Live: Harvard Celebrates the Class of 2026

Monica Bharel urged Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Dental Medicine graduates to confront systematic inequalities in health care at Thursday’s Class Day ceremony, telling them medical innovation would mean little if it failed to reach the world’s most vulnerable patients.

Bharel, a former commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and former vice chair of the Harvard’s Board of Overseers, delivered the Class Day address in heavy rain. She currently leads Google Health’s clinical work in global health, public health, and public sector health.

Bharel opened her speech by pointing to major advances in medicine over the past few decades, including progress in HIV treatment, cancer research, vaccine development, and access to health information.

Irish architect Yvonne Farrell urged Harvard Graduate School of Design graduates to embrace beauty as a professional responsibility at Wednesday’s Class Day ceremony, closing an awards program that celebrated student work across the school’s disciplines.

Farrell, the co-founder of Dublin-based Grafton Architects, framed architecture as a cultural vessel capable of connecting disciplines. She told graduates that designers must recognize the power embedded in creative work.

“You are responsible for beauty,” she said. “Enjoy every moment of your creative life.”

Harvard School of Public Health Dean Andrea Baccarelli urged graduates to embrace the challenges facing public health, capping a year in which the school has faced federal funding cuts and internal restructuring.

Baccarelli opened the ceremony by celebrating the class’s work across the school’s disciplines — from epistemology to global health — repeatedly tying graduates’ areas of study to HSPH’s legacy of translating research into action.

“You choose public health, not despite its challenges, but because of them,” he told graduates.

Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor in chief of The Economist, warned Harvard Kennedy School graduates Wednesday that artificial intelligence and rising geopolitical instability will test their ability to preserve international cooperation.

Minton Beddoes, who earned a master’s in public administration from HKS in 1992, worked as an economist at the International Monetary Fund before joining The Economist as an emerging markets correspondent.

She compared the years after the fall of communism — when she began her career — to the present moment, saying both periods were marked by dramatic geopolitical changes at a “dizzying pace.”

Middlesex County Sheriff Peter J. Koutoujian closed Harvard’s 375th Commencement Exercises just before 12:15 p.m.

After banging his staff three more times, the proceedings ended — just as a light rain started to fall.

Students and their families made their way out of Tercentenary Theater and toward afternoon commencement events. Each graduate school and upperclassman house will host their own degree conferral ceremony throughout the remainder of the day.

Comedian Conan O’Brien ’85 used his Commencement address Thursday to lampoon the Trump administration’s legal battles with Harvard, mocking the federal government’s claims against the University and its efforts to restrict international students from enrolling.

O’Brien joked that he had his own list of grievances from his undergraduate years — including a “cast-iron” bed, 9 a.m. classes in the Science Center, and dining hall fish spaghetti — and said they carried more weight than the federal government’s ongoing litigation.

“I’m confident that my claims will have more merit than those filed by the President of the United States,” O’Brien said, to raucous applause.

More than 50 Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Auto Workers picketers blared noisemakers, blasted sirens on megaphones, and rang cowbells outside Loeb House in an attempt to disrupt remarks by University President Alan M. Garber ’76 during Thursday’s Commencement exercise.

The graduate workers gathered outside the gates of Loeb House and timed the noisemaking — louder than chanting alone — to coincide directly with Garber’s remarks.

HGSU-UAW president Denish K. Jaswal said the union planned to play short bursts of noise during all speaker introductions given by administrators and to continue making noise throughout administrator remarks. She said the union would avoid disrupting student speakers.

Government Ph.D. student Andrew J. O’Donohue ’18 used the annual graduate English address Thursday to call on Harvard to more forcefully defend academic freedom and free speech, arguing that the University’s confrontation with the federal government had exposed the fragility of its stated commitments.

O’Donohue, who said he lost a grant after sweeping federal funding cuts last spring, praised Harvard’s lawsuits seeking to restore research funding. But he said Harvard’s response needed to go further.

“The past few years have put the ideals of our university to the test,” O’Donohue said. “Harvard did not get an A.”

Noah J. Eckstein ’26 called on his classmates to scrutinize their assumptions about one another in his senior English address, lamenting the polarization of today’s political environment.

“Whenever you meet someone, ask the other person about their beliefs, how they got there,” Eckstein said. “Place yourself in their shoes and ask ‘Why do I believe this?’” Eckstein said.

“That is the hardest and most important thing you can do in a world that is constantly telling you to pick a side,” he added.

Pro-Palestine activists unfurled a banner calling on Harvard to divest from Israel from a second-floor window of Sever Hall midway through the annual senior English address Thursday morning.

“Israel bombs, Harvard profits. Divest,” the banner read.

The demonstration marked the third consecutive year that students have attempted to disrupt Commencement proceedings. Last year, pro-Palestine organizers also unfurled a banner from a Sever Hall classroom window and held another sign calling for divestment on the steps of Widener Library.

University President Alan M. Garber ’76 opened Harvard’s 375th Commencement with a defense of academic freedom and open inquiry, nodding to the University’s ongoing effort to answer critics who say the school has grown intellectually closed off.

Garber praised the graduating class for modeling the values he said Harvard must continue to protect, commending students for their ability to “disagree constructively, listen generously, and speak freely.”

“By championing academic freedom and open inquiry, you have fortified this great American university, reminding so many of the myriad ways in which this institution helps people discover more about themselves, about one another, and about the world,” he said.

Middlesex County Sheriff Peter J. Koutoujian called Thursday’s Morning Exercises proceedings to order just after 9:45 a.m.

The ceremony caps three days of events celebrating the graduating class of 2026 and brings together soon-to-be degree recipients from across Harvard’s schools and programs.

Koutoujian, a Kennedy School graduate, struck his staff on the ground three times to initiate the exercises and doffed his hat.

Harvard College Dean David J. Deming addressed graduating seniors outside Phillips Brooks House Thursday morning, delivering a senior valediction address that mixed parting advice with a few final jokes before leading the Class of 2026 into Tercentenary Theatre.

Deming opened by noting the varied paths seniors had taken to Harvard — and the varied ways they had adjusted to campus life.

“You came to Harvard from different places, with different hopes and doubts — and I’m guessing different levels of comfort with primal scream,” he quipped.

Students from the University’s graduate schools streamed into the Yard hoisting custom tokens for their respective disciplines.

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences students waved flags with their crest — as did students from the Business School — and Law School students carried miniature gavels.

And graduates from the Harvard School of Public Health clapped red hand-shaped noisemakers outside Robinson Hall as they prepared to take their seats.

As graduates and guests lined up outside Harvard Yard before the start of Commencement exercises, roughly 20 Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Auto Workers picketers gathered near Widener and Boylston gates, chatting, holding signs, beating a plastic bucket drum, and handing our fliers and pins urging affiliates to email Harvard administrators in support of the union’s contract demands.

The picket did not block students from entering the Yard. As members of the class of 2026 processed through Boylston Gate, union members continued chanting.

“We’re proud of you and that’s a fact,” they chanted, “but we still need a fair contract.”

Members of the Class of 2026 streamed into Harvard Yard for Morning Exercises at around 7:25 a.m. with celebratory signs and instruments in tow.

Faculty Deans for each of Harvard’s upperclassman Houses walked with their students as bagpipes echoed throughout the Yard.

They will be joined by degree candidates from each of the University’s graduate schools before the Commencement proceedings begin.

Garber will confer five honorary doctorate degrees during Commencement exercises for the Class of 2026 later this morning.

The recipients are Nobel-prize-winning physicist Geoffrey Hinton; historian Noel Malcolm; Broadway star Audra McDonald; Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan; and comedian and Commencement speaker Conan O’Brien ’85.

Hinton is well known for his foundational work in the field of artificial intelligence. McDonald — a six-time Tony award winner — most recently starred in a widely-acclaimed revival of Gypsy on Broadway.

The Crimson is distributing its annual Commencement issue at stations outside Harvard Yard as students and families file in for graduation.

Grab a copy of the special edition from one of our editors — in the Yard or outside 14 Plympton St. — or view the digital version to catch up on the year’s biggest headlines and sports highlights.

The families and friends of graduates are filtering through the gates of Harvard Yard to snag prime seats for this morning’s Commencement ceremony.

Though light rain fell on Cambridge late last night, the skies have cleared and the weather is expected to hold throughout the proceedings.

Morning Exercises are scheduled to begin at around 9:30 a.m. and last until 12:15.

Harvard Law School held its Class Day ceremony Wednesday after a last-minute reshuffling of the program, with Class Marshals using their remarks to acknowledge the ongoing Harvard Graduate Student Union-UAW strike and the uncertainty international students have faced under the Trump administration.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu ’07 — slated to be the Class Day speaker — withdrew on Tuesday after HGSU-UAW asked her not to cross its picket line. A second speaker, HLS professor Naz K. Modirzadeh, dropped out for personal reasons, and the school then cut a third, Harvard Defenders clinical instructor John Salsberg, to reorganize the event around student award winners and Class Marshal speeches.

HLS Dean John C.P. Goldberg opened the ceremony by acknowledging the changes.

Mychal Threets, a literacy advocate and newest host of Reading Rainbow, urged Harvard Graduate School of Education’s graduates to recognize their own power as educators, telling them their stories, and the ones they help tell, matter.

Threets, who grew up in California’s Solano County Library system and later worked there as a librarian, told graduates he carries at least 14 library cards in his wallet.

Two, he said, are especially meaningful to him, he said. One belonged to his late grandmother, who he said denied library access as a child in Arkansas before later learning to read in California, and another to Ana Grace Marquez Green, one of the 26 victims killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Former Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow praised his successor, University President Alan M. Garber ’76, as a model of moral courage on Tuesday, telling Phi Beta Kappa graduates that Garber had endured “pressures that would have bent others.”

In remarks that appeared to allude to Garber’s ongoing resistance to the Trump administration’s attacks on Harvard, Bacow said Garber had shown the kind of character the moment required.

“He has sustained withering criticism — not just from critics, but at times from friends and supporters,” Bacow said. “I know, from having worked alongside him, that none of the decisions he has made has been easy. And I know that he has made them anyway, because they were right.”

Hamza T. Masoud ’26, this year’s Ivy Orator, used his Class Day remarks to touch on many of the College’s most controversial recent flashpoints — student activism, grade inflation, leadership turnover, and Harvard’s ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein — in a speech intended as a comedic counterpoint to the day’s other addresses.

Listing extracurriculars his classmates could have joined, Masoud paired the Outing Club with the Palestine Solidarity Committee in a nod to the spring 2024 pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard, which drew federal scrutiny and preceded the resignation of then-President Claudine Gay.

“You could have gone camping with the Outing Club, or you could have gone camping with the Palestine Solidarity Committee,” he said.

Program marshals Jade M. Stanford ’26 and Kirthi Chigurupati ’26 presented the Richard Glover Ames Memorial Award — given each year to two “unsung heroes” of the graduating class — to James K. “Jamie” Durant ’26 and Alexandra Fernand ’26, honoring Durant’s pro-Palestine activism and the pair’s Phillips Brooks House Association work.

Stanford described Fernand as a steady presence in the Mission Hill community since her first year, building relationships with students and families that Stanford said had endured “across years and even generations.”

Stanford and Chigurupati traced Durant’s path through PBHA, from joining the Cambridge Youth Enrichment Program as a high school student to later directing summer camps and leading the Cambridge After School Program at Harvard.

Chieng used a riff on artificial intelligence to reference the ongoing Harvard graduate students’ strike, joking that the University’s labor dispute sounded too implausible to be true.

“AI says that Harvard has a $56.9 billion endowment, and the Harvard Graduate Student Union is on strike to get a livable wage increase to $25 an hour?” Chieng said. “There’s no way that’s true.”

The union is demanding a 12-month base wage equivalent of $55,000 for all workers and a $25 hourly base wage, arguing that the increases are necessary for graduate workers to continue living and working in Boston.

Chieng used his Wednesday address to issue a profanity-laced warning against relying too heavily on artificial intelligence, urging graduating seniors to preserve the habits of thought that AI can replace.

Chieng repeatedly framed AI as a threat to original work, arguing that technology can benefit only those who understand the fundamentals of their field.

“Getting an actual advantage from AI in the future will require minimum escape velocity of intelligence,” he said. “Everyone else who can’t match that is just going to get dumber.”

Harvard College Class Day speaker Ronny Chieng took aim at both Harvard’s grade inflation debate and U.S. President Donald Trump’s attacks on the University in a sharply political riff during his Wednesday address to the Class of 2026.

Chieng, a comedian and correspondent on “The Daily Show,” opened by mocking a recent faculty vote to cap A grades in undergraduate courses, calling the decision self-defeating.

“Do you know how stupid that is?” Chieng asked. “You realize the more A’s you hand out, the better everyone looks?”

Deming closed his remarks with a jab at Harvard students’ historically high post-graduate earnings and the College’s annual Housing Day rivalries — including the Housing Day Challenge, a new fundraising competition among the upperclassman Houses.

“I do wish you success. I just don’t care how much money you make,” Deming said. “Although if you do make money, I hope you’ll consider donating to the Housing Day challenge next year.”

“Unless you’re Adams, in which case, maybe sit this one out,” Deming added. “Or don’t.”

Harvard College Dean David J. Deming told seniors at the College’s Class Day about his own uneven path after college — recounting years of odd jobs, a tech-bust job market, and a string of lucky breaks that eventually led him to academia.

Deming nodded to the uncertain moments graduates were entering, including the rise of artificial intelligence and a recent string of commencement speakers — “usually guys,” he said — who had been booed for lecturing graduates about AI.

“I hope you don’t boo me today, but if you do, I could understand why,” Deming said.

Charisma W. Chen ’26, first marshal of the Class of 2026, opened the ceremony by urging her classmates to “not take themselves too seriously.”

Chen began her remarks by poking fun at Harvard’s preprofessional culture and the College’s often-flexible relationship with deadlines.

“This speech was due two weeks ago, but I rewrote it all last night in a fit of passion,” Chen said, joking that deadlines at Harvard are “a suggestion.”

More than 70 members of the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers protested during Tuesday’s Baccalaureate events for the Class of 2026, as the union’s strike entered its sixth week and drew mixed reactions from seniors in attendance.

Union members handed out flyers as students and guests filed into Harvard Yard before the ceremony. Afterward, during a dessert reception for students, families, and faculty, protesters marched into the event. Several seniors said the union was loudest during University President Alan M. Garber ’76’s speech, with some reporting screams and sirens during his remarks.

“When I first heard it, I wasn’t really sure what was happening,” Adam S. Mohamed ’26 said. “It was like a scream.”

Updated May 26, 2026, at 11:51 p.m.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu ’07 has withdrawn as the Class Day speaker for Harvard Law School after the Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Auto Workers asked her not to cross its picket line, according to an email sent to graduating law students on Tuesday evening.

Wu’s office said the mayor was “deeply disappointed” not to attend and had spent the past week attempting to reach a compromise with the union that would have allowed her to participate.

Garber briefly turned his remarks about artificial intelligence into a joke about the College’s newly approved grading policy.

After joking that he had decided not to let Claude help write his remarks, Garber assured that “any intelligence demonstrated from this point on is human intelligence.”

“All the jokes are human jokes. So feel free to laugh,” Garber said. “I will also accept chuckles and groans. You can’t always get an A.”

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 urged seniors to think critically about artificial intelligence at Tuesday’s Baccalaureate address, framing the technology as “the backdrop” of the Class of 2026’s college years — and a test of what kinds of knowledge still require human effort.

Garber opened with a joke about using AI to draft his speech.

“Claude and I have been working on my remarks for many days,” Garber said, before quickly walking it back. “Given how commencement season has been unfolding, we decided it would be better for me to go it alone.”