
PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — President Joe Biden will visit his alma mater, the University of Delaware, to deliver the Class of 2022 graduation commencement speech next month.
The graduation ceremony, scheduled for Saturday, May 28, will be limited to about 4,000 students and 16,000 guests. However, if you don’t have a ticket, you can still see the speech live streamed from Delaware Stadium on the university’s Newark campus.
Through his political career, Biden has spoken at UD graduation ceremonies four times — 1978, 1987, 2004 and 2014 — but this will be the first time an active, sitting U.S. president will deliver a commencement address there, according to university President Dennis Assanis.
Since graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1965, Biden has kept up close ties to the university. In 1984, he joined the university’s Alumni Wall of Fame. His papers from 36 years in the U.S. Senate have been archived in the UD Library since 2011. In 2017, he founded UD’s Biden Institute, a public policy research center focused on women's rights, civil rights, criminal justice reform, environmental sustainability and economic reform. And the following year, the university established the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.
First Lady Jill Biden and the president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, are also graduates of UD.