At the University’s 279th Commencement on Tuesday, May 26, Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber called on graduating students to have the courage to confront challenges and stand up for the values of learning, independent thinking and integrity that higher education institutions like Princeton hold dear.
“I know that all of you who receive your degrees today have earned them fully by working hard, deepening your knowledge and acquiring new skills,” he said. “Our world needs not only your knowledge and your skills but also your courage.”
In his Commencement address, titled “Learning, Citizenship, and the Courage to Be Unpopular,” Eisgruber emphasized the importance of “civic and personal courage.”
“We must be faithful to the standards of truth-seeking inquiry and civic responsibility even when they lead us down difficult paths,” he said, noting the courage needed «to rebut dangerous tendencies and corrosive ideas.”
“Dissenting from popular opinion — in politics, in a committee meeting, or in a discussion among friends — will often feel uncomfortable. There is an inevitable temptation to remain silent so as not to hurt other people’s feelings, forfeit their affection or risk retribution,” Eisgruber said. “If we are to live up to the ideals of citizenship and scholarship, we must sometimes speak anyway.”
Eisgruber spoke to the graduating students, families, friends, faculty and other guests gathered in Princeton Stadium on a sunny spring morning. During the ceremony, the University awarded degrees to 1,469 undergraduates and 668 graduate students. The Class of 2026 is the largest undergraduate class in Princeton history.
Princeton Stadium is filled with graduating students, family, friends, faculty and other guests for Commencement. The University awarded degrees to 1,469 undergraduates and 668 graduate students.
Commencement capped days of campus celebrations, which included Reunions for alumni; Baccalaureate, featuring an address by Craig Robinson, Class of 1983 and executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches; Class Day with a speech by Wendy Kopp, Class of 1989 and founder of Teach For America and co-founder and CEO of Teach For All; Graduate School Hooding for master’s and doctoral degree candidates; and the ROTC Commissioning ceremony held Tuesday afternoon.
The need for courage as graduates go into the world
In his remarks, Eisgruber wished students a future filled with “brightness, celebration, and joy.”
He also acknowledged that graduates are beginning their journeys beyond Princeton at a time when “our world is struggling to cope with partisan divisions, political violence and rapid technological change.”
During challenging times, Eisgruber said he often looks to the wisdom of predecessors like Robert F. Goheen, who served as president from 1957 to 1972 during a period of social upheaval and transformative change. In his book, “The Human Nature of a University,” Goheen discussed why courage is essential to universities — institutions that he described as “dedicated to the advancement of learning and the betterment of human life.”
“Courage, with temperance, is always needed to hold the university to its role and mission,” Eisgruber quoted from the book.
Quoting Goheen again, he said: “Perhaps the highest and most difficult function of the university, its most irreplaceable form of service in a free society, [is] to be willing to stand up as a judge of society’s tastes and actions. The critic and the judge are not always popular, but the greatest teachers in all ages have preferred hard truth to comfortable fiction and self-respect to popular esteem.”
In reflecting on the idea of courage, Eisgruber also invoked the words of another influential Princetonian, the late Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, as well as 20th century Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis.
“As Louis Brandeis, Robert Goheen, and Toni Morrison all emphasized, self-government, freedom, and learning cannot always be comfortable,” Eisgruber said. “They require independence, and independence by definition entails the strength to stand alone, to be respectfully and when possible politely, but nevertheless unabashedly, unpopular.
“Courage is necessary not only to assert dissenting opinions but also, and equally importantly, to admit error or change one’s mind,” Eisgruber told the assembled students. “That, too, is an essential part of learning, in life generally and especially on a college campus.
“To quote again from Robert Goheen’s book,” Eisgruber said, “students and faculty ‘should be constantly in the process of making up their minds and then unmaking them.’ On a healthy college campus, he wrote, ‘there should be controversy and arguing and a great deal of churning of matters of mind and spirit.’»
Eisgruber told the graduating students he hoped they have “not only experienced but enjoyed and been formed by what President Robert Goheen called the ‘millrace of jostling and tumbling ideas.’”
“I hope, too, that as you venture forth to meet the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead, you will always consider this campus one of your homes and that you will return to it often,” Eisgruber concluded. “Those of us on this platform will greet you then as we cheer you today, wishing you every success as Princeton University’s Great Class of 2026! Congratulations!”
Valedictorian and salutatorian emphasize community
Eisgruber’s Commencement address was preceded by remarks from Class of 2026 valedictorian Daniel Yu and Latin salutatorian Madeleine Murnick.
Yu, an African American studies major from New York, said he is excited to see what his classmates will do as their lives take different paths. “This, I believe: that as we remain fiercely compassionate, unceasingly generous, and attend to the stakes of our work, we will reshape this world and imagine new ones, oriented towards justice, peace and freedom.”
Yu thanked his classmates, as well as faculty, staff and alumni, for making up a community that has supported each other through challenging times.
“In a moment defined by social, financial and political precarity, this is a most beautiful act of resistance: to refuse the pull of individualism,” Yu said. “To turn towards one another, towards community, and practice generosity, even when it may seem unearned. This is what you, the Class of 2026, have taught me. That to live ‘in the service of humanity’ is not an old, forgotten motto and it is not something we save for our careers. It is something we have practiced here, together, every day.”
(Left photo) Friends hug at the conclusion of Commencement. (Right photo) After the ceremony, students made their way to FitzRandolph Gate at the front of campus. It is a Princeton tradition for undergraduates to walk out the center gate only after they have graduated.
Yu encouraged his peers to continue practicing these values long after they leave Princeton.
“While some might consider our graduation a transition from the security of Princeton to the unpredictability of real life, our time here has taught us that the so-called Orange Bubble was never truly separate: not from the considerations of ethics and politics, not from the tumult and uncertainty of life outside these walls. The world acts on Princeton, and Princeton acts on the world,” he said. “What we can do is choose — in our words, in our work, in the lives we build — to orient ourselves, deliberately and stubbornly, toward the world we want for our communities now and generations after.”
Murnick, a classics major from Washington, D.C., also expressed gratitude for the community she found on campus. Speaking in Latin, which is the tradition for Princeton’s salutatory speech, she told her classmates (translated to English here): “Great Class of 2026, let us celebrate one another, because no one can achieve anything of importance alone. I feel very lucky to be able to call you classmates and friends.»
More Commencement highlights
During Commencement, Princeton also presented six honorary degrees, to the following individuals:
- William J. Burns, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Career Ambassador with the U.S. Foreign Service
- Steven Chu, a pioneering physicist and Nobel laureate who served as U.S. Secretary of Energy
- Caryl Emerson, the A. Watson Armour III University Professor Emeritus of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton and one of the country’s leading Slavists
- Herbie Hancock, jazz legend and music innovator who is the recipient of 14 Grammy Awards and an Academy Award
- Jaynee LaVecchia, former associate justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and the state’s longest-serving female justice
- Strive Masiyiwa, a global technology entrepreneur and philanthropist known for pioneering the transformation of Africa’s digital landscape
The ceremony also included recognition of the winners of the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, which honors Princeton faculty with sustained records of excellence in teaching undergraduates and graduate students, as well as the recipients of the Princeton Prize for Distinguished Secondary School Teaching, which is given to outstanding teachers from secondary schools in New Jersey.
Prior to the Commencement ceremony, as the Class of 2026 processed into Princeton Stadium, graduating seniors from the varsity men’s lacrosse team proudly carried the trophy from their NCAA national championship win over Notre Dame in a game played less than 24 hours before.
After the ceremony, many students and families continued on to FitzRandolph Gate at the front of campus. It is a Princeton tradition for undergraduates to walk out the center gate only after they have graduated.
Visit Princeton’s YouTube channel to rewatch graduation events, and follow #Princeton26 on Facebook and Instagram for more highlights, photos and videos.
Caps in the air to celebrate graduating from Princeton on a sunny spring morning.
