By Colin Terrill and Katelyn Yoshimoto
David Axelrod, AB’76, a prominent political analyst and former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, has been announced as the speaker for the University of Chicago’s 2025 Class Day ceremony on June 6.
The founding director of UChicago’s Institute of Politics, Axelrod will address the Class of 2025 and their friends and family at the College celebration, which kicks off UChicago’s Convocation weekend
“It's a special honor to be invited to give the Class Day speech on the campus where I arrived a half-century ago and which has played an enormous and positive role in my life,” said Axelrod. “I look forward to drawing on the lessons of my own journey in a way that might be useful to these graduates in these uniquely challenging and promising times.”
A New York City native, Axelrod was drawn to the city of Chicago as much as the University itself.
“I was fascinated by the dynamic political environment, and began working as a student journalist to understand and report on it,” said Axelrod, who remembers sociology professors Morris Janowitz and Richard Taub adding to that understanding. “Those early years in their classes and as a journalist, during which I became quite an expert on Chicago's Byzantine political machinations, helped lay the foundation for my life as much as my oft-neglected studies.”
Axelrod was a political reporter for the Hyde Park Herald and worked for the Chicago Tribune after graduating from UChicago. In the 1980s, he founded Axelrod & Associates, where he began serving as a consultant for over 150 campaigns, becoming one of the country’s preeminent political strategists. Axelrod was the chief strategist for President Obama’s first campaign in 2008 before helping him during another successful run for the Oval Office in 2012.
Returning to his alma mater in 2013, he helped establish the Institute of Politics. The non-partisan institute, which was designed to foster students’ passion for politics, has hosted countless political figures from both sides of the aisle and regularly puts on programming designed to spark conversations and debate.
“When I finished my career in politics and government, I was determined to bring to the University the thing I most missed when I was a student: an extracurricular program that would bring to campus leading political and governmental practitioners from across the spectrum and around the world to engage in civil discourse with each other and with students,” said Axelrod. “There are so many forces tearing us apart in our current, rancorous political environment that the ability to drill down through rigorous, thoughtful—and sometimes uncomfortable—discussion and debate is more essential today than ever before.”
Since launching 12 years ago, the IOP has hosted more than 1,000 events and seminars where such dialogue regularly takes place.
He currently serves as a distinguished fellow at UChicago, has published a New York Times bestseller, is a senior political commentator for CNN, and hosted the top-rated political podcast “The Axe Files.”
Axelrod will join a group of UChicago prominent alumni who have been addressed College graduates during Class Day. That list includes U.S. Senator Andy Kim, AB’04; award-winning journalist and podcast host Rebecca Jarvis, AB’03; New York Times columnist David Brooks, AB’83; and distinguished cancer researcher Otis W. Brawley, SB’81, among others.
The Class Day ceremony, which will take place on the Main Quadrangles, is slated to begin at 2 p.m. on June 6. Graduating students and their families are invited to join the College at a reception prior to the ceremony on the Bartlett Quadrangle at noon. Please visit UChicago’s Convocation website for more information.