Marquette University announced its 2026 undergraduate commencement speaker on Feb. 23 — alumnus Chris Duffey, an author and leader in artificial intelligence. With large disapproval immediately coming from students and faculty, the university needs to listen to our voices.
Duffey is the global head of AI & Agentic Systems at Adobe and manages AI system behavior to support the platform. He is recognized as a global leader in AI and Agentic products and was named the 2025 Fluxx Visionary of the Year in Tech & AI. His experience is a main reason why Marquette President Kimo Ah Yun chose him as this year’s speaker.
“He will bring a unique perspective to our graduates as they leave Marquette, facing an unprecedented landscape of technological advancement and ethical dilemma,” Ah Yun said.
While Duffey has the qualifications to discuss AI, it is not the motivational pep talk the graduating class wants to hear.
A speech about the technology that is predicted to take over 300 million jobs and impact 25% of the global labor market is extremely tone-deaf. Having a speaker badgering students about how to ethically use AI while it is stealing career opportunities from them is insensitive.
Many students have worked hard — relentlessly studying, facing financial burdens and managing family matters — to receive a quality liberal arts education. To end such a journey by being preached at by someone who works with a technology that can easily replace one’s years of dedication is a tremendous disappointment.
As our new graduates enter the workforce, they should leave with enlightenment, not a sense of impending doom.
Compared to past commencement speakers, this year’s decision is a letdown. Marquette has had a commendable run of choosing creative, inspiring people with human-driven focuses as its undergraduate speakers. Former Marquette basketball player and NBA legend Dwyane Wade was chosen in 2022; Academy Award-winning actress Marlee Matlin in 2023; Global Brigades CEO and co-founder Shital Vora in 2024 and Diane Foley — mother of alumnus and slain journalist James Foley — most recently in 2025.
All these speakers had meaningful stories to tell based on visionary and artistic experiences. Students could relate to their anecdotes. A speech given by a leader in AI — a technology that strips originality and remains monotonous — does not emanate the same level of expressiveness.
Every major and career path at Marquette involves a degree of imagination, innovation and human connection — traits that AI will never have. We are taught to be inventive and resourceful, but a commencement speech about a lifeless, non-tangible technology takes those lessons away.
Students should be excited and look forward to their commencement speech, but this year, they have expressed strong dissatisfaction and even infuriation. Many blatantly called the decision “a slap in the face.”
It is also worth mentioning the repetitiveness of AI discourse as well. Our academics are saturated with talk about AI, mainly alluding to why it is bad and should not be used.
Marquette does not have a unified AI policy; use of the technology is up to the discretion of each professor. The university does this to provide “instructional flexibility,” but there are different guidelines for each department or professor, sending conflicting messages about AI.
While it is an important subject to discuss, it is, once again, not the motivational, inspiring monologue the students want to hear — especially when the majority of them are discouraged or outright banned from using AI in the classroom at Marquette.
If the need to discuss ethical AI use in the workforce is so dire, it should be more consistently implemented throughout our academics instead of being lectured to us at the very end, upon our graduation.
The nature of AI also strongly contradicts Marquette’s core beliefs and Jesuit values.
The university’s tagline is “Be the Difference,” but this encouragement falls short when we are constantly told about the prospect of AI taking our jobs and consuming the world. The inspiration is lost and is, instead, replaced with dread.
Along with the lack of creativity involved, AI poses many environmental concerns and threats. The data centers required to run AI increase energy usage, carbon emissions and can waste up to 1.8 billion gallons of water annually.
These statistics go against Marquette’s “Laudato Si’” mission which aims to expand campus sustainability efforts in response to Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical letter. Subtitled “On Care for Our Common Home,” the Pope addresses environmental degradation and calls for everyone, not only Catholics, to take global action in the letter. We must take care of the world where we so graciously live.
In 2023, former Marquette University President Michael Lovell announced the formation of the Laudato Si’ Action Plan Task Force, a group made to develop campus-wide sustainability goals.
Marquette wants to instill environmental awareness and action but then chooses a commencement speaker who specializes in AI — technology that is actively damaging our planet. Additionally, there have not been updates on the task force’s progress since its formation.
Between contradicting university values and showing little to no response to student backlash, it seems as though Marquette’s mission of serving God and its students is just a performative act. This commencement speaker decision denounces the values that the university claims to strive for.
Marquette, listen to your students.
A Silicon Valley lecture is not what the Class of ’26 deserves as its parting goodbye.
Editorial topics by the Marquette Wire are decided at weekly meetings between members of the executive board. The editorial is crafted with leadership by the Executive Opinions Editor. The executive board consists of the managing editor of the Marquette Tribune and executive print editors, including news, sports and arts & entertainment.
