Every year, conservatives point out that America's top universities pack commencement stages with Democratic speakers. Every year, universities do it anyway. This year, 86 percent of partisan commencement speakers are Democrats. That's not new. It's just never changed.
A new analysis from The College Fix found Democrat or Democrat-leaning speakers outnumber Republican or Republican-leaning speakers by roughly 6-to-1 at the nation’s Top 100 universities. The outlet identified just six Republican or right-leaning keynote speakers compared to 38 Democrat or Democrat-leaning speakers at major undergraduate commencement ceremonies.
Among the Democratic or liberal speakers scheduled to address graduates this spring are Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler, Jonathan Capehart, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Jane Lynch.
The full Republican roster: Mike Huckabee, Arthur Brooks, Colt McCoy, and Eric Dickerson.
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It was 5-to-1 in 2025, and similar in both 2023 and 2024.
This is not a new problem. A 2015 Young America's Foundation survey found the same 6-to-1 ratio at top universities — zero conservative speakers at the Top 10 schools that year, and not one conservative officeholder invited to speak, while then-Vice President Biden and a roster of Democratic governors and senators had no trouble getting podium time.
Jonathan Turley argued that universities are no longer even pretending. Commencements have become ideological showcases, with anti-Trump Democrats and active political candidates delivering what amounted to campaign speeches from the podium.
“Faculty members and administrators want to use commencements as a final opportunity for indoctrination, including inviting a liberal candidate for the Senate to give a campaign speech,” Turley wrote. “It treats its students and their families as a captive audience.”
That includes Nancy Pelosi, who used her Notre Dame de Namur address to slam the GOP and Trump, and Rep. Jamie Raskin, who appeared at two separate commencements to call for packing the Supreme Court. James Talarico, a candidate in an active political race, turned his Paul Quinn College speech into a campaign rally, hitting the same talking points he uses on the trail.
Georgetown replaced a Jewish undergraduate commencement speaker, who stepped down after protests, with a law professor who has criticized the Republican-led investigation into campus antisemitism. Faculty and administrators select these speakers, and they keep picking people who think exactly like them.
Zach Greenberg of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression put it plainly: commencement speaker selections “reflect the values of the institution.” At most of America's top universities, those values are uniformly left-wing.
For conservative students and families sitting in those seats, commencement has become something else, a final reminder of exactly who runs these institutions. After more than a decade of the same 6-to-1 ratio, the message is clear: they've heard the complaints, and they don't care.
Editor's Note: President Trump is fighting to ensure America's kids get the education they deserve.
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