steve jobs graduation speech written

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech Transcript 2005

Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, gave a commencement address at Stanford University for the class of 2005. Read the full transcript of the June 12, 2005 commencement speech here.

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Steve Jobs: ( 00:21 ) Thank you. I’m honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college, and this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation today. I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why’d I drop out? It started before I was born.

Steve Jobs: ( 01:15 ) My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates. So everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking “We’ve got an unexpected baby boy, do you want him?” They said, “Of course.” My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college. This was the start in my life.

Steve Jobs: ( 02:13 ) 17 years later, I did go to college, but I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working class parents savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was spending all the money. My parents had saved their entire life, so I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out. Okay. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

Steve Jobs: ( 03:04 ) It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hari Krishna temple. I loved it, and much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example, Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country throughout the campus. Every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sanserif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.

Steve Jobs: ( 04:03 ) It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. Since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Steve Jobs: ( 04:58 ) Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever, because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

Steve Jobs: ( 05:38 ) My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I love to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20, we worked hard and in 10 years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage, into a 2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I just turned 30, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him.

Steve Jobs: ( 06:28 ) So at 30, I was out and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone and it was devastating. I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce, and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley, but something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did.

Steve Jobs: ( 07:04 ) The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I’d been rejected, but I was still in love. So I decided to start over. I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could’ve ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named Next, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

Steve Jobs: ( 07:49 ) In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought Next and I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at Next is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.

Steve Jobs: ( 08:21 ) You’ve got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it and, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.

Steve Jobs: ( 09:04 ) My third story is about death. When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like, “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me. Since then, for the past 33 years, I’ve looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, if today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? Whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Steve Jobs: ( 10:11 ) About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

Steve Jobs: ( 11:00 ) I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening, I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach, and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife who was there told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and thankfully, I’m fine now

Steve Jobs: ( 11:40 ) This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful, but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. Yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life.

Steve Jobs: ( 12:14 ) It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others opinions drowned out your own inner voice, and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Steve Jobs: ( 13:08 ) When I was young, there was an amazing publication called the Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the Bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand, not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 60’s before personal computers and desktop publishing. So it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools, and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of the Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue.

Steve Jobs: ( 13:52 ) It was the mid 1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay hungry, stay foolish. I’ve always wished that for myself, and now as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish. Thank you all very much.

Speaker 1: ( 14:56 ) The preceding program is copyrighted by Stanford University. Please visit us at stanford.edu.

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Wearing jeans and sandals under his black robe, Jobs delivered a keynote address that spanned his adoption at birth to his insights into mortality after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a year ago. In plainspoken terms, his address struck a balance between the obstacles he has encountered during his notably public life and the lessons he has gleaned—for example, from his high-profile ousting in 1985 from the computer company he helped start.

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Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement address

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” said Jobs, 50. “It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life.”

The 2005 Commencement proceeded with its familiar mix of the goofy and the formal: Graduates attached plush animals to their caps and carried body-length flotation devices onto the field for the Wacky Walk. This traditional kickoff to the ceremony was once again a flurry of wild wigs, rock-star shades, feather boas and a few Speedo swim trunks.

Also seen were a procession of walking iPods, several balloon floats, spray-painted umbrellas and one group that unfurled a volleyball net and spontaneously started to play. The first ones on the field carried boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, while behind them a dance troupe in tutus and ape masks pranced around the track.

But calm was restored once the graduates took their seats and the Rev. Scotty McLennan, dean for religious life, delivered the opening invocation. President John Hennessy then welcomed the estimated 23,000 people in the stadium and, after a presentation of faculty, staff and student awards by Provost John Etchemendy, returned to the podium to introduce the keynote speaker.

Hennessy said Jobs embodied the university’s spirit, its “willingness to be bold and strike out in new directions.” Hennessy also touched on Jobs’ reputation as an innovator, a visionary and an advocate for education who developed partnerships during Apple’s earliest days to get computers into schools and communities.

Jobs began by noting that he dropped out of college, and that Sunday’s ceremony was the closest he had ever gotten to a university graduation. He then launched into the first part of his address, which focused on having faith that the dots of one’s life will connect down the road, even if the journey so far has not followed a clear pattern.

Jobs said his biological mother was an unwed graduate student who wanted him to go to college, so she chose a lawyer and his wife to be the adoptive parents. But because they ultimately wanted a girl, he was adopted by a working-class couple—neither of whom had college degrees, Jobs said.

Jobs said they pledged to send him to college, and when the time came, he chose Reed College in Portland, Ore. Concerned that tuition was draining his parents’ life savings and dissatisfied by his required courses, Jobs said he dropped out and began taking courses that interested him, including a calligraphy course that, a decade later, inspired him to design different fonts for the first Macintosh.

“Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward,” Jobs said. “You can only connect them looking backward, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

Jobs also talked about love and loss, and how he discovered what he wanted to do in life at an early age. He was 20 years old when he and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer, which in 10 years grew into a $2 billion company with 4,000 employees. After his departure from Apple, Jobs went on to found NeXT Software Inc., which was subsequently bought by Apple in 1997, returning him to the company that got him started.

“I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple,” Jobs said. “I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.”

The last part of his speech was about death. When he was diagnosed with cancer about a year ago, Jobs said doctors initially gave him up to six months to live. His cancer turned out to be a rare, curable form, and he quickly underwent surgery. He has since recovered, but the experience nonetheless taught him another lesson.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,” Jobs said. “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

After a standing ovation, Hennessy brought the ceremony to a close with remarks that honored Jane Stanford?this year being the centennial of her death. The graduates of each school were then asked by their deans to stand for the conferral of degrees by Hennessy.

“Stanford is committed to keeping the spirit envisioned by Jane and Leland Stanford alive, and instilling it in the generations of students who pass this way,” Hennessy said. “And so, I hope that you leave this campus with a strong reservoir of the Stanford spirit, a reservoir that will grow over the years.”

On Sunday, 1,782 bachelor’s degrees were awarded, along with 2,026 master’s degrees and 904 doctoral degrees, according to Paddy McGowan, associate registrar and director of institutional research. Of the 1,732 undergraduates, 844 were female and 888 were male. Departmental honors were awarded to 388 undergraduates, 294 graduated with university distinction, 118 graduated with multiple majors, 477 completed minors, 70 graduated with dual bachelor’s degrees and 133 graduated with combined bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Among international students, there were 95 undergraduates from 40 different countries and 948 graduate students from 70 different nations, according to McGowan.

“I just can’t believe that I got here,” said Farah Giga of the Southern California suburb of LaVerne, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree with honors in computer science. “This makes five all-nighters in a row totally worth it.”

Kateri Jones sat among family members who came from all over California and Colorado for her daughter, Dyani Jones, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in human biology. One of the biggest achievements, her mother said, was just getting to this point.

“I just think it’s a remarkable accomplishment to get through this school,” she said. “Just the challenge of being here.”

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Full Transcript Of The Steve Jobs Commencement Speech At Stanford University: An Uplifting Message For All

The 2005 Steve Jobs commencement speech from Stanford University is a testament to his remarkable storytelling abilities and a reminder of the power of words.

In 2005, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs delivered the commencement speech at Stanford University . A powerful orator, Jobs’ brief address is a testament to his exceptional storytelling and motivational abilities. This speech is widely regarded as one of his most memorable public appearances.

Steve Jobs Commencement Speech Transcript

Steve jobs commencement speech.

For the structure of Jobs’ speech, he decided to share three short stories from his life. Here’s the full transcript of the Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford University.

Here’s the full transcript of the famous Steve Jobs Stanford commencement speech.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer , it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future . You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT , another company named Pixar , and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film,  Toy Story , and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle. My third story is about death. When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now. This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share . No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life . Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called  The Whole Earth Catalog ($50+ via Amazon) , which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of  The Whole Earth Catalog , and then when it had run its course, they put out a(Amazon link) final issue . It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much. Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford University (2005)

With its short but powerful words, Steve Jobs showcased his powerful strengths as both a leader and a storyteller. Several lines from his speech, including “ Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life ,” are frequently quoted to this day.

For anyone else giving a commencement speech, Jobs set the bar pretty high. If you’re even trying to come close, good luck!

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Frank Wilson is a retired teacher with over 30 years of combined experience in the education, small business technology, and real estate business. He now blogs as a hobby and spends most days tinkering with old computers. Wilson is passionate about tech, enjoys fishing, and loves drinking beer.

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Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address (Full Transcript)

• September 13, 2014 5:52 pm March 12, 2024 12:28 am
• by Pangambam S

This is the full transcript of the Commencement address: ‘ Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish’   delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005 with intro by Stanford President John Hennessy.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here:

TRANSCRIPT:

John Hennessy – President, Stanford

It now gives me great pleasure to introduce this year’s commencement speaker, Steve Jobs – the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Apple and Pixar Animation Studios. Stanford University has been characterized since its founding by willingness to be bold and to strike out new directions, and this is a characteristic very much shared by today’s speaker. A pioneer and visionary for almost three decades, his name and the companies he has founded have been synonymous with innovation and creativity.

As a young boy, growing up in Los Altos, Steve Jobs came of age at the same time as Silicon Valley. While still in school, he attended lectures informally at Stanford as well as at Hewlett Packard, where he spent his summer working.

After graduating from high school, he left California to attend Reed College. A trek through India, and a short stint as video game designer for Atari followed.

Soon after his return to the Valley in 1974 he became a regular, along with Steve Wozniak, at meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, held at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. It was not long before the two of them had built the prototype for the Apple I.

The Apple I was very fast at the time, reading and writing four kilobytes in about twenty seconds. About 20,000 times slower than we do so today.

The Apple II was faster still, but more importantly introduced color monitors into the home market. In the mid-1980’s the Macintosh became the first truly user friendly personal computer. You didn’t have to be an expert to set it up, or to load software or to transfer information between applications. And the mouse offered point-and-click convenience, and opened the door to computer literacy for everyone.

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The Two-Way

Remembering steve jobs (1955-2011), read and watch: steve jobs' stanford commencement address.

Mark Memmott

Listen To NPR Special Remembering Steve Jobs

The death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs , has renewed interest in the commencement address he gave at Stanford University in 2005, which drew considerable attention for its content and because Jobs so rarely spoke in public about himself.

As Bob Boilen writes over at the All Songs Considered blog :

"He tells three very candid, uncharacteristically Steve Jobs stories about life, love and death from a guy who's biological mother wasn't able to parent him, was booted from the company he created and battles cancer. Anyone stuck in a miserable job — or anyone trying to figure out what to do with their life — should watch this. He's an inspiring fellow human."

At one point, Jobs tells the students "you have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever." The dots you encounter in life, he said, will eventually connect. "Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leaves you off the well-worn path. And that will make all the difference."

Stanford has posted the text of Jobs' speech (as prepared for delivery, so there are some differences from what he actually said) here , and we'll put it in a box below. The school has made the video available as well .

(Click on "Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement address" and the text should pop up.)

Related npr stories, npr news special remembering steve jobs.

• Steve Jobs Stanford address
• Stanford University

Steve Jobs Commencement Speech Analysis

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Looking for Steve Jobs commencement speech analysis? Want to understand how Jobs uses ethos, logos, pathos, and figurative language? Take a look at Steve Jobs Stanford speech analysis below.

Introduction

• Speech Analysis
• Rhetorical Appeals Used

Is it necessary to follow passions or reasons while choosing a career? What effects can losses and failures have on a person’s life? In spite of the complex character and deep ethical, philosophical, and psychological meanings hidden in these questions, they are answered completely in Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005.

Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, Inc., is known as one of the world-famous and successful entrepreneurs whose unique approaches to business and marketing provoked the great public’s interest. That is why Jobs’ speech on the importance of finding an interesting and loved job drew the attention and gained the recognition of the graduates during the Commencement Day at Stanford University in 2005.

Steve Jobs Stanford Speech Analysis

The goal of Steve Jobs’ speech is to persuade the graduates to find jobs that they can truly love because of their passion for definite activities. Thus, Jobs is successful in achieving his goal because of his exclusive approach to structuring the speech and to blending the rhetoric appeals in order to discuss well-known concepts and ideas of love, loss, and death in a unique form; that is why it is appropriate to examine Jobs’ manipulation of methods of persuasion in detail.

In his speech, Jobs demonstrates the virtuous use of rhetoric appeals in the development and presentation of one of the most persuasive commencement speeches in order to draw the student’s attention to the significant questions which can contribute to changing a person’s life.

Steve Jobs Commencement Speech: Rhetorical Appeals

The strategies used in developing the structure of the speech and the rhetorical strategies are closely connected. Jobs’ speech can be divided into five parts which are the introductory part to evoke the graduates’ interest regarding the topic discussed, the three life anecdotes, and the concluding part, which restates and supports the author’s arguments presented in the main part of the speech.

It is important to note that each of the three stories told by Jobs is also developed according to the definite structure pattern where the first sentences of the stories can be referred to the pathos, the personal experience can be discussed with references to the ethos, and the final parts of the stories are organized as the logical conclusions, using the logos.

The first reference to ethos is observed in the introductory part when Jobs states, “I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation” (Jobs).

The uniqueness of Jobs’ approach is in the use of the reverse variant of the ethos as the rhetorical appeal because Jobs has no credibility to discuss the importance of university education, but he has the credibility to discuss the points necessary for professional success because of stating his position as the co-founder of Apple, Inc., NeXT, and Pixar.

The next three stories presented in the speech are used to develop Jobs’ argument about the necessity of doing what a person loves and the importance of finding these things and activities. This argument is developed with references to the concluding or logical parts of the author’s stories which are also highly emotional in their character. Steve Jobs uses pathos in the first sentences while telling his stories.

Thus, the discussion of the details of the child adoption in the first story, the reflection on the happiness of building the first company, and the mentioning of the main question in life, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”, contribute to the audience’s emotional reaction because of describing the author’s own feelings and emotions (Jobs).

The credibility of Jobs’ considerations depends on the presentation of his own personal and life background and experiences to support his ideas. The use of pathos in the speech is observed when the author concludes with the results of his experience: “If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do” (Jobs).

Discussing the near death experience, the author uses the sentence “About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer,” which combines the ethos and pathos strategies (Jobs). Thus, Jobs can use more than one rhetorical appeal in a sentence.

Nevertheless, Jobs’ goal is to persuade the graduates to act and find the things that they love to do, and the focus on logos is observed in the stories’ concluding sentences when Jobs provides the logical argument: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work” (Jobs). These concluding remarks are based on the logical rethinking of the evidence and facts presented as examples from the author’s experience.

The repetition of such phrases as “Don’t settle” and the final phrase, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish,” contributes to drawing the audience’s interest in the presented facts and ideas (Jobs). The effectiveness of using rhetorical appeals depends on the author’s style and his use of repetitive structures and imperative sentences, which sound persuasive.

In his speech, Steve Jobs achieves the main goals of the speech by focusing on ethos, logos, and pathos and by using the author’s unique style. Jobs presents his developed vision of his career and passions in life with references to the ideas of love and death and supports considerations with autobiographical facts.

Works Cited

Jobs, Steve. ‘You’ve Got to Find What You Love,’ Jobs Says: Text of the Address . 2005. Web.

Further Study: FAQ

📌 what is the purpose of steve jobs’s commencement speech, 📌 what is the ethos in steve jobs’s commencement speech, 📌 what is another commencement speech example, 📌 what was the tone of steve jobs speech at stanford university.

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IvyPanda. (2019, January 17). Steve Jobs Commencement Speech Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-rhetorical-analysis-of-steve-jobs-commencement-speech/

"Steve Jobs Commencement Speech Analysis." IvyPanda , 17 Jan. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/the-rhetorical-analysis-of-steve-jobs-commencement-speech/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Steve Jobs Commencement Speech Analysis'. 17 January.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Steve Jobs Commencement Speech Analysis." January 17, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-rhetorical-analysis-of-steve-jobs-commencement-speech/.

1. IvyPanda . "Steve Jobs Commencement Speech Analysis." January 17, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-rhetorical-analysis-of-steve-jobs-commencement-speech/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Steve Jobs Commencement Speech Analysis." January 17, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-rhetorical-analysis-of-steve-jobs-commencement-speech/.

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7 Lessons from Steve Jobs' Commencement Speech

Sahil Bloom

October 5, 2022, mindset & life lessons, today at a glance.

• I'm a big believer in the value of re-consuming the books, ideas, and content that have deeply moved you. While the content may not change, you do, so your experience with it changes. You'll pick up new perspectives and insights each and every time.
• Steve Jobs' 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University is one such piece of content. I watch this speech at least 2x per year. With each viewing, I have new learnings and takeaways. While Steve was far from perfect (all too human, just like the rest of us), the wisdom in his words has impacted me profoundly over the years.
• This piece contains 7 lessons and quotes from a legendary commencement speech that has stood the test of time.

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I'm a big believer in the value of re-consuming the books, ideas, and content that have deeply moved you.

In recent years, it has become a socially acceptable adult flex to talk about how many books you've read in a given year. Trust me, I've done it. You can wow people at a cocktail party by rattling off facts from the 52 books you read last year.

But what I've come to realize is that reading 52 books is much less impressive than reading one book and being fundamentally changed by it.

As a rule of thumb: You may read thousands of books in your life, but there will only be a few that deeply change the way you think. The same applies to ideas and content more broadly.

With books, ideas, and content, I have found that the Pareto Principle (20% of the inputs create 80% of the impact) is inadequate.

In fact, I would argue that 1% of the consumption inputs create 99% of the impact.

When I find one of those top-1% items, I re-consume it religiously (at least once per year). While the content may not change, you do, so your experience with it changes. You'll pick up new perspectives and insights each and every time. It's a beautiful, formative thing.

In today's piece, I'd like to walk through one item on my top-1% list:

Steve Jobs' 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University.

I watch this speech at least 2x per year. With each viewing, I have new learnings and takeaways. While Steve was far from perfect (all too human, just like the rest of us), the wisdom in his words has impacted me profoundly over the years. Even if you aren't a fan of the man, I would encourage you to take in his words.

Here are 7 lessons and quotes from a legendary commencement speech that has stood the test of time...

Question the Assumptions

"I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting."

Independent thinking is a rare superpower of the modern age.

To carve your own path—in your career or life—you have to develop your own views. You can't be constrained by the way things have always been done—by the false tradeoffs or base assumptions that others have told you to believe.

Some of the worst decisions I've made in life were grounded in "that's how it has always been done" thinking.

Learn to question the basis of anything that doesn't feel right to you.

Don't chart your course through life based on someone else's map.

Question the assumptions. Develop your own views.

Let Curiosity Guide You

"And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on...Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this...It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography."

This newsletter is called the Curiosity Chronicle, so I naturally feel compelled to talk about the impact of intellectual curiosity.

Life is a mysterious expanse that we're tossed into without a flashlight or guide. We hope that our parents, family, friends, or mentors can help, but the reality is that we have to figure most of it out on our own.

Curiosity can be your guide—but only if you embrace it.

It's hard to predict, but when you pursue learning with genuine, inspired curiosity, good things tend to happen. It's a mysterious and powerful force—one you should always have on your side.

Let curiosity guide you.

Have Faith in the Dots

"If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

The concept of "dots" has been one of the most impactful ideas in my life over the last decade.

We are just a series of "dots"—moments, decisions, successes, and failures. Our lives are the line that connects through them.

The struggle is that it's often impossible to see that line as you place new dots. The complexity of the world obscures the connections.

Much of life, therefore, requires a terrifying leap of faith. A grounded belief that those dots will connect—somehow, someway.

And yet, as terrifying as it may be, they do. Time and again.

Always, always have faith in the dots.

Go Back to the Starting Line

"I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

After being fired from Apple, Steve Jobs felt the weight of a tremendous public failure that most of us will never experience. He had been fired from the company he founded, after all.

Interestingly, the public failure led to a sort of Renaissance period in his life.

It's easy to allow the burden of external forces to drain your life. The pressures of being late in the race, with high expectations and a buildup of fatigue, bear down on you.

When you find yourself in that position, think back to how you felt as a beginner—the lightness of that moment.

Metaphorically or literally, go back to the starting line.

Never Settle

"You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle."

In your career (and life), if you have the luxury of choice, never settle for less than love.

Low tolerance for uncertainty is one of the greatest drivers of settling. We are wired to fear the uncertainty—so we choose to settle to escape it.

Resist this urge and temptation: Tolerate uncertainty for a bit longer than you otherwise would.

Never settle.

An important note: Sometimes you have to settle short term in order to not settle long term. If you're building a skyscraper, the first step is to dig a hole and pour a rock-solid foundation. That's not sexy or fun, and it may feel like settling, but doing the dirty work early will allow you to build the stunning architectural masterpiece of your dreams later.

Memento Mori

"Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

One year before this speech, Steve Jobs had survived a scare with pancreatic cancer. It was a visceral reminder of his mortality and the inescapability of death.

But rather than darkness, this close encounter brought light…

Life is simultaneously both very long and very short.

Many of us ignore the shortness of life : We then get caught up in the stresses and fail to recognize that our precious days are slowly fluttering away.

Our time is finite, but we often fail to recognize it until it's too late.

Remember that you must die. Memento Mori.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary...Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

The fight against normalcy is perhaps our most important fight in life.

Growing up, I feared being different—I desperately wanted to fit in. This desire led to bad decisions grounded in insecurity.

I only realized later: Being different is your edge—your ultimate competitive advantage. No one can compete with you, at being you.

We all need to fight back against “fitting in”—fight back against normalcy.

The world wants you to be normal and play by the rules. You have to fight—consistently and diligently—to maintain your uniqueness.

Steve Jobs recognized this as well as anyone in the world. So it was fitting that he closed with his most famous line (and the line I will leave you all with today):

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

These are 7 powerful lessons from one of the most wisdom-rich speeches of all time.

If you haven't watched the full video of the speech, carve out 15 minutes and thank me later. It will change the way you think about your career, life, relationships, and more.

The full text of the speech can be found here .

I'd love to hear from you:

• Which lesson stands out the most?
• What other lessons did you take from the speech that are missing?

Tweet at me @SahilBloom and I'll do my best to get back to everyone.

As always, until next time...stay curious, friends!

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3 lessons from Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement speech 18 years ago that still resonate today

• Apple's Steve Jobs gave the commencement address at Stanford University on June 12, 2005.
• He told three stories about love, death, and following your gut. 
• It's been 18 years since Jobs delivered the speech, and the lessons he shared continue to resonate.

Some of Steve Jobs' most iconic quotes came from a commencement address on June 12, 2005. 

Speaking to the graduating class of Stanford University , the Apple cofounder and then-CEO told three stories that connected lessons he'd learned in his life to advice for the new graduates. 

Jobs died in 2011 at the age of 56. 

Eighteen years later, the 15-minute speech continues to resonate, offering useful advice on life and work for people of all ages.

Here are the three big lessons Jobs shared: 

'Trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future'

Jobs' first story explained why he decided to drop out of college. 

After six months in school, Jobs said he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life, and he couldn't see how college was going to play a role. Rather than spend his parents' money, he dropped out. 

"I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK," Jobs said in the speech. 

Instead, Jobs said he started "dropping in" on classes that interested him.

"Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on," Jobs said.

That included a class on calligraphy that taught Jobs about typeface and design, which would later play a role in building the Mac personal computer. 

"If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do," Jobs said. 

Connecting the dots between a calligraphy class and the design of the Mac wasn't something Jobs could see at the time when he dropped out. 

Related stories

"You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future," Jobs said. "You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever."

'Find what you love'

The second story Jobs told recounted the time he was fired from Apple. 

In 10 years, Jobs and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak had gone from running a business in a garage to a $2 billion company, Jobs said in the speech. 

But at 30, Jobs was forced out of the company. 

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me," Jobs said.

Jobs said in the speech that it led to a creative period in his life, in which he started two companies and fell in love. Later, Apple bought one of the companies, and Jobs returned to Apple. 

"Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith," Jobs said. "I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers."

If you haven't found what you love yet, Jobs said, "Don't settle." 

"As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."

'Death is the destination we all share'

Jobs' final story of the commencement speech revealed what he went through when learning of his pancreatic cancer diagnosis. Jobs died of complications related to the cancer in 2011.

Jobs said since he was a teenager, he had used the motivation of living each day like it might be your last to help him make big choices. 

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose," Jobs said. "You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

When Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004, he was initially told the cancer was incurable and that he had only months to live. Later that day, he said, a biopsy revealed the cancer could be treated with surgery. "I had the surgery and thankfully I'm fine now."

But the near-death encounter gave him certainty, he said, of what he wanted to share with the graduates. 

"Death is the destination we all share," Jobs said. "No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life."

That is, it's important to make sure you're living true to you. 

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life," Jobs said, adding, "Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."

After his three stories, Jobs left Stanford's 2005 graduating class with parting words he learned from the final issue of a 1970s publication: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

You can watch the full speech here:

Watch: Steve Jobs left Apple to start a new computer company. His $12 million failure saved Apple.

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That Time Aaron Sorkin Helped Steve Jobs Write His Legendary Stanford Commencement Speech

The late Apple CEO also tried to get him to write a Pixar movie.

Six years before his death, Steve Jobs gave the most memorable speech of his life. He wasn't in his signature black turtleneck, sneakers, and blue jeans announcing a new product at an Apple keynote. He was in a gown, standing before the 2005 Stanford graduating class. Jobs spoke about life, death, failure, success in a speech that has since been viewed millions of times on YouTube. 

"The writer had never met Jobs, but they had spoken by phone. 'First time, he called me because there was an episode of The West Wing that he particularly liked and he called to say so out of the blue,' Sorkin recalls. 'The second time, he wanted me to come and tour Pixar in the hope that I would write a Pixar film. And the third time, he asked for my help on a Stanford commencement speech.' (Sorkin obliged, free of charge.)"

Now, it's still not clear how much Sorkin helped writing the speech. He's said in the past that he only looked it over after it was written, and all the thoughts came from Jobs.

A few other interesting things to note in this quote: Jobs, a mere mortal just like us, would make random calls to writers of specific TV episodes that he liked. And allow us to imagine a Sorkin-penned Pixar movie. Woody and Buzz walking briskly through Andy's room, furiously babbling about the political hierarchy of their toys. Mr. Potato Head plots to plant a story on the Etch-a-Sketch to hurt Woody's good standing with Sarge and the other soldiers. Cue thunderous music. Yeah,  Toy Story would have been way different.

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Who’d Want to Give a Commencement Speech Anymore?

Executive communications experts say the gig is becoming a harder sell for business leaders.

By Sarah Kessler ,  Lauren Hirsch and Michael J. de la Merced

Tim Cook has delivered at least seven commencement addresses since becoming the chief executive of Apple. The superstar Taylor Swift, whose concerts have been credited with lifting local economies, addressed New York University’s graduation ceremony in 2022. Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Jamie Dimon — they’ve all given graduation speeches more than once.

They’re obviously not doing it for the money (and typically there isn’t any). Instead, speakers have long seen graduation ceremonies as offering something increasingly rare: a stage where a large group of people gather to hear speakers impart wisdom, advice or whatever else they want to talk about.

The appeal of being a commencement speaker, however, seems to be waning.

Just three Fortune 50 chief executives appear to be commencement speakers this year, as colleges have faced campus protests over the war in Gaza, student arrests and wealthy alumni threatening to break ties with their alma maters over antisemitism.

“The idea of C.E.O.s going out aggressively and speaking anywhere near this environment on campuses, it just doesn’t seem like the moment for them to be doing that,” said David Murray, the executive director of the Professional Speechwriters Association.

C.E.O.s are tired of talking. At a recent meeting of executive speechwriters, Murray said one takeaway stood out. As one presenter put it, “ Less is more, in ’24.”

Murray highlighted the sentiment in the Professional Speechwriters Association’s May newsletter: “Folks will increasingly keep their leaders out of the spotlight,” he wrote, describing the current moment as one in which “even formerly anodyne messages encouraging employees to vote” sound partisan to some.

That approach marks a drastic evolution from when executives made statements in droves after the death of a Black man, George Floyd, in police custody in 2020. “They didn’t get rewarded for it,” Murray said. “They got called woke. One group said they didn’t go far enough, one group said they went too far, and now they’re definitely in a phase of, ‘We comment on things that absolutely have essential bearing on our company and our business.’”

Campuses reflect an era of division. Before the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the war in Gaza and the campus protests that followed, the City University of New York School of Law announced that it would have no commencement speaker . The school had faced a backlash when speakers at previous commencements focused on their support for Palestinians. After protests on campus related to the war, and the ensuing controversy over how school administrations handled them, Columbia University announced that it would cancel its main commencement ceremony altogether . And across the country, as many ceremonies carried on without disruption, several have been interrupted by protests and walkouts , sometimes targeted at the school’s choice of speaker .

Michael Franklin, the executive director of the industry association Speechwriters of Color, said speechwriters are increasingly preparing for disruption. “A new part of the package this year, in addition to the remarks that they would deliver, is also having some alternative transition remarks in the event of a disruption,” he said.

Some executives prefer chats to speeches. The chief executive of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, accepted an honorary Ph.D. at Georgia Tech this year, but did not give a commencement speech. Instead, at a special ceremony in January, he delivered a five-minute speech , left the stage to remove his graduation robes, and returned for a “fireside chat” with the school’s president, Ángel Cabrera.

“They love fireside chats,” Murray said of executives. “They want to sit down, have a chummy conversation, look charming, be charming. Say short things, kind of stick to their key messages.”

Kate Linkous, an executive vice president in Edelman’s corporate reputation practice, said she’s also noticed more conferences replacing their keynote speeches with fireside chats. “The commencement speech is one of our last few brilliant examples of a long-form speech,” she said.

Will the commencement address as we know it survive? One potential outcome is that the address just becomes boring, as speakers focus on avoiding controversy. “Whenever you’re in a position of trying to sand something down, you end up appealing to no one and saying nothing,” said Ben Krauss, a former speechwriter for Joe Biden and other politicians and the chief executive of the speech writing and strategic communications firm Fenway Strategies. His advice?

“People have been protesting commencements for as long as there have been commencements,” he said. “If someone interrupts, someone interrupts. That’s just kind of a natural feature of human communication.” — Sarah Kessler

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

The N.C.A.A. signed a potentially historic settlement. The college sports association and several top conferences agreed to a $2.8 billion pact that would pay student athletes for playing. If approved by a federal judge, the plan would be the biggest step yet in erasing the idea that college stars are amateurs — but skeptics worry the plan doesn’t resolve a number of major issues.

Nikki Haley opened the door for her donors to back Donald Trump. The former Republican presidential hopeful said she would vote for her onetime rival in November, seemingly making peace with a man she had castigated during the Republican primary. That could give cover to deep-pocketed benefactors like the hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin to give money to Trump, whose campaign fund-raising has trailed President Biden’s. Stephen Schwarzman, the Blackstone chief, said this week that he would back Trump .

Scarlett Johansson took on OpenAI. The actress, who played an A.I. assistant in the movie “Her,” accused the tech start-up of using a sound-alike voice for the latest version of its ChatGPT chatbot — after she turned the company down. The dispute reflected eroding trust in OpenAI and its chief, Sam Altman; Hollywood’s conflicted relationship with A.I.; and Silicon Valley’s continued tolerance of start-ups asking for forgiveness instead of permission .

The Justice Department sued Live Nation over its dominance of live entertainment. The antitrust suit accused the Ticketmaster parent of maintaining an illegal monopoly by locking venues and artists into exclusive contracts and threatening retribution to rivals. It’s the latest instance of the Biden administration’s crackdown on what it sees as unfair competition, and comes despite Live Nation’s endorsement of some aspects of the White House’s fight against so-called “junk fees.”

The F.D.I.C.’s chair said he planned to resign. Martin Gruenberg agreed to step down after losing Democratic support over what reports said was a toxic culture at the banking regulator. Republicans said that Gruenberg, who said he’ll leave when a replacement is in place, should go immediately, as Democrats seek to preserve their majority at an agency tasked with drafting tough new banking regulations.

The bankruptcy blame game

Red Lobster made news this week when it blamed its all-you-can-eat shrimp deal for helping tip the company into bankruptcy . The claim was part of what’s known as a first-day declaration, a legal filing that companies in bankruptcy make to explain why they ran into trouble.

These declarations are written carefully and strategically. A company “usually wants to present itself as the honest but unfortunate debtor,” Adam Levitin, a bankruptcy professor at Georgetown University Law Center, told DealBook. “It’s in bankruptcy for reasons that were not about bad management, but about just things out of its control in the world.”

That’s why so many companies that file for Chapter 11 protection cite macroeconomic trends or quirky exogenous factors, despite other issues being more culpable. In Red Lobster’s case, the company was dealing with expensive leases and the same challenges facing other casual dining companies.

The unlimited shrimp promotion — the brainchild of Red Lobster’s former chief, reportedly in conjunction with Thai Union, the chain’s parent — is unlikely to have been a primary cause for the filing. “The dollar value is not big enough, and it’s a little too indirect,” Vincent Buccola, a bankruptcy professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told DealBook. (His guess: Red Lobster’s current management may be trying to imply the threat of future litigation against Thai Union. Thai Union, for its part, has denied the accusation. )

But it got DealBook thinking: What other unexpected factors have companies blamed for their bankruptcies?

Low-carb diets: The parent company of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, Interstate Bakeries, filed for bankruptcy in 2004, citing low-carb eating as a cause as the Atkins diet became all the rage. That said, the company also carried about $1.3 billion in debt, and had been criticized by analysts for a lack of innovation and high labor costs. The company filed for bankruptcy again in 2012 .

Twinkies ultimately had a happy ending: The investment firm Apollo Global Management and the financier Dean Metropoulos acquired the Hostess brand name and took that business through one of the most successful corporate transformations in recent memory. After going public in 2016, Hostess was sold to J.M. Smucker for $5.6 billion last year.

A helium shortage: Party City filed for bankruptcy in January 2023, blaming in part a global helium shortage driven by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But the retailer carried about $1.7 billion in debt and was still reeling from the pandemic, which had disrupted supply chains and put a damper on festive gatherings. (Its founder also blamed the store’s high prices ).

Party City emerged from bankruptcy in October after eliminating about $1 billion in debt and closing less profitable stores.

People fleeing Manhattan: When the luxury home goods retailer ABC Carpet & Home filed for bankruptcy in 2021, among the factors it cited was the “mass exodus of current and prospective customers leaving the city” during the pandemic. But the company had also been fighting with its landlord and fallen behind on its digital presence , which became a problem once the pandemic hit.

The retailer, which still operates its multicolor Manhattan store, later emerged from bankruptcy and was sold to an investment firm .

The numerical case for giving Elon Musk a big payday

Tesla this week pressed its case to investors that they should again approve Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package at the electric auto maker’s annual meeting next month. The company said the compensation plan, which a judge struck down in January, did what it was supposed to do: motivate Musk to lead the company to significant growth. That included Tesla’s total shareholder return, which vastly outstripped those of other tech giants — the so-called Magnificent 7 — from March 2018, when shareholders first approved Musk’s pay deal , to the end of 2023.

“A deal should be a deal: Stockholders approved the plan. Elon hit the targets. We should hold up our end of the deal,” the company wrote in its presentation.

It’s worth noting that Tesla this year is the worst performing Magnificent 7 stock, down roughly 28 percent as of Friday’s market close.

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you Tuesday.

We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected] .

Sarah Kessler is an editor for the DealBook newsletter and writes features on business and how workplaces are changing. More about Sarah Kessler

Lauren Hirsch joined The Times from CNBC in 2020, covering deals and the biggest stories on Wall Street. More about Lauren Hirsch

Michael de la Merced joined The Times as a reporter in 2006, covering Wall Street and finance. Among his main coverage areas are mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcies and the private equity industry. More about Michael J. de la Merced

The Campus Protests Over the Gaza War

News and Analysis

​Harvard said that it will no longer take positions on matters outside of the university , accepting the recommendations of a faculty committee that urged the school to reduce its messages on issues of the day.

​Weeks after counterprotesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, the university police have made the first arrest related to the attack .

​​A union for academic workers in the University of California system announced that an ongoing strike challenging the system’s handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations would extend to two more campuses , U.C.L.A. and U.C. Davis.

The Battle Over College Speech:  ​University demonstrations over the war in Gaza have reignited the debate over campus speech, and have led to a rethinking of who sets the terms for language in academia .

Making Sense of the Protests:  In the weeks leading up to graduation, our reporter spoke with more than a dozen students at Columbia University and Barnard College about how the campus protests had shaped them .

A Complex Summer:  Many university leaders and officials may be confronting federal investigations, disputes over student discipline  — and the prospect that the protests start all over again in the fall.

A New Litmus Test:  Some Jewish students say their views on Zionism — which are sometimes assumed — have affected their social life on campus .