fletcher) Helen Caldicott (Medicine) |
| 1980 | Irene Worth | Yes | Silvio Conte (Fletcher) Robert Lifton (Medicine) |
| 1981 | Sarah Caldwell | Yes | Thomas J. Watson Jr. (Fletcher) Edmund Pellegrino (Medical) |
| 1982 | John G. Kemeny | Yes | C. Douglas Dillon (Fletcher) David E. Rogers (Medicine) Jean Mayer (Nutrition) |
| 1983 | Edward M. Kennedy | Yes | Frederick C. Robbins (Medicine) Janet Norwood (Fletcher) James Grant (Nutrition) |
| 1984 | John Kenneth Galbraith | in 1968 | Lawrence Altman (Medicine) Philip Habib (Fletcher) Joaquin Cravioto (Nutrition) |
| 1985 | Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill, Jr. | Yes | Harrison Salisbury (Fletcher) Joshua Lederberg (Medicine) Finn Burdevold (Dental) Lester Brown (Nutrition) |
| 1986 | Elie Wiesel | Yes | Sadruddin Aga Khan (Fletcher) Bernard Lown (Medicine) James Dunning (Dental) Jane Goodall (Vet) |
| 1987 | Gloria Steinem | Yes | Winston Lord (Fletcher) Jane Desforges (Medicine) C.S. Loh (Dental) Stanley Gershoff (Nutrition) Bruce Ames (Vet) |
| 1988 | Clifton Wharton | Yes | Winston Lord (Fletcher) Paul Volcker (Fletcher) Samuel Thier (Medicine) Charles McCallum (Dental) Esther E. Peterson (Nutrition) William Pritchard (Vet) |
| 1989 | Javier Perez de Cuelllar | Yes | Winston Lord (Fletcher) Dante Caputo (Fletcher) Frederick Torgbor Sai (Medicine) Harold Carpenter Hodge (Dental) Marian Wright Edelman (Nutrition) Jean Mayer (Vet) |
| 1990 | Robert Coles | Yes | Thomas Pickering (Fletcher) Henry Banks (Medicine) Jean Mayer (Dental) Robert Ballard (Vet) Jean Mayer (Vet) |
| 1991 | Ted Turner | Yes | Cyrus Vance (Fletcher) Oliver Sacks (Medicine) William Sellers (Dental) Harry Belafonte (Nutrition) Mamphela Ramphele (Nutrition) Dick Francis (Vet) |
| 1992 | Bernard Marshall Gordon | Yes | Sadako Ogata (Fletcher) Louis Sullivan (Medicine) Geraldine Morrow (Dental) Doris Howes Calloway (Nutrition) Jill Kerr Conway (Vet) |
| 1993 | Carlos Fuentes | Yes | |
| 1994 | Ted Koppel | Yes | Vaclav Klaus (Fletcher) Joseph Kronman (Dental) William Nack (Vet) T. Berry Brazelton (Medicine) |
| 1995 | Doris Kearns Goodwin and Richard N. Goodwin |
Yes | Marrack Goulding (Fletcher) John DiBiaggio (Dental) Eileen Kennedy (Nutrition) Barbara Culliton (Vet) G. Timothy Johnson (Medicine) |
| 1996 | Betty Bao Lord | No | Lloyd Miller (Dental) Bill Richardson (Fletcher) William Frist (Medicine) Lester Crawford (Vet) |
| 1997 | William B. Richardson | Yes | Louis Bertonazzi (Dental) Richard Holbrooke (Fletcher) Peter Doherty (Medicine and Vet) Quentin Young (Nutrition) |
| 1998 | Garry Trudeau | Yes | Dominich DePaola (Dental) Rosario Green (Fletcher) Jerome Kassirer (Medicine) Carol Tucker Foreman (Nutrition) Ray Powell (Vet) |
| 1999 | David Halberstam | Yes | Peter Ackerman (Fletcher) Marcia Angell (Medicine) Katherine Clancy (Nutrition) Eric Chivian (Vet) |
| 2000 | William H. Cosby, Jr. | Jim Boyd (Dental) Robert Hormats (Fletcher) David Michael Kent (Medicine) Barbara Underwood (Nutrition) Mary Beth Leininger (Vet) |
|
| 2001 | James Charles Lehrer | Yes | David Warsh (Dental) Kofi Annan (Fletcher) Daniel Federman (Medicine) George McGovern (Nutrition) Judith Vaitukaitis (Vet) |
| 2002 | Pamela Kerr Omidyar and Pierre Omidyar |
No | Richard Valachovic (Dental) Madeleine Albright (Fletcher) Roderick MacKinnon (Medicine) Daniel Glickman (Nutrition) Roy Blount (Vet) |
| 2003 | The Hon. Margaret Hilary Marshall | Yes | Mohamed ElBaradei (Fletcher) Irwin Rosenberg (Nutrition) |
| 2004 | Walter Isaacson | Yes | Nevin Scrimshaw (Nutrition) |
| 2005 | Kostas Karamanlis | Yes | Peter Walker (Nutrition) |
| 2006 | Lance Armstrong | James Levinson (Nutrition) Alfred Tauber (Medicine) |
|
| 2007 | The Hon. Michael R. Bloomberg | Yes | William Lockeretz (Nutrition) |
| 2008 | Meredith Vieira | Yes | Robert Russell (Nutrition) Donald Wilson (Medicine) |
| 2009 | Deval Patrick | Yes | Thomas Hughes (Nutrition) |
| 2010 | Sol Gittleman | Yes | William Layden (Nutrition) |
| 2011 | Charles M. Vest | Yes | Edward M. Cooney (Nutrition) |
| 2012 | Eric Greitens | Yes | Peter R. Dolan (Nutrition) |
| 2013 | Claude M. Steele | Yes | Ram Shrestha (Nutrition) |
| 2014 | Anne-Marie Slaughter | Yes | Jody Adams (Nutrition) |
| 2015 | Madeleine Albright | Yes | Cristiana Falcone-Sorrell, F01, N01 (Nutrition) |
| 2016 | Hank Azaria | Yes | Arianna Huffington (Fletcher) |
| 2017 | Kenya Barris | Yes | Richard Engel (Fletcher) Dr. David A. Kessler (Nutrition) |
| 2018 | Ellen J. Kullman | Yes | José Andrés (Nutrition) |
| 2019 | Alfre Woodard | Yes | Susan Rice (Fletcher) Jim McGovern (Nutrition) Ioannis Miaoulis (Engineering) Michael Tzannes (Engineering_grad) |
| 2020 | Neil Blumenthal | Yes | Amina J. Mohammed (Fletcher) |
| 2021 | Bryan Stevenson | Yes | Filippo Grandi(Fletcher) Yvonne T. Maddox, Ph.D. (Nutrition) Pritesh Gandhi, M.D., M.P.H., (Medicine) |
| 2022 | Erica Lee | Yes | Ambassador Ertharin Cousin, J.D (Nutrition) |
| 2023 | Amina J. Mohammed | Yes | Pekka Haavisto (Fletcher) Sheldon Lloyd (Nutrition) Francesco Svelto (Engineering) Deborah Meshulam (Engineering_grad) Michael Curry (Medicine) |
June 2, 2023