Being selected as a speaker for any college or educational institution can be quite an honor, and you’d imagine that the one speaking would take pride in their speech. However, a speaker for Smith College’s Commencement ceremony in Northampton, Massachusetts, decided that her academic integrity wasn’t that important when addressing the school’s many college graduates. She allegedly plagiarized her speech, and once the college president found out about it, the speaker gave up her own honorary degree.
According to an official presidential letter published on the Smith College’s website, President Sarah Willie-LeBreton publicly announced that Commencement 2025 speaker and honorary degree recipient Evelyn Harris had used an unoriginal speech. She wrote that Harris “borrowed much of her speech to graduates and their families from the commencement speeches of others without the attribution typical of and central to the ideals of academic integrity.” Staff spoke with Harris after the event was over, and the Commencement speaker decided to abandon her honorary degree.
When Reddit caught wind of this story about the Massachusetts college speaker, many users completely phased out her act of plagiarism and instead bashed on the concept of honorary degrees. “Honorary degrees shouldn’t exist,” says a post’s top comment, garnering almost 200 upvotes. Another replied in agreement, saying that there is no benefit or “reason to award an honorary degree.” “Degrees are earned, not given,” added in a third.
While the topic of whether honorary degrees should exist or not is a debate to be had, other Reddit users went back to discussing the speaker copying her speech from other people. “Not excusing plagiarizing, but aren’t all commencement speeches pretty much the same fluff?” one asked, to which many replied that no, this isn’t the case. “Everyone has their own unique flair of way of writing speeches,” remarked a commenter. And they’d be right, seeing how Smith College even celebrated the unique speeches that were given at its graduate ceremony. One user made an excellent point: “With the statistics of how many college students are using AI to do their work, I wonder how common this will become.”
Earlier this month, another student from a different Massachusetts college demanded a tuition refund after discovering her professor used AI for classwork. It’s clear people look down on both AI usage abuse and plagiarism, but which is worse in the academic space? Rhetorics aside, hopefully, Smith College will find a more suitable and trustworthy candidate speaker for its Commencement ceremony next year.
