Courtesy of GSU Communications
Emmy Award-winning journalist, co-founder of Lodge Freeway Media, and a contributing writer for The Atlantic Jemele Hill knew just what she was getting into when she agreed to be keynote speaker for Grambling State University’s Fall 2025 Commencement Exercises.
And she soon let the 318 fall graduates along with 42 graduates from the summer semester as she began her speech Friday morning inside the Fredrick C. Hobdy Assembly that she thought they knew, too.
Taking the new graduates through a 22-minute speech with Hill telling the new graduates to overcome whatever obstacles they might face and bet on themselves in life, Hill began her speech with a special Grambling-flavored splash when she told the crowd she wanted to hear some of the chant GSU is renowned for.
After saying she had graduated from a PWI — Michigan State University — where ‘there wasn’t as much flavor and the curl wasn’t quite right,” she told the crowd she had a few friends who attended Grambling State who had told her about the chant and that she needed them to do the chant for her.
And within 30 seconds the World Famed Marching Band and all of the graduates kicked off the party, chanting “GS … GS …GS … U, U, U, … I thought you knew!”
When that finished, Hill took a somber turn to help set up the main theme of her speech as she told a story about having a “near death experience” during which he heart stopped and CPR had to be performed after she was thrown out of the back window onto the trunk of her father’s Camaro during a trip intended to go see the movie “E.T.” that ended up in a horrific car accident when she was 7-years-old.
“I’m telling you this story because this is rooted in how you can find your purpose early, and how that purpose can stay with you for the rest of your life,” Hill said. “I happened to find my purpose before I lost all of my baby teeth.”
She said she woke up in a hospital three days later and could tell something wasn’t right. Hill had suffered a skull fracture that caused her brain to swell and put her life at risk because of the potential of internal bleeding.
“As a 7-year-old, this wasn’t something I could fully process.” Hill said. “But as time passed and I grew personally and professionally, I found myself returning to my near-death experience because it was the clearest indication and example I had ever received that I was here for a reason.”
“Now, all of you out here in the audience, whether you believe in God or not, you are here for an ordained, specific reason. You are in this moment right now because you were supposed to be in it — it didn’t happen by chance, it didn’t happen by accident, it happened because it was meant to be. Now that does not mean you didn’t put in hard work to be here, it doesn’t mean you didn’t have to overcome any obstacles, it means that something led you to this moment and you would be cheating yourself and the family members who have sacrificed so much for you to be in these seats, if you didn’t spend the rest of your life adhering to figuring out exactly what your purpose is.”
Hill then talked about all of the conversation heard so often today about college degrees no longer having value.
“One of the most disturbing conversations I see online is about the value of a college degree,” Hill said. “You’ve got a whole lot of people who have never set foot on a college campus, ain’t never watched an episode of ‘A Different World’ or ain’t never seen a drumline, and they’re fighting for their life every day on social media trying to figure out when to use ‘there’ or ‘their.’
“You’ve got people whose teachers used to hand them back their papers face down but are arguing up and down on everybody’s timeline telling you that college degrees ain’t worth it. Now if you go to trade school or into the military, I am not knocking those — those are incredible career paths. And you can still do those things and still go to college.”
Hill then got to the heart of the matter of the point she was making.
“However, ain’t it funny when Black people start getting their degrees, when Black women start rising in education and suddenly those degrees ain’t worth it?,” Hill said. “Ain’t that funny how that happens? We start getting our stuff together and graduating with statistics about Black women having more advanced degrees than anybody else, and suddenly those degrees ain’t worth it. Funny how that works. You’ve got HBCUs across the country experiencing record enrollment and suddenly the narrative is these degrees ain’t worth it. We have powerful people like Elon Musk, the CEO of Nvidia, telling people that college is overrated. But they’ve got their degrees, don’t they? Are they sending their kids to trade school and telling them trade school? Are they telling them to get their CDL? And again, there’s nothing wrong with that.
“But notice that the richest people — the ruling billionaires — are telling people degrees aren’t worth it, and then you look at their life. The main reason they release these bots telling us college is overrated is that they want us in the mindset that we can only be laborers and never owners. They want to keep us in that mindset that we are here only to serve them. They try to keep us out of their exclusive club because they know our talents, our brilliance, exposing them for what they truly are, which is mediocre.”
Hill told the graduates they made it into the Commencement Exercises because they just passed one of the toughest, arduous, common-sense tests they may ever take.
“College is about learning,” she said. “It is certainly about getting better at your craft. It is about developing your critical thinking and setting yourself up for a robust financial future. But by earning this degree, you also show that you are disciplined, that you can stick to a commitment, that you believe in yourself and that you can work with other people, learn from them, and that you can be in community.
“So, don’t ever let somebody disrespect or downplay what you just accomplished. To quote that great urban philosopher Nas, ‘Hate is just twisted admiration.’ They’re hating on you because they can’t do what you just did.” But earning this spectacular degree is just the beginning of a long and hopefully very rewarding journey. Y’all are just really scratching the surface. But as you level up from this day forward, do not forget that your responsibility to community remains.”
Hill even invoked legendary Grambling football coach Eddie Robinson in her speech.
He never told me this personally, but it’s probably my favorite quote from him — ‘Win without bragging, lose without acting a fool.’ How you handle success matters just as much as how you handle failure. We have this idea that money makes you. Money does not make you. It makes you more of what you are. So how you behave with money is the same way you behave without it. There’s a character test in there.”
After warning the graduates not to ruin their credit, Hill told the graduates to always believe in themselves.
“Do realize that in life, you’re going to make mistakes,” Hill said. “But there’s no mistakes you can recover from. So, don’t look at these next big decisions that you have to make about your future as if you get it wrong, something terrible is going to happen. Don’t let it fill you with too much anxiety. Trust me when I tell you that you are in the place that you need to be.
“You are enough. You don’t need to be more. You need to be exactly what you are. What distinguishes you from everybody else is that you’re you and they’re them. You is always great. You always wins. Always, always, bet on you.”
During her speech, valedictorian Janiah Tims thanked her fellow graduates for taking their college journey along with her.
“There is no limit to how far we can go,” Tims said. “To the graduating class, we made it, and we made it together.”
Three graduates — Joshua Elzie, Jahaven Hardy and Papa Nguer — were also officially commissioned as Second Lieutenants into the U.S. Army during the commencement ceremonies.
