Sam Tanenhaus, Columnist

Milton Friedman, Joan Didion and the Class of 1975

Commencement addresses that stand the test of time.

May 21, 2015 at 3:00 PM UTC

Sam Tanenhaus, the author of “The Death of Conservatism” and “Whittaker Chambers,” is working on a biography of William F. Buckley Jr. He was editor of the New York Times Book Review from 2004 to 2013.

Waiting for the entertainment.
Photographer: Michael Okoniewski/Bloomberg

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Is the commencement speech a dying art? It’s certainly thriving as a form of entertainment, at least to judge from the interest in who’s speaking where. You can find a short list of "the 20 schools with the coolest graduation speakers of 2015” on the website Total Sorority Move. (Barack Obama came in second, behind Bill Nye, "the Science Guy," and ahead of Matthew McConaughey.)

For the longer view, National Public Radio has a database of speeches going back to 1774, searchable by theme (“Inner voice,” “Embrace failure”), and YouTube has collected the 10 most-viewed in its 10-year history (including Oprah Winfrey and Meryl Streep).