The College Fix

University also snubs JD Vance, second Catholic to serve as vice president of the United States

Donald Trump appears to remain the only newly inaugurated president in the last 65 years to not be invited to speak at the University of Notre Dame’s commencement ceremony. The tradition began when President Dwight Eisenhower spoke at the ceremony in 1960.

The university has not responded to multiple requests for comment from The Fix and other reputable sources regarding whether or not it invited the president or vice president to speak at its commencement May 18.

However, looking back, the university indicated Trump was not invited in 2017, following his first election. Then-President John Jenkins said Trump didn’t meet “a certain bar in terms of just moral decency,” the National Catholic Register reported.

Jenkins resigned in 2023 after allowing speakers on campus to promote abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism, The College Fix previously reported.

Further, the leader of a conservative alumni group at Notre Dame said he doesn’t believe Trump was invited this year.

Reached for comment, Sycamore Trust Chairman Bill Dempsey referred The Fix to an article he’d written on the topic, titled “Snubbing Tradition.”

“While neither the university nor President Trump’s office would say whether he had been invited, it seems clear he was not,” Dempsey stated.

Dempsey also raised concerns about Vice President JD Vance not speaking at the ceremony.

Vance “is only the second Catholic vice president of the United States.” This makes “his absence from the university’s commencement plans additionally conspicuous, especially after Notre Dame invited Trump’s previous vice president,” Dempsey stated.

What’s more, “pro-abortion Presidents Obama and Biden, who were invited, met Father Jenkins’s standard despite being the Church’s most formidable adversaries on abortion through their policies and programs facilitating and promoting abortions,” Dempsey stated.

Obama’s speech in 2009 prompted widespread criticism of Notre Dame’s decision, including disapproval from 83 cardinals and bishops, he stated.

Students organized a rally and participated in a Mass on the quad, drawing thousands. The former president’s speech also sparked a wave of petition signatures, he stated.

Other former speakers include Presidents John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.

In February, editorial board members of Notre Dame’s newspaper, The Observer, advocated in favor of inviting Trump to the ceremony.

They stated that “even when a speaker is divisive, the office they hold — and the ideas they bring — demand engagement, not retreat,” adding that “Notre Dame has never been a place for intellectual cowardice” and that it “should not start now.”

Other students, however, wrote an op-ed in response, stating “Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he cannot rise to this level of decorum we expect from our commencement speakers.”

In another op-ed for independent student newspaper The Irish Rover, junior Bridgette Rodgers stated, “[Inviting Vance] would show students that one does not have to sacrifice one’s faith to be successful, and further, that all success is ultimately rooted in living out the faith.”

Dempsey, however, suggested that Notre Dame scrap the “policy of inviting every elected president to deliver a commencement address” altogether.

“The calamitous Obama incident badly damaged Notre Dame’s reputation as a Catholic university, and that experience will be repeated every time a pro-abortion candidate is elected president and is honored at Commencement,” he stated. Further, these presidential visits do not enhance the school’s reputation.

This year, Adm. Christopher Grady, a Notre Dame alumnus and acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will give the speech, according to an announcement from the school.

While Trump may not have been invited to speak at ND, he did become the first sitting president to deliver the commencement address at the University of Alabama this month, ABC reported. 

“You’re the first graduating class of the golden age of America,” he told the graduates on May 1, according to the Associated Press.

MORE: Notre Dame used federal funds to study ‘queer farmers’ relationships’

IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: University of Notre Dame campus and President Trump giving a speech; AaronYoder/CanvaPro and Evan El-Amin/Shutterstock

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