Professor Julie L. Kalish ’91, a lecturer at the Rockefeller Center, was selected by the Class of 2026 as the faculty speaker at Dartmouth's Senior Class Day Exercises, one of the most student-driven traditions in the College's commencement weekend.
Held on June 13, 2026, at the BEMA, Class Day is a celebration organized by the students themselves. The program features student speakers, an awards ceremony, and an address given by a faculty member chosen by the graduating class, making the selection of Kalish a reflection of the impact she has had on students throughout their time at Dartmouth.
Class of 2026 President and Master of Ceremonies JJ Dega '26 with Professor Julie Kalish '91 at the 2026 Class Day Ceremony.
Kalish joined the Rockefeller Center as a lecturer with expertise in writing and communications, constitutional law, and the Supreme Court. A Dartmouth alumna herself, she earned her undergraduate degree here before going on to University College, London and Vermont Law School. Kalish returned to Hanover with a philosophy of teaching rooted in transformation. "Real learning is transformative in some way," she has written of her approach, "and no two individuals will ever be learning precisely the same thing at any one time."
Speaking to a class seated on the grass of the BEMA, just as she had been 35 years earlier at her own Class Day, Kalish drew on memory, humor, and hard-won perspective to deliver a message about the importance of leaning into what makes each person distinctly themselves. She recalled her own faculty speaker, the legendary Dartmouth language professor John Rassias, whose animated, unbuttoned presence at the podium prompted a realization in the young Kalish: "What I saw up on this stage was something kind of miraculous," she told the graduating seniors. "Here was a man who had found a place that saw him for the gifts he had to give — and made space for him to be able to give them."
That, she told the Class of 2026, is what she wants for each of them.
Weaving in a tribute to the original 1979 Muppet Movie (her first career ambition, she admitted, was to become a Muppeteer), Kalish encouraged the graduating class to build their lives around the connections, values, and sense of purpose that had drawn them together at Dartmouth, rather than chasing validation from an outside world whose expectations and goals may not be their own. In an era of rapid change and widespread anxiety about artificial intelligence, she argued that what graduates carry forward as their most valuable assets will be both their own unique gifts and the irreducibly human qualities no model can replicate: the spark of excitement that comes from a genuine idea, the moral imperatives of a deeply held value, and the warmth and meaning of real connection.
"Lean into your gifts," she told them. "To your values and ethics. To the experiences of thinking and feeling that — so clearly — make you not AI."
She closed by sharing what has kept her in the classroom over her many years at Dartmouth: watching a student become more fully themselves, in an office hour, over a piece of writing, in the middle of a seminar. "It feels like a miracle that this gets to be my job," she said.