Call it the “Kermencement” at the University of Maryland, where the graduation stage Thursday night will feature a froggy favorite: Kermit the Frog, delivering what will be his first commencement address in nearly 30 years. 

“I’m so humbled by it,” Kermit said. “I’m kind of taking this seriously — as seriously as a singing, dancing frog can take anything.”

Maryland knows Muppets well: Their creator, Jim Henson, earned his degree there in 1960, majoring in home economics. He and his wife, Jane, met on campus in a freshman puppetry class. Henson is honored with a statue at the university’s College Park campus, alongside his amphibian sidekick.

Kermit’s message to grads this year? Take the proverbial “leap” into opportunity and remember that this big step into adulthood doesn’t mean leaving behind their inner children.

“Maybe we’re at our best when we allow ourselves to continue to grow and learn something new every day,” Kermit said.

“I kind of hope these graduates keep that sophisticated childlike sense of curiosity and imagination and innovation as they travel down their paths.”

Harvard University’s commencement Thursday was defiant and celebratory, with speakers stressing the values of diversity and truth in the wake of the school’s legal battles with the Trump administration.

Dr. Abraham Verghese, this year’s commencement speaker who is a Stanford professor and infectious disease doctor, began by acknowledging the “unprecedented moment for Harvard University in this institution’s almost four-century existence.”

The commencement came just days after a senior Trump official told NBC News Tuesday that the administration intends to ask all federal agencies to find ways to end their contracts with the school. The move would result in an estimated $100 million in cuts at the university and is the latest in the tense sparring between the administration and Ivy League institution.

Verghese said that when he was asked to speak at the school’s 374th commencement, he felt the graduating class deserved to hear from a Nobel Prize winner or the Pope. What made him agree to address the crowd of some 30,000 people Thursday morning, he said, “had everything to do with where we all find ourselves in 2025.”

“When legal immigrants and others who are lawfully in this country, including so many of your international students, worry about being wrongly detained and even deported, perhaps it’s fitting that you hear from an immigrant like me,” he said to raucous applause.

“Part of what makes America great, if I may use that phrase, is that it allows an immigrant like me to blossom here,” he said, in a reference to President Donald Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again.” “Just as generations of other immigrants and their children have flourished and contributed in every walk of life, working to keep America great.”

“The greatness of America, the greatness of Harvard, is reflected in the fact that someone like me could be invited to speak to you,” he said.

For months the Trump administration has gone after higher education institutions, with Harvard in particular in its crosshairs.

In April, the school announced that it would be rejecting a list of 10 demands the administration said the university needed to take to address antisemitism. The requirements included restricting the acceptance of international students who are “hostile to the American values and institutions.” As a result of Harvard’s noncompliance, the administration said it was freezing more than $2 billion in grants to the school, leading Harvard to hit back with a lawsuit.

The school waged another lawsuit against the administration last week after the federal government said it would revoke the university’s ability to enroll foreign students. On Friday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the Department of Homeland Security from implementing the policy.

Murmurs and some cheers were heard in the crowd at commencement on Thursday after a federal judge extended a temporary order blocking the Trump administration’s revocation of Harvard’s ability to enroll international students.

Verghese told students in his commencement address Thursday, “No recent events can diminish what each of you has accomplished here, graduates. I also want you to know you have the admiration and the good wishes of so many beyond Harvard, more people than you realize.”

“A cascade of draconian government measures has already led to so much uncertainty, so much pain and suffering in this country and across the globe, and more has been threatened,” he said. “The outrage you must feel, the outrage so many feel, must surely lead us to a new appreciation for the rule of law and due process, which till now we took for granted, because this is America.”

Harvard President Alan Garber did not address the clash with the administration as openly, but received a loud ovation immediately upon welcoming the class of 2025 Thursday morning, and an even louder ovation when he welcomed “students from around the world, just as it should be.”

Several graduating speakers also spoke to the values of diversity.

Yurong “Luanna” Jiang, a graduate of the 2025 class who is from China, said when she grew up, she believed the “world was becoming a small village.”

“I remember being told, we will be the first generation to end hunger and poverty for humankind,” she said.

Jiang, who studied international development, said her program was built on the “beautiful vision that humanity rises and falls as one.”

“We’re starting to believe those who think differently, vote differently or pray differently, whether they are across the ocean or sitting right next to us, are not just wrong, we mistakenly see them as evil,” she said. “But it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Harvard’s battles against the Trump administration have drawn praise from many prominent figures. On Wednesday during a graduating class ceremony, Los Angeles Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said in a speech that he was moved by the school’s opposition to the administration.

“After seeing so many towering billionaires, media moguls, law firms, politicians, and other universities bend their knee to an administration that is systematically strip mining the U.S. Constitution, it is inspiring to me to see Harvard University take a stand for freedom,” he said.

The sense of unity came in contrast to last year’s graduation at Harvard College, Harvard University’s undergraduate college, when hundreds staged a walkout to decry its disqualification of 13 students involved in earlier protests against the war in Gaza.

This year, the Associated Press reported, protesters held a silent vigil a few hours before the ceremony, holding signs that read “Ceasefire Now” and “Not Another Bomb.”

WASHINGTON — Oklahoma will not be able to launch the nation’s first religious public charter school after the Supreme Court on Thursday deadlocked 4-4 in a major case on the separation of church and state.

The decision by the evenly divided court means that a ruling by the Oklahoma Supreme Court that said the proposal to launch St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School violates both the federal Constitution and state law remains in place.

As there was no majority, the court did not issue a written decision, and the case sets no nationwide precedent on the contentious legal question of whether religious schools must be able to participate in taxpayer-funded state charter school programs.

A key factor in the outcome was that conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who would have been the deciding vote, did not participate in the case. She did not explain why, but it is likely because of her ties with Notre Dame Law School. The law school’s religious liberty clinic represents the school.

The one-page decision did not say how each justice voted. During oral arguments last month, most of the court’s conservatives indicated support for the school while liberals expressed concern. At least one conservative is likely to have sided with the liberals, most likely Chief Justice John Roberts.

The court will likely be asked to weigh in on the issue in future cases.

St. Isidore would have operated online statewide with a remit to promote the Catholic faith.

The case highlights tensions within the Constitution’s First Amendment; one provision, the Establishment Clause, prohibits state endorsement of religion or preference for one religion over another, while another, the Free Exercise Clause, bars religious discrimination.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court had cited the state’s interest in steering clear of Establishment Clause violations as a reason not to allow the proposal submitted by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa to move forward.

A state board approved the proposal for St. Isidore in June 2023 despite concerns about its religious nature, prompting Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond to file suit.

The case saw Drummond on the opposite side of fellow Republicans in the state who backed the idea, but he prevailed at the Oklahoma Supreme Court the following year.

The Supreme Court, when Barrett is participating, has a 6-3 conservative majority that often backs religious rights. In recent years it has repeatedly strengthened the Free Exercise Clause in cases brought by conservative religious liberty activists, sometimes at the expense of the Establishment Clause. Some conservatives have long complained that the common understanding that the Establishment Clause requires strict separation of church and state is incorrect.

Lawyers representing the school and the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board sought to portray the dispute as similar to a series of recent rulings in which the court said that under the Free Exercise Clause, states cannot bar religious groups from government programs that are open to everyone else.

During the oral argument, Roberts pushed back, indicating that he saw the schools case as different from the previous decisions.

Those cases, he said, “involved fairly discrete state involvement” compared with Oklahoma’s charter school program.

“This does strike me as a much more comprehensive involvement,” he added.

The push for religious public charter schools dovetails with the school choice movement, which supports parents using taxpayer funds to send their children to private school. Public school advocates see both efforts as broad assaults on traditional public schools.