Elite colleges are inviting more Democrats than Republicans to address graduates this spring, marking a U-turn from last year’s apolitical commencement season after the Trump administration cut federal education funds.
Recently announced Democratic speakers include Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland at American University, Gov. Josh Shapiro at the University of Pennsylvania law school and Sen. Dick Durbin at Lake Forest College in Illinois.
No Trump administration officials or Trump-aligned Republicans have been confirmed as speakers at traditional universities, although the military academies will maintain their tradition of inviting the president and Cabinet members.
Several higher education insiders said the invitation list suggests campuses are returning to their longstanding preference for liberal speakers, anticipating that Democrats friendlier to their policies will retake Congress in November’s midterm elections.
“Left-leaning college administrators are simply reverting to their comfort zone,” said Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars and a former associate provost at Boston University. “This year, they are emboldened by their sense that a Blue Wave will emerge this fall.”
According to the Cook Political Report, Democrats have improved their odds of winning the Senate and the House this month, as Mr. Trump’s approval rating hovers at or below 40% in public polling.
Donald Critchlow, director of Arizona State University’s Center for American Institutions, said “administrators and faculty hope with feverish expectation” that Democrats will restore the pre-Trump status quo in education policy.
“American universities continue to believe that they are centers of resistance to the Trump administration and racist/homophobic America,” Mr. Critchlow said in an email.
Last year’s low-key commencement season included speakers such as Kermit the Frog, who addressed the University of Maryland to honor his late creator, alumnus Jim Henson.
Top universities went apolitical after anti-Israel campus protests against Biden administration speakers and President Trump’s sweeping reelection in 2024 left them anxious to curry favor with the new administration.
Ronald J. Rychlak, a law school professor and former associate dean at the University of Mississippi, said colleges are less likely to play it safe after a year of adversarial policies from the White House.
“Even those who support the president would have to agree that the Trump administration has been controversial in academic circles this year,” said Mr. Rychlak, whose campus will host country music star and former Ole Miss baseball player Brett Young. “The widely-read ‘Chronicle of Higher Education’ has been filled with accounts of college administrations at odds with the White House.”
The Trump administration has gutted federal education grants. It has also threatened to cut funds to universities that do not purge antisemitic protests, gender identity teaching and racial equity programs.
Additionally, the Department of Education recently finalized rules cutting off federal student aid to low-enrollment degree programs whose graduates earn less than the average high school alumnus. The policy is expected to hasten the demise of humanities degrees such as gender studies, racial studies and language arts.
The federal agency has urged high school graduates to enter trade schools and certificate programs instead, citing a $1.7 trillion federal student debt portfolio and a need to fill emerging workforce needs for skilled craftspeople.
In an email on Monday, an Education Department spokesperson referred to Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s March 21 commencement address to graduates of the Apprentice School at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.
“In a time when too many students leave college burdened with debt and degrees that don’t deliver, you stand as proof of what higher education can — and should — be: a pathway to both learning and earning,” Ms. McMahon said in the speech. “You show that skill, not just a diploma, is what drives opportunity.”
Never Trump
Other prominent commencement invitations this spring feature liberals or conservatives who have fallen out with the Trump administration.
Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich will address the University of California, Berkeley. Samantha Power, a former Obama administration ambassador who has criticized Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, will address American University’s foreign service graduates.
“The big question for this year is whether speakers will criticize the president directly, and how Trump and his allies will respond,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, an education history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where presidential historian and prominent Trump critic Michael Beschloss will speak.
As in past years, Republican and conservative speakers will be largely confined to small campuses.
Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican who frequently criticizes the president, will speak at Washington College, a small liberal arts school in Chestertown.
Utah Valley University, where the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated last year, had invited a “Never Trump” speaker, author Sharon McMahon, to address graduates on April 29. But the small public campus in Orem cancelled its plans for a commencement speaker last week due to “increased safety concerns” following public backlash against her comments about the shooting.
In now-deleted social media posts, Ms. McMahon criticized Kirk’s rhetoric and referenced “the harm many experienced from his words.”
Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, will address graduates at Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school focused on classical liberal arts in Michigan.
“Figures such as [former Virginia Gov.] Glenn Youngkin and Erika Kirk appear in select venues, particularly institutions already aligned with conservative or faith-based missions,” said Linda Lee Tarver, a national director for the Michigan Republican Assembly and member of Project 21, a network of Black conservatives.
Despite the resurgence of Democrats speaking at commencement this year, most universities have tapped famous alumni to speak. They include comedian Conan O’Brien addressing Harvard and actress Sarah Jessica Parker speaking at Northwestern.
“I view it as a sign of restraint when they pick relatively apolitical celebrities,” said legal scholar Gail Heriot, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and former member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “If they were to pick their favorite political activists, it would likely be a lot worse.”
