David Auburn, AB’91, an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and director, has been announced as the speaker for the University of Chicago’s 2026 Class Day celebration on June 5.
Auburn will address the College’s Class of 2026, as well as their friends and families, to kick off UChicago’s 540th Convocation weekend.
“UChicago was formative for me, and I’m not sure that I would have the career that I’ve had, or even be in the profession that I’m in, if it weren’t for the experiences here and within the city itself,” said Auburn. “Any chance that I can come back and repay what I got from the school is meaningful to me.”
A Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner for his 2001 play Proof, he credits both the classes and Core curriculum for allowing him to learn in a more expansive way.
“It didn’t matter if you were learning something directly or not,” said Auburn. “At UChicago, you learned how to teach yourself, to ask the most urgent questions.”
Auburn believes these lessons were critical to his writing—and that traces of the University are now present in everything he creates.
“There is probably something in everything that I’ve written that comes from the same notion about learning in the College and the confidence that it gave me,” he said. “I find the right sources and ask the right questions and read enough, I can write and create something dealing with a subject that I originally knew nothing about. I know that this skill absolutely came from UChicago.”
Outside of the classroom, Auburn was a second-generation member of the improv and sketch comedy group Off-Off Campus (now in its 41st year). Without the group, Auburn does not think he would have ended up working in theater.
“I’d always enjoyed theater as an extracurricular activity, but it wasn’t until I was actually in a group writing sketches and performing them that I thought this could be a career,” he said.
When he returns to his alma mater in June, Auburn plans on speaking to graduates about how today’s world requires constant redefinition.
“One of the things that’s been on my mind is uncertainty,” he said. “But maybe the radical uncertainty that characterizes this particular moment in time is also an opportunity for students to truly define themselves moving forward.”
Auburn will join a group of UChicago prominent alumni who have been addressed College graduates during Class Day. That list includes last year’s speaker and Institute of Politics founding directoer David Axelrod, AB’76;, as well as award-winning journalist and podcast host Rebecca Jarvis, AB’03; and New York Times columnist David Brooks, AB’83, among others.
The Class Day ceremony, which will take place on the Main Quadrangles, is slated to begin at 2 p.m. on June 5. Graduating students and their families are invited to join the College at a reception prior to the ceremony on the Bartlett Quadrangle at noon. Please visit UChicago’s Convocation website for more information.
—A version this story was originally published on the University of Chicago College website.
