The graduation ceremony once signified achievement, celebration, and hope for the future. Unfortunately, not many grads can still say the same.
A recent New York Times study analyzed 50 graduation speeches—half from this year, and half from 2018—to see how their rhetoric has changed. The 2018 speeches featured themes like gender and racial inequality. This year’s speeches had a different focus: generational inequality, and grit. In 2018, the word “resilience” was mentioned just once. This year, the same word made an appearance in one-third of the commencement speeches.
But to young Americans facing the grimmest job market in decades, euphemistic talk of resilience flies in the face of reality. A 2025 Harvard Youth Poll found that a majority of young Americans see AI as a threat to future job prospects. So when commencement speakers across the country used the ceremony to sing the praises of artificial intelligence this grad season, they were met with vocal opposition from graduates.
Students at the University of Central Florida booed real estate executive Gloria Caulfield after she lauded AI as “the next industrial revolution.” Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt met with similar insults and epithets at the University of Arizona. Unable to read the room, Schmidt “reassured” graduates that the question was not whether artificial intelligence would shape the world (it would), but whether they would help shape AI. After the debacle, current Google CEO Sundar Pichai avoided the topic of AI altogether at Stanford University’s graduation, lest he face the same humiliation as his predecessor.
Meanwhile, IBM Vice Chairman Gary Cohn had a more practical piece of advice for the class of 2026: turn to a career in manual labor. “We need to encourage people to find jobs where there are jobs … Who in here can level a cement floor?” You can imagine the response from his audience.
These events are part of a broader cultural backlash against AI. For Gen Z, negative sentiment about AI has spiked over the past year. In addition to venting frustration at commencement ceremonies, students are holding “anti-AI” protests and joining Luddite Clubs at campuses across the country. They see AI as a threat, not only to their job prospects, but to the climate, to their social lives, and to art and creativity. 41% of young Americans think AI will make work less meaningful. And 43% of adults say AI will harm them personally.
As one graduate who was among the boobirds at University of Florida explained, “Talking about artificial intelligence at a college for arts and humanities . . . kind of goes against the humanities part.”
Praise for “the next industrial revolution” rings hollow when students can’t afford to buy groceries or pay rent. Nearly half of college students said their financial stress made it difficult to concentrate on their schoolwork. To these young people, the commencement speakers represent a class of moguls and elites that are far removed from their generation, and are directly responsible for their economic instability. As the crisis deepens, they will seek serious answers and eventually move into action.