Survey: Prestigious colleges largely feature liberal commencement speakers

Yale University
(Image credit: Christopher Capozziello/Getty Images)

A survey by the Daily Caller of the 2015 commencement speaker choices of the top 25 universities in the country finds that just three have selected a right of center dignitary. Those three are former Secretary of State Colin Powell, scheduled at Rice University; Sen. Shelley Moore Capito at Washington and Lee; and political commentator David Brooks at Dartmouth.

The other 22 schools all selected more liberal speakers, ranging from Arianna Huffington to Obama mega-donor Marc Benioff, and including eleven current or former Democratic politicians and appointees.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.