Harvard Voices

Writer and activist Gloria Steinem, 2010 Radcliffe Medalist

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor accepting the Radcliffe Medal, June 2009

Former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Al Gore delivered the keynote address of a multi-day celebration of Harvard’s commitment to environmental sustainability in Tercentenary Theatre on October 22, 2008.

Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy, received an honorary degree at a special convocation in Sanders Theater on December 1, 2008, where he delivered what would be one of his final public addresses.

Best-selling author of the beloved Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, received an honorary degree and delivered the 2008 Commencement Address entitled, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.”

Microsoft Founder and philanthropist Bill Gates delivered the 2007 Commencement Address upon receiving an honorary degree thirty years after dropping out of Harvard College.

Former Harvard Overseer, alumnus, founder of the Harvard Arts Medal, and acclaimed actor John Lithgow delivered the Commencement Address in June 2005.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan spoke to graduates in 1999 on the value of personal character and education to the national economy.

On September 18, 1998, at a rare, special convocation at which he was presented with an honorary degree, President Nelson Mandela spoke to a crowd of 25,000 in Tercentenary Theatre, calling on citizens of the world’s developed nations to partner with emerging democracies to alleviate hunger, poverty and disease.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke to the class of 1997 on the 50th anniversary of the historic commencement address given by George Marshall. Albright echoed Marshall’s sentiment, urging graduates to be shapers of history in an increasingly interconnected world.

At the 1995 Harvard Commencement, honorary degree recipient Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic, spoke to graduates on the common human threads uniting all nations, even those seeking to divide and destroy.

General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in his commencement address in 1993, recalled the long tradition of Harvard and the military, and reminded graduates of America’s responsibilities around the world as it entered into a new era of peace and prosperity.

Seamus Heaney, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, recited a celebratory poem for the occasion of Harvard’s 350th Anniversary.

Another Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Mother Teresa, of The Society of the Missionaries of Charity, spoke in Harvard Yard on Class Day 1982.

In 1978, at the height of the Cold War, the exiled Nobel Prize-winning Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, delivered a Commencement Address titled “A World Split Apart,” which would be quoted often afterward for its indictment of the West’s failure to stand up to Soviet aggression. This selection is read by Gleb Sidorkin.

In 1977, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan from Texas spoke to the Harvard Alumni Association.

Two Harvard Nobel Prize Laureates talked about exciting developments in their scientific research: for Professor Sheldon Glashow in the field of particle physics; for Professor Steven Weinberg in quantum field theory.

The last 40 seconds of the Harvard-Yale game, November 23, 1968, in the Harvard Stadium.

Composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein recounted his discovery as a Harvard undergraduate of certain principles of musical structure.

In 1962, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., soon to be Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, delivered a speech to the Harvard Law School forum.

W.E.B. DuBois, Harvard College graduate and Ph.D., reminisced about his Harvard teachers and his commitment to study history.

On the afternoon of June 14, 1956, Senator John F. Kennedy addressed the Harvard Alumni Association in Harvard Yard.

Former Harvard student and then Norton Professor, poet Robert Frost answered an undergraduate’s question in the early 1950s and later read one of his most famous poems, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

Poet e.e. cummings recalled his own undergraduate experience in his Norton Lectures entitled “Non-Lectures.”

In 1947, Harvard graduate and Nobel Prize Laureate, T.S. Eliot, read his early poetry about Cambridge scenery.

After receiving an honorary degree, Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke in Harvard Yard to U.S. military forces in training on September 6, 1943.

Secretary of State George C. Marshall announced The Marshall Plan on Commencement Day 1947 in Harvard Yard.

Radcliffe graduate and celebrated American author, Gertrude Stein, read from her experimental literary work.

Professor Samuel Eliot Morison, renowned historian of Harvard, also at the 300th Anniversary in 1936.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Harvard’s 300th Anniversary on September 18, 1936, in Sanders Theatre.

“Harvard Voices” was originally prepared for the 350th Anniversary of the founding of Harvard College and has been updated for the 375th Anniversary in the fall of 2011. Excerpts from major addresses by public figures and creative artists, as well as the musings of notable Harvard scholars are included.