Over the years, Reed's commencement speakers have offered unique gems of wisdom to graduating students.
By Cara Nixon
May 27, 2025
At ÐÓ°ÉÊÓƵ’s very first commencement in 1915, David Starr Jordan, ichthyologist and founding president of Stanford University, delivered a speech entitled “The Blood of the Nations.” At the time, World War I was a year underway, and though the United States was over two years away from becoming involved, Jordan predicted in his address the arrival of death, social unrest, and world-wide disorder.
Samuel Stephenson Smith ’15, who’d sat in the audience that day and went on to become a professor of English at the University of Oregon, recounted Jordan’s speech in at Reed’s 1935 commencement. But he said there was no need to re-traverse that history—after all, the graduating students had endured both the roaring twenties and troubled thirties themselves.
The subject of Smith’s speech instead focused on what he called “the legend” of the college—its self-portrait, its reputation, and his dream of making the two displays of character match more closely. He left the class of 1935 with this: “[Reed] should stoutly adhere to its historic policy of starting its ideals at the point where the facts leave off, and projecting, by an exercise of the historic imagination, the vision of a Great Society in the future.”
For over a century, Reedies have tried to do just that—and commencement speakers have sought to leave outgoing students with similar gems of wisdom as the world continues to drastically change.
Embrace the Uncertainty
Advait Jukar ’11 , 2025
Advait Jukar ’11 recounted his life’s path to the 2025 graduating class on a rainy May day. In his address, the paleontologist (who joked he was indeed not like Ross Geller from Friends, despite his profession) tracked his career’s path, and discussed why the “educational experiment that is ÐÓ°ÉÊÓƵ is so vital, now more than ever.”
Though it seemed like his path was linear from the outside, Jukar assured graduates it was not. “Life is seldom that way,” he said. When he didn’t get into any of the PhD programs he applied to, Jukar attended a master’s program in paleontology, but after a year, decided to quit the discipline and return to his roots in ecology. Eventually, he did go back to paleontology, despite long believing he had no future in it.
“Career paths are not always a straight line,” Jukar said. “Serendipity, luck, and timing play a huge role in where you end up and what you end up doing.” He encouraged graduates to embrace that uncertainty, rather than turning away from it.
Jukar concluded by reminding students of the power of relationships. “Reedies look out for each other,” he said. “...We are all comrades in this quest.”
An Ox-Eating Spirit
Gary Snyder ’51, 1991
Pulitzer-prize winning beat poet Gary Snyder ’51 focused on two concepts in : the end of the Cold War and the end of nature. Both events, he said, were related, and taught an important lesson: “We should be dubious of fantasies that would lead toward centralizing world political power, but we do need interactive playful planetary diversity, on this one-planet watershed.”
Before he encouraged students to “Ride Hard, Die Free,” in the words of his motorcycle friends, he left them with more simple wisdom: keep looking for questions rather than answers, walk more and drive less, and follow one’s own ideas of success, rather than the mainstream image.
Snyder urged graduates to go into the 21st-century “lean, mean, and green,” much like the baby tiger in the Chinese proverb he left them with: “A baby tiger just born on the ground/Has an ox-eating spirit.”
Pay the Price and Take It
William Truant Foster, 1948
“Forty years ago this was a forty-acre cow pasture,” is how former Reed President William Truant Foster began in 1948. Recounting the beginnings of ÐÓ°ÉÊÓƵ and his hand in it, Foster spoke of his dream for the institution: “I hoped…that ÐÓ°ÉÊÓƵ would continue to stand staunchly—and if necessary, stand alone—for whatever is right.”
The class of 1948 attended Reed on the heels of the end of World War II. At the time, people wondered how liberal arts colleges could survive in a country that had become “aggressively practical.” In response, Foster had words that echo to this day: “We hear dire prophecies,” he said. But, “We have heard them before.”
Foster ended on this point, quoting his old teacher, the American philosopher Josiah Royce: “You at this moment have the honor to belong to a generation whose lips are touched by fire.” Having undergone drastic global change, the late 40s marked the beginning of a new era. In the world’s new crisis, Foster reminded graduates through the words of Royce that the moment called for people of faith, service, charity, and insight.
“I studied, I loved, I labored, unsparingly and hopefully, to be worthy of my generation,” Royce said. And Foster finished: “If that on your day of graduation is your vision, your pledge, your hope—pay the price and take it.”
You Are Our Hope
Kathleen Saadat ’74, 2015
Kathleen Saadat ’74 had an assignment for the class of 2015 when she gave her commencement speech: “Use what you have learned at Reed to help move and change the world for the better.” She said, though, “I know at least 20 of you thought: define ‘better,’” so she did.
Saadat, a civil rights and social justice leader, described what a utopian version of that better world might look like. Equity, caring, and opportunities for everyone. People being fed, warm, and dry. Living wages. No more needless death from pesticides, curable illnesses, or police violence. Children who thrive because they have the means to grow into adults that contribute meaningfully to society. Clean air, clean water. A green planet. “You are free to choose any part of that vision, and start to work on it,” she said.
At the same time, she cautioned graduates about the rebuilding process. “It’s easier to tear it down than it is to build it back up,” she told them. “You have the skills to help build the new structures.”
Her final words, “You are our joy, you are our hope,” were met with a standing ovation.
A Last Chance to Know Everything
Barbara Ehrenreich ’63, 1987
Barbara Ehrenreich’s ’63 1987 received a standing ovation, too. But she started the address by admitting that it was easily the most daunting experience of her life. Then the author and political activist apologized to any students who were forced to read her work in their time at Reed. “I would have kept it a lot briefer and I would have written a Cliff Notes version right away, if I’d known,” she said.
Her understanding of a commencement address, Ehrenreich joked, was that the job was to cover everything that may have been left out in the last four years of study, and then say a few words about the graduates’ generation, the future of humankind, how to succeed in business, etc. “That’s what I’m going to do, and I hope you’re paying close attention,” she said, “because this is your last chance to know everything.”
Talk about their generation she did, and their reputation—which had recently been called “shallow and greedy” by LIFE Magazine. “If we want to understand why so many of the young and educated today are cynical,” she said, “we have only to look at the policies of the old and powerful.”
The great thing about Reed, she added, is that it produces exceptions to the mainstream of materialism and cynicism. “If you remain true to the notion of success, to this notion that you are imbibed at Reed, you may not always, may not ever, achieve that other kind of success…In fact, you might find yourself labeled an oddball, a troublemaker, a loser, or worse,” she concluded. “But that’s alright…Because when you hear those labels, you’ll know that you’re in good company.”