WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama will urge this year’s graduates at Rutgers University to pursue positive change in the world despite a cascade of challenges from student loan debt to overseas turmoil.
Obama’s visit to the New Jersey campus on Sunday falls on the 250th anniversary of Rutgers, a public university that the White House has praised as a “remarkable institution of higher learning.” University leaders have been lobbying the president for years to deliver what will be the school’s first commencement speech by a sitting president.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama’s speech at High Point Solutions Stadium in Piscataway would focus on how the Class of 2016 can navigate the rapidly changing planet.
“These students are as well-prepared as any students have ever been to confront those challenges and use this changing environment to create a better world,” Earnest said. “That’s what makes the president so fundamentally optimistic about the future of our country, and that optimism is manifested quite well in this year’s graduating class at Rutgers.”
