There’s a two-part response to this question, with the first, straightforward answer being, “In 1890.” The second answer is, “It’s complicated.” The UW’s first two graduation keynotes, in 1856 and 1857, were given by the university’s chancellor, John Hiram Lathrop, who’s remembered today chiefly as the namesake for the building that used to house the women’s gymnasium and for coining the university’s motto. It’s possible he didn’t do a great job, because in the following 32 years, there was no graduation keynote. In 1890, the UW asked Elisha Andrews, president of Brown University, to give the address. He was the first of four non-UW academics to give the commencement address. Then from 1894 until 1970, the UW president was the keynote speaker. In 1970, the university invited Steward Udall, secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and the following year, it asked Fred Friendly, legendary journalist at CBS. Through most of the 1970s and 1980s, UW–Madison had no commencement address, with the exception of May 1979 (vice President Walter Mondale), May 1983 (Martha Peterson, president of Beloit College), and May 1989 (Eleanor Holmes Norton, former head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). The last UW employee to have the keynote role was then-vice chancellor David Ward MS’61, PhD’65 in December 1989. The last commencement with no speaker at all was December 1994. If you want to know who this year’s speaker is, a commemorative flavor of Babcock ice cream might give you a clue.

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