Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to give Commencement address

The Baccalaureate speaker will be Sylvia Boorstein, a co-founding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, Calif., and a senior teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, will be the 2005 Commencement speaker, Stanford President John Hennessy announced Wednesday.

Steve Jobs (Image credit: Courtesy of Apple. Photographer: Moshe Brakha)

Hennessy invited Jobs to speak based upon the recommendation of a committee that included Jody Maxmin, associate professor of art and art history and of classics; Eric Roberts, professor of engineering; graduate students Roger Stanley and Sohini Ramachandran; and senior class presidents Jen Graham, Steve Myrick, Spencer Porter and Paola Worsley.

“The name Steve Jobs is synonymous with innovation and creativity over the past three decades,” Hennessy said. “Steve has been a leader and visionary, a pioneer in the use of technology as a means to create a more engaging and humanistic world. The advisory committee identified Steve as someone who personified the spirit and creativity that have characterized Stanford since its founding. This was an inspired recommendation, and I thank them for their thoughtful work.”

The class presidents said they were delighted that Jobs had accepted the invitation.

“We are very excited that such an influential and relevant leader has accepted our offer to speak at Commencement,” according to their statement. “Both a groundbreaker in technology as the founder of Apple and a pioneer in the arts as the CEO of Pixar, Steve Jobs is uniquely poised to speak to graduating seniors, as his work is ubiquitous in our daily lives.”

Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976 and Pixar Animation Studios in 1986. A biography can be found on the web at http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/jobs.html.

The university also announced its speaker for the 2005 Baccalaureate service. The speaker will be Sylvia Boorstein, a co-founding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, Calif., and a senior teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass. Boorstein was part of the original faculty of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, an organization that provides meditation-based training programs for rabbis and other Jewish professionals.

Stanford’s 114th Commencement will be held on Sunday, June 12, and is part of a two-day celebration for graduates, their families and friends, and members of the Stanford community.