Hamza Mahamud ’26 will serve as senior class speaker during the Class of 2026’s Commencement on Saturday, May 16, inside the Leonard Center Fieldhouse. He will be speaking alongside Dr. Anthony Fauci and bioethicist Christine Grady, and was chosen unanimously by the selection committee.
Mahamud, a political science major with minors in data science and classical languages, hails from Eden Prairie, Minn. He competes in sprints and hurdles for Macalester’s track and field team, and is on Macalester’s Model United Nations team.
His interest in being class speaker was sparked on a whim: “Truthfully, I’ve had friends joke about it. Ever since the start of senior year, they’d be like, ‘Oh, you totally should give it a go. You totally should try it.’ And at some point, I was just like, ‘Maybe this is worth a go. Maybe I should give this a shot.’”
While the speech began from his friends’ joking encouragement, that isn’t how Mahamud views the role of senior class speaker.
“Ideally, I want [Commencement] to be a day that people look back on with warm, fuzzy feelings, and 20 years later, when you think of that day, you tear up a little bit,” Mahamud said.
This year’s senior speaker selection committee included a student representative, Mia Guzman ’26.
“After seeing each student present their speech, Hamza Mahamud’s resonated with me the most,” Guzman wrote in an email to The Mac Weekly. “Contentwise, [the] speech stood out to me because I felt like it struck such a delicate balance between representing the broad range of experiences on campus while still being deeply specific, personal, and true to his voice. He captured at once the moments of grief, joy and resilience that defined the past four years, as well as the ones that defined him.”
The 2025-26 academic year has been marked by local and national unrest. Mahamud reflected on the impact of Operation Metro Surge and the federal shutdown on the Macalester community.
“Our class especially has had to live a different year than I think most senior classes [have]. And so what I think I’ll be talking about is the ways that I think that those experiences have made us better and more connected as a group.”
For Mahamud, the journey to senior class speaker wouldn’t have been possible without some key figures in and outside of his life at Macalester.
“Obviously, I’ve got to shout out my mom and my family for sure, ” Mahamud said. “I want to shout out Lisa Mueller and Wendy Weber for being my advisors, and honestly the entire poli-sci department for just being absolutely legendary, and definitely the track team and my coaches.”
While he is not able to share exact details of his speech, he told The Mac Weekly the story of how his speech came to be.
“The first four or five drafts that I wrote, I hated all of them,” Mahamud said. “… And I’m in the Pittsburgh airport on the day of the deadline, actually. It’s a Sunday. [Dean of Students] Javier [Gutierrez] wants the paper by the end of the day, and the paper had to be done before I got on my flight… I’m like, ‘I don’t like any of these.’ So I sat down on the floor of the Pittsburgh airport and wrote the entire draft in one sitting, no edits, and just sent that in. And was it ill-advised? Probably. Was it a little ridiculous? Yes. Was it the most authentic, true to myself, draft that I could have written? Yes.”
