Claire Shipman's 2025 Commencement Address
Welcome to Columbia on this momentous occasion, this celebration of our 271st academic year.
To our nearly 16,000 soon-to-be graduates, are you ready to get your degrees?
Before I share very brief thoughts with you, given the rain; I want to say a few words to the parents, families, and loved ones here today.
One of our most beloved graduates and faculty members, was philosopher and poet Irwin Edman, who helped to create the Core Curriculum. He wrote eloquently about something we are all experiencing today.
What it feels like to take satisfaction and pride in the accomplishments of children other than one’s own.
“Other people’s children,” he wrote, “are born at about sixteen or seventeen years old. One learns to enjoy them for the promise and charm and hope they embody. And to further as best one can, while they are still within one’s orbit, what is best in them.”
Parents and families. We have not known them as long as you have. But we have had the privilege of meeting your young stars in our classrooms, eager to explore new interests and ideas, brilliant and accomplished.
Our spectacular faculty have undeniably furthered what is best within them.
Their idealism. Their curiosity. Their ability to ask the right questions. And their ability to answer them—to their benefit, and to the world’s.
Families, you have given us a gift. Thank you. Graduates, it is time to give the world your gifts.
So with that, let me turn to you, the nearly 16,000 graduates of the Columbia University class of 2025. You are the best of us.
Our youngest graduate turned 20 this week. Our oldest was born in 1948. More than 125 of you served the United States in uniform, thank you. You hail from all 50 of the United States – plus DC and Puerto Rico.
More than 6,800 of you represent 141 countries outside the United States. And let me say – we are glad you chose to be here. We need you. We draw strength from our identity as a global institution. And we firmly believe that our international students have the same rights to freedom of speech as everyone else, and should not be targeted by the government for exercising that right. And let me also say that I know many in our community today are mourning the absence of our graduate, Mahmoud Khalil.
You are lawyers and linguists, philosophers and physicians. Masters of business and fine arts and public health. You’ve been named Marshall Scholars, Fulbright Scholars, and Truman Scholars—won National Science Foundation awards.
You’ve been crowned champions on the field of play—from women’s basketball to men’s and women’s fencing, to tennis, to an Ivy League Championship in football. (There was a time in my life where you’d get laughed at if you said; Columbia, strong sports school. You’ve already made history.)
Some of you are well on your professional paths, and some just beginning to see the shape your path may take.
That’s who you are. And you’re something else, as well.
You’re exactly what the world needs at this moment. Not simply because you happen to be graduates of the greatest institution in the world. That helps, of course.
But also, because the most resilient, visionary, innovative leaders are forged in times of challenge and change, and you have already navigated your way through considerable turbulence.
I want to offer one observation, given the rain, to keep in mind as you step out into this world, which is this.
Democracy Is Not Inevitable
When I left Columbia and began a career in journalism, in a period of sweeping change not unlike this one, I arrived in Moscow in time to experience the final years of an authoritarian state. Censorship was rampant. There were no open forums where you could say what you want, like people right here have the right to do, and test your ideas against the arguments of others.
The only place that was safe was late at night, in private apartments, and with enormous caution. There was nothing, in fact, that made me appreciate our country more than spending time in the former Soviet Union.
And when it all collapsed, not only did a country fall, but so did its monuments. I remember vividly the graveyards littering the capital—full of concrete remnants of Stalin, Lenin, Felix Dershinsky, the infamous KGB boss. Ripped down with cranes, and even bare hands by a frustrated population, disillusioned with ideology and idolatry.
It was clear to us, the western reporters and to everyone in the west, what would come next. Democracy. It would just spread, naturally.
Of course, we all know now—it didn’t take. Not in Russia, not in China after Tiananmen Square, not in parts of eastern Europe.
Democracy, it turns out, is work—to build—and to maintain.
Our norms, our systems, cannot be taken for granted. They don’t transplant easily, they don’t simply spread, and they have to be nurtured, and repaired, over and over. This is not always glamorous work. It is not easy. But identifying which institutions and rights will need to be secured, what will need to be reimagined for democracy to thrive—this will be the essential work of your generation. And you have the wisdom, and the moral clarity, to do it.
In my view, for example, nothing is more foundational to democracy, to American strength, than freedom of thought, the training of minds, and the unfettered creation and exploration of knowledge. Academic institutions like ours, and even this moment right now, are pillars of a healthy, functioning, democratic nation. They are the basis for American innovation across all disciplines, and for our scientific and technological preeminence. They must be protected—and they must also protect themselves by remaining relevant and essential to our current set of challenges.
Let me close with a thought from former Columbia President Seth Low. Recently, I was given his 1890 inaugural address as a gift. Low had a distinct view about why Columbians and Columbia will always remain uniquely powerful. It’s a view I’ve always shared, and it was extraordinary to read his take on this 135 years later.
Our presence in, and relationship with New York means we are thinkers, and we are also doers—we are not sheltered physically, or intellectually.
I quote, “It means for every one of us, there is no such thing as the world of letters apart from the world of men.”
He went on to say: the greatest scholars are people who, quote, “see humanity, as in a vision, beckoning to them from behind their books.”
You have closed the books – for now. And humanity beckons.
Thank you and congratulations, Class of 2025.