Spring 2025 Commencement Remarks

Purdue President Mung Chiang made these remarks during the university’s Spring 2025 Commencement ceremonies May 16-18.

This weekend we celebrate you in the largest commencement in Purdue history, and for the first time, confer more than 10,000 degrees. Boilermakers Class of 2025, you are ready! 

Purdue’s commencement continues to be special. It is now the longest university-level commencement in America: lasting about 20 hours this spring and arranged in 10 sessions here in the Elliott Hall of Music. Many colleagues work tirelessly on this massive operation each spring, and then each summer and each winter, too. Thank you very much. 

And we won’t forget the other ceremony, traditionally held in late spring, and for me the most moving annual event. Golden Taps recognizes those students who passed away in the previous year, inviting their families and friends to receive a certificate at the Union and then walk together, quietly and dignified, to the unfinished Block P, where Purdue Musical Organizations fills the air with songs of grief and remembrance as each name is pronounced. 

And at this commencement, we uphold the tradition of reading everyone’s name. Our scale has grown over the years, and we could have chosen to call all of you in an outdoor stadium with one name, “all the graduates!” So why do we still call each individual one by one? 

Well, to start with, that’s the moment each of you has been waiting for. In fact, right now you might be getting impatient for these remarks to be over so that we can get to the part when your name is called and then you go have a good time thanking those with you today. (Now don’t worry: While it is another Purdue tradition that the president delivers spring commencement remarks, I’ll make this one the shortest ever. At least shorter than your finals.) 

While some of us, especially the incredible Commencement Band and Glee Club, have to sit here 10 times over and listen to the same “shortest” remarks again and again, each of you will be seated here only once. There may be 10,000 handshakes, but each graduate gets only one. And each one is a little different: some firm, some light touch, some cold and some sweaty. 

For no two students are the same. Purdue attempts not to reduce you to any group label that you didn’t choose yourself, but to respect each individual’s tribulations and triumphs. Purdue focuses not on conformity, but on each individual’s choices and responsibilities. Purdue’s North Star has always been the values of individual freedom, here in the Land of the Free. Today that’s also the compass guiding us in renewing the trust and social contract with the American public in the coming many years, as the entire higher education industry is trying to do with a scope more comprehensive than in eight decades. Many at this university have laid out Purdue’s case and character. But first: 

Trust is earned as you do the right things when no one is looking. For example, to ensure each individual’s freedom of thought and expression, Purdue consistently walks the walk and doesn’t cancel events or censor words, even when doing so would be expedient and fashionable. The keyword is “consistently,” for free speech half of the time is free speech none of the time; for a university is like a gym, and you choose to come to this one because you will sweat a lot. 

There are in fact two distinct notions of a university, as “many” or as “one:” a university should be a home for many individuals each with your own freedom, rather than a monolithic megaphone. As “many,” there are many, divergent opinions articulated from a university. As “one,” the megaphone’s volume should be lowered so dissenting voices can still be heard. 

When each individual is free to think and to tinker, the institution can then strive toward Excellence at Scale. That’s not an abstract concept. That’s you. Look around you right now: your intellectual exercise; your chanting inside Mackey; your chance encounters leading to new chapters of your story; your social, athletic and artistic endeavors wearing that Old Gold and Black are what give rise to our institutional character: one brick higher in the pursuit of excellence while opening the door of upward mobility for so many, with affordability through 14 years of tuition freeze. (Now, some have complained that tuition should have been raised, just like at many other universities. You know what – why don’t we take a vote here? Parents and students: If you prefer to have paid Purdue higher tuition over the past four years, please raise your hands now. But if you kind of like the freeze, please say “Boiler Up!”) 

Growing bigger has not stopped us from getting even better. We are the largest among the 20 so-called “New Ivies” public and private universities. We are the only university from this beautiful state ranked among the global top 100 or top 50 research universities. But more important than any ranking is the heritage and impact of this land-grant institution, since the days of its first bricks, in creating jobs, talent and innovation together. Without jobs, talents won’t stay. Without talents, jobs won’t come. And without innovation in the digital economy, we cannot sustain the co-creation of jobs and talent through rewrites of economic equations. In this changing world, one university has become the new heartbeat of the heartland. Purdue is building America’s Hard Tech Corridor, 65 miles long and vibrant, bookended by our southern and northern campuses and anchored by the LEAP district onshoring modern manufacturing. Along this corridor and beyond, our generation of Boilermakers is blazing new trails toward the endless frontiers of discovery, dissemination and deployment of knowledge in our country. 

This commencement never ceases to move me when the Purdue band plays our national anthem. Next year Purdue will celebrate USA 250, two and half centuries since the birthday of the most amazing nation, and the most crucial, ongoing experiment in the history of human civilization. And we the Boilermakers shall never cease to believe that, for as long as American universities remain the first vista of intellectual competitions and a long-lasting bastion of individual freedoms, we will never cease to live out the meanings of America the beautiful, America the exceptional, America the hopeful. 

May that hope and may Purdue’s values live in each of you. Now let’s get ready to call your name. Congratulations, and Boiler Up!