A Message from Iona University

Iona University is pleased to announce that Princeton University professor D. Graham Burnett, Ph.D., an acclaimed scholar, writer and interdisciplinary thinker whose work bridges the humanities, sciences and public discourse, will deliver the keynote address at Iona's 82nd annual Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 15, 2026. Burnett will also receive an honorary degree in recognition of his many contributions to scholarship and academic inquiry.

“We are honored to welcome D. Graham Burnett as our 2026 Commencement speaker,” said Iona President Seamus Carey, Ph.D. “Dr. Burnett's scholarship and public work reflect a deep commitment to intellectual curiosity, ethical reflection and the value of presence – pursuits that are central to Iona’s mission. Additionally, over the past year, his involvement with the Iona community has challenged us to think even more deliberately about how we engage with one another and with our own inner selves. I am confident his message will inspire graduates as they set out on their personal and professional journeys.” 

Burnett’s keynote adds to an Iona family legacy spanning 25 years, when Iona recognized his mother, Dr. Claire L. Gaudiani ’01H, with an honorary degree in 2001. Gaudiani served as Connecticut College’s eighth president from 1988 to 2001.

“It is an extraordinary honor to have this opportunity to speak to the remarkable community of scholars, teachers, and students at Iona, an institution that is doing so much to center higher education on the higher goods,” said Burnett. “It is extra special to receive a degree from a university that recognized and celebrated my late mother as a visionary crusader for love, justice, and learning.”

About D. Graham Burnett, Ph.D. 

Burnett currently serves as the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History and History of Science at Princeton University. A Ph.D. recipient from the University of Cambridge and the salutatorian of his undergraduate class at Princeton, Burnett has held prestigious fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Mellon Foundation, and his work at the intersection of the humanities and the visual and performing arts was recognized by a recent appointment as a visiting artist at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.

Burnett first engaged the Iona community as a keynote speaker in the University’s Presidential Speaker Series in February 2025, presenting both in Bronxville and New Rochelle, where he challenged audiences to consider the cultural and ethical consequences of what he describes as the growing commodification and “fracking” of human attention by digital technologies.

He has also played an active role on campus through Iona’s collaboration with the Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA), an innovative educational initiative Burnett co-founded to explore the role of focus, care and sustained inquiry in learning. As part of that engagement, Burnett will be working with faculty, staff and students to help shape programming throughout the academic year, including the recent launch of the University’s “Attentional Campus Initiative” workshop series. The initiative supports Iona’s broader vision of fostering “attention sanctuaries” that enhance teaching, learning and student engagement.

Throughout his career in academia, Burnett’s byline has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Harper’s and The Economist, among many others. His recent op-ed in The New York Times was titled, “The Multi-Trillion Dollar Battle for Your Attention is Built on a Lie.” This January, he and The Friends of Attention also released their first book, “Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement,” which the Iona community has been among the first to preview.