Views expressed in opinion columns are the author’s own.

With all due respect to the amphibious community, Kermit the Frog is not only a poor choice for the University of Maryland’s 2025 commencement speaker but also a cowardly one.

The truth is that Kermit is a fun but safe choice for a speaker in a time that demands anything but. A fictional character won’t go off-script, nor will they have to deal with any real-world issues. 

As novel as the concept feels, this isn’t even Kermit’s first rodeo as a collegiate speaker. Kermit gave speeches at Harvard in 1982 and a speech at Southampton in 1992, and there’s little reason to expect much more than the content that’s already out. It’ll be inoffensive, uplifting and milquetoast by design, and the crowd will politely applaud after Kermit finishes with a platitude or muppetism a la “Ribbit-ribbit-knee deep-ribbit”. 

We’ll remember that Kermit spoke at commencement, but we won’t remember what he said. 

There’s a special emptiness and vacuousness in the words of a character like this in the current political climate. Our fellow Terps on campus have had their visas revoked, then reinstated. We are losing professional opportunities to a federal hiring freeze — opportunities that were supposed to jumpstart careers in an especially brutal job market. 

Kermit might give us some words of encouragement, but that means as much from him — probably less — as it does from anyone else. 

In fact, I wager that Kermit won’t even touch on U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration’s active defunding of PBS — something important to his bottom line and children’s education everywhere. With educational resources from broadcast programming to university grant funding under fire from Trump’s administration, isn’t it imperative for this university and the muppet leader to say something? Still, Kermit likely won’t talk about these issues. 

But you know who might? The real people working on Sesame Street, or real people in general. The class of 2025 deserves better than affirmations from Kermit.

This commencement speaker choice sends a message to this university’s community in a politically charged time full of dissent crackdown and the deportations of people across the country: avoid conflict and sit issues out. Stay out of good trouble because it’s trouble nonetheless. 

It’s all antithetical to how we preach moving fearlessly forward. This university’s administration is allowing fear to paralyze it. 

There are better and more valuable ways to do this that don’t ignore the reality of our situation but instead engage with it. That’s where we find inspiration. 

For instance, Larry David, an alum of this university, has been at the front of these conversations every year and recently — and rightfully — made fun of Bill Maher’s monologue that fawned over Trump for being nice to him at dinner. 

Commentary of that ilk isn’t going to please everyone, but it does take a real stance in a real way. We deserve authenticity and perspective like that at commencement, things that Kermit, bless his soul, cannot offer us. 

While David would be a great get for any class going forward, it’s fair to say that maybe this university just couldn’t convince him this time. But there are real stories all across the state that can give us what we deserve. The illegal deportation of Marylander Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia has been the subject of media headlines for more than a month and probably won’t be talked about at the commencement of the state’s flagship university. Anyone with an ounce of familiarity with Abrego Garcia would probably be able to deliver a much more poignant, relevant and inspirational speech to a class that could use direction. 

This university’s journalism college was also recently named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for the first time for investigative reporting, creating change across the country. Hearing about that project would be significantly more inspirational than hearing about Kermit’s upbringing in a swamp. This campus and state houses some of the most brilliant minds out there — we do not need to have an unproblematic, fictional celebrity to have stories and speeches worth listening to. Our stories are important too. 

I wasn’t especially excited about the announcement of Wes Moore as speaker last year, but him talking about his story and philosophy regarding the Francis Scott Key bridge collapse was moving. It was real, and that’s what made it stick. 

The class of 2025 deserves better than Kermit. It deserves something real.

Rohin Mishra is a graduate applied political analytics major. He can be reached at rpmishra@umd.edu.