Last Thursday, Claremont McKenna College announced that former U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and businesswoman Akshata Murty CM ’02, his wife, will be the joint speakers at its commencement ceremony this May. On Monday, Pitzer College announced that it would be welcoming Angela Davis — author, professor and political activist — as its commencement speaker.
These historically controversial speakers have sparked excitement on campus for their arrivals and the values they represent.
In CMC President Hiram Chodosh’s email announcing the speakers, he emphasized the duo’s embodiment of CMC’s values and longstanding commitment to the college, making them good fits for the event.
“We are moved by their selfless leadership, generous support, and close friendship to so many throughout the CMC community,” Chodosh wrote. “They have both made a significant impact on business, government, and the professions.”
Tom Inouye CM ’26 stated that he wasn’t entirely surprised by the announcement, given that this was Chodosh’s last year as president.
“It makes sense that they’re speaking as Chodosh is leaving, because [it seemed like] they had a close relationship,” he said.
While Inouye acknowledged the duo’s longstanding ties to Chodosh and CMC, he said he was “slightly disappointed” with the decision due to Sunak’s conservative political stance.
“I’m not in love with the idea of having a conservative speaking at our graduation in this political climate,” Inouye said.
Sunak is part of the Conservative Party and is a current member of Parliament. In 2023, during his term as prime minister, The Guardian called him “perhaps the most socially conservative prime minister of his generation” due to his conservativeconservation stances on trans rights and immigration.
Mia Pickett PZ ’26, on the other hand, found Davis an apt choice to embody Pitzer’s focus on social responsibility.
“Angela Davis wholeheartedly encompasses all that Pitzer seeks to stand for,” Pickett said. “The fact that she even has ties to our institution is really hopeful for the type of students the 5Cs create and put out into the world.”
Feven Aklilu PZ ’26 said Davis represents a spirit of service that drew current Pitzer seniors to the college in the first place.
“We came to Pitzer trying to make the world a better place,” she said. “Davis is a great personification of what we’re able to do with the education that we’ve gotten here.”
Davis’ legacy as a Black radical activist is an exemplar for how marginalized students can make change in spaces hostile to their contributions, according to Akilu.
“Davis is a great representation of not only how you can work within these systems … [but] fully show up as yourself,” she said. “That sense of radicalism, of being your true and authentic self in these spaces, is just as much of a tool of resistance and a tool of social change as it is to put in policies.”
Murty and Rishi Sunak visited CMC last August, meeting President Chodosh and going on a tour of the campus. Ismail Iftikhar CM ’28, who worked in the CMC admissions office this summer, gave them the tour. He said he was “surprised by the[ir] humility.”
“They were super down-to-earth people,” he said. “Very friendly, very lively, super excited to just be on campus, to be showing their children around.”
Murty is the daughter of Indian billionaire N. R. Narayan Murty and engineer, philanthropist and author Sudha Murty. She received a B.A. in Economics and French from CMC, graduating in 2002. She later obtained an MBA from Stanford University, where she met Sunak. The couple got married in 2009, and have two daughters.
While Murty and Sunak’s attendance at commencement was first announced via email to the entire CMC community, Pitzer seniors heard news about their senior speaker two months earlier, according to Aklilu and Pickett. At a Pitzer senior class celebration to mark 100 days until their graduation, Davis was announced as the to-be commencement speaker.
Although both said the announcement was met with excitement and shock, they also said that a handful of students were asking, “Wait, who’s Angela Davis?” Aklilu said she found the questions “disrespectful.”
“There’s a lot of privilege in being able to say, ‘I don’t know Angela Davis,’” she said. “That bleeds into the natural extension of how Black Pitzer seniors feel on this campus in terms of not being seen and not being recognized for their work.”
Davis was a commencement speaker at Pitzer in 2012. She also visited Scripps in 2016 as a guest speaker, and gave a talk at Pomona in 2021. She briefly taught at The Claremont Colleges, having been hired at the now-defunct Black Studies Center in 1975. She taught a class on the history of Black women for one semester, but her contract was not renewed.
Like Davis, Murty and Sunak have strong ties to Claremont. The duo contributed $3 million in funding to the Murty Sunak Quantitative and Computing Lab at CMC in 2018, which drew flak from UK media in 2023. They also provided an endowment for a philosophy professorship, which doubled the size of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) program, and led to the new second track being dubbed the ‘Murty Track.’
Pitzer’s commencement ceremony will be held on May 16 at Commencement Plaza at 10 a.m. CMC’s ceremony will be held later that day on Pritzlaff Field at 2 p.m.
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