Introducing Commencement Central

We love commencement season here at HuffPost College -- the pomp, the circumstance, the biodegradable graduation gowns and especially the speeches.

There's already been a slew of great ones this year, from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's touching address at St. Lawrence University to Gov. Arnold Schwarzengger's lighthearted oration at Emory (deportation jokes and all).

So we've created a one-stop shop for 2010 commencement speeches, which we'll update as the season rolls on. Stay tuned -- and if we've missed a good one, let us know at [e-mail].

Congratulations, graduates!

 

Follow Leah Finnegan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/leahfinnegan

Comments

[loki]

03:30 AM on 05/22/2010

Just wondering. With universities making huge cuts to try to offset the loss of income and funding, there did they get the money to pay these people to speak? Why did they pay them? Some of them command hundreds of thousands per speech, and next to none of them never speak for free.

[huffy2001]

11:48 AM on 05/22/2010

I would be very surprised if any of them charged for their commencement addresses. They are typically honored by the university or college by an honorary degree...sometimes a scholarship or chair is installed. Most of them use commencement addresses as a way of pushing their public service agendas. Then, of course, there are people like the queen of babble on who do no public service and are all out for themselves. In her case, I am sure she charged...but I don't see that anyone took her up on it. Maybe BJU.

[LMPE]

10:21 PM on 05/21/2010

When I graduated from undergrad, the commencement speaker was someone of whom I'd never heard.

[roshni]

03:42 PM on 05/21/2010

I loved FLOTUS' speech in D.C. She actually motivated a lot of people to volunteer for service (including people in my family) and I think that's wonderful.

[knght54]

03:20 PM on 05/21/2010

Mr. Ken Burns gave a truly inspiring commencement speech at Penn State this past weekend. I was hoping someone outside the PSU community had taken note of it. HuffPost readers would have surely appreciated the content, he discussed how the generation of students emerging into the "real world" must be vanguards to stop the practices of our media that polarize and divide our nation (he was talking to Communicator majors). He provided an awesome quote from Lincoln's inauguration, "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." I saw President Obama used a similar theme during his commencement speech at Michigan. Let's hope at least some of what these two men said sunk in.

[CampCalifornia]

02:41 PM on 05/21/2010

Crickest should tell you something. Talk is cheap especially form the likes of Obama, Sosmayor, clinton, Arnie. I guess some colleges like to highlight failures for inspiratin.

[dtay]

04:13 PM on 05/21/2010

Yea. Like Liberty did inviting Glen Beck. and who is Sosmayer?

[Amanda Donovan]

05:16 PM on 05/21/2010

yeah, phhht. what do heads of state and supreme court justices know about hard work and accomplishments. what a waste of flesh. why couldnt they get someone awesome like chuck norris?

[ecrichert12]

07:04 PM on 05/21/2010

inspiratin?

[Blackorpheus]

01:35 PM on 05/21/2010

Few things are as disheartening in bad economic times as feel-good commencement addresses by rank opportunists who have themselves profited from the inequities.