Conan’s Harvard Commencement Address

Conan recently delivered this commencement speech at Harvard University and thought that he'd like to share it with you the listener. So here you go. Enjoy! Welcome!

“Trusties, deans, faculty, alumni, graduates, families, my fellow honorans, justice departments, spies,”

and that Uber eats driver delivering mimosas. As I look upon this gathering of tomorrow's greatest minds, I'm confident saying, there is no less flattering outfit than the cap and gown. We all look like the Potions Professor at Hogwarts up here on stage it feels like an AA meeting for druids.

I want to thank President Garber for his incredible stewardship of this graduating class.

Fantastic jobs, they're really nice, really nice. Normally, normally I would give you an A+, but in keeping with upcoming Harvard policy, I'm adjusting your grade to a C- minus. Trust me, it's for the good of the school. I will keep my remarks brief because MIT's graduation is also today and I want to give you a 15 minute head start on your job. Those nerds down the river, won't know what hit them.

Also, just a quick announcement after the ceremony. Tequila shots are on me at the Porcelain Club. Yeah, yeah, you're all invited just force your way inside and tell them cone and send you. There are an understanding bunch. As we gather here today at this beautiful Tercent-Tenary Theatre, I am struck by one thought.

Only someone from Harvard would call this patch of grass a Tercent-Tenary Theatre.

Just look at this shot, Persevalu, just a veritable Tercent-Tenary Theatre! Harvard, why use a $5 word when a $50 word will do. It's really nice to be back at the very last place I used the word "queralist" in his sentence.

“Standing right over there by widener, I ask someone, what does "queralist" mean?”

Fortunately, they knew the answer because it was a Yale student, man, they're good. Oh, please! Please! Let us not denigrate our fellow livis. Let's admit that all seven are worthy institutions.

Except for Princeton, those people are absolute tools. The hell's going on over there? Eh? Yeah. As I stand here, I'm flooded with so many rich memories of this campus

and especially of my dear beloved motherhouse. Yeah. Yeah, that's enough.

“Mother was named after former Harvard President,”

increased mother, who was an infamous figure in the Salem Witch Trials. And if any of you spent more than an hour in motherhouse, you know the witch has got the last laugh. (laughing) It's such an ugly building.

Okay! I'm sorry. It's tear it down, start again. All right, here we go. Of course, we all make jokes about our school,

but Harvard is still our nation's oldest and most renowned seat of higher learning. And today, you are the 375th graduating class. Yes!

Did you know that the first graduating class in 1642

had only 9 students? Yeah. And somehow, even they were all legacies. That's hard to do. No university in our nation has produced more Nobel laureates

or white-collar criminals. So whether you choose good or evil, know that you are among the very best.

Today, this university honors 13 esteemed colleges,

“and I salute all of you, each and everyone.”

Now, of course, don't push it. Of course, this includes the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Yes! Yeah. And let me tell you something. When Harvard, when Harvard dentists say you may rinse and spit,

they say it in Latin? I wasn't going to do that joke, but the dental school said that it'd give me free veneers of a game of shout-out. No, I take my assignment today, seriously, and in preparation for this speech,

I asked the provost office for intel on all your concerns. And I was told the following. You're obsessed with doing laundry now that it's free. You bemoan the lack of fresh berries. You're upset.

You're upset that not all the dining halls have hot breakfast. (audience cheering) And you are alarmed. You're alarmed that the Kennedy School

has stopped providing complimentary coffee. Yeah.

If these are indeed your concerns, you second me.

(audience laughing)

“What to have those complaints or things you'd hear from a brown bear?”

More berries! (audience laughing) Before I continue, there is one thing I must acknowledge for your entire academic lives. You have been lectured to by lots and lots of old white men.

And now, when you are minutes from getting out the door, Harvard is saying, "Not so fast!" We found one more! (audience laughing) He graduated 41 years ago, and he's not just white,

but shockingly white. (audience laughing) In direct sunlight, you can see his bones. (audience laughing)

Well, I may be old and white, but let me assure you,

I still fit in seamlessly with the long list of Nobel laureates, heads of state, and civil rights activists who have given this commencement address. Now, sure, we did great things, but only I play a talking,

“potty training gadget named Smarty Pants”

in the upcoming Toy Story Five and Theaters Everywhere on June 19th! (audience laughing) Did Winston Churchill do that? He did not!

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Well, she did audition, but testing showed she frightened children. (audience laughing) Yes, I graduated 40 years ago, but I promise you, your lives here,

were no different than mine was in 1981. Like you, I too had to put an extra long cord on my dorm phone, so I could cook my link cuisine while talking to my friends about Mr. T. Like you, I know the pain of losing my place

on the Ms. Pac-Man leaderboard, because I was too busy buying an erase cartridge for my Smith Corona Typewriter. Yes, we are all bound by these ancient common truths. (audience laughing)

Now, of course, I understand the unprecedented difficulties you faced today, including AI, yeah, I know, I know. Luckily, AI is not a problem at Harvard. Here, professors have been able to quickly flag students' use of AI thanks to the sophisticated AI software

they use to grade papers. (audience laughing) It all works out. (audience laughing) Yeah, and don't worry, despite your fears,

trust me when I say AI cannot replace you. Yes, yes, yes, it'll be too busy replacing those creeps from Princeton, anyway. (audience laughing) Of course, perhaps the biggest issue

facing this institution is that the federal government of the United States is suing our university. Yeah. (audience laughing) Many people think I've come today to defend Harvard.

We'll sorry those people are wrong. Not only am I not against these lawsuits, I'm here to announce that I'm joining them. I too, I'm suing Harvard. I'm suing Harvard for the cast iron bunk bed

that greeted me upon my arrival at how were these 16 my freshman year? (audience laughing) A bed that has since been confiscated by the Hague as an instrument of divine cruelty.

(audience laughing) I'm suing Harvard for allowing me to sign up for a 9 a.m. class at the Science Center and a 10 a.m. class down its soldiers field. For God's sake, that was a child!

(audience laughing)

undergraduate sex life. (audience laughing) For me having a three-way man

“adding a second mirror to my dorm. (audience laughing)”

I'm suing Harvard because once I had to listen to the Harvard crocodiles do an eight-minute rendition of spliss splash I was taking a bath. My God, each one took a solo and it was awful. (audience laughing)

And finally, I'm suing Harvard because

and this is absolutely true. In the spring of my sophomore year while trying to grab a quick lunch at Adam's house, I was served a meal. (audience cheering)

I was served a meal called "Cat and Ben's Fish spaghetti." (audience laughing) To this day, I have no idea who cat and Ben is or why someone would combine government-ishu-caud with spaghetti.

Harvard, I'll see your ass in court. (audience laughing) Yes, I'm confident that my claims will have more merit than those filed by the president of United States.

(audience laughing) Yes. (audience cheering)

“As you are aware, the current administration”

feels Harvard admits too many foreign students and who knows, they may have a point. After all, what has any foreigner ever added to our American culture? With the possible exception of music, literature, art,

cuisine, fashion, architecture, dance, scientific breakthroughs in the core of our moral codes and at the blades. (audience cheering) Seriously.

Seriously, if foreigners hadn't gummed up the works, right now, it all be listening to delightful Calvinist reggae. (audience laughing) Eating savory, church of England, Zidi. (audience laughing)

And dancing the forbidden and sexually charged, the Lutheran Lombada. (audience laughing) But let me assure you, I did not come here simply to toss off some jokes about my alma mater.

I mean, that was the main reason. (audience laughing) But I really do, really do love this school, it changed my life. The day I told my bedridden grandmother,

a woman who had never had the opportunity

to go to college, that I had been accepted to Harvard and seeing her weep is one of the happiest days of my life. Of course, it turned out I was sitting on her leg. (audience laughing) But I knew in addition to the pain she felt real joy.

(audience laughing) And I felt joy as well. Especially when I sat here at my commencement in 1985. I understand, I really understand how much hard work hard work it took for all of you to get to this point.

“And you should feel enormous pride just as I did.”

On my commencement day, I was content if my Harvard degree was the first thing people knew about me. But what I have found, after all these years, is that I am fine with Harvard being the last thing anyone knows about me.

This is not a diss on this institution in any way. I just believe that status, even when it's hard one, can be double-edged. When I started my career, hosting a late night talk show, there was no internet.

The only thing the media knew about Conan O'Brien was that he went to Harvard. That association may have been fine if I were a burgeoning philosopher or physicist, but for a comedian, that was a death now.

(audience laughing) People thought the name of my show would be late night with he thinks he's better than you. (audience laughing) Which I would have gone with, but it didn't fit on the shirt.

All these years later, Harvard is far, far from the very first thing,

people think of when they hear my name. It made 10,000 hours of content. And none of it screams Ivy League Education. That's right, I'm the man who went on hot ones and rubbed hot sauce on my nipples.

(audience laughing) I shopped for weed with Kevin Hartnice Cube. I got drunk in an American girl doll store. (audience laughing) I've done many things no man should do.

And all of this was before I became a Pixar party training toy. Now some of you may think, well, that's comedy Conan.

And to you I say, how dare you interrupt? I'm giving a commencement address.

“Yes, my challenge is where you need to me.”

But I've found that any single achievement, like a Harvard diploma, becomes less important to me in all the very best ways when I embrace certain principles.

The first is that I endeavor to always remind myself

that I have done absolutely nothing alone. Walt Whitman wrote, I contain multitudes. Well, I contain a breakfast sandwich and a nice coffee from Tate, but whatever I have achieved has been with the help of an infinitely packed clown car

of multitudes. If I could invite everybody, a live or dead who was contributed to my being your commencement speaker today, all of Cambridge and half of Austin would be crammed, shoulder to shoulder, with friends, family, well-wishers,

writers, producers, haters, fans, and a billion chance encounters, recognizing that my accomplishments

“are not just my own, has given me much needed”

balance throughout my life, and it really helps

to spread the blame around when things go south. [LAUGHTER] Another thing I learned to do that has saved me repeatedly is to pivot. I have had to course correct so many times in my career

that my path is a crazed tangles of zigs and zags. I famously lost a job that meant the world to me, and then years later, I saw the entire format of late night television, something that I had dedicated my career to start to evaporate.

So at the suggestion of a very smart friend, I started a podcast. I actually had to stand for the project until with the help of guests, collaborators, and an assistant addicted to gummies,

I made something I love just as much if not more than my late night show. I have had to pivot like this so many times that I've come to really love pivoting, and I use the word pivot, much more

than I should in conversation and commencement speeches. And now I pivot to my next truth.

I always recognize the enormous role of luck in my life.

Refusing to see how luck has played a role in anyone's success is simply ignorant. Many people are happy to mistake a lucky poker hand for their own brilliance and fighting that human instinct has kept me sane.

“I honestly believe that community, spontaneity,”

and a real commitment to humility has helped me build a rich life that means much more to me than any diploma. And believe me, I'm not saying the goal is to renounce accomplishments, but rather to metabolize them. If you carry your victories lightly, other qualities,

kindness, originality, courage, humor, and humanity have room to emerge. Maybe, maybe-- [APPLAUSE] Maybe the greatest lessons I've learned

along these lines have been through my 24 travel shows. I have degraded myself in Cuba, Ghana, Korea, Armenia, half of Europe, Argentina, Thailand, Mexico, and Greenland, where I visited a real estate office and tried to buy the country.

When I traveled to another land, every quality I have discussed, community, adaptation, and it's sincerely humble approach our own necessary. Well, you don't speak the language. No one truly cares where you went to college

and you have no choice, but to make friends. So on these travels that I learned a great lesson, let yourself be bad at things. I have been a bad dancer in every country I have visited. But the people laugh, because it turns out,

everyone everywhere is related to at least one terrible dancer. For me, humility on these trips can easily lead to humiliation, which is also a useful tool. Three weeks ago, I visited Amsterdam, dressed up as Van Gogh, and forced my way into the Van Gogh Museum.

Where I started loudly demanding a cut of the merchandising, because I made no money during my lifetime. Guards, forcibly ejected me. I was roundling mocked by patrons from my pathetic display, but I did see a lot of smiles, and not one person said,

"Now, that's a Harvard grad." (audience laughing) In Tokyo, I met with a teacher of Japanese etiquette

and when I asked her why she just said, "Face."

(audience laughing)

“In Ghana, after accepting a royal invitation,”

I was kicked out of the Ashanti Palace by the Queen Mother, because her favorite soap opera was starting. I understand that I am preaching modesty and connection at a time when this is not in style. We are living through a period of extreme narcissism.

Our current leadership in Washington believes that empathy is a weakness, and that our nation stands supreme and alone. Add to that, everyone here today has a phone in their pocket. It is algorithmically programmed to celebrate you and you alone

by making you the protein-maxing hero

of your own special journey. Much has been written about how isolated and silently had become, but for me, the antidote is quite simple. By deemphasizing what makes us special. In your case, a prized degree, we can really find one another,

not as an exercise in virtue, but as a path towards greater laughter, love, and real growth. And believe me, I struggle daily with my own pretensions. I am aware that I am telling you to transcend your glories as I stand on this stage, accepting a doctorate,

I didn't really earn well dressed like a 12th century pope. (audience laughing) Big surprise, I have a giant ego. I mean, come on, the titles of my shows have been a late night with Conan O'Brien,

that's a night show with Conan O'Brien. Conan, where did I think of that one? Conan O'Brien needs a friend and Conan O'Brien must go. I thought like hell to have today's ceremony named Conan O'Brien presents the Harvard commencement

starring Conan O'Brien. Yeah, let's get that done. (audience applauding) So when I realized that my message today would be about the rejection of honor and status,

“can I consider for a second turning this doctorate down?”

Did I say no President Garber? My achievements are not my own. I must decline. Hell no! (audience laughing)

Not for a second. My grandfather, who everyone called Huffer, and who had to drop out of the seventh grade to support his parents, was a traffic cop in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Yeah, and he had a saying, take what you can get and ask for more. Very wise man.

Huffer is an essential passenger in my clown car of multitudes.

And in his honor, I will grab this doctorate and then ask President Garber if there's also a cash component. (audience laughing) You see, I like you, I'm still very much a work in progress,

but the ideals I stress today have made my life infinitely richer and happier. So maybe my wish for you is not that Harvard becomes the last thing people know about you,

“but instead that Harvard becomes the least important thing”

people know about you. (audience applauding) Because your real education starts now, with friends you've made and friends you've yet to meet with stunning successes and miserable defeats.

And with a humble acceptance that your greatness comes from the mess around you, not despite it. From the depths of my heart, I congratulate you class of 2026, not for any piece of paper you received today, but because of your hard work, determination, humanity,

and the boundless community that you have and will create. Let us all resolve on this great day to go forward together. And see, Toy Story Five and theaters everywhere, June 19th, thank you. (audience applauding)